Official Luthiers Forum!

Exactly Ed it's extremely one sided.

For me I've always benefited from sharing what I learned it reinforces what I think I know with the repetition of explaining it to others. I'm sure I am a better luthier because of my participation here and owe everyone a huge thanks for letting me test my knowledge in the light of day with scrutiny.

I receive a lot of PMs so many that perhaps around half the time a participating on the OLF is answering PMs. The most common one is the tutorial "Flattening the Upper Bout." That one seems to come into play for lots of folks who join here and invariably find it, read it, have questions and contact me.

I'm always happy to help.

Thanks Ed I appreciate you and your comments my friend.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

LOL You're right and thanks for the suggestion it's more helpful than you even suspect

Also, well never mind I forgot what I wanted to say

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Hey Buddy thanks for this very, very much. The feeling is mutual and I hope to meet you you too one of these days.

Please pet the puppies for me they are great!!!

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Chris thanks for being my friend AND a mentor to me too! I have learned a lot from you and I believe you have a unique understanding of what I speak of here.

You also have a unique knowledge for this forum which is primarily an acoustic guitar forum although that has been changing over the years. I can go to you about a shredder and I appreciate this and you very much.

Wanted to thank you and Al Bacon too for your kindness and help to Cathy Ernie's widow. You guys put a lot of time and effort into helping after OLFer Ernie passed. This is huge and I am very grateful.

Thank you Chris and Al!

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I don't where else you post, John. I see your stuff on Mandolin Cafe, but no one is impressing me much over there except Forster and you. Lotta self-appointed experts, ignoramuses, and total noobs. I thought some of the other guitar forums were bad. It's hard to make a dent there.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I appreciate the information and help from Hesh, John Hall, and so many others on the OLF. Everybody doesn't have to agree, or even like each other, but there's no excuse for gratuitous negativity. My thanks go to the great majority of people here who participate thoughtfully and respectfullly.

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Tim Allen
"Never hurry, never rest."

I have been doing this a long time and I have learned and tried to share. I am too busy to spend a lot of time on forums. No one gets to the top of their profession alone , someone helped you get there. Hesh and I do try and share. Its sad that a few bad apples have an ego so great they have to feel powerful by trying to bring people down. That is why I don't post much. After thousands of repairs and over 300 builds , I do like to share this info but if a few want to make it aggravating you ruin it for others so what in your ego drives this. As my Pap would say , Many are wrong few are in doubt . I do Pay it forward to people that helped me Frank Ford , Kathy Mashushista , David Nichols and my years with Martin and ASIA. I will pop in from time to time but most of you know were to find me and my videos on you tube are there for your enjoyment.
Hesh loves to share and be glad you have him.
stay well

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

I have been on this forum pretty much from the beginning and am approaching 100 instruments. I still pick up some good tips here from time to time and try to post suggestions when appropriate.

Since you started working at a professional shop your posts have been great Hesh and I hope you will continue.

I must say that in monitoring the forum I have been impressed at how mellow things have been compared to earlier times when there were some real fisticuffs . I guess I must have missed whatever bothered you but I am sorry it happened.

Keep up the good posts and ignore the bad apples.

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

Really appreciate your posts Hesh and have learned a lot about refining setups from you.

Would still dearly love to take a setup class from you & Dave if you ever offer them again

Hey Leo thank you very much for this I appreciate you greatly!

Sadly we no longer offer our classes it was a very hard and long day for all concerned and disruptive to the work flow in our commercial shop.

I am however considering sharing how I set-up guitars as a thread on the OLF that can be a reference for everyone well into the future. I've been thinking of this and think that you guys would really benefit from a structured, sequential approach, what I developed for myself to how to set-up an instrument.

Monday I have four stacked up for me waiting for set-ups. Typically I'll have four done in about 3 hours.

Most of what I do these days at the shop are set-ups and I specialize in it and do about 600+ set-ups a year now only working several hours a day several days a week now. Interestingly even though some aspiring luthiers look down their noses at the set-up or never give it much thought thinking that the wood working is the important part... I beg to differ, respectfully.

The set-up is the user interface to the instrument and as such it will make or break the individual player's experience with the instrument. A great set-up can make someone a better player too and provide a better show for an audience.

So I dug in and made set-ups a P & L center for our business (profit and loss center) and we tracked them. Turns out that my set-ups are around 60% of our revenue and we also, most importantly serve the greatest number of people with our set-ups. I also made them available next business day and same day with an appointment and they beat a path to our door.

Set-ups should never have to complete for a Luthier's time with say the bigger jobs like bridge reglues and neck resets.

Anyway I am considering this and wanted to see if the incoming unpleasantries stopped before I commit to contributing more. I always want to help folks here I just need it to be a positive experience for me too now and that is all I have asked for here. Civility and no one bringing a prior beef here to sling crap.

Thanks again Leo!

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I can't wait to see what you do on step by step process. I hope I don't need to buy more tools
Just kidding. I love new tools.

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

No worries Hutch I'm here to share not be commercial. We turn away over 60% of the work that comes our way because we don't have the bandwidth so I am NOT looking for customers or to sell a book or anything for that matter.

If I do a set-up thread I can see acoustic guitars, electrics, basses and maybe mando only you guys are not very mandocentric on this forum. It will of course be free for all not a free-for-all...

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Ann Arbor Guitars

New Set Up Tools !

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

A procedural setup (as per Hesh) post would be awesome. I hope it happens.

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Wake up and smell the rosewood!

I'd love to see your process documented. In your live class you were doing a refret also weren't you? Would that be included in the process?
Always appreciate your input here Hesh.

Kent

Fretting tools are 15% off at StewMac now. I just bought the Dozuki type saw for that. .

Wait,,,,,,what?

Did someone say new tools?

I'm in!!

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jw ( o)===:::

I would also like to see your toot on electric guitar setups

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https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/

Hi Kent and thanks for the thanks much appreciated.

In our live class folks bought a guitar that was ready to be final assembled and set-up. In two days we made nuts, saddles, fretted the instruments and set-them up. We discussed neck angles, when to fret (after the board is installed on the neck), etc. It was pretty much hands on for our student the vast majority of the time.

We focused on the fine points and since we once did some ghost work for builders they would hand us an unfretted "chassis" and we as Jean Luke Picard would say would "make it so."

Since this is on-line much of this stuff is just not feasible to do remotely such as fretting. So no fretting this time, sorry. I also want to protect the value of the classes that we have held in person. Our students paid a lot not necessarily for our courses but some of them even traveled internationally to come to us.

When they left they had a guitar that had a new nut (bone, always bone with us), saddle (also always bone with us) and it was now a reference if they wanted to use it as one for any future set-ups that they wanted to do. Many students brought an inexpensive "mule" to be their work piece.

We had stuff we had to address too that was unintended and some of that, what a commercial shop does in the real world, blew people's minds who were used to the forum world. One example was a bridge that lifted on a student guitar. We took it off, put it back on with HHG and strung it up in only an hour. We've asked the steward to tell us when and if that bridge ever lifts again and we have not heard form him in 4 - 5 years .... Not recommending a 1 hour cure time on HHG and we would not do this to a customer instrument of course but it does underscore that some of the things we discuss here may not be completely accurate....

We had a student/instructor ratio of one instructor for ever two students so we were involved with our guests every.... step.... of..... the .....way. Dave never got to sit down for something like 12 hours straight which is part of the reason we don't want to do it anymore, too long a day for everyone.

The inspiration for the class was my personal experience using the OLF to build guitars and then one day being faced with a fully finished instrument that needed a nut, saddle, frets and a final set-up. The things that are not discussed here very often because this forum is dominated by woodworkers not guitar nerds was where I wanted the focus.

Our students seemed to eat it up and we learned from them too (such as the one hour glue and string HHG bridge... ).

What I envision here is much simpler and since it's a thread and not a visit no fretting just references to same, no nut making, just setting up the nut, no saddle making, compensation, etc and instead working what an existing saddle to make it work.

I'm also envisioning that you can take your Martin or whatever and follow the thread and come away with a beautiful set-up that we hear from our clients is better than the instrument ever played before. A new guitar from a store or big box store would be perfect for this too. I'm actually sure that any guitar in most people's fleets would benefit as well.

People don't recognize that the vast majority of new guitars have not been set-up. A f*ctory set-up if it's not a very small handful of builders like Suhr, Collings, Sadowsky and others..... sucks and is not even close.

Nut slot cutting is an art into itself and YES I will address that. So stores, not all but most in my experience and big box stores rarely cut nut slots as they should be and that makes a HUGE different in how it plays AND if it plays in tune. It's also the second thing in the sequence that should be addressed. Set relief, cut the slots there is one and two for you.

These may be the only tools too that people will need if they don't have them. No three corner files repurposed for us a V shaped nut slot is not a good thing and I won't be teaching that. It encourages a string to bind as the V snugs up and that causes tuning errors and can also result in broken strings. We will teach the use of the StewMac gauged nut files that I use. So a good thing to do to prepare for the on-line class is to get StewMac or anyone's gauged nut files, I personally like the StewMac ones the best. Have them in the gauges that you use for strings so for me a pack of D'Addarrio EJ-16 would be what I would make sure I have files for, six individual files. Or for an electric my choice would be EXL-110s also by D'Addarrio and I would have files to match those strings.

Stores these days having to compete with big box stores either don't set up the instruments that they sell at all... or well. We have a big box store near us and we often see their customers post new guitar purchase for me to dial it in, finally....

I have a lot of specs that I work to in my head for setting up things. Useless pieces of knowledge that I use every day that someone here might really appreciate perhaps on a wall of their shop. One example is what I set action and relief to AFTER a few prerequisites are accomplished. There is a sequence to a good set-up if you don't want to have to address the same adjustment more than once and that is what I developed and am kind of proud of.

Another useless piece of knowledge that is one of the many that I would impart is we often set-up for a pick-up, pretty common requirement isn't it and most of my Heshtones sold to gigging musicians who needed a pick-up. So an LR Baggs Anthem or Element use an UST (under saddle transducer) that if you add it to the saddle slot to get the very same action you need to remove 0.032" from the bottom of the saddle. Stuff like this is in the set-up domain and it's the stuff I want to share or would share.

Anyway I plan on doing it I just want to think about it and maybe survey you guys for what you want to see or have addressed so that this is as useful to you as possible.

Clearly I see the interest here and it's noted so I do plan on doing this, thanks Kent.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Thought so and if I were planning on participating with this the electric guitar set-up part would be very interesting to me so YES I do plan on doing one

We used to call electrics "the dark side" on this forum. They are my first love

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I look forward to that Hesh.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Hesh,

In the interest of accurate information, I must add a correction.

It’s Jean-Luc Picard.

Looking forward to updating my doc - https://1drv.ms/w/s!AqpMOPRCiq5ajcVg3dkpc_OkSxqqgw


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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Insta - https://www.instagram.com/cbcguitars/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/cbcguitars

You are absolutely correct Ed, shame on me I stand corrected. Live long and prosper my friend.

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Ann Arbor Guitars