#1
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Hand carved vs copy-router?
I looked at the L-4 that Steve linked to in the "Next best thing to an L-5" thread, and the first thing that leapt off the page was "hand carved spruce top". Gibson and every other factory making archtops used copy routers, they didn't hand carve anything. Maybe in the very early days they did, and maybe pre-war they finished them with hand carving, tuning, graduating, but by the 1940's they were doing all the rough carving on machines, and probably just doing finish sanding by hand. I have nothing against machines doing grunt work (when I toured the Benedetto shop in 2018, the first thing I saw was the CNC machines and the now semi-retired old hand-made copy router). I just wonder if describing every solid top instrument as "hand carved" isn't getting a little romantic and deliberately evoking some fictitious image of a worker with a top on a bench surrounded by shavings knee deep on the floor as he "hand carves" a top (or a back, which is around 10 times harder), which when I do it involves several power tools, and at least three or four days of actual hand and arm numbing bench time with planes and scrapers. The reality was wood clamped on machine, carved top ready for finish work in 30 minutes, next one please.
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Brian Evans Around 15 archtops, electrics, resonators, a lap steel, a uke, a mandolin, some I made, some I bought, some kinda showed up and wouldn't leave. Tatamagouche Nova Scotia. Last edited by MC5C; 10-09-2020 at 09:53 AM. |
#2
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The rough carving of archtop plates can be accomplished a variety of ways. The things that are important that separate a superlative instrument from an average instrument during a carving operation has little to do with the rough carving process in my opinion.
These aspects have nothing to do with how the top was rough carved and they do involve knowledge, skill and hand operations. My $.02 Quote:
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… |
#3
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The most important distinctions to me is carved vs pressed, and solid vs laminated. Any guitar with a solid / carved top is a carved-top.
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"Vintage taste, reissue budget" |
#4
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Agree with you on the hand term being over used in this case for sure. Seems like the three main terms that should be used are carved, solid wood pressed or laminate.
I notice a lot of solid wood pressed instruments like the old Kalamazoo Archtops from the 30s and 40s get labeled as hand carved when I believe most of them are solid wood pressed. They were budget model Archtop guitars. This article sums it up pretty well by reverb. https://reverb.com/news/a-guide-to-a...intage-low-end
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Crazy guitar nut in search of the best sounding guitars built today and yesterday. High End Guitar Review Videos. www.youtube.com/user/rockinb23 |
#5
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Yes, and no. Yes, those are primary distinctions, between factory guitars not not luthier made instruments.
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A bunch of nice archtops, flattops, a gypsy & nylon strings… |
#6
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#7
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There is reprinted, in the great 'House of Stathopoulo' history of Epiphone, a Socony publication describing operations at Epiphone, in around 1940. There is a photo of the duplicator carver, use to rough out tops and backs. But when I examine, or work on/repair one of these vintage Epis, it's obvious from the tool marks, that someone scraped and/or sanded the inside surface of the the top and back. So, I believe these parts were roughed out with machines, and then some amount of hand work was done, to bring them to final thickness and graduation. They were made in a small factory or workshop(25 give-or-take employees), and it was a mix of machine and hand work.
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#8
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You know, hand carving of the top is at the threshold of the unobtainium archtops such as John Monteleone's $50,000 and above art guitars. There have been some Jazz cats who have played these instruments but "the rest of us" have to settle for a little more pedestrian, manufactured instrument. It is a little humbling to realize that the most custom, bespoke items in my guitar world are a couple of guitar straps that my wife commissioned from a leathersmith.
Bob
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"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' " Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring THE MUSICIAN'S ROOM (my website) |