Articles

Visit from Guitar No. 5

Brent Webster with Guitar No. 5One week ago Brent Webster came by the shop with guitar no. 5 for some routine touch ups to the guitar's polish. One of the best decisions I've made since being in the business of building people guitars is to offer free French polishing on the first 30 guitars.

Your Judgemometer

You can collect all the data possible, use every objective resource at your disposal and create every millimeter of your instrument with machinist precision, but the end product will always be a result of your judgement.

 

The Limits of Your Imagination

Every time we set out to do something great we can only set our standards as high as our imagination and experience can conceive.

The art we make and the work we do will never be “perfect” because perfection is a standard that is always in a state of flux. It changes as we learn and grow.

So the hardest work is done in your imagination. 

Every guitarist will only play as well as she can imagine herself playing and all luthiers will be forever limited to creating the instrument they are imagining.

 

Standardization

There is one personality that works to create a standardized, objective process / algorithm for things. It’s uncomfortable with ambiguity and doesn’t like surprises. It loves patterns and everyday rituals. It builds and maintains institutions more out of its love for organization than the purpose of the work.

Being Square

Head BlockIt’s not such a bad thing to be. We’re always dissing squares, telling people to think outside of them and not to be such a shape as that. I think squares get lonely sometime.

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