Official Luthiers Forum!

It goes both ways and in the close to two decades that I've been very interested in guitar building and repair I've noticed a few times when things we, small builders did for better or worse began to be seen coming from f*ctories too.

Early on around 2006 we were all using wood bindings and also trying out woods that typically were not known as being used for Lutherie. Along comes R. Taylor not wanting to miss out on the fun or innovation with wood bindings and a plethora of woods that were not the usually suspect EIRW, mahogany etc.

Don't know when we started discussing tilted saddles which I still am not a fan of but no biggie. This morning I had an Epiphone Master Built on my bench with a tilted saddle.

We also, many of us moved to using HHG and in some cases nearly exclusive use of HHG. Then we saw Martin with special editions, Authentic versions and so on and so forth with the HHG coming out and being used once again. We also saw Henry at G*bson also revert to HHG on the custom shop R8, R9 and R0s. I'll add some of us discovered Madrose so Henry went to Madagascar and poached some....

So this thread is dedicated to who stole from who... or more specifically how we small builders have influenced guitar mass production and vice versa.

Please feel free to post examples of stuff we do that is becoming more mainstream and we did it first? Likewise adaptations from factories back down to us as well.

When it comes to Torified wood I'm not sure who started it I have heard reports that Yamaha has been doing it for 50 years.... But you get the idea let's discuss where our ideas came from?

Thanks

Just did a setup for a guy on a Zager dred and the saddle was tilted, nut slots were nice too.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I bet it won’t be long before se start seeing side sound ports on factory guitars.

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

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

I'd like to think that some of the cheaper manufacturers started or will start to glue the bridge down to a wooden foot print too instead of just on top of the finish.

I believe Yamaha started with torrefied wood on their piano soundboards, then moved it to their acoustic line at least 20 years* before Bourgoise et al got into the game. The called it Acoustic Resonance Enhanced, A.R.E, so if you ever saw that in the magazines, that’s what it was!



*dates may not align with reality

And also, if you’re gonna dye a bridge black, at least have the courtesy to touch up the bridge pin holes once you’re done. It only takes a second with a q-tip and black leather dye.*


*not that I’ve ever dyed a rosewood bridge black to save weight when the numbers were just a bit too close for comfort

Yeah Danny stays on the bleeding edge and most of his value proposition is the set-up. He's recognized that f*ctories are not setting stuff up well and he's created a business model that exploits this.

Smart guy and we see Zagers too and they are usually as you said very well set-up.

This is an example of someone taking an inadequacy of the factories and the big brands and finding a niche.

I can't remember what his one hit wonder was do you remember Steve?

I bet you're right Bryan sound ports are on the way.

Yeah good point and there is another aspect to this question and that is how have we influenced the construction of factory instruments and I am sure we have.

That's what I remember too Ed the piano sound boards were first to be baked and suffocated and then came the guitars. You know we on occasion take donated beater guitars and I fix them up and then we give them to the homeless and vets on our streets outside our shop. The Yamahas do great in the winter with no case and this is likely why.

Yamaha stuff has always been a great value IMO from the pianos (I owned one) to the guitars, loved their motorcycles and my first every vehicle when I was 16 was a Yamaha motorcycle. Their stereo gear back in the day was cool too.

Where I see our influence the most is with boutique builders like Huss and Dalton, Collings, Suhr etc.

Here is another example. Can't remember when but some on this forum started making tuner buttons out of all manner of exotic woods. Bridge pins too but the tuner buttons are the best example.

Back then there were several predominate tuner brands and some of them had a few choices for buttons. Gotoh was one of the first that you could spec out and assemble our own.

But I don't recall seeing all the choices in tuner buttons before we, small builders started making our own.

I'm guessing arm bevels started with small shop builders well before their appearance on guitars like Taylors.

_________________
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Yamaha's ARE method is a heat treatment like torrefaction and Yamaha used it many years before torrefaction became a thing for guitars, but there are significant differences between the methods.

With ARE, wood is treated with high pressure steam at 120 C to 200 C in the presence of oxygen. With torrefaction, the wood is heated at 200 C to 320 C in the absence of oxygen (so the wood doesn't burn), and at atmospheric pressure. I haven't seen anything that directly compares the effects of the two methods on wood to each other, so I don't know if they have the same effects on the wood at the molecular level. Both are supposed to enhance tone though.

_________________
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Thanks for that! Was never able to find much info beyond that ARE was some sort of thermal modification. I believe some torrefaction is also done using steam as well, there may be some terminology crossover. AFAIK both methods melt and expel the hemicellulose that is naturally lost over time, hence the’ vintage’ tone…or something along those lines…

If you're interested in such things, the Yamaha US patent for the ARE process is here: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/85/e8/db/bbd3537b4b5e70/US6667429.pdf

_________________
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I had Yamaha skis when I was a kid. They did pretty well in the winter too.

Phew, that’s a dense read for a later day. Two thing jump out at a glance, number one, the patent date. Do you think they were using it before they got the patent for it? I seem to recall seeing ARE ads before that, and that they used it on piano’s long before then, but…IIRC is a real gamble. ‘Cause I often DNRC, lol.

Am I reading that right, they have spruce at .63-.64 g/cm3? Yo, that’s dank!

If his guitar wasn't overbuilt with a super thick finish it would probably sound really good. Guess he's at the price point where he wants to avoid warranty action.

The hit they did was "In the Year 2525".

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

According to Yamaha, they started developing ARE in the late 90s for violins so that patent date would make sense.

Yea, reading patents requires a certain mental state. Patentese language can make for painful reading. If the .63-.64 g/cm3 comes from Figure 15, then that's for maple. Figure 14 has densities for spruce and those range from something like .39 to .44 g/cm3.

_________________
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I worked on a Collings the other day and it had unslotted bridge pins. That was cool.

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

That makes more sense…

Gibson have been producing them for some time now.
https://guitar.com/news/music-news/gibson-launches-generation-collection-acoustic-player-port/

_________________
The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I'm not sure who started the "relic" thing.

My friend owns a retail store and has a lot of high end Martins.
He just got one in that was made to look like an old beat up guitar...

not very convincing-I guess it was ok
He said when he was at the Martin factory a couple of years ago speccing out some guitars for his shop he asked them if they would do the relic thing and they scoffed at the idea....
I guess they changed their minds.

Loads and loads of arm bevels, cutaway bevels and tummy bevels coming out of the far east, southeast, and South Asia. (I even saw a leg bevel) Maybe the flood of them will spur the bevel to go the way of excessive Pearl inlay.

Pat

_________________
Pat

How did they sound