I couldn't agree more. However, I would be concerned about the building skills of a highly skilled player. Each vocation requires a lifetime of study and practice, so it follows that a master builder cannot and need not be a master guitarist. After all, I thought I knew a little about how guitars worked until I listened to the rest of this presentation, so in the reverse situation, I would have made a real fool of myself. Even so, he'd have done himself a favor to have someone else play the intro!

Christopher Rude

Christopher Rude Does the name Wayne Henderson mean anything to you ?

Yes, I take your point. He excels in both disciplines. Perhaps I am over-generalizing with regard to the playing ability of luthiers. Even so, maybe we would agree that Henderson represents the exception rather than the rule.

the average luthier probably starts off learning to play then discover they love building guitars a lot more and put their minds to that. Id bet most luthiers arent very good players. And very few great players could build a decent guitar

Made me snarf yo

blackbird with a broken back got thrown out of a 5th floor window in an atempt to make the thing fly.....

Hé tried at least

The guitar sounds horrible. Maybe the guy is tone deaf? Also the strings are rattling on the frets.

I'm crying laughing with my family now bahaha

My same initial thought, unfortunately.

It was painful to hear. Maybe this should have been entitled: "Making guitars with a tone deaf guitar builder".

I don't think it's the guitar that was out of tune...

My sediments exactly and I do believe this guy may have a mathematical mind for building a guitar however if he can’t tune it his presentation is mute

Simply awful

i think he was deliberately playing without any care for accuracy, his later little bits sounded like he knows what he's doing, it was just because the talk was about sound, rather than playing. it wasn't clear that he was making fun, but i think that was the intention.

***** Oh well.

it killed me aswell hahaha

Xalan yeah no doubt... that guitar sounds terrible

man - NO KIDDING !! didn't he edit this at all ??!! pretty embarrassing...

should just played each open string from lowest to highest and saved the embarrassment !!

You're welcome Mike! We're glad to help :) - Brooklyn

You're welcome Michael, we're glad we can help - Brooklyn

Yes every critiquing playing i feel they missed, how valuable this class is to aspiring luthier's he scientifically laid out an artform that many see a mystic, i can't express in words the value i have gained from this vid not even finished it and i know i will rewatch again & again. and use this info to teach my musician friends the science & woodwork that create, tone and resonance in acoustic stringed instruments. Info is even valuable for wood percussion.

Negative comments are like people (making fun of and discrediting) einstein for the way he holds his pencil and writes his 4's . How cares he just have us laws to better understand our universe. This is the final piece i needed to control what the guitar sounds like anyone can make one look like a great guitar their value is audible and i feel i can now start to control that. There is no amount of money that is too much to get this info and we get it FREE. BLESS EVERYONE WHO THIS GIVES A RICHER UNDERSTANDING OF THE ACOUSTICS OF WOOD. im off to practice and collect wood i will be back when i have invented all my dream instruments.

Glad you enjoyed it!

ill build electrics all day long and have zero doubt i can make a brilliant electric. i wouldnt even attempt an acoustic

@@cdreid99999 electric has none of this if you have a str8 fretboard & saddle + pickup. A shoe could sound great. acoustics takes more wood skill, acoustic/resonance/sound knowledge, . Mount strings pickup and action you got a great electric. Its gr8 to start learning fundamentals. This is a skill/craft/art. Like comparing riding the bike to the Tour de France

Hi Rockin Pip, sorry but I don’t have any videos on the process of making a guitar. Given the popularity of this video, I have been contemplating expanding the content. Construction methods would be inseparable from theory. - Dominic

Curtin University thank you Dominic, i appreciate your reply

@@curtinuniversity You should have tuned your guitar though. If was painfully out of tune.

You're welcome Christopher :) We are glad you like it - Brooklyn

Hi mailvilla, I think the dark piece of wood near the soundhole you refer to is the bridge plate. It is made from hardwood and has a couple of purposes. Firstly it is the piece of wood inside the guitar that the ball ends of the strings sit against. Even though it is hardwood, it can show a lot of wear from the strings on very old guitars and needs to be replaced. Its second function has to do with controlling the bridge rotation. The bridge and bridge plate form one of the most important braces on the guitar top. You can actually measure how much the bridge rotates before it is strung up and after it is strung to pitch. Attaching something as simple as a skewer stick to the bridge so that the stick protrudes towards the neck of the guitar and parallel to the top will achieve this. A large thick bridge plate will inhibit the bridge rotation whereas a smaller thinner bridge plate will allow more rotation. This is simplified as the bridge plate also contacts the X braces which act as a system. This is not a trivial subject. My style of building places great importance on how much bridge rotation occurs - as that is the sum of soundboard stiffness, brace stiffness and placement of braces. - Dominic

You can clearly hear it's awfully out of tune as well.

He's a professional luthier... he knows how to tune and set up a guitar.. but he didnt bother.......

For Everyone its a hobby just some people get big heads when they hear 1 person play worse than them. Great contribution can tell how much you guys learned from all this info.

Nope.

@@ed-rb4bs was going to ask if you learned anything from this awesome lecture but you already answered my question

It definitely was out of tune lol, it happens though

+ZeGypsy lol for sure

Thought that myself, you hear that and straight away you think your tone def, tune that fkin thing before you try to say that your physics make it sound better.

I thought he was making a joke and a funny start by playing a crappy guitar and explaining why it was crappy.

I thought it sounded like a washtub with strings attached. Worst I've heard!

I really thought it was a joke too. Everything about it sounds terrible!

Most people take PLAYING music far to seriously. The forget its PLAYING egos destroy fun and the ability to learn and grow. Ive been around far to many of those. I would join you guys for beers but NO playing or fun conversation this is music and building instruments.

Hi +Ellen Mach, I have no experience building ladder braced guitars. Greg Smallman has used this design successfully for his classical guitars. The premise is that you can get a very stiff top with ladder braces, and so you can make the top much lighter. I don’t know anything beyond that. - Dominic

Glad I found your comment .... avoided a duplicate. Yep, got the folrentine and venetian backwards.

Hi +Chad Redding, the species of wood used to brace the soundboard (and back) of a guitar is not as relevant as the stiffness of the wood used. Wood has such great variations in its mechanical properties that it is possible to make braces from two different species of wood that have identical mechanical properties. On the other hand it is possible to use the same species of wood from two different trees to make a brace and they have wildly different mechanical properties. So it is wrong to think “Martin used red spruce for their pre-war guitars so I must use red spruce to get a good sound from my guitar”. I use Sitka spruce for my bracing only because it is readily available to me. I weed out any brace stock with runout and skewed grain. What I do, and anyone serious about making guitars should do, is to consider the stiffness of the brace stock. There are many ways to measure stiffness. I prefer the old fashioned one of checking the grain count and flexing the brace with my hands. I don’t build with any pre-determined stiffness for individual braces, but find the stiffest wood and use that for the main X braces and the transverse braces on the lower bout. The skill in guitar making is not in what species of wood you use for bracing but how you carve the braces to control their stiffness. Using the stiffest wood allows you to make a brace with less mass. I haven’t explored the effect of different styles of kerfing - I use a traditional style. I have found that basswood is an excellent material to use. I was told by Bob Hoover during a tour of his Santa Cruz workshop that he liked the way basswood decouples vibrations from the top to the sides and the back to the sides. I was lucky enough to play some Santa Cruz guitars after the tour and have been a believer ever since. I handcut all my kerfing and have to say it’s my least favourite part of guitar making by a long shot. The best tool for breaking in a new guitar is your hands. I do have a Tonerite which is really just an expensive fish tank pump. Does it work? Yes it does take a brand new guitar and “settles” it down or “breaks it in”. It won’t change the fundamental tone of a guitar. Only someone who has strung up a guitar for the first time understands how much the sound changes in the first few weeks of stringing it up. Initially you might love the sound of a newly birthed guitar. Later that night you play it and it sounds awful. The next day it sounds heavenly etc. Once the tension soaks into the wood and it has been played (or Tonerited) for a few weeks, it’s essentially broken in. I sometimes get to play a friends guitar that gigs 3 or 4 nights a week, 3 hours at a time. That guitar sounds so wonderful and deep because the wood constantly gets a real workout. I think perhaps that is more what a Tonerite was designed to achieve. - Dominic

Mastery takes time only so many hrs they play more instruments instead of focusing on just playing one. Most guitarist cant build one, it may look right nut would sound shitty.

Glad it was helpful!