Endangered species

Guitar builders have a rather unusual   relationship with woods.  Basically I think of myself (and, truth be know, most other builders) as a wood slut.  I love wood of all sorts but am particularly enamored by fancy woods which make guitars that are lovely to look at and lovely to hear.  Rosewoods, koa, etc.  Unfortunately many of these woods are endangered (brazilian rosewood), close to being endangered (ebony, Madagascar rosewood, south american mahogany, etc). These woods are covered by an International treaty known by the acronym CITES.   Some may not be endangered but the “good stuff” is in short supply and expensive (koa).  Some of these woods cannot be legally shipped across international boarders without extensive documentation, which may not be available.  The other “side” of the issue is that buyers of high end guitars expect high end woods.  this expectation often puts us at odds with the supply of available wood and its legality.   So whats a poor guitar builder to do?

In my case I have thought about this a lot and I have “a plan.”  To me the greatest concern is south american (Honduras) mahogany which I think is indispensible for necks.  I started buying this wood about 10 years ago and hopefully have enough neck wood for the rest of my building career.

Brazilian rosewood:  I have a few sets that I have had for a long time and there are a few suppliers who can provide CITES certification (which may or may not be legitimate).  The prices are astronomical and the quality no where near what it was “back in the day.”

Koa is available, but the nice stuff is very expensive.  I understand that in Hawaii (which is the only source for Koa) it is now being sustainably harvested so it may continue to be available.

The list goes on and the risks are considerable.  The Gibson Company (whose president is very active in the sustainable wood movement) have been raided by the government for (maybe) illegal Madagascar rosewood shipments.  If they have been decieved by their suppliers then what is someone like me to do?   The answer, I suppose, is to be as careful as I can be with the woods I purchase and with the suppliers I rely on.  Also to suggest to my customers that there are alternatives which make simply fabulous guitars (cocobolo is, I believe, every bit the wood that brazilian rosewood is, and beautiful to boot).

Mostly, we all need to think about these issues, keep our eyes and ears open and try to walk softly on this planet.  Which leads to one final thought:  I probably do not have much sway with the Brazilian government, but I suspect that if a genuine effort was made to sustainably harvest brazilian rosewood (or other rainforest woods) the economic return to Brazil could be significantly greater than that realized by slash and burn destruction of the rainforest.  Just a thought.

A year later

Well it has been almost exactly one year since I started this blog.  I have not posted as often as I thought I might and I have not noted a tsunami of readers.  Hopefully that means that I (and my potential readers) have an actual life and can’t spend hours every day hanging out here.  I think this is a hopeful sign.

Speaking for myself, I manage to spend about 6 days a week in the shop and my current batch is moving along well.  Bodies are finished and sprayed and the necks are in the spray booth.  This is one of the more exciting times since I can see the end of the tunnel – where I will be able to hear these bits of carpentry turn into musical instruments – and maybe justify the label of “Luthier.”

The economy continues to be more than a bit difficult for someone who sells non-essential items. Still, overall, my business is down only about 10′% this year and I know businesses who would kill for that stat.  I have orders for the next batch (although it is not full).  Still, every time I talk to someone who expresses an interest in my guitars I get a flutter of hopefulness.  I tell myself that one should not count your chickens before they hatch but I can’t completely suppress that little flutter of hope.  I tell myself that this is a sign that I still love my work and look forward to every day in the shop.  Maybe I am not deceiving myself.

Missing Again?

Once again I have been missing for some time.  Apparently even I do not find my thoughts as interesting as some other bloggers.  Ah well.  Some thoughts that have accumulated in my pea sized brain:

Healdsburg: I was at the Healdsburg show in mid-August and had a wonderful time.  Spent time with a lot of friends, made some new ones, went to Tom Ribbike’s birthday party, and, sadly, did not sell a guitar.  My sense of the show was that sales were slow but not as slow as we all feared.  Since I have taken a number of orders since the show I am somewhat relieved.

We took my daughter and her husband with us (us being Susan and Gabe) and while Gabe and I flogged the guitars at the show, Susan and the kids did the wine country and the ocean.  they had a wonderful time.  We had some wonderful meals.  All in all, everyone was happy.

Here we are in early October and we have had two snowstorms so far – way ahead of schedule.  The shop has stocked up on guitar humidifiers for the season but I would have liked a bit more fall and more time to ride my bike.  Maybe I still will be able to do so.

Today I went out and rented a 3/4 size Cello for my 10 year old grandson (Raafe).  Music and music education are so important and must go on.  For this occasion, the bank of grandma and grandpa is open.

I will have an article coming out soon in Acoustic Guitar on the subject of guitar warranties.  A nice way to combine my careers in the law and guitar repair.

I have spent a fair amount of time recently talking to customers about things that make guitars sound good/better.  Just for the record, I believe there is no magic wood and that fancy bridge pins will do very little for the sound of your guitar.   They may make them look cool but that’s about it.  The sound of a guitar is largely determined by the player.  Beyond that, the builder, body size and neck length (12 or 14 fret) are the most important.  That said, most of the small details can have some impact of tone and can add a lot to the owner/player’s satisfaction.  What I make are custom guitars and these details are important.  Few are transformational but combined they can make the guitar unique.

See you next time.

Why I went missing.

Well its been quite a while since my last post. Mostly I have been busy finishing my current batch (more about this in a bit). Then, in early June I went to the ASIA symposium in Pennsylvania. (ASIA stands for American Society of Instrument Artisans – a collection of pro and amateur instrument builders (and repairers). Got to see a lot of old friends (this really is quite a close knit community – so much so that there is a Socialogy Professor at Yale who is writing a book about the Luthier Community). I also gave a talk – largely how the issues of ethics have changed in this field over the last 38 years. Surprise – a whole roomful of people actually came to hear me!! The Symposium was held about 20 minutes from the Martin Guitar Factory, so naturally I had to visit. Actually I had good business reasons to visit. My shop is one of Martin’s largest Warranty Service Centers and I wanted to meet some of the folks in the Service Department who I knew only as voices on the phone. I also visited the new Martin Guitar Museum which is part of the factory’s Visitor Center and I took an extensive tour of the factory. The Museum and the tours are available to the general public and are free. I HIGHLY RECOMEND THIS!!! Sometimes even Chris Martin leads the tour.
So, a word about the guitars in this batch. Four of them are designated for the Healdsburg Guitar Festival (August 14 – 16). (I have photos on the web site at: http://www.hoffmanguitars.com/Healdsburg%202.htm). This show is a big deal in my business and is also lots of fun. there will be well over 100 guitar makers showing their instruments, continuous demonstrations by wonderful players and lots more. It is also quite a social event for the builder community – many of us have known each other for years but only see each other at these shows. It is also held in Santa Rosa California, right in the middle of California’s wine country. It is called the Healdsburg Festival since it was held there for the first 10 years or so and Santa Rosa is only 12 miles from Healdsburg. Bring your family and have a wonderful time!

Arts Education

I am of an age to remember with great pleasure the singing of Linda Ronstadt, and in fact my employees will tell you I still listen to too much of her music. That said, I think the following, which I found online, is a wonderful expression of how important Arts Education is.

Opinion: Arts Advocacy Day testimony from Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt

Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 03/31/2009 12:05:00 AM PDT

Editor’s note: The following is the full testimony Linda Ronstadt is delivering today to a Congressional subcommittee as part of Arts Advocacy Day. Ronstadt, a Grammy-award winning singer, is artistic director of the San José Mariachi and Mexican Heritage Festival.

Mr. Chairman and Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to be here. My name is Linda Ronstadt, I am a singer, and I am pleased to be a part of the Americans for the Arts delegation and to come to our nation’s capitol for Arts Advocacy Day. I am also here to testify in favor of a Fiscal Year 2010 appropriation of $200 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Before I discuss the topic of my remarks, I would like to share a bit about my personal background, which informs my conversation with you today.

I grew up in the desert in Tucson, Arizona on what was then a rural route. My grandfather’s cattle ranch had been whittled down considerably in size as a result of the financial storms of the last depression, but we were pretty happily established there amid the cactus and the cottonwoods. My family had built a little compound with my grandparents in one house, my father and mother and the four of us kids in the other.

I don’t remember when there wasn’t music going on in some form – my father whistling while he was figuring out how to fix something, my older brother practicing the “Ave Maria” for his performance with the Tucson Boys Choir, my sister sobbing a Hank Williams song with her hands in the dishwater, my little brother struggling to play the huge double bass.

Sundays, my father would sit at the piano and play most anything in the key of C and sing in his beautiful baritone: love songs in Spanish for my mother, maybe a few Sinatra songs while he remembered single life before children and responsibilities, and before the awful war that we won, that time. My mother would play Ragtime or something from Gilbert and Sullivan.

When we got tired of listening to our own house we would tramp across to my grandmother’s where we got a pretty regular diet of classical music. They had what they called a Victrola and would listen to their favorite opera excerpts played on 78-RPM recordings. On Saturdays, they would tune in to the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast or sit at the piano trying to unravel a simple Beethoven, Brahms or Liszt composition from a page of sheet music.

Evenings, if the weather wasn’t too hot or freezing and the mosquitoes not threatening to carry us away to the land of Oz, we would haul our guitars outside and sing songs until it was time to go in, which was when we had run out of songs.

There was no TV, the radio couldn’t wander around with you because it was tethered to the wall, and we didn’t get enough allowance to buy concert tickets. In any case, there weren’t many big acts playing in Tucson, so if we wanted music, we had to make our own. The music I heard there, in those two houses, before I was ten years old, provided me with enough material to explore for my entire career, which has stretched from the late sixties until now.

It gave me something else too, something even bigger than that. It gave me an enormous yardstick to measure my experiences against generations of other people. It placed me in a much larger cultural context, and helped me to locate my humanity.

Sometimes, it shocked me when music revealed the intensity of an emotion I was feeling, something I hadn’t even realized I felt so keenly or disturbingly until I had a musical lens to bring it into focus. As renowned music educator Karl Paulnack, Music Director and conductor of the orchestra at the Boston Conservatory said about great music: “It has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.” Years later, I would have the same emotional experience paging through works of classic literature. It occurred to me: no school curriculum would be complete without the works of Shakespeare, Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, Henry James, Edith Wharton or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Why then would it be complete without a working knowledge of Mozart, Beethoven or George Gershwin?

In the United States we spend millions of dollars on sports because it promotes teamwork, discipline, and the experience of learning to make great progress in small increments. Learning to play music together does all this and more.

José Abreu, the founder of El Sistema, the children’s music curriculum currently considered to be the best in the world, says this: “An orchestra is a community that comes together with the fundamental objective of agreeing with itself. Therefore, the person who plays in an orchestra begins to live the experience of agreement. And what does the agreement of experience mean? Team practice, the practice of a group that recognizes itself as interdependent where one is responsible for others and the others are responsible for oneself. Agree on what? To create beauty.”

Karl Paulnack has also described how the arts, including music, were able to survive even the nightmarish conditions of the Nazi concentration camps: “The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, ‘I am alive, and my life has meaning.’”

Music exists to help us identify our feelings. Through music one can safely express strong emotions like anger, sorrow, or frustration that might otherwise find a release in violence, or, just as bad, cause one to seek the numbing relief of drugs.

I’m continually stunned and deeply concerned when I hear groups of school children trying to sing something as simple as “Happy Birthday” and they are unable to match pitch. Many recent school children’s performances that I have observed sounded like a gray wash of tone-deaf warbling. It is not the children’s fault.

Increasingly, people’s experience with music is passive. We delegate our musical expression to professionals. Music cannot be learned without both listening and playing. We need to teach our children to sing their own songs and play their own instruments, not just listen to their iPods. Do we really want our children’s musical experience to be limited to the mainstream commercial music that is blared at them continually? They deserve and are fully capable of learning to express themselves in the more subtle and profound ways of traditional and classical music.

As I am now 62, I have become concerned about keeping my mental faculties intact and recently acquired, from National Public Radio, a program I can do at home called Brain Fitness. It was developed by Michael Merzenich, a leading researcher on neuroplasticity, which is how our brains can change and adapt to meet new challenges like stroke, head trauma, or old age. When I opened up the program on my laptop, I was very surprised to discover that hours and hours and hours of the exercises were based on one’s ability to distinguish pitch. It turns out that this ability has a great deal to do with how our brains process and store information. Do you know a way of putting in sequence 26 things and remembering them? Well, the alphabet has 26 letters and we all learned it the same way: A-B-C-D-E-F-G… I can still remember a bit of a grammar lesson the nuns at Saints Peter and Paul School drilled into my head by using the tune of “Sweet Betsy From Pike.” “First person refers to the speaker you see. For personal pronouns use I, mine, and me”.

For thousands of years human history was passed down the generations using music as a way to remember long sagas before they could be written down. In these modern times, we tend to think of music as an entertainment or something that helps a troop of soldiers to step out smartly in a parade. Music is not just entertainment. Music has a profound biological resonance and it is an essential component of nearly every human endeavor. Oliver Sacks, the noted neurologist, wrote a book called “Awakenings” in which he describes his patients whose brains were severely damaged by Parkinson’s disease. These patients were unable to walk, but when music was played they were able to get up and dance across the floor. Music has an alternate set of neurological pathways through our bodies and our brains.

Music programs have a very discernable positive effect on our children’s education. A recent survey by Harris Interactive of 450 randomly selected high schools revealed that students who are enrolled in a music program have a 90.2% graduation rate, while those who take no music classes have a 72.9% graduation rate. Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and associate dean of the School of Fine Arts at Kansas University, conducted a landmark study comparing test scores of students in a music program with students who had no music. Professor Johnson later testified before Congress, presenting some eye-opening data: students of all regions and socio-economic backgrounds who studied music scored significantly higher on math and English tests than students who did not study music.

Recently I have been invited to sing at several schools. I agreed on the condition that I not sing from the stage to a large school assembly but rather in the classrooms of first and second graders so that they could hear un-amplified music in a more natural setting the way I experience it in my living room. I know that many of these children don’t have families that play music at home. In fact, most of them have had no experience with anything but recorded music. They think music comes out of their television or computer screens, not out of people’s hands and mouths. After they got over the shock of discovering that we didn’t have volume knobs on our heads or on our acoustic guitars, they settled down and listened to our selection of folk songs from the early part of the twentieth century. These were not children’s songs. They were songs about building the railroad, exploring unknown territory and the loneliness of being a stranger in a new land. Afterward, we talked about the stories in the songs and how they might apply to their lives.

There are some excellent programs that promote live performances in the schools and they deserve to be supported. Yo-Yo Ma, the renowned cellist who performed recently at President Obama’s inauguration, has volunteered his time to perform in schools with the help of an organization called Young Audiences.

In my hometown of Tucson, an organization called OMA (Opening Minds to the Arts) has made a tremendous impact in helping children of many different cultures and languages to assimilate into the Tucson Unified School District. Children of African refugees, Native Americans, and Mexican immigrants, all have benefited from learning music, the universal language, as they struggle to become proficient in English and excel in their other subjects. In only the first year the program was implemented, the dramatic rise in test scores in schools being served by OMA surprised teachers and researchers alike.

Currently, I am acting as the artistic director of the Mexican Heritage Foundation in San Jose, California. We have a mariachi program that has functioned successfully in the schools since 1992 and an exciting math and music program in development.

And finally, as you may know, there is a conductor of staggering talent who has been hailed as the next Leonard Bernstein. His name is Gustavo Dudamel and he has toured the United States and Europe with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra to ecstatic reviews. He joins the Los Angeles Philharmonic as their Music Director in the fall. Perhaps you have seen him featured on 60 Minutes or in other national or international press. Here’s what matters to us today: this young conductor has a passion for music education because he knows its true power to alter the course of young lives. He was brought up in Venezuela in the extraordinary music education system that I mentioned earlier called El Sistema. It has existed for 35 years, and now reaches over 250,000 students and their families. A driving force in Dudamel’s life is to transform communities through participation in music. He is leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s YOLA or Youth Orchestra L.A. project, which is designed to serve children who have the most need and the fewest resources. ACCESS TO QUALITY MUSIC EDUCATION SHOULD NOT BE ONLY FOR THOSE WHO CAN AFFORD IT. THE BENEFITS ARE TOO GREAT. Today, children ages 7-16 in the urban core of Los Angeles receive free instruments, after-school music instruction and orchestra experience. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has already touched the lives of hundreds of children and their families and has plans to reach more. Imagine what can be accomplished if we support the arts, engage ‘at risk’ youth and help them succeed in school and in their lives. For ‘underserved’ families, indeed for all families, participation in music and the arts can help people reclaim and achieve the American Dream.

Me again:  Not much to be added to that.  I suppose that my business and avocation make me naturally inclined to support music (and arts generally) education.  Add to that the fact that my daughter is an art teacher at a very fine arts magnet school here in the twin cities (http://www.wmep.k12.mn.us/fair/ ) and you will find that I am quite passionate on the subject.  I can only hope that my readers will voice their support for arts education whenever the opportunity arises.

Summer is coming

Well, here in beautiful Minnesota it looks as if winter is pretty much over. We have seen days in the 60’s and I have been out on my bicycle a couple of times.
In my earlier post about humidity I predicted a lot of humidity related problems, and it turns out I may have underestimated the issue.   This was a tough year on guitars and we saw a lot of cracked guitars.
Summer presents a whole host of other problems for the unwary (or uneducated) guitar owner.  The main potential issue is heat.  The inside of a parked car in the sun can easily reach 140 in a short time.   Since the glues we use begin to soften at about 120, it is easy to see how a guitar left in the car can self destruct quite easily.  The most common problem is that the bridge peels off.  Normally a bridge reglue is warranty work (at least for Martin and Taylor it is) but not if heat was the culprit and it is very easy to see if this was the cause.  The glue in such a case has a very distinctive look. Another thing to be careful with is insect repellants. They can soften the finish on many guitars and the damage is both unsightly and expensive to repair.
The good thing about summer is that there will be a plethora of music festivals – bluegrass, flatpicking, etc etc.  Grab your guitar and go.  I will be at the Healdsburg Guitar festival this summer (mid-August) showing off my guitars.   I hope some of you can come.  It is a wonderful show – you will be absolutely amazed at the variety and quality of small shop guitars that are out there.  As part of this show this year Michael Gurian and I will be presenting a workshop on customer relations and related issues.  There is a remote possibility that it will be interesting and/ or entertaining.  Much more interesting will be a workshop presented by Tim Sparks (who plays one of my guitars).   If you are not familiar with his work, you should be. Look here: http://www.timsparks.com/
Well, enough of my idle musings for now.  More later, I am sure.

ETHICS AND REPAIRS

When I was in law school we had to take a course in Professional Responsibility (ethics) and when I was a practicing attorney I had to take continuing legal education on the subject every year.  Guitar Repair persons (have I mentioned that I don’t much like the term Luthier) do not have to take such classes, and I am not suggesting that we should.  That said, there are some interesting ethical issues to consider.

Vintage Guitars: In the last decade or so the market for “vintage” guitars has become very active and often very expensive (we have one customer with a 1934 D-28 which is likely worth $100,000).  One of the absolute hallmarks of this “market place” is that the guitar be as original as possible.  As a result we need to have a discussion with the owner of any guitar which may be “collectible” about whether the repair/modification will affect its collectible value.  Often the owner will say that they just want to play it and will never sell it, but you need to have the discussion anyways so that they have complete information.   Even if the customer understands the facts and the risks, there may be a situation where I could not in good conscience do the requested work.  What if a customer has a cosmetically fairly rough 1934 Martin D-28 and they ask me to refinish  it?  (This has never happened to me).  Or what if they ask me to convert it from the original bar frets to more modern frets?  Should I do it?  Probably I would not.  What about installing an under saddle pickup in a 1930’s guitar and reaming out the end pin hole for the strap jack?  When my shop first opened a customer brought in a 1920’s Martin with flush frets – i.e. that had been originally been intended to be played in a slack key style.  He wanted us to remove the flush bar frets and put in regular frets (he might have been willing to accept more “normal” bar frets but they weren’t available at the time.)  We did the work.  Would I do it now?  Maybe not, and if we did it would be with bar frets even though they cost a good deal more.  Bottom line, any repair work or modifications to a collectible guitar requires an extensive discussion with the ownerwhich goes beyond the simple cost of the repair.

Normal guitars: One of the situations we encounter every day is a repair where the cost of the repair excedes the value of the guitar.  this involves several layers of consideration on our part.  First we need to have a fairly good idea of the guitar’s value so that we can consider this factor. We keep a Blue Book handy for this discussion.   Then we have to talk to the customer about this “cost/benefit” issue.  Sometimes the customer will have a sentimental attachment (it was my first guitar!;   It was grandpa’s guitar!  etc.) to a guitar which makes them willing to invest an amount that is not supported by the resale value of the guitar.  Here again, the key is communication – does the customer have the information to make an informed decsion?  It is my job to be certain that they do.  Sometimes I will send a customer off to a couple of guitar shops to do some “research” – to try and see if the money would be better spent on a new instrument than in trying to revive a cheap or badly broken instrument.

So as it turns out, our discussion with a customer often goes way beyond “what will it cost to reglue this bridge?”  I feel that this extended discussion is both essential and ethical.

It also seems to me that this is not just a matter of good ethics.  It is good business.  If you treat your customers with respect and good ethics they will appreciate it and are more likely to come back in the future and to tell their friends about their good experience at my shop.

ART vs. CRAFT

In about a month the Plains Art Museum in Fargo ND is opening an exhibit they call The Art of the Guitar, and it will feature guitars by me, Jim Olson, Mike Keller, Brian Applegate and others. They have asked me to speak at their opening event and I will be ruminating on the subject of Art vs. Craft. This has been a subject of long standing discussion, tension, friction and tension in the Art (and Craft)worlds.
I am not sure that I can offer any truly illuminating insights on this subject but I find it very interesting to think about. I generally think of myself as a craftsman and am not even very fond of the term luthier because of the implied exclusivity. The guitars I build, while artful (i.e. the shapes of guitars are artistic) and, hopefully, tastefully elegant, but I am not often using extensive inlay or other “art” in my guitars. I really see them as a tool for the real artist – the musician – not an art form themselves. That said, there are many builders these days who are clearly aspiring to make works of ART, and what they do truly amazes and impresses me. I think there can be no question that folks like Grit Laskin, Larry Robinson or Harvey Leach (among others) are truly artists and what they are making is ART. I wonder sometimes if the value created by this artistic element makes the guitars too valuable to be a truly musical instrument – i.e. are they played on a regular basis?

I don’t have any answers here, just some interesting (to me) questions. Any thoughts out there?

More about MAGIC BULLETS

There is one “Magic Bullet” that may be more than hot air.    In recent years I have been moving towards use of traditional hot hide glue on structural aspects of my guitars. (I am not the first builder to do this, by any means) I started with top braces and the bridge.  Next I glued the top to the sides with hide glue.  In the current batch I am also gluing back braces with hide glue and gluing the back on with hide glue.  Does this make a difference?  Hard to say for sure but I seem to notice an incremental improvement.  All those lovely Martins and Gibsons from the 20s, 30’s and 40s were done this way.  Recently Martin started making its “Traditional” series guitars that use hide glue (along with a variety of other “vintage” techniques), and they sure are lovely sounding guitars. I also like working with it – the clean up is a bit easier and it just feels a bit more “organic.”

We shall see.  Not a magic bullet but maybe an incremental improvement and I think that this is the way to do this work.  Start with your standard process and make one change.  Try it for 10 guitars or so and see what your ear tells you.  I have been doing it this way for about 38 years and it seems to work.  Besides, I would likely get very bored if I didn’t keep making thoughtful changes in my designs and process.

Magic Bullets

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Internet.  On the plus side, it is a wonderful way to connect with family, friends and customers.  I certainly can use it to get the word about my guitars out to the world.  I have had a web site since 1997 which, I think, makes me an “early adopter” of this technology.  On the negative side, there is a lot of simply bad information on the web which passes as some sort of gospel truth.  And not because the purveyors of this information have bad motives – just bad information.

Which brings us to “magic bullets.”  Look in some of the chat rooms about guitars and you will see innumerable posts about the latest way to transform your guitar:  exotic woods, fancy bridge pins of a wide variety of materials, nuts and saddles of many materials, removing the Popsicle brace from Martin Guitars, etc. etc.  I do not intend to argue against any of these “fads”, or even to argue that they have no impact on the tone of a guitar.  In fact they all do.  BUT, none of them have a transformative effect on the sound of a guitar.  The (not so) simple fact is that guitars are an enormously complex system and each of the elements impacts the sound.  For example,  the impact of wood will be affected by the species, how it was cut, how it was dried, and how thick it is, to name just a few factors.  then there is bracing, body shape and thickness, etc. etc.  To suggest that any one of these will transform the sound of the guitar simply ignores the complexity of the instrument.

What then does determine the sound of the guitar?  All of these, and most important, THE BUILDER!!!  It is the builder who controls all of these elements (often unconsciously) and has the greatest impact on the tone and quality of the instrument.

You might say,”Well Charlie, what do we look for?”  The answer is as simple as the guitar is complex – we look for an instrument that sounds good to our ears and feels good in our hands.  If it can pass those tests, it matters not one bit what the bridge pins are made of.

More to come.