Felipe Conde - So Much for Handcrafted

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Pgh_flamenco

Posts: 1506
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Felipe Conde - So Much for Handcrafted

I didn’t know Conde used a machine for cutting frets.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 23 2022 10:44:29

Rubino

Posts: 9
Joined: Jan. 24 2022

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)

I think the automation of fret slotting is okay.

Hopefully there is still a good deal of craftsmanship that goes into the guitar tops and bracing.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 23 2022 18:10:40

Escribano

Posts: 6415
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)

On the other hand, try an electric guitar built with CNC from Thomman.de - they blow Fender and Gibson out of the water for 1/10th of the price.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 23 2022 19:35:35

Rubino

Posts: 9
Joined: Jan. 24 2022

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)

The guy in the red shirt (shown at the beginning of this video) didn't get the memo. Either that or maybe he's now unemployed.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 23 2022 20:51:46

Pgh_flamenco

Posts: 1506
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Escribano)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Escribano

On the other hand, try an electric guitar built with CNC from Thomman.de - they blow Fender and Gibson out of the water for 1/10th of the price.

I thought most electric guitar bodies and necks were made using CNC. US companies are designing guitars and using Chinese manufacturers to produce them. Some of these guitars are under $200 and are better than Gibson’s Epiphone line. Chinese companies have been at this for at least 20 years so they have the parts and templates available.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 23 2022 21:37:23

Escribano

Posts: 6415
Joined: Jul. 6 2003
From: England, living in Italy

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)

quote:

I thought most electric guitar bodies and necks were made using CNC

Sure, but Thomman's prices and quality are the differentiators. I have two from them and there is really not much you need to do to them.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 24 2022 8:47:23

Ricardo

Posts: 14797
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Rubino)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Rubino

The guy in the red shirt (shown at the beginning of this video) didn't get the memo. Either that or maybe he's now unemployed.

That is the same guy, and probably the same day based on the video uploads. It is clear in the “machine” video, that guy in the red shirt was trying out the new alternative method as per Felipe’s suggestion.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 25 2022 17:49:29

mrstwinkle

Posts: 551
Joined: May 14 2017

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)

For 99 percent of guitar customer needs, machines are better at this stuff than humans.

Yes I know the to err is human quote.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jun. 25 2022 19:54:38

ernandez R

Posts: 737
Joined: Mar. 25 2019
From: Alaska USA

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)

Buffing out my latest today, #14, and seeing all the flaws here and there and thinking could a machine do better?

I use a most of the power shop tools one way or another but the wood still gets pushed or pulled through by my hands and fingers. I use a little belt sander like Anders had but clamped to the wall with a wood bracket instead of a vice for a hundred little details, still it takes the magic of my fingertips to make the parts right.

A few years ago there were some cheap classical guitars from china in a music store but the fit of the wood was impeccable, they had a vary thin flat finish so no thick gobs of clear plastic in the creases etc. They were strung with some impossibly thick strings and sounded charitorless as in no tonal variation from saddle to the top of the sound hole: over built "to survive the retail event"

In the end you play the guitar you fall. in love with regardless of its origin, sure many need to brag about this or that guitar, my strings are lower then yours, etc... I still play my first guitar every day but when I play one of my others its like, oh ya!

With todays technology machines could replicate all the checks we do with flexing wood, bridge rotation, and top lifting, doming etc, sensors could give feedback and in the end fine tune braces etc, right up to mechanizing all the Magic Tom does with his fingertip tuning.

Just play the dang thing best you can.

Ol'e

HR

ps. been cutting back on my social media cause, but I still read the Foro every day.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jul. 1 2022 21:37:50

Echi

Posts: 1131
Joined: Jan. 11 2013

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)

Machinery is very good for this kind of stuff. It makes it fast and precise: the human touch wouldn’t add anything more.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jul. 2 2022 10:51:24

Pgh_flamenco

Posts: 1506
Joined: Dec. 5 2007
From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to ernandez R)

quote:

With todays technology machines could replicate all the checks we do with flexing wood, bridge rotation, and top lifting, doming etc, sensors could give feedback and in the end fine tune braces etc, right up to mechanizing all the Magic Tom does with his fingertip tuning.

I don’t think we’re quite there yet. If scientists could replicate a Stradivarius violin I’m sure they would. At least when it comes to high-end violins there is a demand and the money is there.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jul. 2 2022 13:02:09

Richard Jernigan

Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Echi)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Echi

Machinery is very good for this kind of stuff. It makes it fast and precise: the human touch wouldn’t add anything more.

Alan Carruth has done a lot of very ingenious scientific measurement of guitars. He says we can distinguish good guitars from bad guitars by measurement, but we can't tell good guitars from great guitars.

A good luthier accounts for the variability of wood. A mechanical setup to produce great guitars would have to duplicate that process. Such a mechanical process would require a way of evaluating its work. Carruth says we can't do such an evaluation via scientific measurements yet. There has to be a human in the loop.

I don't know whether the luthier evaluating the results constitutes a "human touch" under your definition of the term.

RNJ

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jul. 3 2022 1:30:44

Echi

Posts: 1131
Joined: Jan. 11 2013

RE: Felipe Conde - So Much for Handc... (in reply to Pgh_flamenco)

In general there is a lot to say about it.
Stages like the choice of the right piece of wood, gluing, thicknessing, voicing, assembling etc. are better done by a skilled hand.
On the other hand, things like the frets slots (or the head slots for instance) are better done by a machinery and I see no possible counter effect for the tone.
For years the main employees of Ramirez were given the boards already thicknessed to 2.8 mm, the necks already half- prepared with their machined slots, the squared wood for the struts. From there each maker could go further down by hand, each by their skills.
In the last years even Ramirez used to have such a fret slot machine.
I see nothing wrong with it as the main part comes when you go thin and start assembling.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Jul. 3 2022 11:03:07