The posts on this thread are on point -- it's a marketing line mostly. The reality is that even with very sophisticated tooling, instruments require a great deal of "hand work". Constrast that with products from IKEA that can be manufactured with almost no human labor going into the construction other than operating a machine with a computer controlled interface (CNC machines).

The term is meant to evoke a scenario akin/similar to products made in glass blowing. Something that is made by an artisan - not something made in an assembly line. So while Martin, Eastman, Taylor, etc... use the term and in some ways it is correct (as there is a lot of hands on labor involved), their very business model goes directly against what it means to be handmade. Hence, the reason we say it's marketing because it really isn't a honest representation of what handmade is supposed to be.


The real interesting thing is that very little woodworking nowadays is actually "handmade" by the true definition. Handmade is defined as being produced by hand tools only (chisels, rasps, files, planes, etc...). But the word is so ingrained that we've carried it over to also recognize objects that are made with great care and in small numbers by artisans.

You post this pretty consistently, and I rebut it, but here we go again.

Froggy is hardly a "small factory", and nowhere close to Santa Cruz and Collings. It's Michael Millard and 3 other guys in a shed in Vermont.

Doesn't look like a factory to me.

http://i655.photobucket.com/albums/u...s/P1000057.jpg

http://i655.photobucket.com/albums/u...s/P1000061.jpg

pictures shamelessly stolen from Michael Watts' post HERE

I agree, we don’t have a rule for categories. But I thought that categorization of Froggy was odd. I bought a Froggy in 2014, 2016, and 2018. Each guitar was built and signed by the same 3 people. Froggy builds 100 guitars/year. It’s hardly a factory. Here is Michael building my guitar in 2016 — in his “factory.”

https://i.imgur.com/uxXNVwLl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/75DQcOtl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/sKVKUedl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/riS0SVMl.jpg

I'm curious as to why you lumped Eastman in with companies who build nearly twenty times as many guitars as Eastman.
Eastman does use hand tools and I was told more so than any other production guitar builder. They are a large group of "luthiers" doing individual tasks with hand tools and with some guitars it is one person start to finish.
Furthermore, Eastman doesn't even promote how they "hand build" their guitars as a "marketing" tool except on their website.
Eastman does very very little other conventional marketing.
Some of their dealers mention it, that's about it.
Eastman is not your typical "mass production" off shore guitar maker folks and they are in fact, building guitars...by hand.

And Lowden in the solo category was equally curious.

There doesn't seem to me to be any difference between the meaning of hand made and hand crafted - both seem to literally mean the same thing.

In any event it us a pointless distinction because even in the lagest factories guitsrs are still being made by human beings operating mostly hand tools and sometimes heavier machinery and sometimes directing computer assisted machinery. Even in the smallest luthiers workshops hand tools at the very least are still needed as there never was a luthier rough enough to cut and plane and shape wood with his or her bare hands alone!

To me a more useful distinction is between the approach and purpose of a factory and that of a luthier. A factory is one that makes and treats all its guitars as interchangeable products - they strive to make aln their processes produce as closely as possible the same product over and over again. Hence the individual differences between each set of wood are ignored and all pieces of wood are shaped and thicknessed according to the same standard specifications that are determined according to safety margins designed to limit warranty claims to as low as possible while using the guitars to still sound on average within tolerable levels of lack of responsiveness. Whereas the luthier is solely focused optimising the tonal potential and capabilities of the individual guitar that he makes so that every piece of wood used is chosen and thicknesses and formed to achieve a synthesis in the final build that produces the highest possible tonal benefits while still maintaining structural stability over the long term. Because of this individual focus, the luthier also sees each guitar as a unique work of craftsmanship that melds art and engineering and therefore he may cause the aesthetically pleasing elements of each guitsr to differ markedly one from another depending on the wishes of the customer

Hence the solo luthier may even used computer aided machinery to help her complete the huitar parts but as long as the objectives and methodology are that if a luthier and not factory, she is a luthier. On the other hand if he has the approach of a factory even though he us a one man show, then he is basically running an incredibly efficent factory.

George lowden is also a solo luthier who builds his own guitars solely over and above what his factory makes under his family name. Perhaps that is what ljguitar was referring to.

Therefore according to my understanding and definitions the Lowden workshop is a factory because as far as I can gather they do not optimise the tone of each guitar but they build according to a standard specification. Likewise for Avalon and McIlroy. On the other hand froggy bottom, Santa cruz, and bourgeois are lutherie workshops because they do individual voicing of guitars.

An example of a luthier doing every operation with only hand tools and without even a bandsaw is boaz elkayam who even takes the trouble to personally cut down some of the wood that he uses. A luthier on the other side of the spectrum is james olson who has perfected the manufacture of his guitars in his one man man shop to such an extent that at the height of his production he was able to make more than 50 guitars a year all by himself.

While I still consider Collings a small factory, they do optimize & voice each guitar.
See — https://www.collingsguitars.com/shop...ood-selection/

Thank you for pointing that out to me - I didnt know that. I will make the correction in my post.

Can I ask why is it that you consider Collings to be a factory while considering froggy bottom to be a lutherie set up? Is it purely down to the scale of production all the size of the operation in terms of the number of staff ? It seems to me if both operations employ individual voicing then there is no difference essentially between collings and froggy bottom except sheer physical size because both are lutherie workshops.

My uncle is an electric guitar luthier of 30+ years, and he has no CNC machines, he calls his guitars hand crafted, and rightfully so. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...51acee24e6.jpg

Boy, I think that is one sweet guitar!

Very nice! I like it.

The key Distinction to me is whether or not they individually voice each guitar that they make. If they do then that means they are a lutherie workshop but if not then regardless of their size they are a factory.

Perhaps in a category of their own are luthiers who offer a line of guitars which were assembled by a factory but which are then further modified post production by the luthier through voicing of the guitar - such as Maestro and Jeffrey Yong (the latter has as his main offering his line of fully custom made guitars that are made solely by him).

I wasn't responding to your post specifically, mate - just commenting on the general gist of this thread.

In response to your question of why I lumped Eastman into the same category as Taylor -- the answer is because they are a factory. Factories are set up and organized for speed and efficiency. IMO, the technology a factory utilizes is more about repeatability and cost savings from labor -- the basic goal is still to build as much product as you can while hopefully maintaining a high level of quality.

Yeah he’s quite talented. He also winds his own pickups. Because of no CNC no two guitars are exactly the same. I think hand made and hand crafted mean the same thing. But there is a difference when you make a guitar from raw wood, or just putting together a Warmoth body and neck.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...cad0f81e43.jpg

To me Collings is far from a boutique or small-shop builder. They are a factory that produces guitars and other stringed instruments.

I understand and that part of my post you quoted wasn't really aimed at you, so my apologies.
It was born out of a continuing frustration.
It is important to note that the annual quantity of guitars Eastman produces pales in comparison to a long list of factory builders. This is directly due to the fact that they use people and hand tools more than any other "factory".
That's part of what I was trying to say.

I imagine with time, Eastman will likely begin to utilize more CNC machinery. It takes a fair amount of technical knowledge and expense to outfit and implement a CNC machine in a factory setting but it is worth it in terms of consistency and repeatability.

There are also certain operations that when done repeatedly for years can lead to injury. I'd hate to be the guy that carves braces or necks all day !!! If the workers get to do lots of different task with regularity it does help but it is less efficient that way.

I am not sure why Eastman comes up in this thread. They use the label handcrafted for their marketing yes, but in the videos they show the unskilled labourers performing simple tasks and passing it on to the next person. If they just do what any robot could do as well, then there's no advantage to that just because the labour is much cheaper than a robot. It's still "mass production" if they produce many of the same items. I think in other threads the estimated number was at least 200,000 units per year a couple of years ago, which by now is probably much higher as they are getting quite common even in smaller stores. My tiny local shop just started stocking them and they had to take at least six units to get started.

That's a beauty!

But I have to play devils advocate here. Does he have a band saw? A sander? A planer? Or does he truly just chop it with the edge of his hand?:D

I draw a line at what guides the tool. CNC is computer guided, that’s obviously on one side of the line. A router held and guided by eye hand coordination is considered by myself to be on the other side of the line. A router following a hard template is more controversial. I consider it not “hand”operated because it is following a repeatable template. This is an arguable point, but philosophically it is what I believe. The line, for me, has to do with whether or not the work is blindly following a formula, or is instead a part of the design process wherein the results are builder-influenced structurally by the variability of the materials and the specific goal.

The real question, then, is not so much whether there is a difference between handmade and hand-crafted (semantics IMO), but the degree to which art-process is incorporated as opposed to manufacturing process. This would matter to me, of course, as I am as far out on the Art-Process side as I can be and still be making what appear to be conservative guitars. Arguably art, but actually music tools.

In my opinion, of course.

That number you used is far more than the number of guitars Eastman produces in a year. It's been told to me the number is around 50-60 per day. That info comes directly from Ted at L.A. Guitars who is one of their better dealers and has been dealing with Eastman for almost as long as they have been building guitars. He is also very close with the Eastman folks at the L.A. Headquarters and Custom Shop. BTW, that's about 25 years.
What you see in the video is accurate but not everything you see those folks doing is everything that is going on. There are highly skilled folks hand carving necks and doing finish work totally by hand.
The point is, it's still being done by hand, not a robot.
To me that's the definition of hand-crafted, hand-made or whatever ... human beings making things their hands or with tools in their hands. YMMV.

To me, it is really immaterial how many staff r employed or how many hand tools are used r whether compiter aided machinery is used or how many guitars are produced. The question is - are they individually voicing each guitar such as tap tuning or other methods so as to optimise the tone of the individual guitar or are they instead producing a product in that they are thicknessing the parts to the same dimensions following a template or set specification regardless of the characteristics and stiffness of the wood sets used in each guitar? If they are doing the former then they are not a factory but if they are doing the latter they are a factory.

Human beings using their hands are also the norm in Taylor or Gibson or Martin. In only some operations are large scale machinery like band saws or computer aided machinery used to form certain parts but most of the operations are still done by human hands using hand tools. In fact some solo builders either use the same equipment or source their parts from suppliers using such equipment. So that may not be a definition that works to really make a working distinction between folks who are really doing philosophically different things.

If I recall correctly one guy does some of the parts while another guy does the finishing while michael millard does the individual voicing.

Wishful thinking ;)
FYI, the process used by Collings or Bourgeois is very little different from Martin, Gibson, or Taylor. None are completely machine made, but machines do the bulk of the 'grunt' work.
This is based on actual observation at the respective factories. Eastman's claim of more handwork is meaningless without a marked improvement in quality, and it also points out the ridiculously low labor cost in China.
Even most individual boutique luthiers make use of machines to a certain point, since it reduces labor without negatively affecting the outcome.

I wonder how much difference in build process there is between an Olson and a Froggy Bottom.

The Lowden staff (2017)-

https://www.gryphonstrings.com/wp-co...n-crew-600.jpg

The solo-built ones are made by him and his son, à la Goodall.