Official Luthiers Forum!

I agree with the statement that pushing the tool (either manual or power) warrants the term "hand made", CNC however does not. I do not think that using a CNC to carve a neck is in any way detrimental to the finished product (from my limited knowledge of the technology).
Before I started this guitar making journey I was seriously in the market for a "handmade" acoustic, but the thought that certain parts were not made from rough stock by the luthier never crossed my mind, it was just a non-issue, I was shopping for the end product not the process, and I firmly believe that any small shop luthiers product is going to be better than a factory guitar regardless of the processes used... there is just a whole lot more room for quality control.
Does a CNC made neck make a guitar not "handmade"? I dont know... its just a matter of opinion, and I have no problem either way with what one concludes.

There is also the situation where someone (a guitar player) has become used to a certain neck shape but in reality it is not ideal. I have had customers take guitars from me and initially bristle at the neck (with the promise that I would remedy it if they didn't come around) but soon they get used to the new shape and either do not want the neck changed or much less so then before. As JJ pointed out, it is not as simple as the customer always knows best. On the other hand, it can be difficult to find a way to try to explain to someone that they may be happier in the long run with a neck shape different than what they are very used to.

In terms of what I have been preferring in necks I have been making a slight V at the nut and having it round out closer to the heel. Like Brock said, I like a bit of asymmetry also. Interestingly, I have moved the center point towards the treble and bass sides and prefer both to exactly in the center.

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

Great comments all around. I think this discussion has certainly helped me codify my thoughts on the subject.

I think those building without any power tools are 100% handmade. Those who are building with limited power tools are some proportion less than that. Those of us who are building with CNC as well as other power tools are somewhat lower yet in terms of a % handmade.

On my own necks I actually have yet to arrive at a neck that I feel is "perfect". I have actually been carving them oversized intentionally so that I can play around with the shape a bit. When I do make one that I love, I'll digitize the heck out of it and carve 'em all like that.

In the words of my former employer, Paul Smith:

“We don’t do something just because that’s the traditional way. If the best possible guitar results from using a robot for one procedure and a lot of hand-sanding or hand-inlaying for another, then that’s how we do it. Our tradition is a byproduct of our quality, so excellence is always the goal. We never lose sight of that.”

Whew!

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

Let me clarify...I did in fact send the neck out. The neck that I let him have for a week had the FB and frets installed....probably similar to what Brock described. The neck was incapable of being played on the guitar at that time since the body was unfinished and the bridge had not yet been glued on.

As far as seeing the guy play, he played many times in the shop...both the Taylor as well as some of my guitars. We actually had a good definition of what he wanted in a neck. My big mistake was to allow him to have the neck before it was profiled exactly to the Taylor. He saw the "new shape" as something he thought he wanted...about which he later was remorseful. Had I just done what I had originally planned to do, both of us would have been happy. Lesson learned.

My point going forward relates to actually letting him play the guitar before the neck is finished but attached to the guitar body that IS finished...and then working the final profile with him in the shop. Of course that's only effective with a local musician. In the case of a distant musician it will obviously be too complex and expensive.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

I guess that it's just me, but I don't take the CNC vs "handmade" stuff too seriously. I don't CNC necks because I don't have a CNC and the CAD work and programming for those machines is way too complicated for me. Give me a block of wood, a spoke shave, chisel, and some rasps, and I'm good to go. I realize that I could buy CNC'd necks, but I guess that I am just too cheap for that.

As far as someone wanting a guitar because it was "handmade" by me, well, I guess the only person that would have mattered to would have been my dear old mom. Others just seem to want what they believe to be a "better" instrument based on sound and playability. In any case, the idea that a CNC'd part is pulled out of the machine in a finished form isn't true. Although all of the rough carving is done, it still requires skill to do the final forming, fit and finish.

I think that the real issue boils down to the luthier's pride in his or her own work. Those that "hand build" everything are very proud of that fact, and they should be. On the other hand, those that may not make every part are also proud of their work, and they should be. They also make some beautiful, great sounding and great playing instruments.

I really like seeing people that take such pride in their work and are passionate about what they do...that's what makes these instruments special.

Didn't read all the posts, so apologies if someone has been over this.

It is very hard for someone not experienced in handling necks off the body to know if the neck is the way they would like it by having only the neck in their hands. It's hard with the neck on a body that isn't strung up. It's even hard with strings on before the guitar is set up. So I don't see much point in sending a rough shaped neck to someone to ask how they like it, and not a lot of point in sending the finish shaped neck for that purpose, either. I listen to their description of what they like, which guitars they like, and make the neck they way I think they will like it, which isn't exactly a copy of any other neck, because I think I can improve on a factory neck, even if the player likes that factory neck. I consider this to be part of why they have come to me. I have actually never had a complaint about neck shape.

Re Pye: Todd, I suggest some rereading. Pye never says that workmanship of risk is necessarily of better quality, or that a piece made by workmanship of certainty can't be as good or sometimes better. His point is that workmanship of risk allows for flexibility and ongoing creativity in design that doesn't happen with certainty workmanship, if I'm understanding him.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

JJ said


I suspect a large percentage of "us" are also players, not just builders. Give the neck a good feel on your favorite guitar. Then take the strings off, and it will feel too small.


I've also re profiled a neck that a client thought felt "right" before the guitar was completed. Possible something to stick on the fingerboard to make up for the missing strings could help.

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

I rough out blanks 8-10 or so at a time
And then do all the finishing by hand depending on what I'm after (profile, thickness width, etc.)
Whether or not you use someone else's product and all the philosophical discussions related to that decision is, in my opinion, personal and dependent on the capacities of your shop and time/money considerations.
-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

Yeah, I send the neck out for them to get a feel for, and make comments on. I am not sure how typical it is, but my customers spend about half our discussions on the neck "feel" so in order to get a sense for whether we are on the same page I send it to them and let them feel it, hold it in there hands, and make notes on it in pencil if they want any changes.

I have found the feedback to be very insightful, particularly with what people seem to want as compared with their teminology.

Howard raises some very good points, and I have mentioned these to customers who get necks to check out, but even still we are not blindly stabbing in the dark.

I don't particularly find it inefficient simply because I build so few per year (12ish) and while the neck is out I can either be cleaning up the body or getting the next guitar prepped.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

I think we'd all like to earn the place that Howard describes...trust and credibility that our decisions more often anticipate and achieve the best interest of the player. So we keep plugging along.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

To nudge things back a little to the OP's intent (I think)...
I've definitely gotten commissions specifically because clients wanted something simply not available off the rack, more often than not because they had huge hands that most necks couldn't satisfy. Usually I tell them to find what sort of guitar they like best, then build something 'in the spirit of' with a neck to their liking. The vast majority of my commissions are from local people, so I have them over to cop a feel before I do the final sanding. There's been a few requests for assymetry, flattening, rounding, C'ing, U'ing etc. Everyone has come away satisfied. But I also find that most people aren't as picky as I would have thought. I have them play around with the piles and piles of various guitars I have amassed over 15 years or so, and it usually ends up something along the lines of "more like this than that, thanks" and be done with it. But I admit I have a pretty rough and tumble approach it all. I care way more about music than guitars, so if someone cracks out a ruler and starts counting grain lines I show them the door. They are but instruments after all...
As for your personal philosophy Fillipo, I wager that after you've carved a few necks you'll wonder why you thought it might be difficult in the first place. A glance at the snappies of your first build shows us you'll get the chops in short order!
Cheers!

My take is to be considered a guitars builder you must have the skills to build an instrument totally without the need of prefab parts. Now I'm not saying you must also make your own tuners (now if you have the skills like some do to do this I'm really impressed) and process your own bone stock for nuts but i feel if you can't make a neck and fingerboard from some board and build an entire body and a bridge your not a builder. Your an assembler. Now for the pro who has paid his dues i see no problem with prefab parts since most times he's pumping out more then a few instruments and is most time in a time crunch. But if you are building just a few instruments a year I see no reason why your not building necks too...mike

It also shows that while we may disagree , we don't have to be disagreeable.

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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

To clear up a possible misconception , When I send out a neck to a customer for ok , it isn't a rough blank. That would be a waste of time . I will have the neck about finished. Fretboard and frets are on so the client can get more of a feel of what the neck will feel like.
It is just one of the things I do , I am not saying it should be done by all . Lets face it , we all build guitars differently . The customer connection is very important to me and I am sure it is with the other builders.

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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

He uses some CNCed parts, and has apprentices making other parts. It's more interesting in light of that article he wrote last year than in reference to him being a good luthier or not, though. There's no question that he has the hand skills to make anything he wanted out of wood.

There isn't an acoustic guitar anywhere that has more machine time than hand-time in its construction. Not at any factory, nor in anyone's shop. They're all more handmade than machine made.

Making a good neck for a player is about the judgment of the person building it rather than their method, be it CNC, duplicarver, rasp, belt sander, lancelot, or whittling it with a pocket knife. Making a neck is easy; it's knowing what neck to make that's hard. I think Laurent mentioned something important, and possibly Todd as well, that it's the control exerted by the maker that's important rather than the method. I like to view it in 'ideas' VS 'execution'.

Imagine an old man with Parkinson's disease and a strong man with perfect coordination. The old man tells the strong man exactly what to do every step of the way. He chooses the materials, he makes choices about how the instrument is voiced, he tells the man to remove a sliver of wood here and there in voicing the guitar. The strong man's motions are guided by the jigs the old man made for himself when he was still able, and he makes no decisions in the construction. In the end, whose soul is in the instrument? The one who made all the decisions or the one who pushed the chisel?

They answered this question hundreds of years ago when people started using apprentices, but we seem confused about it now when we've replaced less skilled workers with machines.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Both.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

As far as I know he is not using CNC parts. He has a big pile of necks roughed out off of a duplicarver but they only have the majority of the wood hogged off, they still need to be carved. He does that to allow them to stablize after they have been cut and rough shaped.

He has some clever jigs, but no CNC'd pieces that I saw (but granted it was a couple years ago that I was there).

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

I don't want to start a mess by naming names, but I know with certainty that his bridges were CNCed as of two years ago.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Good post Bob.

Lars - can your son accurately model a part in CAD? Can he program the toolpath in CAM? Can he design the necessary jigs to accurately locate the part? Can he then fit the part up to the rest of the assembly, sand it, finish it, and setup the instrument? If so, the answer is obviously "yes", he is a luthier.

There are people in factories who do just enter a program number and hit the go button. These people are obviously not luthiers, they are CNC operators.

Your post reeks of elitism and it is a shame to see something like that on a quality forum such as this.

Best,
Trevor

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

Lars has a right to an opinion like you do. I think your elitism comment is out of line.

I don't farm out my necks.To me it would be like haveing a car that goes only one speed.I like varience in my necks to suit different styles of playing and if they were cnc'd i wouldn't get that.Sometimes i carve a neck a certain way to please a customer or to get the tone i want from a certain build.If they were all the same, i feel i would be to restricted as a builder.No two of my guitars will ever be the same and i don't want them to be.Nor do i want them to be the same as someone elses.If i were building a certain model in a factory setting to save time and labor costs i would probably rethink farming them out.

To compare the work of a consummate professional in any field to that of a child hitting an "on" button is insulting. To do so on a public forum like this warrants a public response.

Best,
Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I know Lars and he's no elitist. He's always been a great and passionate gentleman...as is Trevor. IMO, this falls under the category of just not being able to express the nuances of what probably is a second language of many. I would seriously consider giving him the benefit of the doubt. No problem for me.

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

I suspect there is a common misconception about CNC'd parts.
Perhaps the technology exists (laser?) to produce finished objects, but the parts as used by the shops and luthiers I know require a lot of skilled handwork to be made into finished products.

A CNC bridge took me 40 minutes to finish when I was working at the bridge station in a production shop. Pyramid bridges took a little more, as they require more skills to finish-shape "right", at least in the Martin tradition.

Necks ate just roughed out chunks of mahogany, similar to what would come out of a duplicarver. The heel and peghead are very close to final dimensions, but there's usually a 1/16" overhang around the fretboard, a slightly oversized barrel, mill marks to clean up and the final shaping to do.

To me CNC technology as used in most production shops today is just a glorified router, no more. I do not discern a difference between CNC and a collection of jigs set-up in order to spit out identical necks, bridges, fretboards and headplates. It is used for the sake of consistency and to eliminate labour that, quite frankly, is not very qualified, nor interesting.

Now perhaps Martin or Taylor use better CNC technology that what I know, but the last time I saw a Martin neck blank, it looked eerily similar to what I saw at Pantheon or elsewhere. Pretty rough and requiring the final shaping.

As I wrote before, building a neck from scratch takes only marginally longer. It takes me 5 minutes with a spokeshave to hog off material from a square blank to a recognizable neck barrel. It's the final shaping and the details that make the difference. The same set of skills is required to make a neck out of CNC or shop made parts.

Thus, the assertion that a player or builder would know if a neck is CNC or handmade on a finished guitar is absurd.

I think the debate is more about ideology, the production model vs. the artistic model.
Whereas it is Jim Olson or Martin, they're interested in the same goals: consistency in models and quality.
On the opposite side, I and other builders are more interested in making unique objects, each with a distinct personality. This way of building usually has little in the way of jigs, and possibly machinery, because flexibility and freedom of expression are key.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

It is really easy to be misinterpreted on a forum like this....even more so when writing in a second language! It's all good.

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com