Official Luthiers Forum!

AFAIK, the wedge doesn't affect tone significantly. More a matter of comfort. This one is about 5/8" difference between the bass and treble sides. I just tried playing it a little and it feels better than I remembered, not tilted any more than I normally tilt to see the fingerboard. Most people would probably prefer less angle though. I'll stick to maybe 3/8" difference over 15" span in the future.

As for avoiding reputation damage when giving away flawed instruments, try to remove any marks that could be traced back to you through internet research, and give it to someone you don't know (friend of a friend, pawn shop, kid on the street, whatever). That way no one can use your good name to sell it for more than it's worth, and nothing goes to waste.

Does the back look nice? If so, send it to me and I'll take care of it for you. I'm also a box maker, and always on the lookout for nice wood. I'll cut it up, make something out of it, and you won't have to worry about it ever coming back for warranty!

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Phil

http://www.oleninstruments.com

"Those who tilt at windmills are only considered insane by those who can't see the dragon."

make some cuts on the guitars so you can see the guts of the body/neck. Its an interesting and useful way to use the guitars!

This is one of the more interesting threads I've read. The attitude with imperfect builds seems to come down to personality and experience. I've built very few guitars and have no experience selling them so to me destroying something that takes all my effort to merely complete seems crazy.

Others who have built many many guitars may see that one guitar as just that, one guitar of many, many others and destroying it is a very easy thing to do.

Some personalities will simply not allow an imperfect guitar reflect who they are, who they are perceived to be in the market place or who they perceive themselves to be. Others seem to be pretty relaxed about giving a guitar away to a good home without the imperfections reflecting upon who or how they see themselves. Interesting.

I think the world of luthiery can be a very unique world unto itself with standards unbeknownst to many of us which brings up another question. For those of you who describe the potential harm to your reputation, have you experienced any REAL harm to your guitar sales? Do you know first hand of anyone who looked at an imperfect guitar in someone else's hands who then refused to buy a guitar of yours because of it, even though the guitar they were thinking about buying was perfect for them in every way?

For example, "Wow this guitar sounds amazing. It's absolutely gorgeous. the set-up is perfect, the size fits me like a glove and this is THE guitar I've been waiting my entire guitar playing life to hold and to play but I talked to a friend of a friend who once saw this same brand and it had a cosmetic flaw so as much as I like this guitar, I'm going to have to pass. Good luck repairing your reputation." Just wondering.

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Thank You and Best To All

I don't know, I have not sold a guitar yet so I am not even sure what reputation I have. Not an easy world here. Honestly if you're famous like say Gibson, you could make a million lemons and people would still buy it just because it's famous.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Without going into specifics, you learn very quickly in this trade that rumors of one mistake travels a lot faster than numerous brilliant examples of your work...

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Yeah that's what I'm thinking too Arnt. Seems hard to understand from the outside looking in and perhaps not that compelling to learn the idiosyncrasies from the inside but the reality of actually being in the business of guitar building, being a member of the proper builder's circles, attending all the proper shows, and everything else that goes along with a very unique culture must present a very different picture than for those of us who build on occasion and cannot really relate. I just hope I don't fall prey to the perception of perfection and what that can do to sap the fun and enjoyment out of guitar making for me - so far at least. But again I've also got nothing at stake - so far at least.

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Thank You and Best To All

Others who have built many many guitars may see that one guitar as just that, one guitar of many, many others and destroying it is a very easy thing to do.

It's never easy.....

And I don't think we're talking of simple imperfections, but rather, severe/fatal flaws that will cost more time to repair than to simply start-over.

Examples:

- A mishap while binding is a binding do-over, not a 'toss the body in the fire' deal.
- A top or back that shifted when glued and is now off-center is a simple re-top/re-back, not a toss and burn.
- A top or back that cracked or got badly dented(dropped?) is again a re-top/back, not a toss and burn.
- A blunder with the finish is a re-finish.
- A bridge that was glued in the wrong place(perhaps one of the locating pins didn't engage and it slipped...) is a re-glue. If the finish was affected, it's also a re-finish. If the pin holes were drilled before noticing, it's also a re-top.
- Anything to do with the neck is simply replaced with another neck.

So, what is fatal?

- Anything to do with the body's shape and/or the ribs(sides), including cracks, dents(that are too deep to repair), etc....
- Problem with both the top AND back.
- Major mistakes(not flaws, but mistakes) inside the box.

That's pretty much it for me. I build the body and neck separately, and not at the same time, so I've never had to scrap an entire instrument(even the mandolin that I thinned to its death got re-topped...), but I've tossed a guitar body before it got as far as the finishing stage, I've replaced many tops(maybe a dozen?) and at least one back that I can recall. About 8 or 10 necks got the axe, too, but most gave-back their fretboards and truss rods before becoming BBQ smoking chips.

The ones that I regret letting-go were very early ones, back when I had no intention of doing this for a living. They all sounded great(I had -my tone- right from the first guitar, though I had built mandolins previously) and played decently and friends and nearby acquaintances happily grabbed them up for cheap, but they are rough, by today's standards(mine).

VERY enlightening and hard to argue with your approach, but I wonder how many are talking fatal and how many are talking cosmetic? And where do each of us draw that line?

And please, if I can ask this question, remember that I'm very grateful for all the insight you share on this forum, but what do you truly regret about letting those early ones go? Again remembering it's none of my business, what do you think the real harm is? Is there any real damage to your reputation or just perceived harm? Does an early, inferior Sradivarius take anything away, or make any of his later masterpieces any less valuable? Are guitars different? And earlier, inferior builds lessen the value of one's current builds? I'm genuinely curious and thanks again for the information.

Funny thing. I'm actually finishing a couple of builds that will certainly go into the give away or sell cheap category as I improve my build technique and wonder how my tune will change over time if I sell more. Still can't see destroying them (personal of course) but that attitude could change over time.

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Thank You and Best To All

If it's just cosmetics, I have to ask why it's fatal? Like I made a note of, unless it's the rim set itself, all else gets replaced or re-done before continuing. And if someone says that the whole thing is a mess, I have to ask why did you keep working on it at all, when you knew that "this" was wrong, and "that" was wrong, and now "this here" is the straw the breaks the camel's back. What I'm asking is why didn't you fix the first issue? And usually, in newbie builds with severe issues, what we see are not really 3 or 4 problems, but one problem that wasn't rectified then and there, and everything else that followed was simply the result of the first issue throwing the rest out of whack.

Nobody's perfect. Those who's work comes close to being perfect simply took the time to fix what wasn't perfect, before continuing. That's why I build fewer guitars per year now than I did 14 years ago....! <sigh>

And yes, the harm is real. I'll sometimes meet a well known musician or avid amateur musician who had played one of those early ones(some of which are owned and still played by professionals, too) and upon seeing my newer work, stated that they had quietly hoped that my work had gotten cleaner/better. And these are folks who understood that that was my 5th, or 9th, or whatever. It's not that they're "bad" or flawed, but just plain rough. I had no intention of making a living at this, and my goal was to make great-sounding guitars, first and foremost. The interiors of these beasts are pretty crude... <lol> BUT! I still maintain today that the rough interiors gave these guitars a little something unique to their tone. I definitely "lost" something when I cleaned-up things... But it would be pretty hard for me to send-off a guitar, today, with its interior surfaces sanded to 36 grit, visible saw marks on the braces, etc...., despite the fact that the best of the vintage Martins (and especially) Gibsons also showed much of the same crudeness.

I wouldn't destroy the above guitars if i could do it over again, I suppose, but I would keep them closer, where I could control who sees them and who doesn't. With that said, I guess I'd need to know what others would also consider fatal?

This question proved trickier than I had expected... <g>

For me the decision to burn or gift comes down to a couple of things.
Firstly, if I were to gift an early guitar with obvious flaws that could be identified with me, I would always worry about the possibility of someone years down the road getting it in their hands and forming a bad opinion of my work. There is no guarantee that the guitar won't change hands at least once, nor any guarantee that anyone seeing or playing it in the future will have any idea when it was made. God forbid someone should get one and do an online review of it. No, it's my reputation that's on the line, and I value it very highly.
But another side to the gifting idea is this: Now don't get me wrong, if you're cool with gifting guitars that don't quite make the cut, for whatever reason, knock yourself out. That's a cool thing to do.
However, I look at it like this. And please understand, I'm applying this to myself alone. No one else here on the forum. But why should an underpriviledged/disadvantaged person get anything less than the best I have to offer? I haven't done so yet, but should I ever decide to gift anyone with a guitar, it will be the very best I can give them. IMHO people like that deserve it more than those who are more able to pay. If I deem them worthy, they're gonna get a lot better than my leftovers.
I would much rather strip those less than ideal instruments of anything useful, and start over. MHO

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Now I haven't finsihed a gutiar yet, but I have built new tops for each of the first two because I was not happy with the rosette. Then i made the tops too thin, so I cut my losses, got more wood and started over. In short, I plan to do the best I can on these first ones, no matter how long it takes, to learn the skills to make good instruments.

That being said, someone recently gave me a violin. It was hand made, by someone not too far from me, according to the label. I don't own one, and was told this one would be good enough to learn to play on, then I could buy a good one. Well, according to the label inside, this was the man's very first intrument, serial number 0001. And it is, at best, a wall hangar. There are so many flaws in the construction that it simply will not play. Won't hold a tune, action is way too high, neck is already bent, pegs won't stay tight in the holes, and horror of horrors, the neck was not fitted into the body but simply butt-glued to the end. To keep it from tearing off, a block of wood was jammed under the fingerboard, resting on the top.

I saw where I can get a cheap kit to make one just like it for $40 on ebay. Buying a new neck blank will cost more than that. Throw in the cost of new tuning pins and a bridge, and there is no way this thing can be repaired. So, what do i do with it?

Some day, if the builder gets even semi-well known, will it be desireable to have his No. 0001, even though it is unplayable? How do I reply to the nice people who gave it to me as a gift? (They got it for ten bucks at a garage sale.)

One suggestion is that I make a wall hangar out of it, put it up in my shop, and use it as a reminder to each day make sure I do my best. Or, maybe as a reminder of what the low bar is.

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Phil

http://www.oleninstruments.com

"Those who tilt at windmills are only considered insane by those who can't see the dragon."

I did this not too long ago, I was going to start a thread on it but it will be perfect here.

Woodchipper?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I don't burn whole instruments, but I quickly toss flawed parts, for whatever reason, and I don't think twice about doing whole tasks, like a binding job, a rosette or whatever, over, if I think I can do a better job. I usually don't even pause to think much about it any more, I just grab another piece and get to work. It often goes faster the next time, and more importantly: It makes me feel good know I've done the very best I could. Either way, you end up with quite a few pieces that will burn, that way

I don't know what "fatal flaws" would cause me to toss a whole instrument now, I guess a particularly nasty buffer mishap could do it... I remember someone talking about using thin CA glue to attach the binding, only to find that it had run all around the inside of the instrument and made such a royal mess that they sawed up the box instead of trying to fix it. At the time I though it sounded excessive, I think I understand it more now. Building the box doesn't take that long, but spending all that time to fix something that never would have looked right isn't much fun.

I'm not sure what those visual defects are, but if they are anything like my early guitars (and most other newbie builder's guitars that I have seen) it is a combination of many things. My first: Even if I fixed those binding boo-boos, there would still be the uncomfortable neck shape (with a "fixed" truss rod break-through) , the awkward headstock shape, the ugly bridge, the shape... The whole amateurish look of the thing (ok, its plain ugly). The sound was nothing to speak of, unlike Mario I sure am glad my first was not an indication of what my later instruments would sound like... The next ones were better, but I'm glad the first dozen or so are "close to home", and among friends. I have managed to remove some of them from the public view, the rest I hope, will stay mostly at home. I sure wish I could burn some of them!

My current instruments may not look that different from the early ones at first sight, if anything they are usually both simpler and more traditional. Hopefully there’s a better balance in the design, a more developed tone, more exact setup, better finish… So its not so much that the early guitars have specific flaws (but they usually have them), they’re just…not developed, and its evident in almost every part.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Human beings have the unique advantage of being able to define exactly what 'real' damage is to them and sometimes we assign that definition where none really exists. So far I've read that there was talk about a couple early guitar that could have been finished better, even though the builder is considered very successful by any measure. So is the damage done by those early guitars real? Even though the business thrives and the current guitars are in great demand? Not quite understanding that logic but again as humans we each get to make that call. The thing I find most interesting is I think we are very bad at defining 'real' damage, real danger, real anything and have a hard time stepping away from perceived emotional damage and discerning where there is, or if there is, any real damage.

Is Martin guitars harmed by the 70's pick guard or whatever made certain years structurally inferior? Short term maybe, long term doubtful, but again that's a judgement call with very few measurable metrics to use for an accurate judgement unless you view the continued success of their business as a valuable metric - many would. So even though they produced some dogs they still sell guitars and their reputation hasn't suffered (except for perhaps among the very few elite guitar builders.)

Still not sure having a 'bad' guitar out there does anything more than make the builder feel imperfect in some way, or emotionally injured and may really do very little harm to their current and future business. I would buy an imperfect guitar if it sounded and played great and I'd buy the next guitar from the same builder if it was perfect and sounded and played great but that really, again, comes down to personality and this thread seems to bring that part out in each of us. Interesting.

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Thank You and Best To All

This is pretty much the philosophy I've been going by too; started doing this when building custom furniture. I sill have at least one of those re-dos hanging in my shop as a reminder of how not to use a radial-arm saw (which is no longer in my shop).

My latest was the set of sides that I scorched during the last challenge - all nicely put together with heel and tail block. They are hanging in the shop too but will never be a guitar, maybe a little shelf unit. I had a whole box of scrap like that at the beginning of the winter, most of it has been used for kindling in the wood stove. Instrument parts make great kindling.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I've got a side set with head and tail block of an asymmetrical design just waiting for a left handed player to appear and want a design that doesn't exist - hanging from the ceiling - I wonder If I should I burn it or just put it in the trash?.

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Thank You and Best To All

So its not so much that the early guitars have specific flaws (but they usually have them), they’re just…not developed, and its evident in almost every part.

"not developed" is pretty much bang-on for what I was trying to describe. It's not so much that my(and most others' early builds) were so "rough", but rather, "not well developed, as a whole", yet. Great term!

s Martin guitars harmed by the 70's pick guard or whatever made certain years structurally inferior? Short term maybe, long term doubtful,

Not doubtful at all. Harm was indeed done!

This is where being a musician, also, gives me a better understanding, methinks. I've been in many circles where the only Gibson acoustics that someone has played were from the late 60's and 70's, when they were complete abominations! Awful guitars! And the 70's "lump-scroll" mandolins? Oh my! So yes, for some people, it's hard to look past that, -especially- if they haven't played/held some of the great examples. How many thousands of sales were lost? Uncountable, for sure. Same for Martin, but on a smaller scale; for many, they've only been exposed to a 70's era guitar with the well-known intonation issue, combined with the need for a neck reset which made them less than easy to play, and pretty much impossible to play any lead, up the neck, on. And with the large EIR bridge plates and a few other bug-a-boos, they didn't sound that great, either. Most Japanese guitars from the same era would whupp a Martin or Gibson in tone, volume, and playability. Harm done? Very real. Both companies have carried-on, obviously, but that real harm was done, is indisputable. It's only because of the internet and the information it brings everyone, today, that we can look back and say" it was just this particular ten or twenty year period where they were less than stellar", but in the days when all a potential guitar buyer had to go-on was what he/she had as actual experience, or the experience of friends/colleages, reputation was everything, and all those who had only experienced the instrument during the less than stellar era would certainly look, or recommend looking, somewhere else.

Do you not think that irreversible harm was done to Detroit's "Big Three" by all those terrible, gutless, rust-within-2-years cars and trucks of the 70's? There's a reason that the best-selling car in the US is(sadly, I may add) a Toyota...

Uh oh. Car analogies - not good when a thread gets to car analogies. Again thanks for your thoughts, very valuable and very interesting, and knowing how much more experience you have than I, I'll take it for the great advice and information that it is.

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Thank You and Best To All

Another thought regarding Martin is that their customer base is and was at the time much larger than any single luthier has access to. There were thousands of Martins out there, in the hands of thousands of satisfied musicians. So even with all the problems they had there was still a very real and large customer base who were satisfied and would look to them again when the time came. There's a lot to be said for numbers. IMHO comparing a large company like Martin to a single luthier with a much smaller customer base and a lesser known reputation (for good or ill) proves absolutely nothing. I don't need a car analogy to figure that one out.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Well put Mike and I think you're right. Apples and Osage Oranges.

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Thank You and Best To All

The car analogy was to compare Martin/Gibson(whom were brought-into this thread by someone other than I) with, not individual luthiers.... Like Martin/Gibson, the Big Three had a lot of satisfied customers, enough so that they have survived, but the point I was making was that their tarnished reputation has cost them dearly.

I like the way you put that, too. Gonna have to remember that one.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Go figure - Toyota had more recalls in the last three years than any other manufacturer. I guess that is brand loyalty to the Maxima!

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker