Official Luthiers Forum!

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

Well said, Todd, I was about to type up a post and then you said pretty much what I wanted to say (and more), only better.

I do think it'd help to clarify discussion by separating CNC and Outsourcing as these are two different things.

I'm sure anyone who's experienced in setting up their own CNC work would say it's a bit more involved than hitting a button. I'm a CAD guy (not so much on the CAM side), but I know that it takes more than a little skill to model something as geometrically complicated as a neck, let alone the skill in setting up and operating a CNC machine. I'm not saying these skills are the equivalent of making a neck with hand tools, but we do tend to talk about it as "pushing a button." That's like telling someone with a spray booth just to "pull the trigger."

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

One thing that you can lose using CNC is the flexibility to change what you are doing in the middle of a part. I say this with the experience of owning, programming and running CNCs since 1985. The machines are very accurate and will generate the same path all day long. What they will not do is automatically compensate for inconsistencies in material, which could result in twist, pitch pockets, etc. in the finished product. That is where cutting a blank hands on has an advantage. If you have material consistency and good fixtures you can let the machine run unattended with modest QC. The QC may be the most important part as the CNC will make bad parts just as fast as good ones. I personally do run my bridges and rosettes on the CNC, and have also been making ivory parts for local luthiers at show time for several years on a CNC. I also will have no problems with cutting the fret slots for the fingerboard on the CNC. Those operations are well suited for CNCs because of the accuracy and consistency that can be achieved, IMHO. No different that running things out of a fixture with a larger router and maybe a little more flexible as dimensions can be changed with a couple of coordinate mods.

If someone is set on their design and are producing guitars in medium to large batches the CNC is a useful tool. But if someone is small it is probably just a matter of time before they start carving the blanks themselves as it gives one more control over the finished product, it's a whole package, plus I like doing it myself . While the box is producing the sound, you're really playing the neck and everyones idea of the perfect neck is going to be different.

Tim

As I said earlier, I think it is most fruitful in this thread to keep it to making yourself vs. farming out, and hold the CNC stuff for another thread. [I personally see no essential difference between using CNC and using a lot of jigs and templates if the latter make variation in the end product nearly impossible. Pye would recognize CNC as just another form of workmanship of certainty.]

Laurent, there is a considerable skill set in laying out a neck, and also in sawing, and roughing out. I'm sure you didn't rough out your first couple of necks in 5 minutes.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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Agreed. I was referring to pushing a couple of jigs against a shaper, pin router or router table. And yes, like many, I blew a couple of necks at the beginning.

On the subject of farming out vs. shop made parts, isn't it first and foremost a matter of scale and philosophy?
At a dozen instruments/year average for most builders (the mortal ones anyway) I would think it really doesn't make economic sense to go through the expense of carefully designing parts on CAD and paying a CNC shop for the fabrication of the same parts, plus shipping etc. The labour saved would be really minimal, with a fairly large loss in an already thin margin.
I am not sure above what scale it really pays off for a single builder. Twenty/year? Thirty?
As for the philosophy, farming out parts is assuming that some designs will never change, or not for a long time, and creatively I find that too constraining.
The other aspect, of course, is the pleasure taken in fashioning a neck, bridge or any other part. I can't think of any task I despise in building a guitar. Making and shaping the neck is definitely up there among my favourite, though.
So, on an amateur level -without economic or time constraints- I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to learn and know every task in the building process, including finishing.
From the client's perpective, romantic notions apart, people are always amazed -when receiving pics of the build- at how a few pieces of wood become a guitar, and relatively fast. A collection of pre-made parts wouldn't have the same appeal, nor would they trigger the same excitement I would think.

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

He uses some CNCed parts, and has apprentices making other parts.[/quote]

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).[/quote]

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.[/quote]

Bob is incorrect here. We looked into CNCed bridges. We inquired with Bob and a few other contract CNC shops. We had some prototypes made, and frankly, I thought they were pretty nifty. A few minutes of cleanup and you had a nice product. We may have glued one or two on. Ervin, however, never liked them, and because of how we set the neck, we custom size the height of every bridge. CNC-ing in this case is impractical. Between the practicality and aesthetic issues, it was a no-go, so Ervin makes each one by hand. We have used one CNCed fingerboard on a custom project where we needed a specific .020" channel. I write with some authority as I've been Ervin's shop manager since 2004.

I think it can actually be pretty economical given all of the traditional equipment & jigs that you need that even a "small" CNC can replace. I use mine as a thickness sander and a jointer. That right there replaces about $1500 worth of equipment. I can make any kind of radius dish, mold, or any other kind of jig I need. I've made everything from little jigs to cut purfling to the exact length for my rosettes, to bracing forms, to a variable angle tenon jig for necks. Of course, you can still do all of the more typical CNC operations like neck carving, bridge making, inlay work, fret slotting, etc. I bought my machine a few years ago, complete with CAD and CAM software, for about $9k. So, at the end of the day I probably spent about $5k more than I would have had to just to get tooled up with traditional woodworking tools. If you build 12 guitars a year then you could probably have it paid off in a year or two. You can go from design to CAD to CNC pretty quickly (less than 10 minutes for simple parts) but you'll definitely get more of a return by making standard parts.

The prices are not prohibitive...it's a great time to be into stuff like this!

Trev

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

I apologize for assuming they were still in use. I qualified that my information was two years old (and it was true then).

I used to make graduated bridges for a company that had that exact problem (different bridge heights required), though I doubt any small builder is likely to carry a stock of X bridges in 5 different heights like they were!

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Ever since Todd wrote his "last chapter" on the thread, I continue to go back to ponder his above paragraph. It makes a lot of sense to me. I think it contains the important essence of self-imposed standards to which we should hold ourselves. To what level of craftsmanship do we wish to aspire? In days gone by, those decisions were made by others within a Guild...today we have the ability to call ourselves a luthier during a first kit build...and some actually have done so.

As far as the neck source issue (built or purchased) is concerned I can't help but detect a bit of defensiveness from those who purchase. Far less so from those who actually do their own CNC'd necks. The tone of the latest issue on whether Ervin does or doesn't buy CNC'd components was revealing as was Howard's revelation of some prominent pros who buy many pre-fabbed components prior to assembly. The question to me has now become clear...do I wish to continue to strive toward a level of expertise, continually examining my skills critically and make efforts to improve or do I want to rest on any experience and self-justify an easier path. So to me, personally, I always try to justify value choices as to which passes the red-face test... which path sets a better example for my sons. If I can show them by example the benefits of taking a certain path then I feel that they have a better chance of becoming productive members of society...and that's a far more important role for me than building guitars. In the meantime, I'll continue to build necks the old fashioned way and strive to improve my accuracy and efficiency. Who knows...I too may someday be promoting the benefits of the Lancelot!

We live in a society today that for decades has been moving the bar lower in our educational system in the interest of maintaining the child's self esteem:
...social promotion in the early grades rather than holding back slow learners
...eliminating letter grades in favor of pass/fail or eliminating grades altogether
...admission to universities based far more on non-academic issues
...not keeping score in little league baseball and soccer
...even banning games of dodge-ball and tag
...you get the picture

All of that has resulted in becoming a non-judgmental society and shunning the very traditional values that made this country exceptional. All it does is promote mediocrity, or average performance to be the goal. So it's no wonder why the issue of make/buy on components can be so controversial...it goes right to the issue of making a judgment based upon traditional craftsman values. It's my belief that if we wish to strive for excellence in luthiery and become exceptional craftsmen, we need to self-impose a higher sense of discipline on ourselves as well as hold others to a higher standard. It's why I've always gravitated to the taskmasters and experts in a field and why they have been able to more fully teach not only the tangible portions but also the philosophical and historical aspects of their subjects as well. To those curmudgeons (you know who you are) who know what the red-face test is...thanks!

Hey...Filippo...see what you started!

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

Well said JJ

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Dave
Milton, ON

Great post otherwise, and very much on point...but please get to that point quickly (using the Lancelot)... and make videos

If craftsmanship is defined as success at risk VS certainty production (which Howard spoke of), then the Lancelot takes the cake!

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services