Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jim Morris on December 28, 2016 at 1:54am

Yeah Taff, you've got to have a go at one. Here's a CB mandolin I recently finished which is one of the louder ones I've made. A bit harsh tonally to my ear but not as terrible as some low end factory ones.
https://youtu.be/dN8tWS60cxY

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Permalink Reply by Kigar on December 27, 2016 at 3:51pm

Regarding the volume (or lack of), in some ways it can be a good thing.  I like taking a cbg and/or cbu for campfire playing, it does not disturb the neighbors.  For me, once the volume is at a decent level, a good tone trumps volume any day.  Anything can be amplified.

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Permalink Reply by turtlehead on December 27, 2016 at 6:13pm

I agree with everything that's been said, and to bring it back around to Robert's original question:  I don't think the luthiers are the ones looking down on these homemade instruments, it's more the average Joe guitar player who has been convinced that you need a top of the line instrument to make some music.  I'd say we've proven that's not the case by now.  

That's the spirit of no rules isn't it?  You can make an instrument out of anything and play whatever you want on it. If you want it to sound halfway decent and make what is considered by most people to be music, well then there all all sorts of rules, conventions, standards and aesthetics to consider.  It's not like we're re-inventing the wheel here, more like a re-construction or de-construction.

It's that de-construction that I've come to love.  Like Oily's haiku shows us, there is something special about constraints. That's where the real good stuff comes from. Stripping it down to 3 strings or less has forced me to go back to learn the basics of music at a fundamental level, which has been probably the most enriching experience of my life.

No rules is a state of mind, re-assuring us that we can take risks and be ourselves, with one foot in the past honoring tradition, and one foot pointed to the future.  I'm glad there are the Jim Morris' of the world trying to perfect the acoustics of these little resonators, and I'm also glad I have a whole bunch of cheap electronics in front of me ready to help make the sounds I have swirling around in my head.

What the luthiers understand and what I didn't get at first is that it's all about incremental steps toward a more perfect thing.  It isn't about saying that intonation is somehow breaking "the rule of 12", which isn't even a real term, it's about small improvements over time that add up to something greater (in the hands of the right person as Taffy says).  The big innovation has already happened, which is that a good number of people have come to appreciate these things as "real instruments".  The rest is up to the musicians.

The beauty of the modern CBG movement is the ability to iterate and use modern tech to enhance the sound.  Both of these things have given legitimacy to these humble instruments, and I can't wait to see what's next.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on December 28, 2016 at 2:31am

Respect must be earned
Winter coat man respects sun
To inspire, perspire

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 27, 2016 at 10:39pm

Okay, so I missed it by about half of the years I mentioned(about 75 years instead of 150 years). The point was that CBG's didn't get any respect from most of the classical luthiers.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 27, 2016 at 11:17pm

The CBG came on the scene in the 1840's. They had a period of popularity after the turn of the 20th Century through the Great Depression and then quickly fizzled out of the picture into obscurity until the last 10 years.

So I think it's safe to say that CBG's have been overlooked/discounted by many for a long time by players/musicians/builders/luthiers.

 There's a difference between a luthier and a builder. Just because someone has built an instrument or two doesn't mean they are a luthier. A luthier is someone with formal training over a good deal of time, not someone that builds as a hobby or side job to make extra money like myself. In the past I was a Certified Welder, Certified Mechanic and Automotive Electrician. All jobs that I had training for and spent time doing. We all know that someone without training in those areas would be less likely to get work in those fields because of perceived lack of knowledge and skill compared to someone with certifications/training. Just like the Classical luthiers of the past frowned upon such a lowly CBG unless they became popular.

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on January 5, 2017 at 9:37am

Cgar boxes in their now familiar form appeared around 1840 but this doesn't mean that we can track back the existence of cigar box guitars to this date. I think Dan Sleep is right with his argument «I think you also have to bear in mind that during those early time periods, the guitar was not a popular instrument, or at least, not as popular as the fiddle or banjo; this may account for the number of pictures and other documentation that show fiddles and banjos, and not guitars.»

 

So we have to check the history of mass production of guitars affordable for a larger public. About the Stella guitars of the Oscar Schmidt Company, founded 1871, I found on wikipedia the information that they were primarily sold door-to-door by travelling musical salesmen from the early 1880s, so this could be a more realistic date. At Smithsonian's there is an instrument classified as cigar box guitar but rather an ukulele made by an unknown maker in North Carolina around 1875-1899, measurements overall: 22 in x 7 1/2 in x 4 3/4 in, see

 

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_605717

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Permalink Reply by RTZGUITARS on December 29, 2016 at 10:31am

The Bagel Bow pic came from my favorite music store MacCabe's website. I went back and look for it but site has been updated. Great place the backroom is legendary if you like all thing string music. If you have a minute check out the History page of the backroom just Amazing. You will want to live there! A full list is below the pictures everyone has played there.

 https://www.mccabes.com/archive/

Eddie Lang -Sam Kamaka who are you people. Box guitars are a sub-group and always will be.

Some people mostly those that don't play find things like the Banjo or The Ukulele a joke and expect to hear Dueling Banjo's or Tip Toe Through the Tulips, but even a string under tension has a musical soul. You either get it or you don't. It's second nature to try and get better sound and more volume your building a instrument even Professional builder are involved in cbg's , Matty Baratto we all know who plays his Resofiddles.

What I've learn in the pass 5 years is fretted instrument are much more versatile because I learn to do it. Piezo undersaddle pickup can sound great for cheap and a sealed solid wood box sounds better then anything else I have tried or heard. But I still build with Tin's paint lids and someday a License plate guitar but first i'm cramming a Telecaster into a Cohiba box and the challenge go on and on and on and on.

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Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on January 5, 2017 at 10:46am

Hi, re Craig's comments regarding the making of a luthier. I'd like to put my thoughts on the part of the comment, that the term "Luthier" is for those craftsmen/craftswomen who have had formal training.

I tend to think that some people do get some formal training and call themselves Luthiers, but that may not make them a skilled, caring, dedicated and respected "Luthier". Training now days is very easy to come by. I feel there are many, many craftspeople out there who have learned their skills the hard way, over time, with research and with trial and error, and still earn the respect of their peers. I read about them in GAL journals all the time.

But I agree the right person being lucky enough to have a skilled mentor to work with every day is going to be streets ahead in their acquisition of skills and knowledge.

One could hang up their shingle "LUTHIER" a lot sooner, for the other it may take longer or they may choose not call themselves a luthier. I'm not sure if a person has to be full time at their craft to warrant being called a Luthier, being a mainly a low paying profession I think many would rely on a second income at times. 

For me, I have never used the term Luthier to describe myself or what I do, the sign on my fence says Guitar Builder/Repairer. But I'm referred to as a Luthier by my customers and friends all the time. So maybe I am a Luthier, a self taught Luthier, and I'm proud of that. But as I have not had formal training I am more comfortable in calling myself a Builder/Repairer of Stringed Instruments.

So if you are interested building stringed instruments don't wait for formal training, start now. Google "Taffy Evans Handmade Guitars" to see what a person without classical training can produce. And I'm not the only one.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

Cheers Taff

 

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on January 5, 2017 at 4:06pm

Some history of the term "luthier," since we're resurrecting DIY instrument building around here...

Luthiers are made, not born. The term "luthier" now refers to a maker and repairer of stringed instruments, specifically those related to the modern guitar. But 'twas not always thus. The word came about because of Catholic jihad. Yes, CATHOLIC jihad.

During the Middle Ages, specifically during the 200-year period from the call for the First Crusade in 1095 by Pope Urban II to rescue the Holy Land from the infidel Muslim (another interesting word choice), to the fall of Acre in 1291, numerous Europeans, primarily from France, but also England and Germany, came into contact, in Byzantium (modern Turkey and surrounding) and in Syria and Palestine, with makers of small, bowl-shaped stringed instruments. These were ouds, still made today in the Middle East, primarily in Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey. "Oud" is the Arabic word for "wood," more strictly "al oud." It is directly from this instrument, and this word, that the English word and instrument "lute" derives. Remember that many of the Crusaders were French. The term "luthier" is French, and has been incorporated into English (1066, and all that). So, strictly speaking, a "luthier" is one who builds and repairs...lutes.

How did the term come to refer to guitar builder / repairer? Well, all those Crusaders came home. They brought their ouds with them. For the next 400 years, the lute was the primary stringed instrument played at the Italian, German, French, and later, English and Spanish, royal courts. Troubadours, another French word from which the English word "trooper" or "trouper" derives, were those traveling musicians who regaled both the common folk and the nobles with tales of romance and derring-do in faraway places. For money. They were the social media of the times. (insert here the mental scene from Monty Python and The Holy Grail, a Crusader spoof if there ever was one, of Brave Sir Robin being sung into, and away from, courageous battle by his personal minstrel, who played...a lute).

The quest for volume is what led the lute-makers to develop the plucked and strummed stringed instruments called the zither, the cittern, the citara, and ultimately, the guitar (you can see right there wher the word "guitar" comes from). Lutes, and ouds, are lovely, somewhat-quiet stringed instruments. They are also notoriously difficult to make, as the bowl-shaped resonating chamber is made from carved and steam-bent slivers of various woods. Flat pieces are easier to work with. The earliest guitars were actually the Spanish citara (how similar that word sounds to the word "cigar") and its derivatives, and were built small, for portability. Remember too that this was well before the advent of metal strings, which didn't appear on the personal musical instrument scene until the late 1700s.

The guitar evolved as Italian, Spanish, Getman and French stringed instrument makers, especially violin makers, experimented with volume and frequency enhancements like arched tops, f-holes, sound posts, tone bars, and top bracing. All in the quest for greater volume and more penetrating tone, to cut through the hubbub of banquets and marketplaces. The Spanish guitar-maker Torres did the most research into how to maximize volume from relatively small wooden boxes. Nobody taught him how to build guitars, per se; like most stringed instrument makers, he learned initially from building violins. He was the Leo Fender and Les Paul of his day, experimenting with ways to make a portable popular instrument better, and is directly responsible for the development of the Spanish classical guitar.

So why "luthier" and not "guitar-builder?" Remember that after the demise of Latin as the language of international diplomacy, politics, and commerce, French took its place. For approximately 600 years, from the late Renaissance (another French word for the Italian renewal of classical learning, which also had its roots in the aftermath of the Crusades, as scholars brought back and translated Arabic, Greek and Roman manuscripts) up until the First World War in the early 20th century, French was regarded as the epitome of flowery diplomatic and political language, and language generally, in English-speaking countries, as well as in Poland and Russia. So this word "luthier" is just a fancy Frenchified word for "stringed instrument builder / repairer." It is also far more compact to say and write.

Now, the poor black and white men who made the first cigar box fiddles, banjos and guitars during the mid-to-late 1800s, when Torres was experimenting with guitars, didn't call themselves luthiers. It is not a DIY term. And the word "luthier" still has a slightly elitist, specialist, professional connotation. It also implies high-priced, custom, luxury item.

There are people around here, through their craft, art, and technical skill, as applied to CBGs, who probably deserve the term luthier. They strive for excellence with exotic woods, better volume, custom fit and finish, etc.

Then there's the rest of us. And that's OK, because DIY instrument making is anti-commercial, anti-elitist, anti-establishment. Just look at the original logo Shane Speal developed for this site - taken straight from Russian Communist revolutionary propaganda.

But that's a story for another time, you CBGers. ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Kigar on January 5, 2017 at 4:56pm

Kudos to both Taffy and Ron, great stuff!  For me, I am definitely a builder, maybe someday a luthier.

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on January 5, 2017 at 11:34pm

The Spanish wikipedia favorizes another explanation for the arrival of the lute in Europe, both referring to the arab world of the Medieval: « El laúd (del árabe العود al-`ūd) es un instrumento de cuerda pulsada, cuyo origen se remonta a la Edad Media y cuya introducción en Europa se inició en la península ibérica por los árabes e influenció a los cordófonos que por entonces ya existían en la península.»

It were the arabs on the southern peninsula iberica they brought back to Europe the science, civilization and culture of the antiquity, 'algebra' and 'algorithm' are some terms we learnt from them, so maybe they brought the lute to Europe from northern Africa. We can thank a lot to the arabs in Southern Spain, their universities were the MITs of the Medieval.

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