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Question/topic for everyone: How to be consistent, in guitar building.
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Question/topic for everyone: How to be consistent, in guitar building.
Dear ladies and gentlemen,
I was assembling the latest build early this evening, and I could not stop thinking about how could I do better. Which is a good thing you may think, but in the today era of social media where you can basically follow every of your inspiration as a guitar builder you, well at least certainly me, cannot stop thinking about ‘how X can be so damn consistent on every build?’
So I started to wondering if its actually a situation where I can certainly do better, is all a construct of mine or I am too much influenced by what I can see on social media.
Please don’t get me wrong, those guitar builder I’m referring to -which I won’t mention for obvious reason- are among the very best in the world, so no doubt that what you see on social media is real.I started to take note on every new build I do, not only mentally but phisically, of the parts I am not satisfied with. Again don’t get me wrong, I don’t release something I’m not proud of, but as said you can always do better. I take this as a sort of training I do cause after nearly 15 year in guitar making I now have my own authomatism. Which again is good, and bad, cause you can genuflex over authomatism and involountary ignore something you make that can be done better. But, and here’s come the tricky part: I steel feel there’s a gap between what I do and what I see from others. About which you can respond to me ‘there’s a reason if they’re among the best of the world, and your not’, and I would agree over that but, again, perfection it is not our goal it is our tendency.
So please if you feel free to do it, share your experience with me, and us.
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9 Replies
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I feel the best thing to do is not compete with anyone but yourself.
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Which is a good, if not the best, advice of a path to follow but then, how do you grow if you don’t have a comparison mether?
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I just set a goal of 10% improvement with each build. Incremental improvement will get me to where I need to be.
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1) you can’t fix everything at once. Or at least, I can’t. For me early on the priority was to finish guitars without being too self critical. You need to finish instruments and see what your faults are. So for 2 years my priority was to make and finish the coolest instruments I could and not really get too stressed about faults. I wasn’t trying to make mistakes but I didn’t get stressed.
But as I went I made a list of things I wanted to fix. And I would try to focus on a few of them with each guitar. I don’t think you can totally change everything you’re doing at once.
For instance, at the moment I’m pretty happy with my guitars in general but my binding is absolutely terrible. My focus coming up this year is to really get better with that.
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What type of guitars you build? Speaking about binding I assume acoustic?
Anyway it seem a reasonable approach. And you surfaced a very nice point: self-overcriticism. I don’t know if that’s a self improvement method, or an auto-disctruction one.
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Mostly acoustic.
One thing with guitars, I think we think about them like violins made in Ghippetos workshop by a lone craftsman, but in reality many of the greatest guitars were and are made in factories and oftentimes with people specializing in one job and doing it all the time. I know Bourgeois works this way, one person doing most of the binding, one person doing the necks. So it’s immensely challenging to equal that standard when you’re making 10 guitars a year, 10 necks, 1 a month or so, vs the guy who is making 12 necks a week.
Not easy.
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That’s a good point.
Yes, sometimes you can forget that most factory have 1 tech for each step. Particurlarly by the way I was referring to a one-man-shop, which have a so high level of craftsmanship and perfection that everytime I am truly blown away bu pieces that are in pre-final sanding stage. I mean, just by the way they are sanded, you can already see what a magnificent instrument it will be. And its for every build!
Probably, as you said, practice make us better.
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Hey Alex!
I myself have not built any guitars but do spend time with folks who have and notice a few things that may be helpful.
I have a close friend who has been guitar building for 50 years with an absolutely insane resume of accomplishments. He completed two guitars recently and I went to play them and his wife was joking about how he has been up at night worried about if they are just right. My take away was we are never satisfied. No true masterpiece is ever complete!
Second, the guitar makers I have been around who are successful either had a background in factory production or act as though they did. The friend I referenced earlier was dispatched to my area in CT from nashville after working at gruhns. He oversaw a lot of production at Guild. He is an incredible jig/fixture maker. Things are so repeatable. So on days when he makes bridges he makes 100 etc. etc. He joked with me that the goal is to be assembling kits but you made enough “kit parts” to last a few years at a time.
I hope I get to check out your guitars sometime!!!!!! If you are always improving I am sure they are amazing.
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Hello dear, nice to meet you!
Must say that I’m fortunate enough to have the shop near my house, and unfortunate enough to be the same kind of person as your friend which sneaks outside to go check the build at every hour of the night, and I mean very late hour of the night (winter too lol).
Anyway your consideration gave me a nice point to reflect on: basically, to divide/reduce the building process in less step possibile, to have more control of each one. I’m not in the position to work on more than 2 guitar per month anyway so probably my weak point is in the organization process of the tasks needed during the building process.
I, for example, sometimes stop the work I’m doing cause I realize that I’m moving the parst around too many time increasing the possibility of, lets’s say, scratching a completely fine sanded body/neck.
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