Official Luthiers Forum!

I am working on my 7th acoustic steel string guitar build. I have been working on OM style guitars, with and without cutaways, but my current build is in the approximate shape of a Taylor Grand Auditorium. This one will have a soundport. Each one seems to get better and I'm trying to improve the tone (naturally) and of course every other aspect of the build. In conversation with non-builders I frequently hear "Now you need to build an electric", "Now you need to make a violin", "Now you need to make a banjo" ...or insert "something else"... This is curious to me. I guess they don't get it... (or are they just making conversation?)

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Now you need to build what ever the heck you wanna build ! Better ?


Tell em , sure I would be glad to as soon as you hit me with the $800.00 down payment to commission that instrument .

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
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The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
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Consider yourself lucky, at least they are not saying "so do you hang this on the wall for decoration?" People just don't get it, but why would we expect them to? The idea of building a guitar is so foreign to people that it seems unthinkable that someone could build an instrument that is actually functional. If I built a chair, I doubt people would compliment it then be surprised to learn that people can also sit in it. The same applies to the now you need to. . . In their mind, you made a guitar, you must have already completed that goal.

I once showed a guy a longneck dulcimer that I made. He had never seen or heard of a dulcimer but thought it was cool. He asked if I could make him one, then he asked if I could carve a 3D bust of Leonardo Da Vinci on the peg head. Since I have never carved anything in my life, nor given him any indication that I knew how, I said "Sure, would you also like it to fly?"

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

There you go. I think you are on to something there!

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

It's up to you to choose your own path, of course. Some folks like to stick with one thing until they get it under control, and, given the inherent difficulty of making a great instrument of any kind, many people spend their whole lives making one thing. Others like to explore a wide range of different things. I've seen great instruments by makers from either camp.

What bothers me is when people cop the attitude that one or the other of these paths is 'right', and anybody following the other is somehow wrong. This is most common in the violin world, it seems, where many people feel, as one friend said to me, that if a guitar touches the bench that bench is polluted, and can never be used for violin work. One violinist I spoke with said she would never buy a violin from somebody who called themselves a 'luthier'. I've seen this attitude in the classical guitar world as well, where many classical makers look down on steel string guitars. In extreme cases there are violin makers who won't build violas, and classical makers who don't make Flamencos, or vice versa.

The opposite view; that you're not a 'real' instrument maker unless you can make almost anything with strings, is less common, but it exists.

I'm one of those folks who does make lots of different sorts of stringed instruments. I have found over the years that's it's been a help: my guitars got better when I started making fiddles, I learned a lot about strings from the harp makers, and so on. And anyway, I think I'd go nuts if I could only make one sort of instrument. Because I do make a wide range of things I call myself a 'luthier', rather than a 'guitar maker' or whatever, but I don't attach any special prestige to the term.

Strad was, of course, a luthier, and I think he even called himself that, so the joke's on the folks who see that as a pejorative. There's a lot to be said for becoming the best guitar maker you can be, though: either way you've set yourself a problem that you'll never get the bottom of.

I have nothing against other instruments. I've been a guitar player for a lot longer than a guitar maker. Making them is just an extension of my obsession with guitars. So, I have an affinity to guitars. At some point I'd like to make some other things like a solid body or an arch top, but right now I'm concentrating on the craft of making acoustic steel strings. People are just funny sometimes. For those people that don't play, when I've shown them a guitar I've made, they'll say something like, "I had a guitar once" or "what is that?" (pointing to the pickguard).

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

I think it's an innocent enough remark; and a compliment actually. I think people mean "Wow! That's really nice; with your skills you could probably build anything!" Ya know, you build a nice table they say "You should make some chairs!"
I think when people see nice handmade stuff it excites them to consider the possibilities; I think they are truly impressed with your accomplishment.
Furniture builders don't just build tables; so I think it's reasonable for the average person to believe that instrument makers don't just build guitars. And they'd be right a lot of the time!!
Check out the wares of many of the members of this forum...
So don't get your panties in a bunch-as the saying goes- Graciously accept the compliments and politely explain that you "haven't tried building mandolins yet, maybe someday..."
regards
pvg

You are right. I don't mean to be snobby or smug...

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Flying's not so hard. Getting it to land gracefully is the challenge.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I think that some people are so amazed if you build a guitar, they really don't know what to say, so instead of being speechless they just blurt out nonsense.
Just consider it nonsense, and treat them kindly.
I had a person who knew that I built guitars tell someone that I could build them a house. "If he can build a guitar, a house would be easy".

Nowdays when someone asks me to build something off-the-wall, I ask them "does it look like a guitar?"
"No" they will say.
"I only build stuff that looks like guitars."
It pretty much puts them off.

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Ya....I think it was Fillppo pestering me to make an acoustic ....but he doesn't realize that I have a five year old, $3000 Taylor with less than 10 hours of playing time on it. My passion is electrics so I build electrics.

Follow your heart. Although I assume all such comments are good natured, innocuous conversation, if you follow someone else's heart, your own heart will pine away for attention and think, "What a gyp".

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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

Anyone can fly once.

It takes training to fly twice.

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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

Probably thought luthiers were out of her price range.........

I always thought that was just people projecting what they thought was cool on you. People who like electrics want you to build electrics, people who admire archtop builders want you to build archtops etc. Sometimes it's what they wish they could build too.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I'm a banjo maker. I'm not altogether ashamed to admit that I also build archtops, ukes, resos, and other such beasts, but please don't let my banjo buddies know....



Dave

I love people that are willing to take a chance on your building something you have not tried before. I never would have gotten into archtops or built a reso if it hadn't been for folks like that.

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

Most guitarists play several styles and types of instrument (seriously, how many do you know with only one or two guitars?), so it's not all that weird to me. I started building electrics, because that seemed like a reasonable, achievable sort of goal. Acoustics were mythical, complex things made with thin bits of wood and heat and tension and such.

Right now, acoustics are more interesting/challenging to me because I'm at the beginning of the learning curve, and because a lot of the music I'm playing is acoustic guitar based. Simple. But I really love having different kinds of instruments on the go - always at least one electric, preferably two, in different styles, and at least one acoustic. I'd also like to have an archtop, so I figure I'll build one. I have a friend who wants a bass, so I'll make one of those too, and another who wants a mando, and I'm up to that challenge. Each instrument teaches me something, poses different problems and forces you to look for new solutions, which can give you new, interesting ideas and ways to do things on other 'classes' of instrument.

What's important is that you're passionate about what you're building. If you're completely uninterested, don't build it. I would never accept a commission for a 'vintage correct' Gibson LP replica (for example) mainly because there are a number of things I consider 'bad design choices' (both aesthetically and part of the fun is designing your own instrument. Even if it's a very close 'copy' (I do make strats and teles sometimes), there are touches that set it apart. And I prefer designs that are fully mine.

Flying just involves missing the ground.

http://www.extremelysmart.com/humor/howtofly.php

Matt

Has Lance ever thought of adding in a "like" button? I would have clicked it for this post.

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Another day, another dollar.

Strad was, of course, a luthier, and I think he even called himself that, so the joke's on the folks who see that as a pejorative

He also built other instruments, even guitars(as they were in his time)....

I'm another who builds various instruments. An often forgotten fact, likely because I'm best known for my guitars, is that I made mandolins --first--. The guitar came second. Some of what I learned in those first mandolins and took to the guitars helped shape and define "my tone", too. Today, I offer 7 different guitar size/bodies, 3, perhaps 4 different mandolins(both carved and flat top), and am building my first archtop guitar right now, commissioned by a client who while waiting his turn on my wait list, began playing more Jazz and less Bluegrass.... <lol>

I've also built a mountain dulcimer, and a couple violins. A lot of my spruce tops, and all of my bracewood, is harvested and processed by yours truly. I've also built furniture, cabinetry, 3 shops, extensively remodeled our home(still in progress....). In past "hobbies" I built/rebuilt/hot-rodded engines, street cars/trucks(IE: hot rods), dirt-track stock cars and a "mud bogger" truck. I've done some sign painting and lettering, as well as airbrushed murals(remember those days(daze... <g>)?). I keep a couple of gardens, and make my own beer, including growing my own hops and barley, and then malting the barley myself. Oh, and there's this Tortoloid pickguard thing that I have going, too....

There's nothing wrong with being well diversified, and I truly believe that everything I do, and have done, and will do, comes back to help me build better guitars. The plastic car/truck/plane models I assembled as a wee lad taught me how to dry-fit pieces and file them until they mated perfectly, for example, and dry-fitting is something I do, to this day, with each and every piece that goes into my instruments. Many of the finishing techniques I use today were refined in my sign-painting/lettering/airbrushing days, for another example. the science of beer-making helps me further understand hot hide glue, and why(and when) we need to re-sanitize our glue pots and containers(and brushes...).

On the flip-side, there's also nothing wrong with being a "specialist", and doing only one thing, or a few things, and doing them very, very well. The folks who work at the guitar factory and who do bindings 40 hours a week are very, very good at doing bindings! The instrument finish specialists are excellent at what they do!

I, too, had a lot of folks tell me "now you need to make a violin", when they learned that I built guitars. I think it's natural for people to think that way, and they don't mean anything 'bad' by it. Every lay person knows that there are multi-million dollar violins, so they automatically assume that violins must be the finest instrument any luthier can build. And having built a couple, I can now smile and tell them that I have, and would they like to see it?

The other question we all get asked a lot is: "and where did you learn to build instruments?" We can stand there and spend the next hour recounting the journey that lead us to where we're at, but my favorite answer to this question came from Bill Moll, and I've gotten really good at responding instantly and with a dead-pan stare into the questioner's eyes with Bill's 3-word response: "work release program". Shuts 'em right up. Every. Time.

Glad I'm not the only one who gets these questions.
Now you should build a....
You started another guitar??
What do you do with all these?

I usually answer that its just a hobby and I build what I like. Then ask them why do you plant the same flower garden every year....why do you fish the same lakes every year....why do you work on the same old car....etc