Official Luthiers Forum!

So here it is, a brutal question to pose, probably even more brutal to answer honestly, but to all, especially those of you who have been lucky enough to lay hands on a collection of fine vintage instruments, what's your take? Are the better hand built steel string guitars of today, better sounding instruments than those well aged collectibles of yesterday??

Try and remove the sentiment and the temptasion to run with the pack, close your eyes and think before you answer, sure the soundboards and bracings of those rare old beauties have had much longer to aged in to each other and open up and I am sure they sound real good, but ........

You build instruments, or at least you exchange ideas with other builders, you strive to make the best sounding guitar that you possibly can. The fact is, like all builders since long before most of these fine old vintage guitars were fist glued up, you have probably looked at what is around and tried to improve on it, to make it better. The more you build, the more you seek, the more you seek, the more you learn and begin to understand, the more you learn the more you exchange and so on.

In fact with the revival of this craft and the Internet at your finger tips, more information and therefore more potencial to learn is available to you than has ever been available to any other generation of builders in history.

So, is it working?? Are we growing in this craft towards a better understanding? Is the science truely begining to amalgamate with the art? Are our guitars of today, or at least those of our more experienced craftsmen and craftswomen, better sounding instruments than those best builds of yesteryear?

As I mentioned above, please try to remove the sentiment, close your eyes and think about it and then, then give an honest answer. Regardless of how you vote, I think it would be interesting if we could explain why we chose to vote the way we did, IE, "I vote YES because better science has allowed clearer understanding of what is needed to get the most out of the structure as a whole." Or, I vote NO because we no longer have access to the same quality of material that was available back when these vintage guitars were made etc.

So please don't hold back even if you normally just casually lurk here, lets hear what you have to say, introduce yourself and share your thoughts and theories with us. Even if you have never played a vintage guitar it is fine, go ahead and vote any way, just mention that you are expressing an opinion or theory rather than your own experience, then we can all get a good picture of what people feel is true and what actual experience is telling us, but above of all, be brutally honest with your vote.

Cheers

Kim

Wow How to answer?

Are you referring to the sound of (pre war) vintage Martins (now) vs. a hand crafted by a talented builder fresh off the bench?

It depends on each guitar, each person listening and what that person likes in tonal response. There is really no way to answer your question in reference to sound.

I don't even think this is a valid comparison. The vintage guitars have had many decades to mature.

Now on the other hand; Have we advanced the craft?

I believe so. With all the knowledge at or fingertips we can't help but to have learned more than we would have with out the net. At least within the same time frame.

I do believe the percentage of quality, both structurally and musically, hand crafted guitars in relationship to the total # of handcrafted guitars built, has had to increased. And a large part of why is directly related to the Internet.

Best I can do for an answer.

What a wonderful question... I too do not have a definitive answer but some thoughts.

Builders today have much more information available to them than builders of the past. Not only from other luthiers, but from physicists, engineers, etc. all readily available at the touch of a button. It appears that luthiers are **understanding** how the instrument works much more today. We *know* certain things today that we did not know many years ago about the dynamics of guitar construction. This is good and well from a scientific standpoint, but then there is the artistry of lutherie...being able to incorporate science and art to get the desired result.

It also seems like beginning luthiers can progress much faster now because of the availability of resources and products. Any information about "how to" are available somewhere on the internet. Trial and error, I believe, is greatly reduced because of this.     

If nothing else I think the original question will help me put things in perspective. I often find myself getting too involved in the physics of how the instruments work (e.g. the "soundports suck" post). I must have read that thread 30 times trying to wrap my mind around the ideas being discussed. Then I ask "how much does it really matter??" Since many guitars sounded wonderful many years ago without all of the **science**, is knowing the scientific principles and theories necessary for what I am doing? Sorry for not staying exactly on task (I need to take my adderall). It is a beautiful question...looking forward to the other responses.   

The best sounding guitar I ever heard is a 1780 guitar made in London by that well known maker Anon, which I repaired, I like to think it was my repair that made it sound so good, but really it was the 200+ year old spruce top.

My 1930s Martins sound wonderful, interestingly my 1963 Martin sounds better. My guitars, well they sound like my guitars, closer to Lowden than Martin, but what will they sound like in 70 years?

Sorry can't answer your question as I think there is no answer. We all like a different sounding guitars. To me a modern day Lowden sounds better than a Vintage Martin (Why have I got 4 vintage Martins and no Lowden? Pension fund!) But to others the Vintage Martin sound is the holy grail.

Certainly the guitars being built today have enormous potential to be stunning in the future.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

I can see from the results that we have a lot of banjo players in here. Either that or nobody is taking the poll seriously.

70 year old guitars can sound nice but there were probably just as many average sounding steel strings as great sounding steel strings made - and very few exceptional ones. I remember someone saying that truly exceptional vintage guitars were rare - the proverbial "1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters and eventually one would get out a line of shakespeare" type of thing. Older guitars sound more crytalline and woody to me because of the wood aging and being played in for all that time. That doesn't necessarily mean they sound "better", just older and more broken in.

It's kind of unfair to compare the old with the new, but I think that a lot of today's builders are making better guitars than Martin and Gibson did back in the day. I believe that some of the current crop of handbuilt guitars will sound as good or better in 70 years as the great pre-war guitars do now.

There are not many great old guitars now, but in 70 years there will hopefully be a plethora of exceptional instruments for our grandchildren and their kids. I think people take a little better care of instruments now than in the past, so hopefully these handbuilt guitars of today will be around for a long time.

I'm not one of you guys who builds steel strings - all my experience comes from visits to Healdsburg and Newport, places like Gruhn's guitars and owning one nice vintage guitar and one exceptional newer instrument. Having played lots of older guitars and a few high-end new guitars, my opinion is that the new guitars have the edge over the vintage stuff. Hopefully guitars will get better as each new generation of builders comes along.

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John Lewis
Wannabe builder owned by 2 crazy dachshunds

Modern guitars are great just so long as they look and sound exactly like the
old guitars. Preferably they should be a dreadnought, as that is the
shapeless, dull, bland tone that people have been conditioned over the years
to think of as good. So long as you build it to look like an old D-28 and
sound like an old D-28 it can sound as good as an old D-28. Whether or not
a new instrument sounds better is directly proportional to the
reputation and/or celebrity endorsements held by the builder.

Banjos rule....

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

So subjective. At GAL last year, the Steel String Listening session pitted "blind" several makers guitars and some vintage(one for sure). Really hard to separate the sounds, overtones, sustain,range.... even the room was a variable. Afterwards it was like a wine tasting.. they all tasted, er, sounded great! Drunk on sound!

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Greg
http://garibaldiinstruments.com/

I chose where's my banjo I mostly play ukulele ans the most vintage guitar I
have played is 10 year old plywood

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Zac

Anchorage Alaska

Finshed my 1st! See #1 here

[QUOTE]close your eyes and think before you answer, [/QUOTE]

   Woah! Have I been doing that wrong, I usually open my mouth before I think! Thanks for the tip Kim!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

I cant answer this either...

Here are my thoughts though:

I certainly think that today's hand built guitars are built better than the vintage instruments, but I attribute that to better tools and tighter controls on humidity and glues. I have looked inside quite a number of old pre-war Martins and Gibsons and the craftsmanship leaves a lot to be desired. I say this because I look inside of one of mine or any other quality luther's guitars and I see perfect seams and usually no glue that is visible and most, if not all, chisel marks sanded smooth.

Better sounding???/ I cant answer that. I think it goes to show that craftsmanship and good sounds are not necessarily sononomous with one another. I'll agree with my buddy Hesh on this one.... beauty is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.

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Reguards,

Ken H