Official Luthiers Forum!

When I was starting out in 2005 I would spend my lunch hours in the local G*itar Center in the back moldy humidifier room with the acoustics closely checking out the Martins mostly and exploring the mysteries of same. Martins were my standard for what I wanted the guitars that I built to be built on par with for tone, quality and fit and finish.

I would still feel this way today only these days I've become the owner of not one but two brand new Collings guitars and I am now a huge Collings fanboy as a result. Been taking advanced lessons too learning Solos by Betts and others note for note and having a grand ole time playing. These guitars have kind of been a rebirth for my personal playing and that's a good thing.

Check out the fit and finish on a Collings guitar and if you can produce an instrument on par with this as your standard you will be ahead of 90% or more of other small builders. We see them all, we see what you produce too and I have a great deal of experience with what this statement refers to. Small builder instruments can be the entire gambit of quality or... not. We often reject things built by someone we don't know for obvious poor workmanship, etc. but that's another discussion.

So this is my latest and I'm thrilled with it. It is now my second favorite all time guitar with my first favorite also being a Collings I-35 that I own.

This is a Collings 290 light relic with Throbak smoking hot P-90s. All the fit and finish is superb, the fret ends are the model of what a f*ctory instrument should be and the thing just rocks. I think of Leslie West when I play this guitar.

So I'm posting this for two reasons to be honest. First is this idea of who are you using as your model to emulate and inform how and what you build? Second I wanted to show you my new ax

Also check out the nuts on Collings guitars as they should be eloquent, bone, minimalistic and showing a deliberateness of craftsmanship that shows that someone knows what they are doing.

Collings also does f*ctory set-ups that are about the best we've ever seen. I only had to refine things a bit and intonate for my brand of stings and I was rockin.

What does Collings do different? Do we have bracing patterns or full plans to follow? Where do we get this info, the internet is flooded with Martin data.

_________________
Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Basically what Collings does different from most guitar producers is they do a great job! I'm speaking of the details, the fit and finish, the fret work is superb, the nut, the set-up all the things beyond and including the woodworking but beyond the woodworking that make for a great playing, great sounding, long lasting, value keeping guitar.

For example Collings uses a PLEK which is cool but not the end all to be all and we believe that hand work can produce better results. So they use a PLEK and then follow-up with finishing touches by hand work. Best of both worlds. And.... someone else who agrees with us that better fret work can be had by a talented Luthier and hand tools. We are splitting hairs here too, know this.

Most of all this is the legacy of Bill, Bill Collings RIP who was a stickler for details and fussy as can be about quality. It shows.

Now my take on when I started to build guitars was and remains I was not interested in another Martin copy I wanted to do even better than Martin as my own value proposition. My thinking was and remains why buy something from me who has less than 100 guitars under my belt and a warranty only as long as my hypertension permits when you can buy from Martin and others and have a warranty and a company standing behind the instrument who has had four generations of family member principals who will indeed be around if you need warranty assistance. Martin is a great company, Collings too.

So that's my point Sarge I'm asking others who they used to inform, to model their workmanship and results after and telling my story here too. I did not want to throw wood together breathing my own air and never exchanging ideas with others and having some scrutiny too.

Why would Hesh buy a $5K Collings when I can pretty easily build one pretty much just like this? Because in the time that I can build this guitar I can earn twice that repairing other people's guitars. I sold everything I had including my Martins when I started building to force myself to be a better builder by making myself have to play my own stuff.

Now in my old age I'm back to being excited by and appreciating the products of others and I wanted to share with folks here that Collings is an excellent producer to find a store that sells them and sit down with one or ten and spend an afternoon looking at what they do and then incorporate that into your own Lutherie activities. From finishes to fret work you will find some of the best work commercially available from a small f*ctory guitar producer with Collings. This is a shout-out to them too and a thank you for my new ax!

I love Collings to and have always aimed for their quality and tone. From my number 1. I’m really talking acoustics. If you’re ever in Texas, take the Collings factory tour, it’s a blast. Back when I went, there was no Plex. Don’t know when they added that, but there work was excellent before.

Yeah they are great and my favorite. Dave knew Bill pretty well and was always a fan. The Waterloo line channelling period Kalamazoo guitars is pretty cool too.

I also have an I-35 Collings that is about the closest I've ever come to a single perfect guitar for me for most of what I play. I love Collings stuff!

Collings on their electrics is using Throbak and Jason Lollar pups, great stuff.

I didn't even know Collings made electric guitars. Is it just the lighting or is there crazing on that head stock?

Gotta love P-90's. I loaded up my 'Tele' with some SM Parson St. P-90's with the reverse polarity mid position humbucking set up and I just love the thing.

Some years ago I had a nice conversation with Frank Ford about building 'salable' guitars. His take was that Martin is the industry standard, and the easiest guitar to sell is a copy of that. Collings is an 'improved' Martin: the same design and sound, more or less, but with better detailing, fit, and finish. The further you depart from that standard, the harder it is to sell them. This is not to say that Martin or Collings guitars are 'perfect', and can't be improved on. It's just that, to the extent that any new design improvement departs from the standard, the harder you have to work to justify it. You need to be able to point to clear reasons for changes, and noticeable improvements in sound, durability, or whatever, in order to stay in the market. The hardest thing to sell is something that's 'almost' like a
Martin: people assume you were not good enough to make a 'real' copy.

I'm currently only trying to please this customer. So far, I suck at the details so I'm not trying to sell. If I ever suck less then I may try to sell one, but really, who's going to buy Joe Schmo's guitar when they can get all the big name guitars with resale value that just goes up? I'll just build for me and try to do more repair work where the money is. Almost every repair I've done has been gotten me a decent hourly wage and I don't see that ever happening building so I build for myself.

_________________
Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I took the first steel string guitar I built in '94 to a local shop as the owner wanted to see it and I was rather proud of it at the time and he went on to tell me all about how it was not like a Martin guitar Of course they were a Martin shop too. And actually he did compliment the guitar highly as far as it's tone goes. But I have always held Martin up to the gold standard. I went on to work for a store that sold Taylor's and honestly I never really liked them. I have played a lot of nice Gibsons but their consistency seems to be off. But of the Gibsons I did play and like they were fantastic guitars.

Having done repairs now for 25 years I have come across a few small shop (not small factory) guitars from reputable luthiers and while they sounded amazing the fit and finish was still not that of a factory guitar. Of the 70 or so instruments I have made non have ever reached the level of finish of any of the main factories but I'm ok with that.

Yeah their electrics are like their acoustics top shelf! You're Tele sounds very cool too and I like the mid position wiring your are describing.

I'm old school baby and love the basics including 50's wiring.

Martin is the gold standard like it or not and lots of folks subscribe to this.

My thinking was to sell my wares they had to be superior to Martins in all respects or who would invest that kind of money in what I produced. I used Martins as a benchmark to beat out and not to sound arrogant that was not all that high a bar. I did out source finishing but it was always my belief that a customer would prefer a world-class finish from a finishing pro over what I could squirt on my guitars and even though it cost me substantially more I priced my stuff to compensate for this.

One of the many things that Martin does very well is the shout-out to tradition and guitar history. We don't see a lot of innovation coming from Martin and when we do, counter top materials, laminated necks some folks are pretty critical of the departure from tradition.

Interesting how you feel about Taylors and I completely agree. Not going to say much else about Taylor other than we dropped them and no longer do repair work for them, our choice....

I guess I need to go into some stores, and really look at things. I've built a dozen violins, and 3 guitars now without having anything ever before me! I look at pictures and plans, or draw them up myself, and go to it.

Probably not a business plan.

It is the details that I know nothing about. I've read Hesh's tutorial on nuts, and it is not much different from a good violin nut. I see way more good violin nuts, than good guitar nuts. Lots of DEEP grooves out there people.

I always feel like I'm in the way if I'm just looking, and inspecting instruments in a store. I know that I have no intent of buying. I'm still just learning how to play. I'd like to see how things are done. Transitions are one thing. Sometimes they may need to be pointed out. I've had a LOT of things pointed out on my violins! That's how you get better.

Level of finish? Still working on that!

_________________
Why be normal?

I'm intrigued "Hesh's tutorial on nuts". I'll have to look this up, there's always room for improvement.

_________________
Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

I've found this to be true. Of the steel string guitars I've sold, those most like Martins sold easily. Some acoustic Gibson-like ones too.

_________________
formerly known around here as burbank
_________________

http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I do have to have the finish conversation with anyone who wants me to build a guitar for them. And I have considered having them finished elsewhere if that is high on their priority. Like if they want it to look like a Martin right out of the factory then they will have to pay for someone else to do it. So far though it's all good. And since my main finish is French Polish now then that would never look like a factory guitar anyway. But I am fairly comfortable now with my FP finishes at least being good as some well respected makers of classical guitars.

Factories have the luxury of having a wide variety of skilled workers and the finishing department is one of those. I'm sure they are trained to do it but nothing beats 8 hours a day for years to learn how to do it right. Us small shop luthiers just don't have that time and it shows. Of course I enjoy the luxury of not having to make a living doing this and a customer base where I have more often then not heard them say "I don't want it to look like a Martin..." Lucky for me because it's not

Many years ago I had a Taylor that came from the store with the best setup I'd ever seen on a new guitar. It sounded terrible, poor volume, tone-wise nothing in the lower registers but the neck shape was at that time the most perfect and comfortable neck I'd hand in my hands. Despite its terrible acoustic sound I purchased it happily and it did years of duty gigging in the corner of noisy bars with a plinky magnetic soundhole pickup and in all that time the great setup moved not one iota.

Pulled it out the other day from nostalgia, strung her up and gave it a strum. Yup still sounds like cardboard. Geometry still spot on. A superb tool for the blue-collar musician.

I am not to the point of selling the guitars I make, but my wife and I keep inching down that path, using some of our day-job skills, making plans for how to run a very small side business doing that. I think an important part of that plan is to figure out how best to reach and communicate with the right segment of the guitar buying public. By that I mean: My target customer is not the person who thinks Martins and/or Taylors are the best guitars, and need no improvement. My target customer is the person who appreciates the good things about those guitars, but wants a guitar that the large factories just can’t or won’t make. If you are trying to sell a handmade guitar to someone who thinks there is nothing better than a Martin, how do you ever win? But if you instead shift your focus to finding the customer who wants to buy something Martin just can’t or won’t make, you have a shot, assuming you can deliver what they want. There are definitely fewer of these types of customers out there, but I would rather spend my marketing time looking to connect with that smaller group of buyers than trying to convince the much larger group of Martin worshipers that they should want something different. We’ll see if my wife and I can come up with a good plan for how to do that. It will be fun trying. It’s a lot less pressure when you don’t need to rely on this as a necessary source of income.

It is probably true that we (very) small builders are not going to get the fit and finish to match the factories offering.
However surely what we can do is aim to get a great sound and great playability. We can aim to take the time and skills to get the best out of the materials we have compared to the standardised component approach. We can measure the stiffness of a given top and adjust thickness accordingly. We can do a certain amount of post completion adjustment etc.

In terms of aesthetics we may not have perfect finishing and details but other aspects can be used to make good looking guitars that are not copies of anything.

Hey but I don't have to sell guitars to make a living!

Cheers Dave

Worker hours are the most expensive input in a factory. They can't spend time making stuff fit, so they live by fit and finish. They can't take the time fine-tuning the acoustics, either, and 'custom' work of any sort is off the charts expensive. That's where hand makers find their niche.

I found Simon Winchester's book 'The Perfectionists' to be an interesting take on this. The chapter contrasting Henry Ford and Henry Royce (of Rolls-Royce) was particularly interesting. Ford used lots of measurement tools to make part that would be interchangeable, if sloppy. Royce's workers filed everything so that it fit perfectly, in this car. If something broke you could not get a replacement off the shelf; it had to be hand made to fit. Ford's production model proved amenable to large improvements in precision; we now have mass produced cars that fit as well, last as long, and run as reliably as any thing Royce made, which is one reason Rolls-Royce is no longer there.

Designer David Pye talked about how 'hand made' vs 'machine made' was a false dichotomy. He proposed that the real divide was between 'certainty' and 'risk'. I once saw a man who made wooden signs by cutting the letters and numbers freehand with a router. He'd take a blank, cut your name in it, spray it with paint, and then run it through a joiner to remove the paint that was not down in the letters. That's 'risk' with power tools. I use a set of plane jigs to make precise parts for rosettes; 'certainty' with hand tools.

Given the variability of wood, and especially top wood, dimensional certainty in building a guitar leads to acoustic risk. You can get 'arbitrarily close' to duplicating the sound of a particular instrument by spending time to match acoustic variables, such as resonant modes, but Martin or Taylor can't do that. For them the variability of wood is helpful. They make a bunch of guitars that all sound a bit different, and let the customers pick the one they like. Customers often come to hand makers with a particular sound in mind, and the luthier has to wrap a box around that. The more you understand about how the guitar works the lower the acoustic risk, but it's hard to do that and also sustain a high level of fit and finish. Luthiers rely on tool chops where a factory uses jigs and fixtures. As long as we use wood, particularly in the tops, those comparative advantages will probably persist.

I see Dave m2 beat me to it, and more succinctly.

Thanks Alan but your post said rather more!

I have appreciated David Pye's work which helps to settle those discussions as to what is really 'handmade'
I shall have to look up the Simon Winchester book.

Dave

That's been my take on it too. As of about ten years ago I sell 4 a year consistently and that's more than enough for me.

I was reminded of a story when I read this too. My band had a gig at a decent size venue about a decade ago. We came on after a Rush tribute band who were fantastic. We play all originals. So we get on stage play our hour and half set and had a wonderful response from the crowd. Later we were all hanging out at the bar and these college kids came over to talk to us. One of them was saying how much better the Rush band was because they sounded just like Rush. We're like... Okay dude glad you enjoyed them

Seems like you frequently hear stuff like “I like Taylors better than Martins because they make the action lower and they are easier to play”. Folks seem to frequently equate setup with brand.

I am also in the the group that thinks that given two guitars, one sounding better the other set up better, the average customer will often opt for the easier playing one.

I will admit that my guitars look like Martins but have a lot of features that put them, for better or worse, in a different ballpark.

Another Collings fan here.

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

The industry has changed a lot in the last 20 years … I imagine a new builder starting out in 2021 might be looking at ‘boutique’ factory guitars - Collings, Santa Cruz, Bourgeois, Lowden etc - as a yardstick for fit, finish, tone, rather than Martin etc

I am a huge fan of Collings guitars s well
It’s not just their incredible fit and finish but I just love their aesthetic…

It’s funny how that is it’s hard to put into words but sometimes I look at some guitars from different companies and I just say yeah that’s OK but pretty much without exception Collings guitars just do it for me I just love the way they look.

That being said I think there is a real place for hand makers that don’t make “perfect“ Guitars. I’m not trying to say they should be sloppy but there are several makers who do old-school varnish finishes that have a few little pools or runs in them and som not so perfect mittens on the binding etc.and it doesn’t take anything away from their craft. they’re going for that old school look like the way they used to build guitars and some are very successful in that niche.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk