A Customer Review

As a craftsman, I strive to build the perfect guitar. There's no such thing of course, but I can at least aim towards that ideal by looking at my work with a critical eye. I'm clearly biased though. The only way to really see what I've done right and done wrong is to ask players and customers: how could I make my guitars better?

The owner of Ulma was kind enough to send me this thoughtful review after he'd had a chance to play it for a while. Is it perfect? No- but I'm really trying. Here's exactly what he had to say about his Sankey Guitar:

"The motivation for getting this custom guitar was the ergonomic body shape, which is not currently in production as a standard guitar. After three months, it is, in general, working well for me. The 15 degree wedge profile of the body tilts the fretboard toward my eyes, reducing the need to slouch over to look at my left (fretting) hand. In addition, it makes my left wrist straighter on open chords, which reduces fatigue.

"The leg cutout, combined with the thick cross-section of the body below the neck, positions and stabilizes the guitar while sitting, eliminating the usual jostling I have while playing an electric guitar while seated. The one part of the body I would change is the contour above the neck. My arm tends to slide toward the bridge end of the guitar due, I believe, to the convex shape. In order to anchor my right (strumming/picking) hand, I have to clench my bicep. (If you have any tips on how to get around this, please let me know.) From a design standpoint, if I was to respecify the guitar, I would ask you how this part of the body should be shaped to improve this situation. My first thought would be a straight, Flying-V type top (see sketch). I am reasonably certain this would be an improvement, but having missed the mark on the first try, I would want to consider more options.

"The neck/setup was the most pleasant surprise on the guitar. Easily the most comfortable neck I have tried, I can play barre cords for a long time without thumb fatigue, and yet there is no buzz. I will need to go through a full year of weather changes before I know for certain, but the neck seems also to be very stable in response to temperature and humidity changes.

"The electronics/pickups are dead quiet with no input, and go from warm, pleasant tones at low output to an excellent vintage overdrive at full range. The two knob setup, one tone and one volume control for both pickups with a bridge-both-neck selector switch, is simple and intuitive. I was concerned that I might miss having separate controls for each pickup, but this has not been the case so far, and I like the convenience of being able to switch between pickups and have the output level roughly the same.

"Dealing with you, both before the contract and through the build, far exceeded my expectations. Email replies were prompt, thoughtful, detailed and easy to understand, even in cases where I asked a lot of questions. No detail was left to chance. The neck shape discussion where I photographed my left hand on a guitar neck in fretting position, and you actually built a few neck shapes was well beyond what I could reasonably ask for. I would not hesitate to commission another instrument from you."

New Guitar: "the Black Swan"

I've somehow become something of a specialist in electric guitars with modern high-performance features. Features like headless ergonomic body shapes, complex wood laminations, multiscale fretboards, more than six strings, advanced electronic components... On this guitar, I got to do them all at once. It was an extremely ambitious and audacious project. Click on the pic to see how it worked out...

New Guitar: "Malena"

I am always interested in trying out new techniques, and creating guitars that will have new sounds. It turns out that one of the newest things for me is to try something very old. "Malena" is a guitar build specifically for the clients' love of Argentine tango music. She was build by very traditional and long-refined methods from spain, whence the guitar as we know it was born. I was surprised to find myself strongly drawn to this intelligent and thoughtful building process, which is so deeply entwined with the guitar itself as to be inseparable. Perhaps part of my future lies in the past after all.

(click on the pic for the full gallery description)

The ugliest tool in the shop

The tops (and sometimes backs) of my archtop guitars are carved by hand out of thick slabs of solid wood. While the shape on the ouside is important, what about the inside? It has to be smooth like the outside, but has to be precisely the right thickness, tapering thinner towards the edges.

How do I get them so thin without carving away too much? I know many luthiers use precision-machined deep-throated calipers, perhaps even with a digital readout. There exist also sets of carefully calibrated magnets that measure using their attractive force. But I use this, probably the ugliest tool in the shop:

It's a piece of scrap wood (from a trashed ikea chair, no less), with a knob of wood glued to one arm and a pencil jammed in the other. It's a very simpe machine. And yet, it has proven to be perfect for the job at hand; simply set the pencil (white in this case for drawing on walnut; a soft artist's pencil for light woods) the desired distance from the knob and draw it across the plate like this:

Wherever the wood is thicker than the gap, the pencil leaves a mark. The arms have a bit of spring to them, so I can tell how much thicker by observing how faint or dark the pencil marks are. Then I simply plane away a few shavings and test again. By adusting the gap and looking at the pencil marks, I can also carve the plate thinner toward the edges.

It's extremely precise, it marks and measures at the same time, and it's basically free. I've been using it for sixteen years and ten archtop guitars- and only replaced the pencil once. Ugly or not, it's one of my favourite tools.

New Gallery: Tube Amplifiers!

As promised, I'm going to start showing you some of the guitar amplifiers I've built. I've actually been tinkering with amps for as long as I have with guitars. My first attempt as an over-ambitious and under-informed teenager involved a cheap stereo console rescued from the neighbours' trash. It was a cheap power-transformerless design, and the experience of turning it into a guitar amp was so shocking (fortunately, only 120 volts... over and over and over) that I didn't dare touch one again for nearly 12 years.

But then, if you build guitars for a living, what are you going to do for a hobby?

Building amps is completely different from building guitars: hardly any woodwork, no room for improvisation, and an awful lot of math. It's more like learning a new language than honing a new skill. But the goal is ultimately the same: to create sound, nay TONE. Tone you've never heard, or heard only in your head and need to bring to life, or even tones vagely remembered and in need of resuscitation. And let me tell you a secret that most luthiers won't share: most of the tone is coming from the amp, not the guitar. Just between you and me...

Clic on the pic to go to my tube amplifier gallery. Just one amp there so far, more coming soon!