Jump to content

Is Zachary Right?


Recommended Posts

Actually, I think I have this Alex guy figured out:

1. Build a guitar with whatever wood scraps I have laying around or can find.

2. Convince everyone that I'm a boutique builder and my guitars are works of art because they have no durable finish and I couldn't be bothered to sand out the tool marks.

3. Charge a minimum of $2500 for one of my works of art.

4. ???

5. Profit!

Well, you have to give him credit for stirring up some passion. How many other builders can get some people so angry, and others so willing to drop $2500? :D

About the durable finish part...I was kind of skeptical about oil finishes. until I found something called Le Tonkinois" --it's an all-natural oil mixture.

I can't really speak about the durability part yet, since I've just started trying it out on scrap. So far so good though, the stuff looks great, its already pretty hard after only a couple of days (I think it takes a week or so to cure completely) and it's already as shiny as any other finish I've seen. I haven't tried spraying it, I've just been wiping it on, but supposedly spraying works too. They say 3-4 coats should do it --but you need 8 for marine applications. It's waterproof, humidity proof, and not sensitive to weather changes.

One thing I wondered about was how deeply into the wood it penetrates --so I planed off the side of my test pieces, and you can see pretty clearly how deep the oil gets --probably less than half a millimeter, I'd say.

I'm going to wait a couple more days before I start banging on it with a hammer --we'll see how durable it is then! And of course, I'll have to wait until I string up the guitar to know what effect, if any, it'll have on the sound. I'm guessing not much, and certainly it can't be any worse than the plastic-dipped guitars you see nowadays.

And at least you don't need a paint booth and heavy duty respirator to use it.

I don't think this is what Zachary is using, because frankly, this stuff really feels tough--but I definitely give him credit for turning me onto the idea that a natural, non-toxic finish is possible.

And it's cheap too --I paid 9 euros for a can that will probably cover 10 guitars. It cost me 80 euros to paint my last guitar (and there's nothing durable about that finish)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 228
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Its confusing to have a company named Zachary guitars when his name is actually Alex... I assumed for ages he was called Zachary

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its confusing to have a company named Zachary guitars when his name is actually Alex... I assumed for ages he was called Zachary

Me too. Maybe its for when people realize how much they overpayed for his guitars they cant find him.

angry customer: I'm lookin' for Zachary!

Alex: No idea where he is man, my name's alex...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For me, it's not really a question of better --the question is whether it works or doesn't. I'm assuming it does work, since Zachary's been at this for a few years now.

Fender's been at it for around 60(?) years, Gibson has for even longer. This guy seems pretty quack-ish to me.

He contradicts himself multiple times... "I carve out a cavity, which leaves more wood in the guitar. My goal is to take away as little wood as possible from the cavity... This [headstock] shape is a very compact design... This headstock design is a true innovation in terms of tone transfer... the Body Tone Hole Option, which not only adds to the intricate beauty of the guitar, but reduces the overall weight, changes the feel and alters the resonance."

If he is worried about taking more wood out of the guitar via the electronics cavity, why on earth is he drilling holes in his guitars? And likewise, why is he making the headstock so small, making it wider like a Fender headstock isn't going to make it weaker, only add more mass, which I'm pretty sure is scientifically proven to add sustain. Making it thinner like a Fender may affect strength, but a negligable amount.

Oh, and I love this: "My design and manufacturing process utilizes only primitive Old World craftsmanship and never any 'New World technology'. " Just to the left of the original text, there's a picture of this moron on a big circular sanding device (please excuse my lack of power tool name knowledge) and above he's on a table saw, working away. I was unaware that "primitive old world" craftsmen had motors and machine made blades and precision grit sand paper and all that jazz... Fool.

As far as I'm concerned this guy is full of hot air. He makes claims that are not backed up by science. Not that that is a big change from most guitar builders/companies/-ists, but some of them are much better about it.

I feel he makes very little sense, contradicts himself like a certain top-selling book, and is just trying to sell a product.

Have a nice day.

-Galen

Edited by Gemm012
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nitefly, even though I'm a big Alex fan, that WAS funny!

Crafty, that was maybe 3-4 guitars out of the almost 100 he's made. Check these out, beauty IS in the eye of the beholder but if you like wood, and natural beauty, you can't deny these:

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/290899_07.JPG

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/120603_01.JPG

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/280901_02.JPG

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/160406_30.JPG

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/290506_20.JPG

I think that if he was in this to make money, he'd instead have a slick website and wouldn't turn down people who want to buy something from him. He also only just raised the price recently. for the last few years you could buy one for under 2K, and at one guitar a month, $1200-1500 profit aint much to live on.

Hey, to each his own, I'm just extremely impressed with this guy's passion and willingness to do what he feels is right, regardless of if he could make $$ from it. Do I think he can be a bit of a Dick at first? Sure.

Check the site out a bit, then make your decision. I used to think he was just as whacked as alot of you do, he's now my favourite luthier around.

I also still say no one has as many straight 10's on Harmony Central as Zachary Guitars.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Would you agree with me that every string on your guitar should have equal tension? In other words, each string should have exactly the same tension when tuned to pitch. Would you agree with me on that?

No??? ...What do you mean NO? Are you nuts? For those who said no, you are idiots and should be on the PRS site looking at grossly quilted tops and drooling over them. That's where you belong, so stay there.."

straight from the horse's mouth

Edited by Nitefly SA
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hahaha. If all of alex's guitars have equal tension across all strings, I seriously doubt they're in standard tuning. I doubt he'd know what to do with a quilt top. "You mean this is meant for a guitar? But I didn't find it under my house." In his defense, some his guitars(read:bodies, not headstocks) look pretty nice; it's just a shame that he's so foolish. I could see myself really respecting him if he was a bit more straightforward about why he does what he does. Let's be realistic, he does most things for aesthetic reasons and then tries to rationalize it tonally or ergenomically.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

wait, wait this is the best part: "I learned that using unbalanced strings is the way to go and that its actually better if the strings all have inconsistent tension and the low E actually has less tension than most of the other strings. What was I thinking before?"

EDIT: http://www.zacharyguitars.com/Idiots.htm this is hilarious!

"hey man, Thanks for putting my mail on the idiot page. I just couldn't believe you had time to read all this "fan mail". I have a question for you.

If you were to draft your guitar necks and bodies and have cnc machine cut them and put it all together would it still sound like a zack?. Or do you use voodoo magic to make them sound good?. Tell me is it the enchanted woods harvested from the ancient marhes of Gorormir ,sprinkled with elf juice squeezed from the phallus of virgin mugwamps while aged for centuries under the watchful eyes or one thousand serpents. Carved by the magic hands of the mystical wizard Alex?. Is that why people are totally bonkers about your guitars?..... well is it? " :D:DB):DB)

Edited by Nitefly SA
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nitefly, even though I'm a big Alex fan, that WAS funny!

Crafty, that was maybe 3-4 guitars out of the almost 100 he's made. Check these out, beauty IS in the eye of the beholder but if you like wood, and natural beauty, you can't deny these:

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/290899_07.JPG

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/120603_01.JPG

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/280901_02.JPG

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/160406_30.JPG

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/290506_20.JPG

I think that if he was in this to make money, he'd instead have a slick website and wouldn't turn down people who want to buy something from him. He also only just raised the price recently. for the last few years you could buy one for under 2K, and at one guitar a month, $1200-1500 profit aint much to live on.

Hey, to each his own, I'm just extremely impressed with this guy's passion and willingness to do what he feels is right, regardless of if he could make $$ from it. Do I think he can be a bit of a Dick at first? Sure.

Check the site out a bit, then make your decision. I used to think he was just as whacked as alot of you do, he's now my favourite luthier around.

I also still say no one has as many straight 10's on Harmony Central as Zachary Guitars.

$1500 profit? Dude, the parts he's throwing on those guitars amounts to less than $150. That's more like a profit of $2350--MINIMUM. All of the guitars seem to have some type of options that add many more dollars to that base line profit. Like $200 for a $40 Wilkinson trem.

I don't have a problem with anyone making a profit or puffing and selling their wares. That's capitalism and I respect that. What I think is ludicrous is how people are really buying into it, and how his contradictions about quality and craftsmanship are so glaringly obvious that it's insulting to the reader. Then he puts up a page about PRS being a sellout because he sells nice looking guitars. Boo-freaking-hoo.

It's like Ed Roman without the faux Kramers...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just googled 'vegemite'... looks like it must be the american verison of Marmite...

So I guess thats what I mean!

We don't have Vegamite/Marmite in the States. Vegamite is an Aussie thing, if I'm not mistaken. And from what I understand, it is absolutely disgusting! If we have it here in the States, it must be a special order sorta thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have to admit, that first pic from Frazzled's links was AWESOME! Great-looking guitar.

However, the Ed Romanism of the whole site tells me-- stay away!

Nothing sends me packing more quickly than Tone Voodoo. As mentioned earlier in the thread, ALL the companies (even ones I respect... there's no avoiding it) have a little bit of it. It's the excessive amount of it, combined with the condescension here that does it.

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Amen to all that.

Also, frankly? All 10s at Harmony Central? That means exactly diddly. The sample size is quite tiny, the people who buy into Zacharay guitars buy into it wholesale, and are likely to be in love with the concept, the bull sales pitch (gotta love the rants against figured wood followed by pictures of guitars featuring...highly figure wood), the '***?'-eliciting 'logic', the 'common sense' (ie, as usual, neither common, nor sense)...no, thanks. He makes some nice guitars, but none of them warrant $2500 bucks, IMO.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And the chiminess? From changing string tree height? Colour me highly skeptical

This one's easy to try out for yourself and with the right type of string tree you can do it right on the guitar --just raise and lower the tree and see.

I tend to be skeptical about seemingly minor things--but there is indeed a difference there. Since the way the string breaks over the nut and over the bridge saddles is an important part of the construction of a guitar, it just makes common sense. At least for the open strings. But when I'm chording, I'm often letting the open strings ring out too.

And IF this is true, then using string trees makes even more sense, as it would allow you, yes, to tweak the tension of the string at the nut.

And IF this is true, it also makes sense that the more control you have over dosing that tension, the better --in other words, since each string is of a different thickness, then it would indeed make sense to be able to tune the tension of the break angle over the nut. (Okay, six individual trees might be a bit much--better to pair off strings that are close to each other in guage. Personally, I like the idea of a single string bar. )

I say IF, because I'm not willing to spend tens of thousands to find out. I am willing to experiment with own builds though. It's only wood after all. Which leads me to...

I wont tell you the results, but i will have no problem telling you this.

Sorry man, but that just out-Zacharys Zachary. I don't doubt at all your ability to build a beautiful guitar, but your 'secret sauce' thing just buzzes the same bell in my head.

If it's real science, if there's real proof of anything, then it ought to be out there --not hidden away. Otherwise, anyone and his mother can make the same claims. Call it the 'Rael' syndrome. And I wonder why anyone would spend tens of thousands in order to have someone else tell them what sounded right?

Not saying you're wrong to have done so, just that it doesn't mean diddley to the rest of us. Either we like your guitars or we don't.

Like I said, just because Gibson and Fender have been doing it this way forever means little --in Gibson's case, they were tooled up to make a headstock like that, because that's what they'd been doing since the beginning of the century. That's what they were associated with, it worked for them. How were they to know that a bunch of drunk, drug-addicted longhairs were going to come along and start smashing their guitars around and snapping off their headstocks? Accidents happen--if you're moderately careful with the guitar, it's less likely to happen. My own Gibson is still going strong after 40 years, thin little neck and all. Gibson tried to develop some new designs in the 1970s--people rejected them pretty quickly.

Meanwhile, Fender came along, didn't play guitar, had a look at the design and decided it was possible to do things differently --radically differently in fact, and it's really hard to compare a Telecaster to a Les Paul because of that.

To proponents of the angled-back headstock, Fender's design must have seemed like a huge shock--and probably had a lot of people laughing and running to scientists and sound engineers for proof and dropping tens of thousands, etc. But no one can deny that not only did his designs work--but they made for guitars with very distinctive sounds. And headstocks that didn't snap off.

Many other guitar builders have played with headstock design and other features on the guitar since then-- have a look at some of Wandre's headstocks, or the Kramer Y, or the Parker headstock. All of them no doubt have attempted to claim that their idea was 'better'. Hell, just look at the construction of the Danelectros-- laughable stuff, but without them, we might never have had Link Wray and his song "Rumble"...a lot of people consider that song a turning point in rock n' roll history.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

this is my first post here on PG but i have been "lurking" here for a while and reading through the hundreds of pages of threads non-stop. :D

so Hello to all of you, i am sure i will post more in the future. :D

i went to the Zacahary site to read through his innovations page and i have to say that he lost me at "CONSISTENCY AND PRECISION - These characteristics are not applicable, or absolutely necessary in a handcrafted instrument."

for the prices that he charges there had better be precision involved. i wouldnt pay $2k for a MIM Fender strat just because they write up that a neck joint doesnt have to necessarily be tight to get good tone or that a good fret job doesnt result in good playablity.

to me, the hallmark of a true artist is precision and accuracy. anyone can build an inaccurate guitar.

overall, i am left skeptical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wont tell you the results, but i will have no problem telling you this.

Sorry man, but that just out-Zacharys Zachary. I don't doubt at all your ability to build a beautiful guitar, but your 'secret sauce' thing just buzzes the same bell in my head.

I think the difference is Zak makes all his claims and opinions out in the open. Im content to keep them off my website, and just build a guitar using what i know.

If it's real science, if there's real proof of anything, then it ought to be out there --not hidden away. :D Otherwise, anyone and his mother can make the same claims. Call it the 'Rael' syndrome.

Maybe you would respect me more if i patented the evidence i discovered?

Im quiet happy to share my research with the world if someone wants to reimburse me for my time and effort. Afterall, it cost me a years wage to do it, and at least six months of production. Otherwise, you'll have to do the research yourself. I thought it was worthwhile to spend the money, and the proof is in my guitars. But, until you've played one, please feel free to make assumptions from behind a keyboard :D My clients who are ordering multiple guitars, and coming back to give me repeat business, who know what i can do (because of research).

I have no problem doing research to prove to myself what is or isnt right. I guess thats the difference between a pro who turns away the majority of commissions he gets offered, and the majority of the members on this forum... hobby tinkerers. B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have no problem doing research to prove to myself what is or isnt right. I guess thats the difference between a pro who turns away the majority of commissions he gets offered, and the majority of the members on this forum... hobby tinkerers. B)

No doubt, that IS a difference. :D On an interweb forum, I'd say that the majority of the people are hobby tinkerers. This holds true at KvR Audio (recording software and techniques) and Steelguitarforum.com, also, and those are the 2 biggest websites in their respective fields. I strongly suspect that every forum dedicated to a particular pursuit will feature mainly hobby tinkerers.

I just hope that's not seen as a bad thing... after all, it's the raison d'etre for a forum: a meeting place for beginners and experts alike. I certainly appreciate the experts on this board, and I also reserve the right to disagree with them, based on my own ability to reason things through.

In this case, though, I agree completely with Perry regarding the secretiveness. I couldn't previously explain WHY his expertise is more believable, but it's right there in his post-- on his website, he doesn't make any stupid claims or talk himself up. He walks the walk and just builds guitars. Zachary seems to glorify the strangest things (as mentioned above, "Look, mom, no precision!" and that's the main reason it rings untrue.

You're quite welcome to keep your secrets, IMO, Perry. It's no secret that I'll never be able to play one of your guitars, anyhow. :D

Greg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No doubt, that IS a difference. :D On an interweb forum, I'd say that the majority of the people are hobby tinkerers. This holds true at KvR Audio (recording software and techniques) and Steelguitarforum.com, also, and those are the 2 biggest websites in their respective fields. I strongly suspect that every forum dedicated to a particular pursuit will feature mainly hobby tinkerers.

I just hope that's not seen as a bad thing... after all, it's the raison d'etre for a forum: a meeting place for beginners and experts alike.

Personally, doesnt bother me. I enjoy helping others, but i dont spoon feed them. Thats why i hang out here, do the guitar making courses, etc etc. Those that take some comments, and do the research, end up bearing the best fruit. That how i learnt. Spoon feeding someone didnt ever teach them to reach their own conclusions. And, very few people ever got anywhere in life by simply blindly following those in front of them...

You're quite welcome to keep your secrets, IMO, Perry. It's no secret that I'll never be able to play one of your guitars, anyhow. :D

I'll have some close to you very soon B)

PS. out of forum interest (to avoid yet another flame war) i deleted my original post.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe you would respect me more if i patented the evidence i discovered? B)

Not a question of respect, it's a question of the pot calling the kettle black.

But I'm not here to defend Zachary either, just think some of things he puts out there are interesting, that's all. Opens up debate, and that's a good thing.

Otherwise, you'll have to do the research yourself.

I think it's no secret by now that I get a kick out of questioning everything about guitars, wondering about the different parts and how they fit together, wondering what can be changed, what has to remain, etc., and then trying things out on my own builds It's part of the fun of building for me, and it's my own way of doing 'research'.

The big difference being that I'm only trying to make guitars for myself. I don't need to win clients --and I definitely agree, you owe the client value for money, and I'm pretty confident you give them just that.

Whether your guitars are really better than Zachary's or anyone else's, well, see, that's another issue altogether. It's impossible to say. Most of it comes down to personal preference and opinion. You didn't spend that money to build better guitars than Company X, since at a certain level, that's impossible --you spent it to build the best guitars you can build.

and the majority of the members on this forum... hobby tinkerers. :D

Not that there's anything wrong with that, right? :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was bored and was flicking around this guys site again, and I watched a couple of his videos too

first read this;

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/BestGuitars2.htm

Specifically:

Zachary guitars all come with unique bridges that are the result of design excellence. I can honestly say that I have never broken a string on any Zachary guitar. Not even when I go ape on the tremolo arm. This again is quite an achievement.

Then watch that and skip to the very end :D

http://www.zacharyguitars.com/141005_03.wmv

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...