Official Luthiers Forum!

Whenever a prospective customer books in for a visit, I always ask them to bring their favourite guitar. Then they know exactly what they're laying down the $$$ for.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Great topic. enjoyed reading the whole thing. It all boils down to buyer beware. The last off the rack guitar i bought, i played for an hour till i was sure. Loved and never should hace sold it. I have since made better sounding guitarsbut still would love to have my solid black gibson dread....epiphone back. Talk about happy surprises! there maybe craftmanship in taylor or martin etc, but not much artistry. How can there be.

Try this link, it is photos of Gibson bracing, very sloppy work at best

http://theunofficialmartinguitarforum.yuku.com/topic/1364#.UWwu47Wzd8E

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

It looks like a vintage Gibson and those glues might be repairs. Its really hard to do a clean job when you cant reach it... Although we try our best.

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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

This is indeed a very interesting thread. I've played some mighty fine factory-made guitars. I've also played exceptional handmade guitars that I felt were superior to factory-made guitars in every way. I have no doubt that the master luthiers and experienced builders among us have attained the level of skill and artistry required to surpass the finest factory-made standards with each instrument they create. I guess I'm in the minority here, but having completed only four guitars to date I think I have a fair distance to go before I can stake that claim myself.

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George :-)

You're not alone. . .

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Not trying to defend them TOO much, but some of those look like really sloppy repairs, as well as some interesting brace "customization" done aftermarket as well.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

If they removed the back to do this repair (and it looks like they probably did) then it shouldn't be this sloppy.

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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

medlingfool wrote:
"I believe it to be untrue that you can't build a guitar without wolf tones."

It is certainly possible to build a guitar that has no wolf notes: WalMart has racks of them. It's also possible to build a good guitar that has no wolf notes that matter, it's just tricky. All good guitars have resonances that could show up as wolf notes of one sort or another, but if the problems happen between played notes, or are masked, they don't matter.

One of my 'test mule' guitars has it's 'main top' resonance almost exactly on the pitch of the open G string when the humidity is 'just so'. This causes a classic mode split wolf on the fundamental of that note, which is very easy to spot if you look at the spectrum of the note. You can even hear it, if you know what to listen for, and listen carefully. Most people don't hear it, though, even when it's pointed out. There's enough going on in the sound that the 'warble' is masked pretty well.

Any guitar that's responsive enough to be interesting to a good player is likely to have frequencies where odd things happen to the sound, and that's a wolf. The trick is to keep it from being a problem.

Not only for branding, but for manufacturability. They are consistently good or bad because factories have moved all the decision making around how the products are built up the ladder, away from the assemblers to manufacturing engineers. Cheaper to pay a few engineers than a whole assembly line of highly skilled workers.



Trevor's example is a case in point. The manufacturing environment has made it necessary to pile on the finish. No matter that it's detrimental to sound. The manufacturing process compromises the design and the final product.



My guess is that the good ones come about because the materials, especially the tops, are closer the low limit of acceptable stiffness, so despite being thicker than needed (in order to minimize the chances of needing warranty work), their floppiness allows them to move enough to sound better than the others. The floppy ones are heavy, but move; the stiff ones are heavy AND too stiff and don't move.

The fact that Martins hit the mark more often may indicate that their margins are closer to the edge, taking more risk where their warranty work could increase, but at the same time getting more "hits." Taylor seems to be more conservative, taking less risk, perhaps with thicker top dimensions for example, willing to get fewer hits (or maybe none?) for in exchange for higher consistency.

Bottom line, if you build them heavy enough, anybody can build them in your factory with little or no training, you can give the guitars all the same terrible sound, and they'll be strong enough to incur zero returns. But they'll be consistent!

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com