Official Luthiers Forum!

This thread is dedicated to the false notions that sadly get passed around and no one stands up and says "this is b*u*l*l*p*o*o*p." It also may be the title of my book.

Please feel free to add anything that you've run into that is spread around the Lutherie forum world that is not true.

Entry number one came up yesterday and was so absurd that it's why the idea for this thread happened.

1). Truss rods negatively impact the sound of a guitar........

Answer: Bullpoop! It can go either way or have no impact at all. We can't know in advance, it's subjective as hell, in the professional Lutherie world this statement is not only false it's laughable.... There is also the need here to be more specific as to what kind of guitar. Classical guitars traditionally do not have truss rods but even the makers of the the most classical guitars today such as Cordoba (Cordoba means bridge reglue in Spanish..) are now using some truss rods because it can save an instrument and keep it in service.

For steel strings truss rods are really a must if you want to have any ability to adjust your set-up, action, relief, change strings to something heavier or lighter. I'll make the case that the truss rod will save you money if you need or ever need fret work too in so much as it does not have to be compression refretted and some shops charge more for this.

2). This is an old and well known one - Dovetail sounds better than bolt-on neck joint....

Answer: Bullpoop but I do personally relate to the dovetail crowd since a well made and fitted dovetail and it's not needing any metal hardware is a beautiful thing. But can most of us or even a lot of us tell the difference in resulting tone, nope not even when we just return from the pot dispensary on a good day. Again though I do like the dovetail and I really like how clever a dovetail is for this application it's dang near perfect. This notion has been hotly debated for years and to this day the jury is still out likely because no one can reliably tell the difference....

3). Stainless OR EVO frets can sound tinny.

Answer: The jury is still out and the glove didn't fit... Lots of disagreement persists to this day especially between stainless and nickel silver. I do not hear a difference on my electrics but I sure as shootin hear a difference on my acoustics. Dave says I'm nuts and he doesn't hear any difference. Being nuts aside I'm not alone in what I hear... We've had A-list famous player ask us to refret a Tele with stainless and then pay us double to take them out a few days later he hated them..... Someone was willing to spend nearly $500 additional they so believed that they heard a tinny tone. And I'll add that if it's going to be perceivable a Tele with that twang is a very likely place for it. He was happy when we took him back to nickel silver and he again claims to hear the difference. He's on over 35 albums as well and famous so he may know.

OK your turn what bullpoop notions have you run into in your Lutherie journeys that some folks still peddle to this day and are false OR too subjective to say one way or the other?

Thanks

On the neck joint thing, a local pro brought his very nice sounding Bourgeoise in for an estimate on a neck reset. He was raving about how he loved it, and it did sound good. I told him the reset would be very affordably priced due to the bolt neck construction. He was shocked it wasn’t a dovetail and by the time he left the workshop he was downcast about the guitar he’d loved five minutes earlier. I later heard he sold it.

The concept that one neck joint “sounds better” than another is untestable in any practical manner.

Similarly, I believe that zero people could pick a nice dovetail dread out of a lineup of nice bolt neck dreads in a blindfold listening test. What element of the sound do people think they are hearing that tells them how the neck is attached?

I get a lot of guys who think vintage six screw strat trems have “better tone” than the modern two post strat trem, and an equal number who think the two posts sound best and the vintage ones are junk the same goes for brass tele saddles, or three saddle tele bridges vs six saddle or staggered pole piece pickups vs flat pole … it goes on and on.

The thing that draws people to being dogmatic about these beliefs, I think, is that people want it to be EASY - they want one thing to be unequivocally better than something else … a simple truth they can grasp and hang onto with no inconvenient grey areas. Like “all 70s Fenders suck”.

But of course in the real world things are not necessarily BETTER or WORSE, they’re just DIFFERENT.

Yes, if I reach in and scallop the braces in a guy’s dreadnought it will change the sound.

Will it sound better?

Dunno about that. But it will sure sound different.

Wow that's kind of sad that he sold it. One of the top five acoustic guitars that I ever had the pleasure of playing was a brand new Bourgeoise with a torrified top on a dr*arnought. It was awesome and Dana makes killer guitars. I would buy one and Elderly has one right now that's been calling my name, oh Hesh, oh Heshy come buy me.... Hate when that happens.... Kind of...

Yeah the difference in tone of neck joints is untestable for sure and likely will remain that way.

And what about the difference in how we hear as individuals?????? I'm a geezer now who may hear less than most of you.

For years Dave would get the latest and greatest dissertations from graduate students at the University of Michigan and they all thought hat they solved all things Lutherie and had it figured out often providing what they believed to be empirical data. It's almost always crap and way off the mark. Fact remains an acoustic guitar and the physics of how it works, everything is so very complex that not even NASA has accurately modeled it and put some of these notions to bed.

Can't answer what they think they hear telling them what kind of neck joint, I'm crazy but not that crazy

Oh yeah in the electric world the snakes are producing oil 24/7. I've chalked it up to how people deflect the fact that they never were the player they had hoped to be. So blame it on something they don't have on the guitar. Poor guitars get scapegoated on.....

As you know Josh my friend like you I work on a lot of guitars on a daily basis and I don't specialize either, also like you. So we can be with a bass for an hour, a mando for an hour, a Martin, a Fender and on and on. I have gray areas of knowledge too because I'm exposed to so very much it's impossible to be a master of it all. But the physics, the wonderful physics is the same and a constant in how I work to understand what I have to work with. If I didn't accept that I don't know it all, far from it, I would not be suitable for this work because you have to have an open mind.

You also have to be capable of being excited at what we encounter and learn.

Anyway you're right often it's not better or worse it's simply different or, maybe a severed head tossed in our laps (Apocalypse Now Col. Kurtz reference) on the forums just to observe how we scurry about as a result...

This is the thread for it though. Lets hear more bullpoop Lutherie notions.

This one won’t be popular and if there was such a thing as a downvote on the OLF I perhaps would win an award for most downvotes ever but….

The idea that a CNC is a machine where you put a pile of wood in one side and a guitar pops out on the other.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

_________________
Insta - https://www.instagram.com/cbcguitars/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/cbcguitars

You know, this thread has a very predictable outcome: At some point, it will reveal that there are lots of situations where one person’s Gospel is malarkey to someone else. There may be more of those situations than the absolute truth vs. bull poop dynamic upon which the thread is based. So, prepare for when that happens. All of us (not excluding Hesh, the originator) have some belief or another that runs counter to the conventional wisdom. Maybe we can all keep that in mind as we are tempted to ridicule those who believe in what we see as malarkey.

But, I will play along, nonetheless.

I think it is malarkey to assign tone deadening, or tone preserving, qualities to the specific substance used to surface finish a guitar. I think any effect on tone imparted by the specific substance is dwarfed by the thickness of the film. Thickness of the film is what really hurts or preserves the tone, not what the specific substance is. The effect of the specific substance used is negligible, if it exists at all, compared to film thickness.

OK, line up some more sacred cows.

Do you know John Watkins Brad? He struggled with this long ago around 15 years ago here on the OLF too. There were the camp that felt that if you are not endlessly toiling by candlelight with only a sharp chisel and a pocket knife you aren't a luthier. Now that some of the biggest names in the business who make the most money all have CNC and maybe PLEKs too no one cares.... In fact thinking of some of the A-list luthiers CNC is very prolific in this trade today.

Good for you you are already where many will want to go.

The Idea that if it "Does Not" have a Truss rod and Uses Carbon Fibre D tube its Junk and is destined to fail..... Bull...

It never ceases to amaze me on the number of people who think the ONLY way to do anything is the "current" way its done. If people took that thought 100 yrs ago , where would we be today ?


EXPERIMENT PEOPLE !!!

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
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 !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

People Hear with their eyes, If it Looks good it MUST sound good !

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
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 !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

I dunno who you think is calling anything junk because it does not have a truss rod and uses a D-tube of CF. The concern is with a stationary, non-adjustable neck that it can't and won't accommodate some string gauge changes and can't be dialed in for the most important part of the instrument, the set-up, the human interface and that is problematic.

This may go back to how we view guitars. If someone views a guitar as a woodworking project it's a different perspective than how I view a guitar as a tool for a musician. In my belief system the guitar has to be capable of playing how the player needs it to play and that means very adjustable now and well into the future. The constant tension of steel strings does weaken necks over time too and truss rods can be tweaked and everyone is whole again just like that.

Don't have a truss rod in it and it may be a major repair perhaps not economically feasible which can end the useful life of the instrument.

People shouldn't have to pay for a refret or fret dress to change strings and string gauges when a simple 1/8th turn of a double action rod can get the music playing again.

This is not a case Wud of another way, no truss rod being just a difference of opinion. Not using a truss rod on a steel string guitar that is intended to be capable of playing anything and everything most guitars can play is short sided, lacks serviceability, problematic in the future and has resulted in broken hearts of real life clients when they learn that their builder did not incorporate a truss rod and could have.

Further it's also just not another way to not use a truss rod when I can't name anyone in the entire industry building steel strings who does not incorporate a truss rod and often now a double action rod. I am not speaking of a small builder who thinks they can do fine without one and I am not speaking of classical, nylon string instruments that have less tension and a tradition of no rod AND much higher action.

So I don't see the problem here Wud no one said your neck will fail but I am clearly and repeatedly saying that a neck that can't be adjusted is a very bad idea when you cannot know how the instrument will be played in the future, how it will be treated in the future, who's going to be playing it and what strings and even tunings they use.

And I'm not alone you will be very hard pressed to find a professional Luthier OR factory who does not use a truss rod, a quality truss rod on steel string guitars. There are exceptions of course and they may find that some of us, professional Luthiers will not work on their instrument if it does not have a truss rod. So with that said there may even be issues finding servicing if convention is thrown to the wind regrind truss rods.

PS: I used CF in my builds but not in the neck, that never made sense to me because we WANT our necks to be capable of moving and not completely immobile....

PSS: Rickenbacker used two truss rods..... and they still suck....

PSSS: Might be fun to do a poll and ask the builders here who have sold a dozen instruments or more and make steel strings if they used truss rods.

Electric solid-body “tone wood” debate.
It’s best to have no opinion.

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

I would agree that film thickness can be far more problematic than what kind of finish it is so maybe we both will get shot down, Don

PS: My best sounding guitar ever has very little finish on it and it's FPed shellac. It weighs 2.9 pounds.

The misconception that lutherie is this soft light reverb scene with the aforementioned pony tailed bearded luthier quietly working in meditative nirvana.

What a shock to realize it is actually mostly bedlam, screaming power tools and dust collectors in a toxic environment laden with micro particulate debris and volatile fumes practiced by nerdy guys that built model planes and played with chemistry sets as kids.

(Well I suppose there are a few pony tailed bearded outliers )

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

. Oh I know Dan and right you are it's ridiculous and they go way too far. This is true here too where dressed up pallet wood someone will call "tone wood...."

Sheesh it's wood and in many cases people would be hard pressed to tell Martin's counter top material from some woods too....

15 year ago one of the many who have been members and are no longer active here built a guitar completely out of MDF and it played and sounded pretty OK. It was a great exercise in wood being wood to a major degree.

Of course it's that last 15% of tone that costs us all and has us climbing mountains and crossing valleys to find.... When I was younger it was something else... but we won't go there.

I did RC helicopters too and it would cost me about $1K a crash....

You may have the best post in this thread Terry and I was hoping you would chime in. Knowing what you did before you retired I knew in advance that serviceability is high on your list, always.

Going to get my hernias fixed this winter if they let elective surgery happen again, wish me luck I have 5 - 6 of them.... Going to be a full sheet across the front.

Does six hernias mean you have three reproductive organs Hesh. Wow!!

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

No comment

Here's another one that will rub some folks the wrong way - nut compensation.

Many of you use it, there is Earvana and Buzz Feiten etc and countless products are sold too around the idea that you need a compensated nut. Compensating lousy players will pay millions chasing something billed to help them sound better. I do

I'm speaking of steel strings here now because there are reasons to compensate a nut on a classical. But on steel strings we can see the need for compensation on our strobe Peterson tuners and then as we work the individual nut slot down and adjust action, relief, etc that need for compensation goes nearly.... completely away. to be more specific a well set-up steel string guitar should not need nut compensation and out of our 10,000+ guitars serviced in the last 9+ years we did not have a single instance when well cut nut slots did not eliminate the problem for the player.

Or, in other words we have never met a client who asked for nut compensation that was not thrilled when we told them we have a better idea, cut their nut slots correctly since they are not cut in factories well these days if at all....

Again this is for steel strings I do see where nut compensation can be beneficial with classical guitars.

Brazilian Rosewood fretboards sound better than Ebony fretboards…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wood doesn't matter, only the pickups are responsible for tone... (all the solidbody idiots on the other forums).

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

Good example. On a related note Dave thinks that ebony should not be used as a fret board material because when it ages it gets brittle and chips during refrets. He greatly prefers rosewood for fret boards for the serviceability aspects.

You know too the BRW personal guitar was with wood from you, thanks again man!!! It's a great Guitar!!!

Yeah I know it's weird as hell too. I have two Les Pauls hanging in my studio. they are similar vintages only one is 7.4 lbs and the other is 9.2lbs. They both have Throbak SL 101 Plus pups and Faber hardware.

They both also sound vastly different and the only variable is not the type of wood but the individual pieces of wood.

You're right wood makes a huge difference and it's not homogeneous even from the same tree.

How about the myth of qtr sawn verse flat sawn for electric necks? The bulk of all fender necks are flat sawn.

_________________
https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/

Or figured wood sounds better than plain wood.

_________________
https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/

Wood like "The Tree" is specifically the best. lol it may have some of the best figure but what I see is typically a lot of the high profile luthiers use it. They cam make anything sound great. its all about experience.

_________________
https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/

And if you thing luthiers are bad, just check out some of the Tube Amp forums. OMG way worse arm chair techs then luthiers. Bunch of cork sniffers.

_________________
https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/