Official Luthiers Forum!

Come on Hank, if you'll post a picture of your shop I'll post one of mine.........if I can find my camera.....it's in my shop somewhere

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

Dares go first!

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Hank Mauel

I asked Kevin Ryan what his optimal shop size was not too long ago....when I was looking for properties that had shops already built. He said 4000 square feet would be enough....and that setting up a seperate station for every task was to his liking - productivity-wise. I guess that's true for everyone but this sort of begs the question of how much time one will spend organizing and cleaning vs. actually building instruments in a very small shop.

I think a lot of people enjoy the building of the tools as much as the making of an instrument. For me, creativity is creativity and I enjoy any chance to be creative. A small shop presents an interesting problem with its own specific challenges. I suppose there are absolute limits to how small a shop can be before it's impossible to produce an instrument but I am truly impressed when I see world class craftmanship coming out of little shoeboxes. I think that shows a clear passion for luthrie and I truly respect those who follow through like this.

Words may be handy but the heart speaks deliberately through one's hands.

I ended up with a pretty large shop....2400 sq ft. with 4 rooms. It's hard to imagine filling it up entirely with guitar building equipment. I occasionally still do aviation research projects and needed this size of room to allow for that...but mostly it's guitars these days. Just got finished with the insulation, drywall, and painting. Next lighting, compressed air plumbing, moving, a little more carpentry, then it's back to building guitars again. I'm measuring my own passion by how rotten it feels to sit around and watch other people work. It might not be pure passion for luthrie but at least it's a work ethic.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

To me, that's not 'on the edge', but rather 'over the edge'. A guitar that is truly 'on the edge' is, I believe, the best guitar you can built. (I am, such as Brock is, in that 'school of thought'). Furthermore, I'm pretty sure lots of guitars out there would sound a lot better if their builder wouldn't worry so much about making sure their instrument will last over a century without the slightest belly developping behind the bridge, or some other ('normal') top deformation for that matter.

MHO...

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Doesn't that reduce 'on the edge' to just meaning 'optimal', since you're taking it to mean 'on the edge of screwing up the sound'? And that reduces to 'the best guitars are built optimally', which I'd have to agree with but which isn't much of a conversation starter

'On the edge', to me, means that if the guitar is lightened further then it will become structurally unsound. I know some clever builders (including Mario) who can build as light as they want without risking structural instability, definitely past the point where it starts to sound more like a Bodhran than a guitar, so I'd have to say 'maybe, but it's an unnecessary risk if they are'.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Fantastic guitars can be built from diametrically opposed methods. Some like Somogyi's "building on the cusp of disaster" approach have tops like trampolines. Some traditional scalloped X guitars can feel quite stiff in comparison but both methods can produce outstanding (although different) instruments. It's just as diverse in the classical world.

It's not hard to see why people get dogmatic about their own approach because it would seem that if one approach works so well, a completely opposite approach must be wrong. But there are clearly many ways to build great instruments.

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

Indeed Bob, you got me on this one. But, nonetheless, The best guitars I've made and/or tried were always light built. And although it is possible to make a light guitar sound bad (because it's built too lightly perhaps), it still think that overbuilding the structural components of a guitar (on the top and the back) is bad for sound.

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Well, the shop looks like this...once upon a time, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away!

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Hank Mauel

I echo what many have already said about diametrically opposed methods. I watched Kent Everett's video on voicing. He doesn't even shave the side of any of his braces! He leaves them square. The exception is the upper back braces because (in his words) "people can see them and I don't want to upset anybody." I am more of a Somodgyi approach person but his sound pretty good to me.

I am also in the "I like the sound of lightly built instruments" camp....

I have found that as you build lighter and lighter -- you gotta spend some time really trying to get your brain wrapped around how the forces all balance out... Where are the strings squishing the top... Where are the strings stretching the top... Where are the strings twisting the top? What else moves around when the top flexes? What happens to the main body resonance? Etc.... The idea is to figure out how to balance the whole thing out right so that it can be built without sounding crazy...

Unfortunately, for a J-200... The body is already so giant that if you build it too much on the light side ... you could end up with a super tubby/wooshy/thumpy sounding instrument (That is still structurally sound.....) You may have to get creative to figure out what to do to the design to help compensate for the massive air volume inside and giant, wide top...

If it was me... I would think about using a larger diameter sound hole as well as a sound port to help raise a low main body resonance created when you use a lighter top and back.... and it still might take Medium strings to really drive that giant top well... I also wouldn't build it extra deep... maybe even a hair shallower than standard... but those are just pure guesses...

Thanks

John

That was also my experience, though I've only built one lightly so far.

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David Malicky