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  #46  
Old 11-19-2017, 10:17 AM
1Charlie 1Charlie is offline
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Originally Posted by RP View Post
I think that the contempt is more apparent among guitar forum purists than builders themselves. I visited the shop where Rockbridge guitars were built several years ago. I don't know if they've since moved, but at the time it was in the basement of an old house in Charlottesville. My recollection is that a staff of three did the actual building in the mishmash of small rooms. I asked about whether having a CNC machine would be desirable and was told that they'd love to have one but their space and small output didn't really support such an expenditure at the time...
Yep, still in the small basement of an old historic house in Charlottesville, about five blocks from where I live. I think there are four guys working there now.

Rockbridge only produces around 60 guitars a year, so I can see their point. CNC machines are not cheap.
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  #47  
Old 11-19-2017, 10:22 AM
rokdog49 rokdog49 is offline
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Originally Posted by dneal View Post
I still don't understand the contempt for CNC.
I view the negativity as "purism" on the part of those who view it is not being truly hand-crafting. It's not necessity contempt as much as much as what others will allow in the process and call it hand-crafted.
For my part, a truly hand-crafted guitar means one that was built using rudimentary tools only no matter who did the neck, bracing, top, etc.
Somebody still has to spray that finish on using a compressor and a gun, but that somebody is still doing it by hand and that is a human skill set.
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  #48  
Old 11-19-2017, 10:39 AM
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Originally Posted by 1Charlie View Post
Yep, still in the small basement of an old historic house in Charlottesville, about five blocks from where I live. I think there are four guys working there now.

Rockbridge only produces around 60 guitars a year, so I can see their point. CNC machines are not cheap.
Amazing. I thought they'd have moved by now. My recollection is that the ceiling was fairly low so I'm not certain that a CNC would have even fit down there....
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  #49  
Old 11-19-2017, 10:41 AM
Mycroft Mycroft is offline
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Originally Posted by murrmac123 View Post
This is the thing that always intrigues me, Charles ... like ... how does the builder actually know that one more stroke with the sanding block will ruin the top ?
Experience, perhaps. Observation and deduction. Most humans learn from their experiences. Even the factories who produce parts to a specification have learned what they consider the optimal specification through experience. Your "experience" may be different.

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I totally get the top stiffness measurement thing (not part of this thread discussion so far, admittedly) ... but it seems to me that many builders like to propose an almost mystical , tai-chi kind of approach to their voicings, and I am not sure that I can altogether gel with that .
Perhaps you know different builders than I do (It does take all kinds) The ones who I know simply use their experience to apply their observations of the characteristics of an individual piece of wood to what should be done to optimize it based on the desired responses. Nothing foo-foo about it.



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AFAIAC if it can't be measured, then it doesn't exist.
There are many things that we know exist that we don't know how to measure. Some things we have learned to measure. Some things we have not yet learned to measure. Measurement is not equivalent to observation: we may observe a thing long before we know how to measure it. It does not come into existence at the moment of measurement, but was already there.

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  #50  
Old 11-19-2017, 10:56 AM
Mycroft Mycroft is offline
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Originally Posted by 1Charlie View Post
I had the great fortune to tour the Huss and Dalton shop week before last.

H&D purchased a CNC machine in 2004, and slowly incorporated it into their operation. It churns out bridges, rough-cut necks, fretboards, etc, which are taken across the parking lot into the assembly shop. Mark Dalton told me that the CNC can make parts more reliably, faster, and with less waste. For instance, the machine had just finished a run of bridges, and out of 20, only one of them had to be thrown out.

What happens in the workshop is that these individual parts are made into exquisite guitars with human hands and a variety of power and hand tools.

Mark Dalton takes care during his discussion of the CNC machine to describe what it does and why. It does not generally spit out "finished" parts. Instead, it frees him, Jeff Huss and their team to do what they do best, which is to take the CNC parts and sculpt fine guitars out of them. They are not just slapping CNC parts on without lots of further handwork to suit each instrument.

I own two H&D's, one that predates CNC (2004) and one that fully utilizes it (2014). While it is cool to think about all of the handwork that went into the '04, the '14 is every bit its equal in terms of fit, finish, tone and playability.

So, from at least my tiny sample size, I can tell no difference between "before" and "after" CNC from a quality perspective.

Probably the coolest thing I saw in the shop was one of the simplest. H&D use a simple weight and gauge to test the flexibility of each top. All tops are then repeatedly sanded to achieve a thickness that falls within a specified range of flex. This is regardless of species. Mark told me that through trial and error during their earliest years, they found that the best guitars they made fell within these flex parameters. So they built that process into every guitar.
This. Most small builders who I know who have a CNC use the machine for repetitive tasks rather than than the fine accuracy ones. They use it to rough-out braces and bridges. Necks. (once you've entered the programming for a specific neck into the computer, you can reproduce it whenever you want.) But that does not mean that the work on that part stops when the CNC machine does. Finishing it by hand means it is every bit as hand made as a top that went through a powered planner before it was hand-sanded to finish.

I do think that "hand-built" is more than just the tools that a builder uses.

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  #51  
Old 11-19-2017, 11:42 AM
Mycroft Mycroft is offline
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I think all guitars built now are mechanically assisted builds. Whether its by one person or many.

As far as the "assembly line" idea of a factory, I don't think that it takes away the notion of "hand built in that its probably more feasible for one person to become an expert in the manufacturing of a few parts than every part in a guitar.

So for example only, one guy does necks and bridges, another does tops and backs, another bends sides and closes the boxes, another does the trim, etc. All these people develop specialized skills that are above average. For one person to become highly skilled in all the areas is tougher I would think.
But what that does not do is allow the person making the braces to vary their dimensions based on the properties of that individual top and/or the particular tone or responsiveness desired.


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This results in many guitars getting built over a short time with lower costs as opposed to the one or two guitars being built by one person.
But are those guitars, less expensive though they may be, as good in their consistency as one or two built by a single person who has become highly skilled in all the areas and is able to fully integrate all the parts in a way that accounts for their innate variability? The real question is not is there a team or is there a solo builder, but rather do they build to a specification or to the materials and response desired?

There are small production facilities who straddle the line. Santa Cruz, for example, has a team who builds the guitars. A guy who roughs out parts. Someone who does finishes. Someone who does necks. Someone else does inlay work. But they also have someone who voices the tops. Mark Traugott once held that position. He was followed by Roy McAlister.

So are they "hand-built" or "factory?"


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Originally Posted by TBman View Post
The very small shop charges a lot more money per unit due to the economies of scale among other things, Also the small shop builder will do extra bling features which are labor intensive that you don't see in a "mass produced" guitar. To be fair to the small builder, custom work takes time and time is money. Go into the custom build section of the forum and take a look. The work these builders do is exceptional. They take the craft to another level.
Yes, economics of scale are a factor. But also, and probably more important, is the time per unit invested just in the construction. You might be surprised at the number of small-builder guitars without any extra "bling" to speak of beyond pretty wood. And pretty wood takes no more time to work than plain-looking wood does. Where the time comes in is someone working slowly, with thinking and consideration. You are also paying not just for the man-hours that go into actually building the instrument, but the time and experience of the builder.

I have had people in court ask what I charge after watching me work, and then recoil, saying that I only spoke a few words to the judge. I usually laugh and then tell them that my clients are not paying by the word, but rather for the 4 years as an undergraduate that I put in and then three years of law school, plus my 15 years of experience, knowledge of the applicable law, and institutional knowledge of the particular court that I am in and the Judge that I am in front of. But feel free to represent yourself.

I'm not even sure of why I am bothering to try and convince people that there is a difference between a hand-made custom guitar and a factory-to specification produced guitar. Can there be a great production spec guitar? Absolutely, when the specs match the characteristics of that individual top needs to be its best. The difference is that a small or solo builder is building to those characteristics. That point has been made over and over. And not just in this thread.

TW

Last edited by Mycroft; 11-19-2017 at 11:52 AM. Reason: typos
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  #52  
Old 11-19-2017, 02:20 PM
rpnfan rpnfan is offline
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Not sure I agree with higher variability. We've all read on these forums about factory guitars every now and then just seem to hit a home run while the rest are mediocre to average so in my experience higher variability seems to be more prevalent with factory. It's pretty rare to read about a mediocre boutique such as Goodall, Smogyi, Borgeous, Huss & Dalton, Lowden, Froggy Bottom, Collings....(yes they are tight sounding but they are consistent) Santa Cruz.........they all seem to be exceptional.
The other day I just played a Santa Cruz Eric Skye which I found not good. One string really stood out in a negative way - much louder then the other strings. So that can happen. Maybe "just" the setup, but for a price-point above 8000 Euro I would expect that _not_ to happen.

My luthier built guitar was ~ half the price and built with love and care for the detail, which IMO really shows (and even more so "hears").

So far no one mentioned the really thoughtful article here:
http://www.esomogyi.com/handmade.html

I think that summarizes the topic very well.
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  #53  
Old 11-19-2017, 02:29 PM
murrmac123 murrmac123 is offline
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I just thought I would go back and watch the video of Dana Bourgeois' voicing" his tops ... which I have watched many times before ....I couldn't help but laugh at one of the comments (18 hrs ago as I write) , in which the commenter uses the phrase "ritualized self-delusion".

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  #54  
Old 11-19-2017, 03:00 PM
zeeway zeeway is offline
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Besides guitar, one of my other main interests is woodworking. And this same same discussion rages in parallel among woodworkers. About five years ago, I built a CNC router to help me in my woodworking. With its help I have built some rocking chairs (Maloof style), some other chairs, some fancy boxes, some signs, and even some parts for a guitar and a banjo. The CNC has helped do some things I would never attempt by pure handwork because it just takes too long for my level of patience and skill.

I toured the Taylor factory last summer, and was very impressed at their use of CNC for repetitive operations; and also their reliance on human hands and ears and eyes for the fine finishing touches.

If any luthier is still carving necks with hand tools, they must not value their time very highly. I guess they must make their guitar tops by hand planing a tree trunk.

My point is the magic is in the design and the sound it produces. How you achieve that design (and sound) whether in 100 hours by handtools, or in 10 hours with machines is irrelevant to me. The guitar is the thing, not how it was produced.
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  #55  
Old 11-19-2017, 03:26 PM
JoeCharter JoeCharter is offline
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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
It is a good question. I'm not sure there is an equally good answer.

There are relatively few things these days that are truly "hand made". Most manufacturing, large and small, uses machinery of some kind for at least some processes. More modern processes are often computer controlled (CNC), with even less contact between maker and raw material.

The term "handmade" conjures rosy pictures of old-world craftspersons plying their skills over a workbench with some handtools. However, just because something is made by hand, with little or no machinery, doesn't guarantee a high-quality result. History is full of less-then-stellar examples.

An interesting concept was put forth by David Pye called "the workmanship of risk", "workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment, dexterity and care which the maker exercises as he works." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Pye_(furniture))

Much can be said about the concept and it implications for things "handmade". For a guitar maker, it might include making a guitar top thickness just on the edge of failure - one more stroke or two of the hand plane, sanding block, electric orbital sander, etc. and the top is too weak or not the right response. That isn't done in most large factories where all guitar tops of a certain model are all made to the same, uniform thickness.

It's a potentially long discussion. And many have discussed it.

In the end, it probably boils down to "quality". Quality can be a difficult thing to define and identify. That is, each player wants the best "quality" guitar, however each defines it. Add in "for the money paid" and the concept of "value" enters into it. My perspective, having made guitars for three decades, is that if one can't find what one wants - features or "quality" - in an off-the-rack instrument, - or one wants to support a particular individual and his or her approach to making instruments, be it handtools the old fashion way, or modern CNC equipment - then commission a custom-made instrument. "Custom-made" isn't necessarily the same thing as "handmade" and handmade isn't a guarantee of anything. With the right hands, handmade can be spectacular.
This is such a great post -- thank you, Charles.
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  #56  
Old 11-19-2017, 03:31 PM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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Just to add a couple of things...

My violin making teacher used to talk about trying to 'raise the standard of mediocrity'. As you learn more your average instrument should get better, and there should be fewer bad ones. IMO Martin's standard of mediocrity is well above that of many other production facilities, and the range of variation between the best and the worst correspondingly small. There is still a range, though.

It brings up the interesting question of whether the best luthier built instrument is better than the best production line (as opposed to custom shop) Martin. In other words, is there an absolute ceiling somewhere, and do the better factories hit it from time to time? Do the hand makers hit it more often?

rojdog49 wrote:
"Somebody still has to spray that finish on using a compressor and a gun, but that somebody is still doing it by hand and that is a human skill set. "

Spray finishes are pretty recent innovations. The first one to come into wide use was nitrocellulose lacquer, in the '30s,iirc. IMO nitro is actually not a very good wood finish in many respects, but it has become the standard due to it's widespread use in production shops.

Prior to that guitars were usually finished either with shellac or oil-resin varnish. Either can be applied with a brush. Shellac is also the basic material for 'French polish' where it is applied with a pad in many thin coats. Classical makers often use FP, which has the advantage of going on thinner, and thus adding les weight and stiffness to the top, than any other finish. A good maker can get a nice looking FP finish with .002" or less of coating thickness. It's possible to put on brushed varnish and get a coating that's only .0025"-.0035" thick. It's difficult to spray a finish and end up with less than .005" of film. Some shops use a lot more. I have replaced tops on Ovations that had .040" of epoxy finish on them: a full millimeter.

There is endless debate in the guitar world about what is the 'best' finish. They all have drawbacks and advantages. But, this is beside the point in a sense, which is that not all guitars are 'sprayed', and there are reasons not to. Oh, and there are computer controlled sprayers, although they may not have worked their way down to out level yet.

Some makers talk about thinning the top or braces down to the absolute minimum required for structural stability, in order to get the most tone. The claim is that production shops tend to leave them heavy, and thus compromise sound output. I think it's more complicated than that. IMO the best guitars are more like the deacon's wonderful one hoss shay of the poem, which was built such that every part would last 100 years, rather than one or another wearing out prematurely. In the poem the conveyance did last 100 years to the day, and then all fell apart at once (becoming the precursor of the cars that fall apart just after you make the last payment...) . In the case of a guitar the best ones seem to have all of the parts in the proper balance to produce the 'best' sound, whatever that means. Again, given the variability of wood this can't be done using dimensionally standardized parts; there has to be some variation from one guitar to another to accomplish it. Production shops do tend to leave them heavy in some places, in order to avoid both warranty returns and some types of tone issues, simply because they can't take the time to customize things to achieve the same results with less weight. In other places they may end up lighter than they 'should' be; say, if the wood used turns out to be much less dense than the 'average' around which the design was based. The tone each maker aims for varies, but a good maker will know how to balance things to get that, along with as much durability as can be expected from something as highly stressed as a guitar. For some makers that will be the 'Ferrari guitar' that produces amazing sound for a while and then dies (see 'Flamenco'). Others aim for more longevity while still producing plenty of sound.
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  #57  
Old 11-19-2017, 03:34 PM
robj144 robj144 is offline
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I know this will get no love, but Magnum Opus guitars are made by hand without CNC machines as mentioned in their FAQ:

http://www.magnumopusguitars.com/faq.php

"Every MO guitar is 100% hand-made without the aid of CNC machines. We even make our Ebony, Koa or Bone bridge pins and our tuning machine buttons by hand."

There used to be a video on Youtube of their shop in Vietnam, I believe, and they are do everything by hand including the necks. It was neat. I can't find it now.
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  #58  
Old 11-19-2017, 03:48 PM
Mycroft Mycroft is offline
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Originally Posted by zeeway View Post

If any luthier is still carving necks with hand tools, they must not value their time very highly. I guess they must make their guitar tops by hand planing a tree trunk.
So in your mind it is an either/or proposition? There is no room for a craftsman to choose which tools they want to use and make economic sense to them?
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  #59  
Old 11-19-2017, 03:50 PM
murrmac123 murrmac123 is offline
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Originally Posted by Alan Carruth View Post
For some makers that will be the 'Ferrari guitar' that produces amazing sound for a while and then dies (see 'Flamenco'). Others aim for more longevity while still producing plenty of sound.
All well and good , Alan, and what you are saying has been regurgitated a trillion times, but at no point has any maker ever come forward and produced a video (or even written an article with commentary and soundclips ) which demonstrates the process whereby they decide to remove a thousandth of an inch from this part or the other part of whatever brace they deem, with certitude, to require thinning, in order to achieve the required tone.

I am by no means demeaning the skill of hand builders ... the woodworking skills of many of the top builders approach the level of the top furniture makers ... but if the methods used to maximize tone can't be explained concisely and clearly .. well ... the "Emperor's new clothes " syndrome cannot help but spring to mind.
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  #60  
Old 11-19-2017, 04:04 PM
JohnnyD123 JohnnyD123 is offline
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I say hand-built over factory any day! CNC is OK with me in a small shop, like Collings for example. I buy luthier built used guitars equal to a factory new price and you get so much more!
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