Custom guitar guys

[hamo]

When you take into account that a buyer often has to save up for a while before making a purchase,

Unless they get some of that sweet, sweet finance company money that only has 20% interest.

[ChrisR]

Or you find someone who takes VISA in the back of their workshop.

[dayl]

Or you find someone who takes VISA in the back of their workshop.

Maybe...... if you go paypal? kinda more likely.

[Lawrence]

just to bridge my post and Adrians a litlle

When I say that people are better off with a custom purchase, I mean older seasoned players who understand their wants and needs. Clearly less experienced people are better served by production line instruments. and lets face it, how mant relative noobs are going to fork out more than $3K on a guitar...

The other point I dont get is this issue of resale value.....Even if I had some horrendous accident and lost the use of my hands I would never sell my Noyce.......cos its MINE....sure with carbon copy guitars you might sell a green one to buy a blue one...or whatever, but a well thought out custom instrument....doesnt make sense to sell it.

[Ears]

+1, Despite my quip about nothing being forever I've not re-sold any musical kit that I've bought since 1989.
Some of my gear will go to players who will appreciate it as working gear in my will.

[darkness]

and lets face it, how mant relative noobs are going to fork out more than $3K on a guitar...

Well me . not really over 3k but it fits the point.

[Lawrence]

and lets face it, how mant relative noobs are going to fork out more than $3K on a guitar...

Well me . not really over 3k but it fits the point.

yup -during one of my stints in retail I saw a father and daughter come in....select a Les Paul Supreme on the basis of its looks and buy it cos she was about to start taking lessons....

[Bg]

I would really struggle to spec a custom instrument. Ok pickups - easy, strap locks - yep, switching - easy, trem arm - yep... but choice of woods? Not easy. Fretboard radius - haven't a clue what any of mine are. Scale length - erm I know my LP's a shorter scale, doesn't feel any different to me.

I guess you can just go on looks alone but I figure its better if I keep making my own for a while yet then I'll have a much better idea of what I do want.

[Gelato]

I would really struggle to spec a custom instrument. Ok pickups - easy, strap locks - yep, switching - easy, trem arm - yep... but choice of woods? Not easy. Fretboard radius - haven't a clue what any of mine are. Scale length - erm I know my LP's a shorter scale, doesn't feel any different to me.

I guess you can just go on looks alone but I figure its better if I keep making my own for a while yet then I'll have a much better idea of what I do want.

Headstock - yes/no? So many things to consider

[Bg]

I would really struggle to spec a custom instrument. Ok pickups - easy, strap locks - yep, switching - easy, trem arm - yep... but choice of woods? Not easy. Fretboard radius - haven't a clue what any of mine are. Scale length - erm I know my LP's a shorter scale, doesn't feel any different to me.

I guess you can just go on looks alone but I figure its better if I keep making my own for a while yet then I'll have a much better idea of what I do want.

Headstock - yes/no? So many things to consider

Thats not a consideration

[alanp]

I thought that traditionally, headless gats were made of carbon fibre, BG? That's another consideration sorted for you

[Bg]

I thought that traditionally, headless gats were made of carbon fibre, BG? That's another consideration sorted for you

Traditionally Graphite, but I'm thinking Graphite/Carbon Fibre composite. So yep thats sorted

[sgt mukuzi]

and Balsa

[Tsuken]

I would really struggle to spec a custom instrument. Ok pickups - easy, strap locks - yep, switching - easy, trem arm - yep... but choice of woods? Not easy. Fretboard radius - haven't a clue what any of mine are. Scale length - erm I know my LP's a shorter scale, doesn't feel any different to me.

I guess you can just go on looks alone but I figure its better if I keep making my own for a while yet then I'll have a much better idea of what I do want.

Adrian and I spent ages back and forth before settling on the woods for mine. - And the pickups took even longer. Ended up with pretty safe bets really, so it should all hang together well

[blackdroid]

check this out guys, its a very cool read...


Some Thoughts on the Differences Between
Handmade and Factory Made Guitars

by Ervin Somogyi


I am often asked what makes hand made guitars different from
factory made ones, and whether they're better, and if so, how. These are good
questions, but complex ones. Handmade guitars are not manufactured goods in the
same sense that factory made guitars are manufactured goods. Each is made
differently, for different purposes and different markets, and with different
intent, aim and skills. Factories need to make instruments which are good enough
to sell to a mass market. Luthiers need to make instruments which are successful
tools for musicians. Comparing a handmade guitar to a factory made one is
analogous to comparing a painting with a toaster: the one really needs to be
judged by different standards than the other. I wish to stress that I do not
wish to malign either luthiers or factories, but rather to point out how very
different their products are in spite of the fact that they can look almost
exactly alike.

What, really, is handmade? Obviously, things were literally
handmade a long time ago, when tools were simple. But what is one to think if
the luthier uses routers, bandsaws, power sanders and joiners and the like?
Aren't these the same power tools used in factories? How can something made with
them be handmade? These same questions were asked by American luthiers in the
l960s and l970s, because the use of power tools was so very common. After much
debate it was decided that the answer had to do with the freedom of use of the
tool. That is, guitars could be considered handmade if the tool could be used
with a degree of freedom dictated by the needs of the work and the will of the
operator. Dedicated and specialized tooling capable of only one operation, as is
the rule in factories, did not qualify; neither did the rote assembly, even if
by hand, of components premade to identical specifications. These became the
standards by which to distinguish handmade from production made.

It might
be most true to say that handmade guitars differ from factory made guitars
primarily in that factory guitars are mass-produced, and handmade guitars are
not. While this may sound obvious and self-evident, a number of implications
arise out of this basic fact:

l) Long term repairability. In the
long term, a guitar is likely to need tuneups, maintenance or repair work, just
like a car. Things like bolt-on necks, and the fact that the repairman may have
worked on this or that brand of factory guitar before and knows what to expect,
can make certain operations easiser. But otherwise factory instruments are often
made with procedures and processes which, although quick, cheap and easy to do
within the manufacturing context, can be difficult to undo or work with in the
normal, post-factory setting. Guitar finishes are a good example of this. The
traditional finishes such as lacquers and French polishes are beautiful, but are
skill- and labor-intensive to apply. The increasingly popular polyurethane,
catalyzed and ultraviolet-cured finishes are much easier and cheaper to apply,
and look good. But, they cannot be repaired or worked with if there is damage.
To fix a crack in the wood properly, the finish will need to be completely
sanded off and redone. Lacquers and French polishes, on the other hand, are
comparatively easy to spot-finish or touch up.

2) Personal
relationships. If you deal with an individual guitar maker you will
establish a personal relationship with someone which may last for years, and
which may become an important one. He will almost certainly be available
directly to you to consult with or to take care of some difficulty, and he will
feel a responsibility to you for any work he has done. With a factory made
guitar, you cannot have this personal relationship with the maker. You will have
to settle for the best relationship you can have with either the store you
purchased the instrument from or the factory's customer support
hotline.

3) Choices, features and options. Factory guitars are
made to strictly unvarying specifications and in large numbers. Each one will be
exactly the same in all particulars, and if you want anything a bit bigger or
smaller, or in any way different, you will not be able to have it unless you pay
extra to have it customized. An individual instrument maker can provide you with
an instrument that is tailor-made for you in many ways. As musical styles and
playing techniques evolve, instruments with differing scale lengths, actions,
neck widths and contours, fret sizes, string spacings, tunings, tonalities,
electronics, woods, body shapes and sizes, etc. all become more desirable. But
proliferation of design variables complicates production. I've been told that in
Japan many Japanese customers want guitars exactly like someone else's, because
that's how things are done in that culture. The factory model serves this need.
In the United States, however, musicians more commonly complain about things
such as that the neck on a certain brand of guitar is too awkward for their size
hand, and that their hands would tire less if the neck were just a little
different -- but all the necks are the same.

4) Value and price. A
handmade guitar will carry a price which reflects its real value in terms of
labor and overhead more truly than a factory made one which carries the same
price. The former may take 200 hours of someone's conscientiously invested time
and skill; the latter may take 8 to 36 hours of intensely repetitive and
automated work. A factory will target a price at which it wishes to sell a
certain product and will do everything it can to enable its introduction into
the market at that level, including using parts made by others and mounting ad
campaigns. A luthier will probably want to make something that's as open-endedly
good as he can make it, without an overriding imperative from the profit motive.
Because factory instruments are made for wholesaling and price markup, and
handmade instruments are in general not, there is much more room for discounting
within the system of retail store markups than an individual maker can offer.
Discounting is a marketing tool, and factory made guitars are made and priced so
that everybody in the complex chain of
recordkeeping/tooling/subcontracting/assembling/
advertising/retailing/delivering
can share in the profit. Handmade guitars are priced so the maker can
survive.

5) Quality. According to a guitar industry spokesman at a
recent symposium, quality, from a factory point of view, is the same as
replicability of components and efficiency of assembly. That is, the factory man
considers quality to be the measure of how efficiently his parts can be
identically made and how fast his instruments can be assembled in a consistent
and trouble free manner. From the musician's point of view quality has nothing
to do with any of this: it has to do with how playable the guitar is and how
good it sounds. This also is, normally, the attitude of the individual luthier,
for whom efficiency is important but secondary to his concern for creating a
personal and effective tool for the musician. The main ideal behind factory
guitars is that they be made quickly, strong and salable. The main ideal behind
the handmade instrument is quality of sound and playability. A really well made
guitar almost plays itself.

If quality for the
factory man has to do with efficiency and consistency in making identical
things, it cannot be so for hand makers. And for obvious reasons: there are a
lot of hand makers working at vastly different levels of skill and creative
talent, and they have different concepts of "best". Let us return to the analogy
of the painting and the toaster to illustrate this point. A painting is
something somebody made which may be good or bad, or beautiful, or repellent, or
even personally meaningful. Or perhaps unintelligible. Then, some paintings can
be amateurish or indifferent. Some are interesting. Some may be pretty damn
good. And some are timeless, significant and really great. A toaster, on the
other hand, will do what it was designed and built to do, every time, or one
fixes it or discards it. One does not normally think of a toaster as being
amateurish, meaningful, expressive, trite, evocative, profound, unintelligible,
interesting, or timelessly great. This is not what toasters are all about.


6) Craftsmanship. An intelligently run factory is geared to
operating smoothly in a standardized, not customized way. Its priorities are
automation of procedures and dimensional standardization of parts. A hand maker,
on the other hand, is generally flexible and inefficient enough to do customized
work in every place where it counts. This methodology is essential due to the
innate variability of woods: two identically thicknessed guitar tops can differ
by as much as l00% in density, 200% in longitudinal stiffness and 300% in
lateral stiffness. Bracewood also varies as much and further compounds the
possibilities of mindful wood choice and use. Therefore, while certain
components in handmade guitars may be roughed out to approximate dimensions in
batches of 4 or 6 or more, the selection of these components, and their final
dimensions in the assembled instrument, are done on an individual basis: this
top gets those brace-blanks, which are then pared down to that height, which
depends on the stiffness of the braced top, its tap tone, and the judgment of
the luthier as applied to this particular unique instrument.

As
mentioned above, the levels of skill, judgment and attitude among luthiers are
variable quantities, some highly developed and some not, depending on how
experienced and talented one is. In my opinion many hand makers today are
insufficiently trained and experienced, and as a result many handmade guitars
are less satisfactory than factory guitars of comparable price. Any luthier
worth his salt, however, will continually strive to learn better techniques and
improve his work, because personally achieved quality needs to be his stock in
trade. He must be good in order to survive. The intent and skill level of
factory work, on the other hand, tends to be constant and predictable and does
not improve appreciably from one year to the next. Factory work is based more in
using the best tooling and jigs available than in developing workers' skills
beyond what they must have so they can operate the tooling efficiently and
safely and do work that meets the standards set by the quality control
department.

This is, in fact, the essential distinction between handmade
and factory craftsmanship. The factory's craftsmanship is based in division and
automation of labor: there is someone who is paid to do each step or make each
part. He has to do it repeatedly, many times a day, at a level that meets the
factory's criteria for acceptability. As often as possible, this specialist is
replaced by a machine. The handmaker, in comparison, has to be adept at
everything. He must spend years to master all the techniques and skills
necessary to produce a high quality guitar, and, until he does so, his guitars
will be of less than highest quality in some way. The need to perform every
operation to a high standard is not unlike an Olympic athletic performance: make
one single mistake and you fall short of the goal. To aim so high is an
exceedingly demanding, and noble, effort.

7) Playability and
action. Since factory instruments are assembled in large quantities, they
normally almost all need fine tuning and adjustment before they come into the
hands of players. Music stores in the United States often have a person whose
job it is to set up all new guitars so that they are most comfortable for the
customer. I don't know whether it is the same in other countries, but I'd be
surprised if it weren't. Set-ups include setting the strings over the frets at a
comfortable height, dealing with buzzes, calibrating intonations at the bridge,
adjusting truss rods to the stringing, and whatever else needs to be done. Hand
makers, on the other hand, will usually have done these things prior to delivery
because, as far as they are concerned, a guitar that isn't as perfect as
possible is not ready to be delivered.

Sound. The study of the
factors involved in the production of tone teaches the instrument maker that
small variations in structure in the right places can make important, specific,
differences in response. Because there are so many places where one can take
away or add a little wood, and because the difference between "a little more" or
"a little less" can be critical to a specific aspect of tone, this study takes
years. This is the level of work a hand maker engages in and strives to master.
Ultimately, he will be able to make guitars which are consistent in quality and
consistently satisfying to his clients. The factory approach, on the other hand,
cannot spend so much time on any one guitar: its entire operation is based on
treating all guitar assembly processes identically. Therefore all tops of a
given model are equal thickness, all braces are equally high, all bodies are
equally deep, and so on. Tone in a guitar is controlled by paying attention to
specific qualities in the materials. Yet, the factory's focus on treating all
parts uniformly bypasses these important factors. Because dimensionally
identical guitar tops and braces can be twice the mass and up to three times the
stiffness of their companions in the assembly line factory guitars are,
essentially and literally, random collections of these physical variables. In
consequence, their sound quality will correspond to a statistical bell-curve
distribution where a few will be brilliantly successful, a few will be markedly
unresponsive, and most will be pretty good. To repeat: a factory work's chief
priorities and focus are production, selling and delivery. It is off the mark to
compare this to a concern with making a personal best at something.


9) Durability. Here, again, the concerns a factory and a hand
maker bring to their work are markedly different. And for perfectly good
reasons. There is nothing wrong with a factory maker's desire to sell guitars to
the public. But each member of this anonymous guitar playing public will treat
the guitar with different degrees of care, use different strings, play
differently, live in different cities or even countries with different climates,
temperatures, altitudes and humidities, and will sometimes take their guitars to
the beach or on trips into the mountains. These guitars must be able to hold up
against these unpredictable conditions. It is the factory's concern that these
instruments not come back to plague its warranty department with problems and
repairwork. To ensure this, their guitars are substantially overbuilt. Hand
makers are concerned with making sensitive, responsive tools for musicians who
are fairly certain to treat these with some care. These guitars can therefore
deliberately be made more delicate and fragile -- and this makes possible a
louder, more responsive instrument. The factory cannot afford to make fragile,
maximally responsive instruments: for every increment of fragility a certain
predictable number of damages and structural failures can be predicted, and the
maker would sink under the weight of warranty work. The hand maker, on the other
hand, cannot afford to overbuild his guitars: they would be the same as the
factory version but at a higher price, and they would fail to have that extra
dimension of responsiveness which makes them attractive to the buyer. He would
soon starve.

l0) Machine precision vs. the human touch. Machines
will do the same operation, over and over again, to the identical level of
precision; there are no bad days or sick days, and they don't get fatigued or
depressed. Hand work, on the other hand, is forever shaped by fluctuating human
factors of energy, attention, concentration and skill. For these reasons, most
people believe that machines can produce faster, cleaner, more consistent and
more desirable products for the consumer, as well as reducing the tedium
inherent in parts production. There is much truth in this.

But also, it is a
fallacy. This relationship between tooling and craftsmanship only applies in
direct proportion to how the machines and operations are completely free of
human intervention -- as is the case with computer controlled cutters, which are
getting a lot of press nowadays. But as soon as any real workers enter the
picture factories cannot escape from the same limitations of hand work under
which hand makers suffer. This is shown by the fact that a factory's own quality
control people can tell the difference between the level of workmanship of one
shift and that of another, and especially when there are new employees. Anyone
who has done factory work of any kind knows that personnel problems are the
larger part of production problems. Naturally, no one advertises
this.

This brings us to the fundamental difference in the logic which
informs these different methods of guitarmaking. The factory way to eliminate
human error and fluctuation is to eliminate, or at least limit as much as
possible, the human. The handmaker's way to eliminate human error is to increase
skill and mindfulness.

11) Is a handmade guitar necessarily better
than a factory made one? No. Many factory guitars are quite good, and many
handmade guitars show room for improvement. How successful a handmade guitar is,
is largely a function of how experienced the maker is and what specific
qualities of design or tone he is known for. No one ought to be surprised to
realize that beginners will make beginner's level guitars, and that more
experienced makers will make better ones: this is what makes the instruments
made by an experienced and mature maker so special. On the other hand, there is
considerably less significance to the purchase of an instrument made by a
factory simply because it's been in operation for many years. Long, cumulative
experience with the materials is not what they are about, and neither are
improvements and advances in design which conflict with
profitability.

l2) Are factory guitars any better than hand made
ones? By the standards of the factory people, yes. They believe that
high-volume assembly of premade and subcontracted parts produces superior
products. At least one company advertises this explicitly. By the standards of
the individual maker, it is possible for factory guitars to be better than
individually handmade ones, for all the reasons outlined above. But, in general,
factory guitars are "better" only in a limited sense of the word, also for all
the reasons outlined above. I wish to emphasize again that handmade and factory
guitars are each made with a different intelligence, with different priorities
and for different markets. The luthier cannot compete with the factory on the
level of price. The factory cannot compete with the luthier on the level of
attention to detail, care and exercise of judgment in the work.

13)
Are not high-end factory guitars, at least, better? From the view of the
musician, no. They are much more extravagantly ornamented and appointed and also
produced in limited editions so as to justify the higher price. And they are in
general aimed at a quite different market -- the collector. For the average
musician, the appeal of collector's guitars is blunted by the high price; and
for the serious musician by the fact that their essence, soul and sound are
produced under the same factory conditions and with the same concerns as any
other product of that factory -- with comparable results: random variation of
musical quality. But the collector has different interests. He seeks the appeal
of rarity, uniqueness and "collectableness" in an instrument and his principal
interests tend to be acquisition, owning and display -- not playing or
using.

The collector's market of vintage and collectable musical instruments
is not large but it is quite strong, and its continual hunger for new products
helps drive the production of "collectable" guitars. Factories respond to the
demand by producing and advertising limited edition guitars which have, for the
buyer, the requisite appeal of uniqueness, scarcity, rarity, and high cost.
There are individual luthiers whose work is sought in the collector's market.
But on the whole the difference between factory's and a handmaker's collectable
work is that the individual guitarmaker's collectable work is scarce by
definition, and ends when he dies. A factory such as the Martin company can turn
out limited and special edition collector's models for generations.


l4) A collaborative aspect. I like to think that an important
difference between handmade and non-handmade guitars is the degree to which the
process is one of collaboration. Makers want to find musicians who are able to
appreciate how good their work is, and who can challenge them to do even better
work. This is a fruitful partnership. The factory's needs are overwhelmingly to
sell guitars, and usually prefer to form partnerships only with
endorsers.

l5) How can one really know whether one guitar is better or
worse than another? A key factor in the assessing of what is better and what
is worse is the somewhat basic one of how educated and sensitive one is to the
matters under examination. A discussion of differences cannot go very far
without understanding this. The consumer is not merely a passive bystander in
this debate but a participant in it, even if he doesn't know he's doing it. To
illustrate, I want to give you an example of something that has happened to me
repeatedly in my experience as a guitar repairman (and which I'm sure other
repairmen have experienced as well).

A guitar player
called me to report that his guitar, which had worked well for several years,
was now not playing in tune. He suspected that the tuning mechanisms were worn
and slipping, and he wanted to know whether I could replace these. I said yes,
please bring your guitar to my shop. When the caller arrived I examined the
guitar and found no problems: the tuners worked perfectly, the bridge hadn't
become unglued, the frets and nut hadn't moved, the neck hadn't warped; the
guitar was not in any way damaged or broken; in fact, everything was exactly as
it should be. What had really happened was that the musician's ear had improved
over time so that he could now hear that the guitar did not play in tune. In
fact it never had; but he simply had been unable to hear the dissonances before.


Obviously, a guitar which plays in tune is better than one that
doesn't; but if one is unable to hear this then it becomes a non-issue. With an
improved ear, this man was ready for an improved guitar. This same growth of
ability to see and hear in an educated and experienced way affects our ability
to appreciate nuances of detail, subtlety, and quality. These are the very areas
in which handmade guitars can differ from, and excel, non-handmade ones. But,
until a player reaches the point of capacity to discriminate, whatever guitar he
has is good enough.


©2008,
Ervin Somogyi, all rights reserved.