Customer Reviews

A Guitar Maker's Manual

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book doesn't really provide enough detail to allow you build a guitar, without having either prior guitar building experience, or a good teacher to assist you. The diagrams and photographs are not particularly clear, and the book generally glosses over the fine details of construction. The section on finishing is quite good, and will be of some use if you're intending finishing the guitar yourself. Be carefull if you intend using the templates in the back of the book - specifically the fingerboard template, which on my copy had all the frets spaced incorrectly when compared to a standard fret rule for a classical guitar. I suspect the photocopying process has enlarged the scale by a small but significant amount...

This manual may be of some limited help to a beginning guitar maker. I found quite a few areas that needed to be expanded upon in order to be useful. The book, "guitarmaking", by Cumpiano is much more comprehensive and is highly recommended. Williams book may give you a few good ideas, but that's about it.

I must have owned Irving Sloane's "Classic Guitar Construction" since about 1970. It was probably the only thing around, in English, back then. Although it has a few quirks, it is still a great read and reveals a no-nonsense approach.

Williams' book tries hard to emulate Sloane's, but fails in the most important department--TRUST!

There are simply heaps of little errors, some of them common to many modern woodworking and lutherie books, as well as a few individual howlers that just make an old-timer suspicious.

Anthony Burgess once remarked [on spelling]: "A guage works as well as a gauge". We know what he means, and we know what Mr Williams means, when he mis-spells this basic item. However, he also goes on to mis-spell, mis-use and mis-name another dozen or more common woodworking tools and concepts that make one wonder if he really knows what he's talking about. [It confuses those of us who DO.] Tri-square, sash cramp, swooge, guages, annular rings[!], jointing vs joining...I believe it's just as easy to get these little things *correct* before publication. If not, at least before the reprint(s)!

There are still, after 3 or more editions, plenty of unclosed quotes--No, on second reading, those are actually *inch symbols* with no figures before them...There are suggestions that 1"= 12.5mm...on a drawing, 3/16" is called 5mm, but 3/32" [exactly half!] is called 2.2mm. What's going on??? I grew up with both systems, but I can't really trust my cuts to these kinds of little blunders.

Way too often the text refers to classic construction, but the illustration shows a steel-string dreadnought...There's actually no problem, but it makes me wonder why there isn't just a bit more text to explain the discrepancy. A clever symbol next to paragraphs to distinguish the classic from the steel-string acoustic parts would also assist the reader greatly.

Most of the photos and illustrations are clear, but some just defy interpretation until the text has been read 10 or more times.

If I were Mr Williams' editor, before any reprints, I would insist on a simple, but apologetic foreword, and review and extend the text to make this "almost-good-enough" book into a great book. If you know a bit about making guitars, however, you'll find some really thought-provoking ideas here. Beginners beware!

Disclaimer: I am a beginner at guitar building, but woodworking is something that I have been doing as a hobby for quite a while.

Maybe if you have already built a guitar, or attended such a class, this would be a useful refresher. But for the beginner, you would do better to use the money on something else like payment toward a quality chisel or better book. The interior of the book is 100% B&W, which would be OK except that the photos are all very small. The Jigs section did not give enough information to actually build a jig -- no instructions, just some poor diagrams; very disappointing. For example. the Workboard diagram for guitar (a key item for any and every builder in my understanding) lacks complete dimensions. I can't build one using this book alone. If you don't know what a phrase such as "cut a saw kerf in the center of the scallop" means then you won't get a lot from this book.

Of minor note, the 104 page book contains quite a few blank or nearly-blank pages. These would have been better used by including jig building instructions, a glossary, or SOMETHING USEFUL.

Liking books in general, I did not hesitate to purchase just about all of the guitarmaking books that I could get my hands on when attempting to build my first guitar. Jim Williams' book is certainly inexpensive, and has the added bonus of ring-binding that allows you to open it flat in your work area. It is not a comprehensive volume and if you could only have one or two books on lutherie, this one probably would not make the cut. That said, I actually found it quite useful at times when building my first guitar, a kit project purchased from a well-known American guitar company, in that Williams' overall method of assembly lent itself well to the assembly of the kit.

Another reviewer has pointed out correctly that in general the lutherie literature is behind the times compared to the internet, where much information on guitarmaking is freely shared. I think a modern book on modern guitarmaking would ideally come with a CD-ROM chock full of detailed, color photographs. While it would be cost-prohibitive to publish a book with so many color photographs, the cost of digital photography on a CD-ROM is minimal.

In conclusion, I would recommend this book as a adjunct to other, more comprehensive books on guitarmaking, especially to beginners working with a kit project that comes with somewhat scanty instructions. The writing of an up-to-date book on flat top guitar construction awaits, perhaps for the collaborative efforts of professional and amateur lutheriers everywhere. It would certainly be a gratifying project.

The problem with the lutherie books market is that it has nothing to report from the last 20 years. The whole subject has jumped ahead, and yet the books remain in the 70s (having been writen in the 80s).

Most beginers and others would be better served by getting the LMII catalog, some relevant back issue of American Lutherie, and hanging out on the web.

This book is well liked, because it moves the markers ahead in the sand a few months from Cupiano's dreadfully out of date volume. it contains things like a diagram of the Fox side bender, which you can find better info on all over the web, including the factory tour posted of the Fox fascility on the frets site. This is just one area where the books don't cut it. Do an amazon search of the last 5 years published titles in woodworking or almost any field, and then in lutherie. Books just aren't how luthiers comunicate. They actualy really spread their techniques around generously, they just don't write books.

I found this book to be disappointing for the most part. Significant portions of the process are glossed over: within six pages, the author has covered selecting, jointing, thicknessing the soundboard (2 pages), making and fitting the rosette (1 page), carving and installing top braces (steel string & classical 2 pages each). While some modern techniques are mentioned, such as use of a side bender, generally the information is too incomplete to be helpful to a novice. Also, throughout the book the author refers to jigs for which no instructions for assembly or use have been given. I'm not sure who the target audience of this volume is intended to be, but as an educated student, I found little need for its insights, and imagining myself without any knowledge, I was glad to have read Cumpiano's excellent book beforehand.

This is one of the best illustrated Guitar building books. I have most of them on the market from the the early Irving Sloan ones and A.E. Overholzer (now an out of print classic)books. I purchased this for the section on fitting a Florentine Cutaway. I had a good laugh as the Florentine Cutaway section references other building steps in other parts of the book for example step "S. Refer to step AF from the Assemble chapter." It is very stepwise and logically arranged. Unlike many other guitar building books that feel like they jump around or give too much information in a chapter.
For example his book has the fitting rosette steps before build the bracing. Often times this process has it own chapter but the new builder (like me was never sure) because it is never states when this needs to occur stepwise in the process of building your guitar. Other books often have this over engineered and make it sound too complicated. For those of us who are ADHD and tend to jump around like me. This book is very logically and I recommend it as an excellent check list book to go with William R. Cumpiano & Jon D. Natelson's book Guitar making Tradition and technology book.
After getting this book, I felt able and confident to start building my first acoustic guitar, after having had the materials, supplies and plans since the mid 1990's.

Williams book is somewhat crudely self-published. Many
luthiers would disagree with his method of building
the steel-string guitar with a one-piece neck. I build
nylon string guitars mostly and I thought Williams
had some valuable insight.

His book uses the adjustable workboard which I use as
well. He also shows using a crude version of a Fox
bender and go-bar clamping of the soundboard.

It's not a bad book at all - just not enough information
for even an experienced woodworker to build a successful
guitar confidently. There are too many issues that come
up while building a first guitar that this book doesn't
address. These days with the internet you could go online
and find a luthier to answer any questions you might have.

It has good advice on French polishing in the back... but
you'll only really learn that through trial and error -
it's an essential rite of passage to botch a french
polishing job and have to strip it off and start over
again.

I found this book to have a lot of good information in it,but it leaves you with the need to ask some questions.It would be excelent as a Class book,with a teacher in front of you.

Saying that ,I don't regret buying it (He is an Aussie after all) as it has given me some good basic knowledge to build on. Also remember this book was first written a few years ago and some of the photos are not as clear as the quality available today