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Echi -> RE: How consistent is quality of guitars made by the same luthier? (May 13 2019 7:25:00)
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This is a good question.
Firstly It may depend from the luthier as some makers are more consistent than others.
Guitars made serially are often quite inconsistent because the top wood is not assessed carefully.
Guitars outsourced are often inconsistent because of the different luthier’s hand: Robert Ruck claimed to keep no secret about his guitar making with people helping him as the final result of the latter would be anyway different - no matter how faithfully they tried to follow his directions.
Regarding the one man shops, I think you may get similar guitars (with a clear imprint of the maker) and yet each guitar will be slightly different. There are always small or big differences in “pulsacion”, clarity, punch, within a common clear identity. Guitars are like similar daughters of the same parents.
But I guess the guitars will be as different as you are fussy.
A relaxed listener will catch little differences while a fussy one big ones.
A direct comparison, in the same environment, make the differences pop up clearly while distant circumstances dilute the differences.
It’s famous the anecdote of Ramirez having always 5 guitars ready to try in his workshop in Madrid.
The guitars used to be made with the same plan and materials and yet they sounded quite different for those trying them.
In one case a top player praised and picked a certain guitar (among the 5) and despised quite heavily another one, to the point that Ramirez thought not to sell the latter. Few days after a second pro player came in the shop and Ramirez had just 4 guitars ready for the trial plus the “unfortunate” guitar, which ended up being considered the best of the bunch by the second player.
I have tried many nice guitars in life and yet in my case it took me months to understand if a certain guitar was what I was originally looking for. Eventually I came to terms with it as no guitar is perfect.
I think to have 3 particularly good guitars (a ‘74 Pepe Bellido a Ramirez and a Conde) and for years I used to dislike the last 2 brands. Even now I cannot say if it was I changing my tastes throughout the years or it happened to me to pick the right guitars among a genre of in instruments I usually dislike)
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