Discussion: What makes a guitar "hand made"?

[WezV]

and that was the forum adding an E rather than my bad typing ;)

[Philly Q]

i always feel i know someone once i have seen them drunk  :P

At least, then you know them drunk.  :P

[MDV]

erm, maybe a little.  it is 1am on a friday night!!

i am either drunk or a forum geek


truth is i am both but you really should get used to how my responses change on friday and saturday nights ;)

Too right. Not mutually exclusive.

I agree completely by the way. Inhibitions the first thing to go. Neurological fact. If a persons cool when they're drunk, they're cool. Its the way it is.

Oh, I was criticising your english, not your statement or character!

[hooglebug]

o dear lord. and i dont even believe in god. but that devries (or whatever) thing is horrendous. goes well with his attitude! makes me feel better about my work anyway!

[WezV]

my english can be pretty shocking when i am sober... it gets noticably worse when drunk.

[Bob Johnson]

I just like to say that despite the one or two examples of badly made hand mades illustrated in the thread there is a hell of a lot more badly made "production" shitee out there. I've seen basses where the bridge was so badly aligned that the E string completely missed the pickup, acoustics that were folding in half before they even got out of the shop, a Takamine where the bridge was positioned 4mm too far back, Epiphone Les Pauls where you could stick a 0.8mm pick in the gaps between the binding and the rest of the body and so on and so on.

I was a mechanical engineer in R&D for many years before taking up luthiery full time and I know that machine manufactured items (someone mentioned car engines; a good example) have the capability to be far superior to their hand made equivalents but when the pressure is on to get the volumes out the door to justify your investment compromise is a constant companion. The clips of the PRS workshop, which I guess were included to show that PRS are at least partly hand made, are a classic example. It's basically an assembly job with tight cycle times and machines doing all the "skilled" work. Even with the cheapest Chinese made guitars it is rarely the machine made parts that are at fault it's the design and/or the assembly; with a true quality hand made these errors are eliminated, admittedly at a price.

We're hoping to launch a part CNC machined model soon but we will not be referring to it as "Hand Made".

[CaptainDesslock]

I just like to say that despite the one or two examples of badly made hand mades illustrated in the thread there is a hell of a lot more badly made "production" shiteee out there.

True....but damn that thing was the complete opposite of any other quality hand-made guitars out there....yourself, De'temple, Blackmachine...ect.....the guy could've at least dusted it off :)

[Johnny Mac]

Does this get classed as handmade?

http://guitarsatbmusic.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9544

I read that thread, and it was funny, but I didn't get it.... did they buy the guitar just to rip the piss out of it?

That's what I thought. So who's laughing? I didn't get to the end of the thread, way too big.

[FELINEGUITARS]

Does this get classed as handmade?

http://guitarsatbmusic.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9544

I read that thread, and it was funny, but I didn't get it.... did they buy the guitar just to rip the piss out of it?

That's what I thought. So who's laughing? I didn't get to the end of the thread, way too big.

I think enough of them clubbed together to mean that nobody had much of an outlay , with the intention of bringing someone they considered arrogant and full of themselves down to earth.

Whether they succeeded or whether it was justified I couldn't say

[hooglebug]

having read it all it doesnt seem like anything would bring him down to earth. he still insists its their fault its not any good cos they tuned it to e when its built to be tuned to d, played it through a diezal amp when its built to be played through a different amp (cant remember) and the fact that they're not on a stage with everything turned up to 10 on the amp.

also, having previously said what a rip off custom shop guitars are and saying that his are better quality for a fraction of the price, he then went on to say it was the people who bought it fault for it not being great quality as they only spent $800 on it. if they wanted a custom shop quality guitar they should have paid him $1500 instead.

[Lew]

The clips of the PRS workshop, which I guess were included to show that PRS are at least partly hand made, are a classic example. It's basically an assembly job with tight cycle times and machines doing all the "skilled" work. Even with the cheapest Chinese made guitars it is rarely the machine made parts that are at fault it's the design and/or the assembly; with a true quality hand made these errors are eliminated, admittedly at a price.

We're hoping to launch a part CNC machined model soon but we will not be referring to it as "Hand Made".

Basically yea...  8)

I have two electric guitars at the mo, one is the 513 that I waffle on about all the time and the other is a Fibenare.
The PRS as we know is a CNC guitar made in a factory on a deadline whereas the Fib is handmade by three hungarian brothers who even machine their own hardware and is made with all the love in the world and doesn't go for sale until it's ready. On the face of it the Fib should cream the 513 in every way-but it doesn't.

If handmade meant you would get a better sounding/feeling guitar everytime then there would be no argument, but that's not how it works out.  8)

[Twinfan]

The clips of the PRS workshop, which I guess were included to show that PRS are at least partly hand made, are a classic example. It's basically an assembly job with tight cycle times and machines doing all the "skilled" work.

That's very harsh and I would even say "untrue".  Surely the skill is in putting it all together, setting the neck at the correct angle, sanding the neck and body perfectly flat to allow the finish to be applied and look "glass-like" etc.

The CNC machines at PRS cut the body shapes and neck shapes to save lots of labour.  Then the skill kicks in to actually makes those into a playable instrument.

Are you saying the real skill in building a guitar is cutting a rough shape out better than a CNC machine?

[_tom_]

haha I think that Devries "guitar" has been posted on every guitar forum that exists right now :lol: Absolutely shocking.

[Bob Johnson]

I know this is always a touchy subject Twinfan but the point I was trying to make is that you can train someone to finish sand to perfection in a day. You can also train almost anyone to do a one off repeat operation to a satisfactory standard quite easily; I also said that quality problems were usually in the design or assembly, ergo, companies without quality problems have well trained staff. As for "glass like" finishes if you spray a 0.5mm coat of polyester on almost anything you'll be able to polish it mate.

I was trying to be fair; manufacturing processes have to be boiled down to a number of simple, totally repeatable steps. To accommodate that you have to introduce machining tolerances and "design for assembly" features that you wouldn't necessarily adopt if you're making it entirely by hand.

As a development engineer and designer in my past life I spent many years designing things to make them faster and cheaper to assemble often having to accept compromises if they were deemed by marketing or manufacturing to be transparent or insignificant to the customer.

I'd hoped my post was a balanced view of the real world not a pop at PRS; I'm sorry if it offended you.

[Twinfan]

Hey, not offended Bob  :)  Just discussing!  :D

I think a non-handmade guitar doesn't exist anyway.  It cannot be be completely made by a machine as far as I'm aware, so there's always a level of human involvement.  I guess the term 'handmade' isn't the best.  I think Custom Built puts it better, or something like that.

Sorry if I offended you, too!