Totally Hand Built....

[Pete skjold]

Ok i am starting this thread more as information for guys wanting to know so please add the makers...

Who are the luthiers that totally use only tools and no CNC for their builds... Neck and Body.... I only know 2 so please feel free to add...

1) Fodera
2) MBasses

I do not use a CNC. Not better or worse, just to answer your question. I do however have a very elaborate system of fixtures and templates that allow me to get very accurate reapeatability. Just the way I went into it. So you can add me to the list of non CNC made basses for whatever that is worth

 

[jbossolo]

My apologies to Bruce Johnson for forgetting to mention his stellar work as well. As a proud owner of one of his AEB masterpices, I can vouch for his superb craftmanship and attention to detail. He'll also go out of his way to help a fellow bassman.

 

[SturmUndDrang]

What, nobody is sculpting an entire bass from one big log using nothing but a whittling knife? That's bogus

 

[jim777]

I get the impression sometimes that when people hear 'CNC' they assume every single little bit was made by some magical CNC machine (usually in the Far East) that puts frets in the fret boards and screws the bridges to the bodies without any human interaction at all. I would rather my favorite brands stay in business, and tools be damned. Basses are just tools themselves, with the music made with them being what matters at the end of the day. I doubt anyone listening to a song on their car radio ever thought the song would have been better if the bass had had another string, for example. the outcome is more important than the tool. (I am going to throw in a 'that's NOT what she said' here, take it as you will )

Use what gets you to that place where you want to be, as a player or a builder.

 

[joeyl]

wasn't there a bass maker popular here on TB that used only non-powered hand tools to make his instruments and some people ended up waiting like 10 years? I forgot his name, but he lived in a lake cabin in Tahoe or something

 

[Emanuel Apascaritei]

wasn't there a bass maker popular here on TB that used only non-powered hand tools to make his instruments and some people ended up waiting like 10 years? I forgot his name, but he lived in a lake cabin in Tahoe or something

Now that's tottaly handmade

 

[joeyl]

Found it

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f8/i-waited-10-years-ken-bebensee-316982/

 

[M.R. Ogle]

I'd certainly think that the use of a CNC would enable builders to spend MORE time tweaking, hand-sanding and shaping each bass... addressing the details that really count..

It's not like any of those router-cuts aren't sanded down further anyway, you're not going to be touching (or even seeing) any area of the wood that hasn't been gone over at least one more time by hand.

Sorry, I LIKE the use of CNC machines in production. Aren't the variations inherent between each piece of wood ENOUGH unpredictability?

 

[FloridaSam]

What, nobody is sculpting an entire bass from one big log using nothing but a whittling knife? That's bogus

Knife? really!? I won't touch a bass unless the builder has verbally embarrassed the wood to reform itself from an ugly log into a 5 string.

 

[Adamovic]

I do not use a CNC but not because I have anything against it. I do use various fixtures and templates that allow me to get very accurate.

A CNC machine is just a tool, just like a hammer, band saw or handheld router. The quality of the product is not determined by the tool that is used but by the talent, experience and knowledge of the man behind it.

The reason I do not use CNC is because I like to have control of every tiny step and have each part I am working on in my hands, being able to inspect and check as I go along. With CNC that is much harder to do.
Also like M.R. Ogle says, wood is not a homogenous material and it differs from piece to piece. Adding to that; we work with over 40 species of wood. So each piece is being handled slightly different (router speed, pressure applied etc). This would make programming the CNC time consuming.

 

[Roscoe East]

Does CNT make all the mojo leak out?

Something about this thread reminds me of an old sticker I got from Mad Magazine back in the 1960s. I think you were supposed to stick it on the kitchen door of your (least) favorite restaurant. It proclaimed

"Our food untouched by human hands!"





















...it had a small picture of a chimpanzee in the corner.

 

[1958Bassman]

Thanks for the nice comments, guys!

We Luthiers always have to make tradeoffs in how much labor we put into our basses versus how expensive they become. We'd love to add all kinds of extra details and do every step really carefully, but how much are you (the customers) willing to pay for that? The more expensive the bass is, the harder it is to sell.

Should we invest money in better tooling to save labor in one area, in order to lower the selling price? Or should that labor savings be spent in adding more features to make our bass more exotic and worth more? As Cheaply As Possible isn't the answer either, because that puts you in competition with instruments that are built much cheaper in large quantities. These are tough tradeoffs that we have to make.

And, as I've described in some other threads, there's no money in this business. The prices that our basses sell for are well below what we should be charging by any standard small business model. The biggest name guys with established reputations make a modest living at best. The rest of us are somewhere between going out of business and barely getting by. You actually do have to be crazy to be a Luthier. It's a requirement!

It's like being in the boating industry, where the (sad) joke goes,
Q- How do you make a small fortune in the boating industry?
A- Start with a large one.

I guess doing a lot of repairs would help keep things running, but that's a completely different animal from building only the instruments you sell. Then, you have to support your products, market them and do all of the other crap that it takes to get your name out there but doesn't really generate any revenue.

 

[1958Bassman]

Hah, you just reminded my of a saying my stepfather used to lay on us. He was the tool crib manager of a machining company.

He'd say, "I guard the tools that build the tools that make the tools."

Sounds like a line from a Pete Townsend song.

 

[1958Bassman]

I'm saving up to build a neck carving machine. That's my next big hand-made labor saving machine. It's not going to be CNC; it will be controlled by ME, pulling the levers and turning the cranks. It's going to be a pattern-following type machine, specifically designed for shaping necks. That is, I'll hand carve a master pattern first, just the way I hand-shape the necks now. The master pattern and a partially finished neck will index into the machine. Then, I'll skillfully caress the levers and the router head will exactly replicate the master pattern's shape onto the neck. If it works right. Right now, I spend about 2 1/2 hours hand shaping the back of each Scroll Bass neck, using patterns and lines to keep them consistent. This machine, if it works, will hopefully bring that down to a half hour per neck, and make them all identical.

That's what it's all about: reduced labor and consistent quality. And no stinkin' mathematical modeling needed! I trust my hand more than that software to tell me if the neck shape is right!

So, to continue beating a dead horse, would these necks still be considered hand-shaped? It would still be me, delicately operating the levers of a hand-made machine (with a screaming router head hand-made by Porter-Cable).

Amazing thing about a human hand that doesn't have any nerve damage or major callouses- it won't necessarily be able to feel if something is right, but it sure doesn't have a hard time feeling when something is wrong.

 

[malthumb]

Alembic

Nope. Alembic's process is fairly similar to what Bruce Johnson describes below, as I have highlighted. They have scores of patterns that they can access on CNC to do the rough cuts, then the craftsmen take over and hand carve the detail.

Does not reduce the awesomeness one iota.

I still build my basses the old-fashioned way, using routers and fixtures to cut the main dimensions and surfaces of the bodies and necks. No CNC here. But I design my basses in AutoCad, and print out patterns to make the routing templates. Does that count? There are a lot of us Luthiers who still do it that old-fashioned way.

It's really hard to define "handmade" these days. Many small high-end builders now use CNC in place of the traditional pin routers to rough out the wood parts. But they still put a huge amount of skilled, detail labor into trimming and fitting the parts together. CNC routers are a big help, but they don't save as much labor as you might imagine, as compared to the traditional pin routers with good tooling. Remember how many millions of instruments Fender turned out with pin routers, very efficiently, a few decades ago.

To me, the gradation between Mass Produced and Handmade is about the total number of hours put in on each instrument, regardless of the types of machines and level of technology used. Inexpensive basses are built in large quantities at one time, putting only a few labor hours into each one. Expensive instruments are built in small quantities, putting 50 or 100 labor hours into each one. It's really a simple as that.

Expensive instruments can be built using CNC machines and still require 50 hours of skilled detail labor. Doesn't that qualify as Handmade?

I'll probably eventually build myself a couple of specialized CNC machines to do some of the grunt work in building my basses. The machines are getting cheaper every year, and the technology is getting easier to work with. But I'm always going to build my basses in small quantities with lots of hand labor (by me).

Alembic also makes their own pickups, bridges, circuit boards, and preamps. The only parts of the bass they do not manufacture are the tuners, the jacks, and the strings. Not a whole lot of manufacturers make all that hardware.

 

[malthumb]

My old 1975 Series 1 was handmade. (back in the day)

Thanx for posting that Dluxe. Now, let's look at that body next to my 1987 that may or may not have been cut on CNC and my 2000 that was definitely cut on CNC....which one(s) should we burn?

 

[Just Thumpin']

Not at all...i just feel that a complex question like this deserves a detailed answer.

Regards,

J

Do you experience people having issues with Foderas' instruments being made, using cnc tools?(I haven't read the whole thread and may have missed such issues being raised)
Just wondering, since you followed this up with quite a long post.

 

[Type-55]

Mbass uses cnc machines.
Check out the youtube stuff.

 

[esa372]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed] basses are hand made, one-at-a-time, by one man:

All Pedulla instruments are proudly handcrafted in the U.S.A. using the finest woods, electronics, hardware, and building techniques. We do not offer (nor have we ever offered) any "import" models. Each and every Pedulla bass is made here in our shop in Massachusetts by me, Michael Pedulla.

[...]

The hands now know inherently what to do. Neck shapes are not measured, the hands remember, they are measured to feel. Sculpting, fretting, sanding, finishing… all exacting and unforgiving. Yet once the techniques are ingrained, one goes above the science and technique, and enters the art.

[...]

I have returned to building every bass 100% by myself (no more training, supervising & managing production employees. All of my focus and energy is on each bass I make).

 

[Prezbass425]

I have no wish to inflame the CNC Wars (patent pending) but I do want to be transparent on something.

We started out doing without CNC. There's no denying the craftsmanship of using nothing but pin routers and such, but it is slow going. And, there *can* be quality consistency issues as far as depth of cuts, sizes, etc. Please note that I am NOT slamming anyone when I say this- but, sometimes you run into trouble.

We thought long and hard about the CNC issue, and we decided to do it. We do all our own programming, and each piece is watched LIKE A HAWK as it's done, and when you get right down to it, all the CNC does (for us) is set up the larger cuts and do the rough stuff. There's still a bunch of hand craftmanship done after CNC.

When it comes right down to it, at the end of the day- like everything else- what matters is the planning, more planning, second guessing, more planning and then cutting. If you do all that stuff poorly, it doesn't matter a lick if it's CNC or a saw. That much is a consistent fact.

So, yeah- at Regenerate, we use a CNC. Others don't. The world is a big place, and there's lots of room for both methods. I honestly don't think one is better than the other.