Official Luthiers Forum!

Actually, I think the number of acoustic guitar players that insist on dovetailed necks is a relatively small percentage, at least here in my neck of the woods.

For my last 5 instruments I've moved to three glues, fish, hide and CA. I use CA for rosette and bindings, hide for back / top braces and bridges, and fish for everything else including making laminated solid linings.

However, I was thinking about maybe using CA for the side struts that I build into the solid linings. The strut doesn't strike me as something needing to be repaired ever. Am I overlooking something obvious? If a side crack did form and happened to make it across the strut, does that create a repair problem?

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Gregor thanks my friend that made my day and was unexpected. Much appreciated!

Didn't you write and publish a book in the past JF? I remember you posting about it some years ago.

Thanks too even if you are a pain in the ass much of the time....

Yes electric guitars can need the equivalent of neck resets at times. Fenders often need necks shimmed changing the neck angle, that's a neck reset equivalent. Some g*bsons have come our way that the neck angle deteriorated and we see arch top electrics that need resets too.

It's not like acoustics where neck resets really should be considered general and expected maintenance but it does happen.

Yep exactly right.

The worst cases of electrics that we see that need neck angle adjustments are "parts guitars" where the parts don't fit as billed and the hobbyist didn't know how to properly remedy the poor neck angle.

Our experience agrees with this and I would add that the VAST majority of acoustic guitar players are clueless what kind of neck joint they have nor do they care.

Our concern over this may be because we remember when Bob Taylor had to fight the design purity wars over his ingenious bolt on system. That's all seemingly in the past now and no one asks about it anymore.

Dunno ask me when we have to repair a side crack with a CA glued in side strut. We see very few side struts in general with most of our world using tapes. I used side struts on the first 4 - 5 and may have CAed them too. They are still there.

Hey Hesh,
Maybe Lance could collect all your 10,000+ posts and archive them in one place. He could call it ..... wait for it ...... "The Hesh Tomes"

I have to get back to work but I wanted to suggest that getting into semantics of what the term "serviceability" means is not what I want to waste my time doing.

Instead I'm a veteran repair man who services with my business partner around 1,100 instruments annually mostly guitars in an upscale market where we see Somogyis, Lowdens, D'Aquistos and original late 50's Les Pauls as well as $200 imports.

We frequently see small builder guitars from folks who have built a dozen or so and they are often the worst instruments we see and do reject working on them at a much higher rate than anything else.

"Serviceability" in this industry means reversible glues, engineering and building methods that permit the thing to be repaired without someone having to pay an arm and a leg and the repair person (man or woman) jumping through their own .... well you know.

If anyone is doing what I never intended and taking it personal that's your issue and won't be mine.

I'm being generous as well as firm that I'm here to give a different view of what it looks like some years after the sale and when the builder is usually out of the picture. It's a view that I would have killed to have when I started because from the get go my value proposition was never to make something that looked and acted like just another guitar. I wanted to build superior instruments that would capture top dollar and give 100 years of service with care and normal maintenance. Dig me up in 85 more years and let me know how I did and pardon me in advance for the smell.

I love to write new music but by then I will likely be decomposing... but I digress.

If anyone... would like a personal critique of what veteran repair folks think of their wares and is willing to be professional about it and not take it personally I am happy to critique anyone's creations in person and privately so as to minimize anyone's need to get defensive.

But you know every market, every area has some veteran repair guys like Chris, Frank, Dan, Bryan and many more who might be willing for a beer or two or bottle of single malt (I never was a cheap date...) to take a peek and let you know what we see.

I can tell you that often the fret work on Lutheir built instruments sucks big time, necks angles can be over and under set, nuts are terrible, chunky, ugly, slots WAY too high and intonation and saddle locations are often off considerably too.

We just redid a small builder guitar that a friend of mine, a life long Marine who recently retired bought. He spent $5K and we had to refret it at once, plug the saddle slot and move it to the proper location, replace the nuts, saddle and glue a loose brace on a new guitar... Had this Marine not been my friend it would have cost him another grand. Sheesh...

Lastly there is a tendency on this forum to view guitars as woodworking projects and stress over the rosette when one's fretwork is terrible.... Guitars are tools for musicians plain and simple and that's also why serviceability matters.

Just bought a new car and I won't have to do a thing to it for some years. That's what a decent guitar should be too. If someone spends their hard earned coin and trusts your arse when they can have a quality, honorable.... best-in-class warranty from say Martin but goes with you anyway don't you think that you owe it to them (and yourself) to do the highest quality work at all times as possible? I do.

I'll repeat too I did some things initially that were not serviceable and once I learned that what I was doing would create a burden down the road for my very valued clients (and the other ones too... ) I changed how I built guitars and made things more serviceable.

I would love to have a veteran repair person look at my work and give an honest (hopefully polite) critique. That sounds like a great idea. I'd love feedback on fretwork and set-up as well as things I don't even know I need to do better. Maybe someday I'll be up the Ann Arbor way.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Playability and intonation is the dividing line between Furniture and Musical Instrument... A Solid Brazilian Rosewood coffee table sounds no better than a particle board and masonite model in a house brand BORG box.... Well ok - maybe in states that legalized weed they do....

One of my real complaints all along with forums like this is that we focus intently on things that are easy to show in pictures... Spectacular wood, Beautiful finishes, carefully executed invisible joints, BEAUTIFUL FINISHES, Spotless inlay, "The Right Glue", etc....

All that stuff is great and wonderful... But it DOESN'T set you apart from furniture... I have seen a bunch of strikingly beautiful instruments which play WORSE than a $10.00 Toys R Us plastic Mickey Mouse Uke.... They all have perfect inlay... The finest wood... Seamless builds... Smooth and flawless finishes.... And they cut your hands open on the fret ends... A couple frets and the bridge are off by 1/8"... The string spacing is totally funky.. The neck is weird.... The fretboard has a few humps and bumps... And the top and bracing is so massively heavy it could be used to support floor joists or to hold up the rear end of a car... But wow is it beautiful FURNITURE..

We NEVER go deep into specific procedures and numbers for doing the setup activities to get dead-on fretwork, neck alignment and sets, bridge setup, or general guitar playability.... I am talking the stuff Bryan Kimsey shows on his website.... Feeler gages under strings, tapping the string to hear the *plink* etc....

5-million to one - I would have a new builder get the neck set dead on... Get the fretwork dead on... Get the bridge, nut, and intonation dead on.... Make sure the frets are levelled, crowned, and the ends are properly dressed. Err on the side of light instead of heavy build... And don't worry so much about perfection in finish, what glue to use, gaps here and there, funky glue blobbed inlay... Whatever....

Once all that is worked out - THEN worry about serviceability and the rest...

Actually, I think I've seen all of the details needed to do a good setup listed and explained right here in OLF posts - mostly by Hesh. Problem is many may not recognize the value of what they're reading compared to some of the other advice available on the internet. It can be hard to separate the gold from the BS.

Another happy alumnus of the Dave C./Hesh B. Setup academy in Ann Arbor. Setups are most of what I do.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Having to repair new guitars from factories is not unusual these days either. Gibsons are notorious for poor fret work. Also, a couple of years ago I had to reinstall the frets on a brand new, $4k Hofner archtop that had the worst fret job that I have ever seen.

No luthiers should ever have frets off by a country mile, ever.

You can download programs online that tells you fret positions for any scale you want, and they can be easily done by hand, using a long stainless steel ruler. Convert the measurements into mm and use the mm side of the ruler to lay out your measurements. Mm is quite a small measurement and it should not be hard for the average person with good eyes to lay down a line with an accuracy of .3mm. That is good enough for fretwork (I think the standard is 1/32"). Alternatively fret rulers can be bought that have the measurements accurately laser cut into it. I did all of mine by hand using a fret saw and a standard miter box, and never had someone complain that intonation is off.

But now I have a full size Bridgeport style mill with digital readouts, so I can lay down lines as accurate as .005mm. That should be more than good enough for fretwork.

A factory should have ZERO excuse for this. Hand builders I can sorta understand because mistakes happen, but factories use gang saws for cutting fret slot, they should be dead on accurate.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

It's over 30,000 posts I've had multiple IDs. The first ID I ever had here stopped counting at 10,000 so I created a new ID.

You know I get comments on how prolific my posting is all of the time and not just here there are other sites that I've more active on then here.

Before I retired I used to have to sometimes fly all day often internationally and then when I got into my hotel say at midnight I might have 70 emails to answer. I also liked and still like single malt after a long day.

So I learned to write very quickly and crap out emails at light speed. Kind of like I post and about as thoughtful at times too.... . Just kidding on the thoughtful part.

Just think Clay of all the joy my plethora of posts brings you???

Exactly and that's what happened to me largely because of the OLF. It took my building to a whole new level that I had not even imagined existed.

I was aware of David Collins in my town, Ann Arbor (it was his town too so we now share it... ) but had not met him. We agreed to meet at his new then shop and I took a newly completed guitar with me. After the pleasantries I opened the case on his counter and without saying a word he took it out of the case, looked at it for a minute, put it on his bench and began cutting the nut slots.

From his posts I had a lot of faith that he knew what he was doing so I just kept doing what I usually do and that is talking at him and without missing a beat he cut my nut slots way down where they are supposed to be and handed it back to me. I sat on one of his recycled church pews and played it and what a difference. It was an extraordinary difference and had John Hall said what he said a few years later, "you don't know what you don't know until you know it" it would have applied perfectly.

Now that was just the nut slots. My fret work sucked, I did not understand relief and had way too much of it in my neck (on the guitar...) and I didn't know about industry norms/specs for action either.

I wanted Dave to teach me more and begged him to put together a class on set-up and fretting. This is how the classes that we offered for a while were started out of my need and request. It took a year but he put together a one week class for me and I paid $750 for it.

That class lasted three months (I only paid for the week...) and we still did not complete all of the material that we had intended to complete. After I left a month later he called and asked if I wanted to apprentice with him and I did so I did that for three years. When a local music store lost their Luthier and Dave was contracted to do ghost repairs he called me again and asked me to contract with him to also do ghost repairs too. We were now doing five or so instruments a day. After the music store closed we leased the shop on the third floor and never left and built the repair business into what it is today with A-list clients and more business than we now want.

As you can tell I am rather proud of what we've built and all the good will that we have. We have over 250 five star reviews and the only non-five star reviews we ever received were from people who are not even in our area and lashed out at one of us over a political post made on facebook. These were never clients, just fake review writers. Many of your fine folks helped us out back then and we remain eternally grateful too.

All of this is what resulted from letting a working in the trade Luthier evaluate your stuff. By the way I see no reason why it would not be completely respectful as it should be and engineered to inform and help everyone concerned. You may not agree with what someone else thinks either and you may even be right. Anyway it was the best thing I ever did and when I did start selling my guitars I knew that they were vetted against industry norms by someone with at that point nearly two decades of experience.

The following year I built 26 guitars that year and sold them all off the rack in my shop and refused to do commissions as I always have. It was a good time until I got tired of it and then found out that's what happened to Dave with building too.

These days repair is what I love doing and I work later today. I may only spend an hour on a single guitar and then move on to another one, next and that suits me fine with my attention span. We both do larger jobs too doing what you can and then hanging it for glue to dry or what ever and another session in a day or two.

This all started for me because of the OLF by the way. Back then we were much more social with each other and we made what are now some life long, quality friendships. I'm known as "Uncle Hesh" to Dave's daughter and his dog. .

Anyway get a critique and you may find that the simplest thing will raise your value proposition a great deal making it all worth it. Just understanding nut slots did that for me and then there were the 2,000 other things that Dave taught me that help too.

Excellent post John, completely agree. Guitars are tools for musicians.

Thanks Steve.

This is true and we call it "completing the proper manufacture of the guitar" since that's what we are doing.

I don't know why the set-ups and associated stuff, nuts, frets, saddles etc. are neglected by builders and f*ctories at times when it's the user interface to the instrument, what can be more important than that.

Also true.

Dave has a multi year study going of historic fret spacing and much of the vintage stuff is way off. The reason why was often jigs and templates that wore over time and were not maintained and replaced as often as they should have been. There are other factors, the rule of 18, etc.

Just had a PRS SE last week which usually have superb quality and are imports as well but this one had the bridge studs nearly 1/4" out of the proper location.... Stuff happens as they say.

I think as far as setup goes I don’t think factories do setup at all.

You have to realize those guitars are shipped all over the world and the best setup in the world will be a buzz machine when it spends a month at sea and make its way to say Malaysia where humidity is constant 100%.

So I think factories do a “good enough” setup and they expect the guitar setup properly by a luthier near the end user.

_________________
Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I think good fret work might be the hardest part for builders. I'm an amateur with maybe 50 instruments under my belt, mainly ukuleles which are very forgiving in that department, and it wasn't until I built my first 6 string guitar and a few tenors that I realised how poor my fret work was.

Because each fret job is separated from the previous by months, effectively I'm re-learning at last part of how to do it from scratch each time. Although in theory it's purely mechanical engineering, a process to follow which should work every time, in practice it requires "feel" for what will be right for the instrument. That feel evaporates quickly.

So a good repairer who might have done my 50 fret dressings and crownings in a single year, or even done more, is always likely to do a better job than me. But I'm working on getting beyond my current level of (around) Adequate.

Poor fret placement and saddle placement seems unforgivable to me - I worked on that from day 1 and musicians who own my builds are very happy with that.

But I always had the philosophy that these are tools to make music, and so focused on playability. Finishing is my weak point, because beyond the basics that's just making a playable instrument pretty. And if you're on stage, the audience can't spot the difference between my agricultural finishes and some blemish-free finish work.

Hesh wrote:
"Just think Clay of all the joy my plethora of posts brings you??? "

Hesh, for the most part I have enjoyed and benefited from your postings on this forum, and liked seeing the latest "Heshtone" as they were created. Occasionally with your postings I think you "went off the rails", but with 30,000 posts that is bound to happen. Forums have a way of cycling through people, but it's nice to see people stick around for the duration and provide some continuity.
All the best,
Clay Schaeffer

What I saw on many of these bad hand builds is that the fretboards were being hand slotted by the builders.

1/16" is microscopic to the average person who doesn't do tool and die work.... But it's massive on a fretboard or bridge.... And seriously - how good are you really when using a ruler and a pencil to layout the frets? No! Stop! Buy a slotted fretboard from a company who cuts them on CNC or with a gang saw....

Every project guitar I have found locally for sale would have required a new fretboard and bridge not to mention a neck set. That means the price goes WAY WAY down... and I am sure it's why Dave and Hesh specifically require the guitar to already nominally be working BEFORE they will do setups. Because these don't need SETUP - they need expensive and time consuming repair work...

These didn't even pass the 1st gate to get to "Servicability" - they were still decorative wall hangings and furniture...

Thanks