Cool Shop Talk...

[MOJO]

thought some of you guys might appreciate this roundtable discussion of duplicarvers and CNC machines

builders represented:

John Suhr , Ron Thorn , Bill Chapin (shades)

Joe Driskill( diablo ) , Saul Koll , Scott Heatley

rep for lentz an denyle guitars , Juha Ruokangas , Bill Gadow

enjoy...

http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthrea...&threadid=71800

[mledbetter]

That's pretty cool..

[Guitarfrenzy]

Thanks for the link.. very interesting stuff...

[mledbetter]

oh to sit in your office monkeying around in Rhino3d while your shop elves and robots spit out bodies and necks, and your Plek system scans, sands and levels your frets for you (j. suhr) lol

It's the price you pay for selling through retailers I guess.. His comment on one of the machines was "yeah it's ok but kinda slow.. you can only do a few guitars a day on it"

[MOJO]

oh to sit in your office monkeying around in Rhino3d while your shop elves and robots spit out bodies and necks, and your Plek system scans, sands and levels your frets for you (j. suhr)  lol

It's the price you pay for selling through retailers I guess.. His comment on one of the machines was "yeah it's ok but kinda slow.. you can only do a few guitars a day on it" 

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haahahaha sounds way too easy doesn't it ..but theirs quite of bit of hand work still to be done once it's off the CNC.the bodies are far from complete

besides when someone can logically explain exactly how hand carved is better then CNC carved..then i'm all for it (CNC that is)

[jer7440]

Thanks for that link. Ive been working on cncing a guitar for a while and it's cool to see how the pros are doing it!

[MOJO]

Thanks for that link.  Ive been working on cncing a guitar for a while and it's cool to see how the pros are doing it!

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i'll bet you if you had the demand for your guitars that they do.you'd be a CNC covert also besides i'm sure most of them have a long history of "hand carving" before they said to themselves " what am i knocking myself out for" ..there an easier and better way to do this..

other then self -gratification for the luthier there's no difference between the hand carving and CNCing...absolutly none at all..

don't get me wrong I fully appreciate the skill it takes to do it the old way

i quess what i'm trying to get across is that the term "handmade" or "Hand carved" is the most abused term in the guitar making business these days .if your using any kind of power tool ...bandsaw, planer, jointer or whatever..your using a power machine to do the work exactly like what a CNC does..unless your using nothing but a hand saw, hand planes , hand sanding (no electric ones allowed ) a chisel and hammer for all routing and spokeshaves for all carving on ..then you can claim it's truly hand made

Edited May 31, 2005 by MOJO

[jer7440]

Thanks for that link.  Ive been working on cncing a guitar for a while and it's cool to see how the pros are doing it!

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i'll bet you if you had the demand for your guitars that they do.you'd be a CNC covert also besides i'm sure most of them have a long history of "hand carving" before they said to themselves " what am i knocking myself out for" ..there an easier and better way to do this..

other then self -gratification for the luthier there's no difference between the hand carving and CNCing...absolutly none at all..

don't get me wrong I fully appreciate the skill it takes to do it the old way

i quess what i'm trying to get across is that the term "handmade" or "Hand carved" is the most abused term in the guitar making business these days .if your using any kind of power tool ...bandsaw, planer, jointer or whatever..your using a power machine to do the work exactly like what a CNC does..unless your using nothing but a hand saw, hand planes , hand sanding (no electric ones allowed ) a chisel and hammer for all routing and spokeshaves for all carving on ..then you can claim it's truly hand made

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Amen, preach it brother

[erikbojerik]

I beg to differ...even when you're using a power tool, you're still using your hand(s) to guide either the piece or the tool. Not so with a CNC.

[mledbetter]

I wasn't bashing CNCs at all.. It's more the surrealness of having the money to have a setup like suhrs.. The Plek got me more than the CNC even.

If you go the route of resellers, you really have no choice because your margin is cut in half. You would have to personally build 15-20 guitars a month, or go the CNC route and shoot for more. There's really no way around it.

Now one thing I do have a hard time justifying is that suhr's flat top models are about 2500 and when you jump to a carved top the base is 5600 or something crazy like that. Honestly, i know a carved top requires more hand sanding, somewhat deifferent approach to finishing but 3100 dollars worth? There's certainly some perception marketing going on there.

But mostly i wanted to clarify that i'm not baching CNCs.. People like Suhr are trying to be more along the lines of PRS. They aren't in it to be one-man-show artisans..

Heck.. James Olsen is still primarily a one man show but he's got a kickin Fadal setup. Interesting.. handmade, his guitars were 5-6k a few years ago.. Now that he has a CNC his guitars are 12,500 each!! demand is higher than ever. For an acoustic i'm sure the precision of CNC along with his engineering genius makes for one hell of a guitar.

[jer7440]

Now that he has a CNC his guitars are 12,500 each!!

Gotta pay for that machine some how! If I didn't have access to a cnc at work there is no way I would think about building a guitar that way. But I finally found a fun outlet for the skills I have learned in my job.

[MOJO]

all points are valid, i don't want anyone think i'm knocking the old school way of building guitars..it really is a highly skilled Art form that i hope never fades out completely... if a luthier really good he produce a guitar thats every bit as good and accurate as CNC machine..i have no doubt of that..there are plenty of you guys here that clearly demonstrate that... Rhoads comes to mind..great stuff no doubt

i just can't fault a builder for going the CNC route if he wants to compete in today's

competetive guitar market..thats all....really you have to..not much choice

As far as prices. i agree with you guys.prices have gone berserk when you consider how much wood actually cost compared to what some charge you for it in the end. i'm all for a luthier making a bit of a profit off the wood prices but i think some have gotten totally ridicules

korina's a good example..go to any wood supplier and compare the price of korina to say Hond Mahogany..it's a little more expensive then H mahogany yes.. usually around $20 buck per body or neck blank

but when you talk to certain Builders they want to charge you $600 more for the korina body upgrade..it's a ripoff and greed at work..plain and simple, but people are suckers and they pay it not knowing any better..so what are you going do...

[Myka Guitars]

This is an interesting topic and one that gets talked about a lot. A CNC router is just another woodworking tool that is used where consistent reproduction is needed. Most guitars out there are factory or what I call factory custom guitars. You kow what factory is. Factory custom is like the PRS model where you can order a guitar and choose within a certain set parameters the design elements you want. There is the custom shops that will give you a Les Paul with a flat fingerboard if you want it that way (or maybe they wouldn't even do that).

I think it is a matter of what you want to do. If you see Gibson, Fender, and PRS as your main competition then you must get a CNC and start cranking out the guitars if you ever hope to catch up (design first of course). These companies will design to the middle ground and hope for the best. The result is a bell curve and only a few guitars will ever really be great. These are the vintage (or modern) guitars that people do not sell. A CNC can achieve strict dimensional tolerances that is absoutely wonderful. But this is not necessarily the most effective way to build a guitar. Depending on the specific pieces of wood involved each guitar will respond and play differently because the design does not compensate for this. This is the most important delineation that I wish to describe between hand made and factory custom and it can be illustrated by the fact that there are not any tonal parameters offered beyond wood choice. How the wood is machined is never open to customization because it would require individual tweaks to the design for every guitar.

I personally do not see the larger companies (or the smaller companies that emulate them) as my competition. I am in a completely different market altogether. My client base is very small and want something more from their instruments than what they are generally offered. Usually they have played a number of different guitars or many of the same guitars and note what they like and did not like and start looking for 'the one'. You can find it in the racks of manufactured guitars although depnding on what you are looking for you may be looking for a long time. It's the nature of manufacture that everything is based on dimension and not tone.

I agree that 'hand made' is a term that is totally abused. Hand made usually means pieced together by hand from machined parts. These can be very excellent instruments but they can also be mediocre eye candy. To me hand made means that I do some of the work by hand so that I can individualize the voice of the instruments. It is this custom voicing that differentiates what I am striving to achieve from instruments manufactured dimensionally (and cosmetically).

While popular opinion dictates that an electric guitar is all pickups and electronics (who started this idea do you suppose?) then the ideas I use in my designs are seen as useless. My opinion is that the guitar must be as responsive and toneful as it can be as dictated by the tonal requirements of the design. The pickups will not pickup anything that is not already there. They may color the tone but they do not add anything at all. Wood choice is very important but even more important is how it is machined.

To illustrate my meaning let's get back to the question of the hand carved tops. My approach to building electric guitars is much like how I build an acoustic guitar. I tap test the woods and proceed with the knowlendge of what that piece of wood adds (or subracts) to the mix of materials I am using for the particular guitar. Hand carving a top allows you to make subtle changes in the way the piece of wood (or body if it's a solid body) resonates and responds. If you need more treble in an archtop you might thin out the top on each side of the bridge. If you want more of a bass response you may thin it out behind the bridge. Both of these adjustments depend on the way the braces are oriented (if they have braces) and how dense or stiff the wood is. A maple top on a solid body dampens the tone so the same principles apply but in reverse. You may leave the bass area thicker to dampen the bass response or vice versa. When chambering the body may need 1/8" more material removed in the chambers to get to the sweet spot. This can be a combination of top and body chambers.

Let me be very clear that I am not against CNC use at all. I use a duplicarver and would gladly acquire a CNC if I thought I could justify the expense. With my duplicarver I carve my tops oversize so I can fine tune them by hand. There is no other way to achieve what I do. If I had access to a CNC I would use it in the same way and rough carve tops. I would also use it in place of my pickup and control cavity jigs for sure. But I would never hand over the most important aspect of building to a machine that doesn't know the difference between a resonant, sweet tap tone and plate distortion. They both have their place depending on what tone you are building to and it takes an appreciation for music to hear this. And it also takes ears.

Here is an excellent article by Irvin Somogyi: Some Thoughts on the Differences Between Handmade and Factory Made Guitars.

~David

[MOJO]

This is an interesting topic and one that gets talked about a lot. A CNC router is just another woodworking tool that is used where consistent reproduction is needed. Most guitars out there are factory or what I call factory custom guitars. You kow what factory is. Factory custom is like the PRS model where you can order a guitar and choose within a certain set parameters the design elements you want. There is the custom shops that will give you a Les Paul with a flat fingerboard if you want it that way (or maybe they wouldn't even do that).

I think it is a matter of what you want to do. If you see Gibson, Fender, and PRS as your main competition then you must get a CNC and start cranking out the guitars if you ever hope to catch up (design first of course). These companies will design to the middle ground and hope for the best. The result is a bell curve and only a few guitars will ever really be great. These are the vintage (or modern) guitars that people do not sell. A CNC can achieve strict dimensional tolerances that is absoutely wonderful. But this is not necessarily the most effective way to build a guitar. Depending on the specific pieces of wood involved each guitar will respond and play differently because the design does not compensate for this. This is the most important delineation that I wish to describe between hand made and factory custom and it can be illustrated by the fact that there are not any tonal parameters offered beyond wood choice. How the wood is machined is never open to customization because it would require individual tweaks to the design for every guitar. 

I personally do not see the larger companies (or the smaller companies that emulate them) as my competition. I am in a completely different market altogether. My client base is very small and want something more from their instruments than what they are generally offered. Usually they have played a number of different guitars or many of the same guitars and note what they like and did not like and start looking for 'the one'. You can find it in the racks of manufactured guitars although depnding on what you are looking for you may be looking for a long time. It's the nature of manufacture that everything is based on dimension and not tone.

I agree that 'hand made' is a term that is totally abused. Hand made usually means pieced together by hand from machined parts. These can be very excellent instruments but they can also be mediocre eye candy. To me hand made means that I do some of the work by hand so that I can individualize the voice of the instruments. It is this custom voicing that differentiates what I am striving to achieve from instruments manufactured dimensionally (and cosmetically).

While popular opinion dictates that an electric guitar is all pickups and electronics (who started this idea do you suppose?) then the ideas I use in my designs are seen as useless. My opinion is that the guitar must be as responsive and toneful as it can be as dictated by the tonal requirements of the design. The pickups will not pickup anything that is not already there. They may color the tone but they do not add anything at all. Wood choice is very important but even more important is how it is machined.

To illustrate my meaning let's get back to the question of the hand carved tops. My approach to building electric guitars is much like how I build an acoustic guitar. I tap test the woods and proceed with the knowlendge of what that piece of wood adds (or subracts) to the mix of materials I am using for the particular guitar. Hand carving a top allows you to make subtle changes in the way the piece of wood (or body if it's a solid body) resonates and responds. If you need more treble in an archtop you might thin out the top on each side of the bridge. If you want more of a bass response you may thin it out behind the bridge. Both of these adjustments depend on the way the braces are oriented (if they have braces) and how dense or stiff the wood is. A maple top on a solid body dampens the tone so the same principles apply but in reverse. You may leave the bass area thicker to dampen the bass response or vice versa. When chambering the body may need 1/8" more material removed in the chambers to get to the sweet spot. This can be a combination of top and body chambers.

Let me be very clear that I am not against CNC use at all. I use a duplicarver and would gladly acquire a CNC if I thought I could justify the expense. With my duplicarver I carve my tops oversize so I can fine tune them by hand. There is no other way to achieve what I do. If I had access to a CNC I would use it in the same way and rough carve tops. I would also use it in place of my pickup and control cavity jigs for sure. But I would never hand over the most important aspect of building to a machine that doesn't know the difference between a resonant, sweet tap tone and plate distortion. They both have their place depending on what tone you are building to and it takes an appreciation for music to hear this. And it also takes ears.

Here is an excellent article by Irvin Somogyi: Some Thoughts on the Differences Between Handmade and Factory Made Guitars.

~David

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great post Dave.enjoyed the article too

i visit quite a few guitar forum and you'd be amazed how many people when they hear the word CNC instantly picture ..you put a piece of wood into it punch a button and out theother end pops a completed guitar the hahahaha..

i don't think they even realize how much handwork still needs to be done to get a guitar completed from that point....

PRS is a good example. i've been on the their factory tour and was amazed how much handwork was still involved even after the rough cut bodies and neck come off the CNC.. lots of handwork still done the old fashion way.. not a ton of Robot's doing every little thing like a certain "Vegas" dealers would love people to believe

( i have it on decent authority that He uses CNC materials too ..hypocrite)

the one place i feel PRS has slipped is where you mentioned.. wood and tone selection ( maybe not on the Private stock models but definatley on the production models ) they really don't take the time they use to, to go thru their woods for toneful pieces...

but i do believe that there are quite a few smaller builders that balance both the old school hand work and wood selection with modern CNC machinery Joe Driskill and Ron Thorn come to mind..these guys are not producing hundreds of instrument a years, hell i think 20 is probably a closer number per year, maybe even less but i know they both put a ton of handwork time into each of their instrument sanding and fine tuning everything to incredible tolerances..when i got my first Thorn i went over it like a hawk and i'll be damned if i could find a single hint or trace that any kind of adhesive or glue or epoxy was used on any part of it.the woods just seemed like they were naturally bonded together and seem lines when visible at all, looked more like decreative touches then the place where 2 woods were glued together..thats how tight they are and how much attention to detail is there and thats only with Ron, his dad and one assistant, not to mention the whole other inlay business he has to run at the same time..i don't know when he finds time to sleep

Joe i don't think sleeps at all, dial his number a three o'clock in the morning and 90% of the time he'll pick it up..still there working..by himself as far as i know ( i don't believe he has anyone that works for him ) if he not working on the guitars he's designing and milling his own bridges or researching some other wacked out space age material

( don't know how many people know this but Joe did 2 years of research on the NASA poylmer materials used in the stealth bomber, so that he could used the material on one of his guitars for a Player who was suddenly paralyzed in an accident. he needed to find a material covering for tthe wood that could tolerate the strain and stress that an air pressured controlled robotic fingering system (which he also built) would put on it , he then built the guitar pretty much from scratch and delivered it... now that freakin customer service and dedication to guitar building if i ever heard it..

like you suggested Dave... CNC is just another tool builders can use like any other power tool and using one is not neccesarily a sign of lazy, bad or shoddy workmanship ... besides you've got be freaking rocket scientist to learn how to program and maintain one of them anyways... ahahahaha

[MOJO]

[sorry posted twice somehow }

Edited June 2, 2005 by MOJO