A thought experiment

[John Link]

Dave,

Copy-cats do not move the ball anywhere as far as instrument design goes (they may serve many musicians quite well, however). But there is a space between them and the lone wolf innovators. That's where I find the most compelling action. But the "tweeners" don't get the easy recognition for making a difference that the obvious innovators do.

Charles Fox told Brian Burns that he and Brian were "craftsmen" while Fred Carlson was an "artist". I can't quite see it that way, though I understand what Fox was getting at.

[John Link]

Four "tweeners" who have documented their strategies publicly are Brian Burns, Alan Carruth, Trevor Gore, and Ervin Somogyi. Hopefully, mentioning them will clarify what I am trying to point out.

[ken cierp]

As it see it we guitar makers are all "copy cats" and that's exactly as it should be -- we want the end product to sound like a "guitar" our sense of what we "want and need to hear" is demanding and unchanging. The strategy to get there is a combination of science, personal preferences and artistry. On the other hand -- Les Paul stretched six guitar strings along a 2x4 over an electro-magnet and came up with something that every body had to have and did not even know they needed it. That is innovation -- just like the PC's, Cell Phones, pulse windshield wipers to name a few.

I am a huge fan of Alex Degrassi -- however, I could not even listen to the posted video, with all due respect I found the sound/noise annoying to an extreme. $.02

[John Parchem]

He also builds some kick-ass harp guitars and simpitars played by some good musicians, including a 39 string model played by someone named Alex DeGrassi.
And a sweet double-neck Classical guitar recorded by Todd Green.
http://www.toddgreen.com/audio-todd-green-music.asp

Each and every one of his instruments are gorgeous master pieces. I just found the combination of the sounds with the sympathetic strings he was getting was a bit discordant to my ears. Alex DeGrassi is a great musician, and if I am engaged in other activities I appreciate the minimalism style I think he and other Windham Hill artists play. The long slow moving nearly unresolved chordal progressions work great as sound tracks for movies or even for activities, but if I am just trying to listen I feel very restless, wanting the music to go somewhere.

To John's and Ken's point there are builder applying science, engineering, tuned ears, and some innovated intuitive thoughts toward progressing guitar designs, not copy cats at all. Even in a classical guitar design Greg Smallman makes a very different instrument than a Torres style guitar, but it's sound is still very well accepted (by most anyway) in the classical guitar world. I think guys Like Carruth and Gore, first work to quantify what a great guitars sound is and then work to remove luck and inconsistency from the process of making great guitars. From there they also work to maximize the positive attributes and minimize the negative attributes found in many guitars. Others I appreciate innovate on small shop production techniques like Charles Fox.

Fred Carlson besides being a master craftsman and clearly a solid engineer is a true artist. I am only an engineer. I will never come up with something new an interesting, but as an engineer in my field I have come up with very new and innovated ways of solving a problem or progressing the state of the art. From that prospective I gravitate toward the work of Trevor Gore and Alan Carruth as they are giving me the tools to evaluate what is going on in the guitar.

To the thought experiment when looking at the bracing patterns, before I would move any braces I would need to understand the problem, I think two fold with a guitar: supporting the structural load of the strings and providing braces for the top and back plates to make a good guitar sound. Then I would want to know what each and every brace of a set of reference guitars is doing. Complicating any changes is that the instrument still subjectively needs to sound like a guitar.

The X-Brace was a marvel of innovation as it was a solution for a great portion of both problems when applied to the double load of steel strings. An incredibly elegant solution. Ladder braced guitars sound good, but over time I suspect they would be more prone to developing a hump near the bridge as they provide only longitudinal stiffness. In about the same mass of braces the X provides both. Some work from the X-Brace and try to improve it. I like Trevor Gore's Falcate bracing as it was an innovation on the X-Brace. It retained the positive attributes of the X-Brace but remove the structural discontinuity where the X crossed. Basically at that point the braces as a system looses half of it stiffness. Other bracing solutions try to separate the two problems. For example CF rods remove the need for the top braces to structurally support the neck against string load. Terminating the strings in a tail piece. Relieving the top of some of the string loads allows a large variety of bracing patterns. Great instruments have been built in this way, but as the instrument moves farther away from the current tradition it starts to loose some of the characteristic sound looked for. Sure every now and then a whole new an accepted instrument is created, like the electric guitar.

[Dave Bagwill]

I dig what you all are saying, and pretty much we're in agreement.
As to Fred Carlson - well I'm just saying the world of lutherie would be poorer without a few like him. He does fetch a pretty penny for some of his stuff ($15K and up for certain models) and has a waiting list - and it's not all weird. :-)

And I don't use the term 'copy-cat' in a derogatory manner at all :-). Most of the time, it's what I try to do.

It's all good fellas.

[John Link]

Fred Carlson's web site now says his latest projects cost about $40,000 and take him 1,000 hours to complete, for $40 per hour gross. When you deduct the cost of materials, hardware, and especially the overhead of operating his shop for 1,000 hours, the net would be somewhat less per hour.

It costs almost $100 per hour to get a car worked on these days, so I have to think his projects are right reasonable at $40k, if what he does is what you want. In the past he sought to make low priced instruments, but he says he no longer does that. An early "Model A Dreadnautilus" could be had for a paltry $500. (I would imagine they are worth a whole lot more than that now.) Carlson says he made just slightly more than $3 per hour on them as he improved the instruments and put more and more work into each unit.

It is impossible not to be charmed by the guy. He reminds me of the inventor in BACK TO THE FUTURE. The prose in his apology for taking so many more orders than he could possibly fill is irresistible (maybe because I was not one who ordered an instrument that I will never get). He also apologizes for developing a list of people whom he said he might build an instrument for, that he also cannot possibly fulfill.

Yes, Fred Carlson has been good for lutherie.

[Paul C]

That is priceless thankyou!. That is a story that maybe too familiar at least to me anyway