Official Luthiers Forum!

The professional repair people amongst us will find the following discussion to be a rehash of an oft-discussed topic; this note is intended more for the aspiring builders here on the site than the usual suspects (looking at Mr. Breakstone, etc.).

I got a call last week re: availability to do a few hours on Sunday reworking three guitars for PM delivery back to the owner (this was an overnight turnaround with associated adjustment in rate, and the schedule was already tight due to other prior commitments). These instruments needed level/crown/polish, plus fret height reduction to a uniform 0.043" on two of the three. Despite the customer being one of those people seemingly endowed with micrometers for fingertips, this sounded easy as I was already going to be in the DC area for some shopping at Tysons Corner. A challenging but consistent customer... hit his numbers and we are usually good to go.

In summary, all three instruments were in the top 1% of those I have see over what is now close to 10 years of association with the shop. Even the best of the dozens of Somogyi, Olsen, other custom builder, and vintage guitars that have flowed through the shop were distant also-rans compared to this trifecta trio. Perfect, understated cosmetics (I think of Mr. Somogyi's instruments in terms of details but without the troublesome neck joint), exceptional tone, and when I got a chance to play them... whoa!... absolutely awful player interface. The reason for what would be close to a $1K bill by the time we finished was apparent with close visual inspection and a few chords played. Flat-topped frets... apparently leveled, lightly hit with some 400 grit paper to break the edges, 0000 steel wool to get a more uniform sheen, then pushed out the door. This on three guitars that are marketed-priced at well over $100K in aggregate.

While we had discussed the tendency of some builders to have a somewhat less than uniform level of execution on the broad range of tasks necessary to build an instrument, I do not believe I have ever seen quite this stark a contrast between the overall level of execution of a group of builder instruments and what may only be described as a blind spot in the builder's skill set.

When I quizzed Mr. Stock on the issue, he just shrugged and suggested that it was a thing with this builder, readily remedied with a few additional hours on the setup bill.

I was not around when the owner picked up that evening, but my understanding is that the shop suggested to the customer that he pass any future commissions from that builder through us before considering the instrument ready to go.

On a related topic, there was also an obvious early effort from another builder in the shop. Made for a family member for cost of materials, the owner brought it in for setup work and correction of a few problems re: geometry. I took a look and added a few notes to the three pages of suggestions to be sent directly to that luthier.

Summary? As the boys say, a 'foot-stomp' with regard to the fact that successful commercial and custom builders are required to master a very diverse body of knowledge and multi-disciplinary set of skills to delivery a uniformly 'good' final product. This suggests that builders should aggressively court feedback from both their customers and competent peers as to what was well done and what might be improved. We will do exactly that for both that trio of otherwise stellar instruments (at owner request, and with respect) and the builder of what might have been described here a decade or so back as a GLO.

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We have become a civilization that elevates idiots, prostitutes, and clowns. Am I still to defend it? Yes, for its principles. Yes, for what it was. Yes, for what it still may be.

-Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story (A Novel)

Perhaps the builder felt the buyer was more of a "collector" rather than a player and wouldn't notice a less than stellar set up. It is not unexpected that a "setup" will be needed to suit a particular player's requirements on most commercially built guitars, but is less expected on a bespoke custom made instrument. However, if it was an "off the rack" guitar by the builder it perhaps was given a more rudimentary setup with the understanding that one more suitable for the player would be done by the technician of his choice. Why spend the time to do a perfect setup if it is the wrong setup for that player?
As to the "cost of materials instrument" I hope you were gentle with your criticism. In the first glow of success we often fail to see the GLO qualities of our early instruments. If you were able to make it a playable instrument then the builder has made a reasonable first effort and will probably improve with future guitars.

Well, at least i know they’re not mine…

Woodie, I enjoyed reading this as it's a great reminder to never get too comfortable where you are at. I suspect this builder has surrounded themselves with blankets of success and accolades and built themselves quite a cocoon of complacency.

I hope I never get so over-confident that I forget to consider the player interface altogether. I've been told that I have a good amount of "tortured artist contempt" and I know I suffer from imposter syndrome.

I think that might mean I'm just a nervous wreck...

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-Marcus
http://www.bailieguitars.com
Instagram | YouTube

Reminds me of my favorite line from this hilarious video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tH55syq0o
"For a programmer, there are only two states of being. Impostor syndrome or superiority complex."
Apparently it's true for luthiers too.

Bear in mind that anyone building guitars at the 30k range will probably only fret 6-8 guitars a year and will probably have a fairly low body count overall. And will spend a week on the rosette and an afternoon on the fretwork…

I suppose it depends on your perspective too. As a serious player if a guitar doesn’t sound good and have a good setup then it’s worthless to me. Guess that’s why I jumped on the Ann Arbor Guitars setup course when it became available. I do believe that any experienced luthier making custom guitars should be able to at least do a better than average setup.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

This is my problem.

Well… the 6 instruments a year (on a good year) problem.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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Insta - https://www.instagram.com/cbcguitars/
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Woodie,
Thank you for that account. I just read an entry on Cumpianio's blog from 2015 that touches on some of what you said https://dolcecano.blogspot.com/2015/02/ . He wrote:

You've made me aware of the careers of handful of self-made builders who have leveraged their career success on the purchase of one or several of their guitars by some superstar guitarist or other. This good fortune of happenstance now permits them to command $20,000-$30,000 for all their subsequent instruments. Now, they can't make them fast enough at that price¡ Well, far for me to begrudge the financial success of others. But I feel that it is legitimate to point out the distance between us: between what I think drives them and what I know drives me. I serve my craft. I don't expect it to enrich me. I'm privileged that it does afford me a living stable enough to continue doing it, free from financial anxiety, yes. But striving to a level that makes my work largely inaccesible to the working artists which I serve, no..

It's a good read, touching on some of what you wrote about.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Just speaking for myself: I would rather under-promise and over-deliver than over-promise and under-deliver. Just an important overall perspective for providing services and/or products combined with a service element.

If I were a guitar buying customer and paid this kind of money for a guitar, I would want there to either be a near perfect setup the way I want it to be done, or (perhaps more realistic) some modest credit on the price for what it will cost me to get a local setup done the way I want it to be done.

I definitely see the value of what Clay said about a builder leaving the setup unfinished, so that the buyer can have a trusted local person do a bespoke setup. It would make sense to do that for an expensive hot rod like these guitars we are talking about. Is that what was going on here? No mention of such.

I do know that, as much of a hack as I am at building guitars, I can do an OK setup once they are done, and not spend days getting there. I'm sure the professionals can do far better than I can, and do it faster, but nobody plays my guitars and hands them back saying that they didn't like the fretwork, nut or action. They are functional instruments that feel good and intonate right. So if I (a self-professed hack) can do it, somebody who builds at the high level we are discussing should be able to avoid embarrassment and just do a basic, average guy, no frills setup. What Woodie described falls below that fairly low standard, which is disappointing.

I would offer that the majority of professional luthiers send their guitars out the door with a professional set-up. Not doing so is the exception or so I'd like to think.

For some of the builders' work I've seen with substandard setups—horrible in a few cases—I think John Hall's adage might apply: You don't know what you don't know until you know it. I think in some of these cases it's just lack of awareness.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

What Pat Foster and John Hall said.

I cringe when I see some of my earlier work. Nobody is born knowing this stuff, and if nobody tells you you might never learn it. Any maker worth their salt will be actively seeking feedback, and welcome it when it's well meant. I once had very fine player ask if the guitar I'd showed them was my best ever. It was a 'showpiece', six or eight years old at the time, and by then could do much better, but rather than point out all the flaws I jut said: "No; that will be the next one". May it ever be thus.

PREACH!



Well said. I am reminded of a story when Bob Marley's record company wanted to release a "Best of" compilation album. Bob fought them, saying his best was yet to come. They did it anyway, and he signed with another record company.

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

I was lucky to have had the opportunity early on to sell off the wall at a pretty iconic store staffed with folks that really knew what they were doing. They gave me invaluable feedback on everything from fit and finish to setup and tone.
Interestingly they said I was one of the few new builders that actually listened to them and applied the lessons. Some got mad and never came back.

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

Hope you don't mind Woodie if I weigh in here I'll try to be brief.

I never intended to sell my guitars and said so over and over and over on the OLF. But people came at me after trying one of mine and kept encouraging me to hang out the shingle.

I decided to attend Healsburg in 2007 and take an OM that I built. I schlepped that guitar to the booths of people I admired such as Ervin Somogyi, Howard Klepper, Rick Turner RIP and many more. Everyone told me my stuff was in the top half for quality of the guitars at the show. Now this was either an insult to many of the builders there... or a compliment to me. But I was again encouraged to sell my stuff and reassured especially by Rick that my greatest fear, my creative autonomy would not be impacted by selling. He was right.

Back at the ranch in the People's Republic of Ann Arbor the latest example of a town destroyed by Progressive Democrats.... I finally hooked-up with another OLFer David Collins. I visited him in his shop. Dave had gone to the Galloup School of Lutherie and was asked to stay on and apprentice with Bryan Galloup and later he was asked to work at the school and teach people to be Luthiers. From there he went to work in the repair department at Elderly where TJ Thompson had worked too. Dave now has about 30 years of Lutherie experience and in my experience he's one of the best in the world. He also built about 200 acoustic guitars and many of the prototypes for McPherson.

So upon meeting Dave he opens the case of the OM I took to Healsburg and as we chatted about other things he puts it on his bench and begins to cut the nut slots. Lower and lower they went and I had a **** eating grin on my face deliberately letting him do what he wants and interested in seeing where this was going.

I came away that day learning that I did not know roughly one half of what I needed to know as the most basic baseline to be a Luthier and builder. The set-up is the user interface to the instrument and if it's not right the entire experience of the instrument is flawed.

I'll repeat roughly 1/2 of what I needed to learn I did not know just being a builder with no repair experience.

This led to a three year apprenticeship for me with Dave learning to do all the things that as builders we may not think are all that sexy. From fret work to set-ups to resets to crack repair to the proper way to glue on a bridge and the care and feeding of HHG.

This became the outline for the condensed set-up and fretting courses that Dave and now I taught at Ann Arbor Guitars, what I learned as an apprentice.

Of course one has to be capable of being intellectually honest with ourselves and recognize the strong.... tendency for Luthiers who work in solitary to breath our own air so to speak. You have to be able to put your ego aside and sweep a floor and clean a toilet too. If it was important enough to you these things will not be a problem. It was important enough to me and I now have the best retirement gig on planet earth as a result.

So give some thought to what happens to your pretty guitars with the 19 wood rosette when someone actually has to play the things and enjoy the experience. Get feedback and have the broad shoulders to learn and not resent people being critical with you. It pays off in spades and I'll add once last thing.

The flow of money reversed in a big way for me from going out the door to coming in the door. Much better.... and my guitar collection has never been larger.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Alan and Chris, you both would have been doing your early work in the ‘dark ages’ pre internet, when secrets were jealously guarded and information was precious metal. Hardly any information…

These days you could spend all day watching YouTube videos on how to do set ups and some of them would even be right. The challenge now is sorting wheat from chaff in the unending barrage of people who don’t know what they don’t know, lol…

But also these days there’s not much excuse for putting out sub level work…

Yup. When I got started in the late 70's there was NO reference material at all. There were books about building guitars (mostly classical), but nothing about repairing until Don Teeter's book.

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

Kamimoto's book came out around the same time, if I recall.

edit: I have it buried somewhere—if I remember, it covered repairs. They were the only resources at the time. I was lucky to be close to Lundberg's guitar store in Berkeley at the time so I had some face-to-face exposure to good work.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

For me there is no excuse for shoddy work when you are commanding those type of numbers.

No Matter how much feedback one gets from clients ,unless they are willing to change for the better it is a moot point......
It reminds me of a story in Arnold Schwarzeneggers book "The Education of a Bodybuilder" He was approaching the top of his game but he new in his heart that his calves muscles (gastrocnemius) were not up to par with the rest of his physique and in order for him to be the "best" he had to make his weak point his strong point ,which is what he did and the rest is history....

You have to be honest with yourself and figure out how to do it better.

Someone mentioned that if you only make 6 guitars a year you just don't get that much practice, which is why also doing repair you will be getting more fretwork than anything else and this will vastly improve your skills.

So ,I guess my point is unless you want to change it doesn't matter how much critique you get from other people-it has to come from within....

When the Dalai Lama visited New York he got a $5 hot dog from a street vendor. He gave the guy a $20 bill.
There was an expectation of change but the vendor’s reply was - -

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

There's nothing like a stint of repair work to how you the wrong ways to do things.

Again, back in the day there were no texts available on repair work, or they were limited in scope. We had to figure it all out, and it took a while.

All of the well known violin makers, and restorers that I have met, or heard of, have had years of repair and setup work in top notch shops around the country; before they made a go of it as a maker, or restorer. It seems to be a real thing. They can do setups in their sleep. As a teen, I woke up dreaming about whipping piles of dishes through a dishwasher; but that was never a plan.

We have Ed Bond, aka Meddlingfool, here as an example of the same trek.

Not so much in a places like Cremona, Italy; where EVERYONE is a violin maker; and maybe are born into it.

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Why be normal?

Grinding out 18 years in a busy shop was definitely more useful than grinding out dishes at Denny’s, my previous job, lol…

I just also want to point out that the lowest possible set up is not always the best set up (often it is). The best set up is the one the customer wants. I’ve met many great players who like a little higher set up than my normal (3/32 - 1/16).
It’s a super important part of the build.
As a side note, I once watched Frank Ford do a complete refret and setup on a Martin in something like 45 minutes!
Time is where repetition really helps! So, my hats off to all you repair guys and gals who have this down. It takes me considerably longer than Frank.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com