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RE: New vs Old
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estebanana
Posts: 9352
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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 RE: New vs Old (in reply to Tam DL)
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I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at.
On the one hand you sarcastically poke bit of well deserved fun about national treasures drawing plans. Then on the other you mention Bogdanovich's book, I'm not sure of the direction you are taking your point. Maybe you are working in two directions at once.
To me real guitar makers don't really use plans on a regular basis. Maybe there's plan or two around the shop to take a reference from or you might, but for the most part you work from measurements you keep in a book you compile from studies of guitars you see. You keep plantillas traced from guitars you like and you modify them to suit you and your intentions.
What happens after you make so many guitars is that the measurements stick in your head. A real guitar maker can wake up in the middle of the night and call out numbers in inches or mm of any part of a the guitar. No plan is needed at that point.
There are a million little things a plan can't flesh out or explain, it's really quite a vague document without the knowledge of a maker to interpret it. A maker knows why the fans splay out at a certain width and why that point to the 10th fret or the 12th - the design is predicated on all the minute details a maker learns to juggle. A plan does not convey that information. A guitar is not the culmination of following a plan;it's a live system of interdependent parts and assembly methods. A guitar is a conceptual problem that a good maker makes by using the skills he or she was taught from lofting their own model. A plan is a tool, a document, but not an end in itself.
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So I agree a guitar is not a the sum of constructing a face plan from a drawing. A guitar is not a plan. A guitar is a string with a box attached to it, not a box with strings on it. You build the guitar for the string to do it's thing. A guitar plan is a drawing of a box of wood. It fails to address the most important thing, how to think about the string on your own without some other persons wooden box solution.
I'm not down on plans, I reference them sometimes. But it's of the most importance to understand the plan is a box of wood and that a guitar maker starts at the string, then moves to the scale, then the plane of the geometry set by the string. And then to the wood box. That is the conceptual order from which it arises. There must not be confusion between the conceptual order of making a guitar and a plan for a box of wood.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Jan. 26 2011 8:22:19
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Anders Eliasson
Posts: 5780
Joined: Oct. 18 2006
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RE: New vs Old (in reply to DoctorX2k2)
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quote:
But you two really took it up to a personal level. Why? Who knows. Did he ever talked you down about the guitars you build? Not that I know of. You keep bashing on him trying to raise your own selves. "Americans copy, that's what they're good at", "Tom doesn't catch the essence of guitarmaking, the true spirit of the old Spanish builders...", "My design is better than yours", all that kind of nonsense. You don't agree with his methods, so be it and let the guy do what he has to do, which is build guitars. If he wants to talk about his approach, then let him talk so people that might be interested can enjoy it even though you disagree. In the hand, it's in the hands of the PLAYERS.
Why dont you relax a little bit doctorx2k2.
Noone, not even me or Stephen have taken anything to what you write. Its 100% your interpretation and nothing else. You take things totally out of context. prove the following:
Quote "Americans copy, that's what they're good at", "Tom doesn't catch the essence of guitarmaking, the true spirit of the old Spanish builders...", "My design is better than yours" Quote Doctorx2k2
Noone has said that exept YOU. I have a feeling that you´ve just entered this thread in order to stirr up things.
You write that we should leave the guy to do what he has to do, to build guitars. I would happily do that. And I would enjoy his knowledge and be happy, relaxed and helpfull if the things were like that.
But the man has been here promoting himself like some kind of guitar builders messias. talking down to anyone not agreeing with his approach and ideas. talking about builders not using his fantastic Reyes plan like they had not seen "the light". A plan of the best guitar made by the best guitarbuilder in the world. And improved by Mr TomB
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Date Jan. 26 2011 8:44:41
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Tam DL
Posts: 21
Joined: Jan. 1 2011
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RE: New vs Old (in reply to estebanana)
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"On the one hand you sarcastically poke bit of well deserved fun about national treasures drawing plans."
Well there are some well known people here, and elsewhere, and if the standard or content of plans bothers then, as has been expressed above, they have only to produce their own.
" Then on the other you mention Bogdanovich's book, I'm not sure of the direction you are taking your point. Maybe you are working in two directions at once."
Just an example of a book, plan, video, template, tools, materials empire in the building, and of the possibility of being more specific, since I think TB at least mentioned the difficulty of 2 dimensions.
"To me real guitar makers don't really use plans on a regular basis. Maybe there's plan or two around the shop to take a reference from or you might, but for the most part you work from measurements you keep in a book you compile from studies of guitars you see."
Beginners, as mentioned in reference to plans above, they aren't real guitar makers yet, and they need a starting point. But there are lots of real makers that do fairly faithful reproductions of certain instruments or styles. Oddly I see a lot of beginners who go wildly off the reservation, and a lot of expert makers who at some stage draw back more closely to a tradition, and as a result are pretty close to some kind of template. There are also a number of "real" makers who grew up in the business and are continuing a family tradition. That may be more in evidence in the future if some of the great post 1970s revival makers, like Hill, Romanillos, Fischer, etc... hand off to another generation.
"You keep plantillas traced from guitars you like and you modify them to suit you and your intentions."
To me that is a plan. It may not be on paper, but any half competent builder who has access to instruments doesn't need a plan to get miles ahead of what the plan maker gets from the paper. Any subsequent claims to the wind blowing in their hair as they fulfill their inner vibrations, vs. the plan builder, are laughable. So if you do repairs, or otherwise have access to a lot of instruments, you are many steps ahead as a copyist. It's like murder, kill one person you get life or the noose; kill a million and you get the Nobel prize. Copy one plan you're a hack; copy a hundred and move to the country of origin, and you're inspired by angels.
"What happens after you make so many guitars is that the measurements stick in your head. A real guitar maker can wake up in the middle of the night and call out numbers in inches or mm of any part of a the guitar. No plan is needed at that point."
So true, I make a number of things other than guitars, and I realized early on you need to know the whole object. I can calculate hydro for boats in my head, or do beam calcs. It's a little daunting when you realize for the first time that you actually have to know where every single mm of the surface needs to be, not just some general impression.
"There are a million little things a plan can't flesh out or explain, it's really quite a vague document without the knowledge of a maker to interpret it. A maker knows why the fans splay out at a certain width and why that point to the 10th fret or the 12th - the design is predicated on all the minute details a maker learns to juggle.'"
Right you are. Plans are weird. Many people reproduce the Hauser '37. We don't really know what that guitar meant to Hauser, whether if in building 20 version he would have actually stuck to one constant guitar, or varied it to take into account differences in the wood, etc...
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Date Jan. 26 2011 20:52:42
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estebanana
Posts: 9352
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: New vs Old (in reply to Andy Culpepper)
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Thank you, but bloviator is more like Rush Limbaugh or Sarah " Bulldog Lips" Palin. I'd rather be known as the George W. Bush of guitar making. In politics I'm liberal, but in guitar making I'm "The Decider".
Andy,
I was in art college for six years, from undergrad to grad school. I took a degree in sculpture, so I have a fair knowledge of art history and studio art. My father is a painter and others in my family are artists. I grew up around artists and artists egos, I pretty much have no fear of saying what I want to say about artists and their egos and how it works. In grad school you get reviewed by your peers and they can be pretty tough on you and you on them. I'll tell you nobody cares about your art or music except you. If you stop writing, making films or guitars or painting or anything creative nobody gives a crap. When you are hard on someone else and you say tough things it means you give a crap. Artists can rip one another apart and it's rough trade and I suppose that part of how I am. When you say what you think is the truth often times it makes you unpopular and you have to pay a price for what you have said. Eventually everything shakes out and what seemed a harsh thing to say might make sense. It's a risk to tell people what you think, but art, writing, painting and guitar making if it is being done to the best of your ability is all about risk.
When you enter your guitar shop and you think I'm going to do a Conde' or make a Hauser or whatever, that's a pretty shallow area of consciousness. Then as you work for an hour or two that consciousness drop away and you are who you are, Hauser has left the room and left you alone. After you work longer and you really get into your work pretty soon you leave the room, your ego has gone bye bye and there is nothing between you and the crazy mysterious flow of creating. People call that the void, the zone or whatever. We all go to that place and that's why we love creating. ( Of course you get a guitar after you go to that zone a hundred times:)
When you get to the egoless state and you are like a conduit for making this guitar you have a really good time. Hours can seem like minutes. You become calm and fulfilled. When one of your compadres forgets that that is what it is all about it's fair to clobber them back to consciousness.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Jan. 28 2011 1:01:13
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