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Tell me how you went about developing your tone as you built your first few guitars? Did you build the same thing with slight changes or did you have another approach?

What would you suggest?

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EddieLee

It will take a lot more than "a few". Start by making five or six to the exact same specs, with the exact same woods, and see how different they sound. You can start to vary bracing, or materials and plate thicknesses, one at a time, until you begin to understand how things work. And make notes.It takes a lot of building before you begin to understand how to alter things to get the sound you want. Remember, even Stradivarius began his apprenticeship at age nine, lived to be ninety-two, and not all of his fiddles were worth millions.

I'm over 50 instruments now and feel like I'm just scratching the surface. My two cents would be to copy a pattern that has a proven success record. Build to that spec and keep the appointments simple so you can get as many under your belt in the shortest possible time. If you use good wood and build to spec they will sound good. Make little tweaks as you go along, keep copious records, and let it evolve. It takes a long time.

It is a huge help to get a high end guitar store and professional players involved for test drives and suggestions and listen to them.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I'm in the same boat as Terrence. I've got a bit more then 50 built and only have a slight handle on it. Some time ago when I was on my 4th or 5th guitar I designed a body type that was a hybrid of a classical guitar and a steal string guitar. I really had no idea what I was doing but I liked the look of it and so I stuck with that design and Have built probably 20 or so of them with various woods and brace size and dimensions. My last version of this was trying a true flat top. I've now done two of those and think it sounds the best. So I guess what I am saying is pick a style and learn it. It's probably best to pick a traditional design, learn it very well, and then experiment with ideas to make it better. The good thing with this approach is that you will almost certainly come out with a nice sounding guitar.

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http://www.CostaGuitars.com
PMoMC

I think time is the most important factor, you can only evaluate the design decisions after a large enough group of examples has accumulated. In my own work I think of the body shape as one of the biggest indicators of sound, more even than some of the wood choices. If you are designing your own shapes it takes enough examples of that shape to understand what it can offer.

Keeping extensive notes (I think I am up to 12+ pages of data for each guitar) has helped me quite a bit but other builders I know and respect work primarily on instinct and still produce wonderful and consistent results. There is no correct way and I would bet that the best way to progress is the one that feels most natural to you.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

If you can, try to use the best top and brace wood you can find. Very generally, different top woods work better in different applications. Try not to over build for the type of playing style you are building for and take pictures and measurements of your top and bracing specs. Other than that, for me, I think it's pretty much a crap shoot. I do notice a trend that tone is getting more consistently what I like to hear in a guitar. I think that's good.

Cheers,
Danny

Also, if you can make them look cool they always sound better.

Do you think it's more shape than size Burton? I've only build a couple of bigger guitars. One 16" and one 17". I was pleasantly surprised by both.

Of course the size matters too but I think the shape still imparts a big effect on the starting point. I built a couple of different 14" shapes and they were definitely different.
As with all things, of course, my ideas may mature but for now I do look to that as one of the stating points in honing in on a sound.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

The degree to which you "develop your sound" depends on how specific you are regarding what you want your guitars to sound like. If you just want your instruments to sound excellent -- there is a very wide margin of acceptability for that goal.

I started out with such a goal. I just wanted to build guitars that were very responsive and alive with a full, rich tone and good balance. Those are decent goals and gave me a path to work towards. However, along that path I built a few guitars that changed the way I wanted my guitars to sound. I heard something in them that was different than the others. Those guitars served to "narrow my vision" of what kind of sound I want to achieve. I believe that was right around the 20 guitar mark or so.

A professional musician or someone very specific about their musical tastes will likely have a much easier time deciding what they want in a guitar.

This is an interesting thread. Simon's point of starting with a general aim of overall excellence and narrowing focus as you gain experience makes perfect sense to me. I'm only on my fifth guitar and while I think my choices of shape, size and tonewoods will shade the tone in a certain direction, I really have no idea how it will turn out. It's a mystery!

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George :-)

Great approach. Thanks Simon.

Got the same advice from other pros.Keep working on one plan and refine it as best as you can.

Thank to all that commented. Lots to think about.

Burton, That is a very interesting comment. I have a feel for how size effects the tone of a guitar but have never thought about body shape having a large effect. How do you go about designing your body shapes? Do you feel that there are some specific shape elements that effect the tone in one way or the other? How much do you vary your bracing to accommodate your body shapes.

Simon - That is a very interesting comment. I have heard Kent Everett say you need to define what tone you want. But even if you define it where do you start. What you said make sense to me. I consider myself a reasonable (ex-pro) musician. As musician I think developing the right tone is almost and important as developing the right playing technique. I think you do that by playing and playing and experimenting with every element. When I hit on something that touches me I follow it.

Sounds like the same is true in building. Your example seems to reinforce that approach. Sometimes you may not know what you are after until you get close enough to get a glimpse at it.

Simon in your case were you aware of what got you the tone you like? Can you share with us what it was about that 20th guitar that made you take notice?

One other question to all. When you started tweaking things. What sort of things did you tweak?

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EddieLee

Eddie,

I designed them for looks mostly, and most before I started thinking that the specific shape affected the sound. I have not felt the need to change them since my thinking changed. I think the things that matter are the big things, where the waist sits and how tight it is, how much the upper bout opens up above the waist, where the widest point of the lower bout is etc...

I vary the bracing much more to the specific stiffness of each piece of wood rather than the body shape, the x brace on everything for me is based on the bridge wings (where it sits) and the long-cross grain ratio (the x angle) and then I fill in around that.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Certainly Eddie,

First of all, I was very consistent from the beginning -- meaning that my bracing and the way it was carved was identical from guitar to guitar. Also, the top species I used were often similar and I only focused on one body shape.

Around guitar #10, the quality was pretty good and my sound was excellent. My guitars were vibrant with good volume and projection. The tone was very full and rich and the overall balance was good. My guitars were definitely in the Lowdenesque type sound. I built an Engelmann/Myrtlewood guitar after 20 guitars or so (Myrtlewood is very much like Maple) and the guitar was significantly more articulate than all my previous instruments. I realized over time that I really liked that quality in a guitar and felt like the sound I was getting was just not "focused" enough. I wanted every guitar I made to have exceptional note separation and clarity.

I made a number of bracing changes and dimensional changes over the years in pursuit of those goals. I closed the x-brace angle a bit and experimented with my bridge plate materials and lower bout bracing. Stuff like that.

Thanks for the response. Very kind of you.

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EddieLee

Elbe_flys,

Great subject and great answers. As many have stated the issue is one of gaining experience. One thing that I've had the good fortune to experience is a class setting. A few years ago, I took a class at the local (here in Denver) college to build my first steele string. During the few weeks during the semester when everyone was working on their tops, we were all encouraged to go around and touch, flex, tap, listen, measure, and ask questions about everyone else's tops. On saturdays (open shop day) there were probably 25 tops in various stages of constuction.

Even though I had no experience (couldn't find my rump with both hands, a map, a compass, and an Indian guide) the ability to experience 25 tops gave me alot of "experience" very quickly. It didn't make me an expert by any stretch, but valuable none the less. I think of it as a jump start right out of the box. As Tony pointed out, building one guitar at a time takes lots of time and none of us is getting any younger.

If you have this kind of opportunity where you live, you might count this as an added bonus when paying tuition.

Steve

Keep notes on everything you use and do. I didn't do that, and now I am on my 20th build and wish I had. I like Simon's advice. By the way, be prepared to have your 'sound' evolve . And as Mario advised me a few years ago on another forum, " don't try to reinvent the wheel."

Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk 2

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Under Compensated Nut!

12 pages of notes for each? What sort of things do you take note of? Apart from thicknesses, sizes, deflection tests and some sort of description of the sound, I can't really think of anything else you could take notes of.

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"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso

https://www.facebook.com/FenskeGuitars

I agree it seems excessive. It includes: All deflections (including braces), every glue joint, the weight of every piece before it is glued and notes on feel, etc... 6+ pages of Chladni tests, detailed spec charts of all the little detail parts, notes on exact bridge thickness and feel as well as the same for the neck (internal supports and shaft shape). I also keep a big Uline box of all the offcuts (large and small) so someday if needed I can either perfectly match a part for repair or at least have an unfinished example to use for matching. Not to mention being able to test those pieces later if necessary.

I see all the data as insurance. It may not do me too much good presently but someday I imagine (when I can look back on 40 guitars and have all that information in front of me comparing sounds and notes) it will be like gold. Even being able to look back 10 guitars has proven to be very informative.

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Burton
http://www.legeytinstruments.com
Brookline, MA.

Next to a good set of sharpening stones, the file cabinet is probably the most important tool in the shop. I don't keep the extensive records Burton does, but I still have a file folder on almost everything going back over the years. I don't have much data on the ones before about number ten, but I'm up to 120 now, so that still makes a pretty good file. Some of those folders, especially on the test mules, get pretty thick: I actually have two folders on my first 'port' experiment, the 'corker'; probably 150 pages of data.

No matter how much data you get, I can pretty well guarantee you'll think of something you'll wish you'd written down and didn't.

It really helps to start with some sort of model that explains how you think the guitar works. It almost doesn't matter what that model is; the important thing is to get the data to try to show it doesn't work. So, if you think that there are leprechauns that like to live in guitars, and that when they laugh the sound gets better, then you have to come up with some way to count leprechauns, and figure out what makes them laugh. If you can't find any leprechauns, then you can give up on that model and try something else. Eventually you're likely to hit on some correlation that fits your model of the moment, and works, and you can run with it. There are lots of models out there to try: I think the one based on Newtonian physics that Trevor Gore talks about is probably the most productive, but you can go any way you want.

The important things are to keep decent records, test things against reality as often as you can, and remember what I call 'Feynman's Dictum', which is: "You are the easiest person for you to fool". If you can avoid fooling yourself, you'll make good progress.

It must be getting close to St. Patrick's day