Trusting Intuition

It’s tough to trust your intuition. It’s easily referred to as a flakey source of misinformation and untrustworthy emotions. Because the understanding of the physics behind the guitar are understood much more clearly than ever before there is a temptation (and many luthiers are taking full advantage of it) to claim that the superiority of one’s guitar design is fact - that rigorous scientific testing and the performance of obscure mathematical algorithms have led to the perfect design. If this is this case, then why are there so many different interpretations of an objective set of principles and why is the “perfect guitar” independent of new gimmicks and design ideas.

I am not debunking research and measurement. Obviously continual measurement records for each iteration of a design are necessary for improvement. Furthermore, building technology has arguably made an improvement on the traditional guitar built by Torres.

I am reminding the scientists out there (perhaps preaching to the choir, but I doubt it ) that the most important innovations in guitar and in other fields started with an intuitive hunch. Although it’s easy and only fair to point out that just as many and probably a lot more of the worst ideas started with an intuitive hunch, it doesn’t mean that you should abandon your gut instinct.

If the advancements of any technology were waiting for scientists to discover them through the scientific method, then our technological growth would completely halt. That’s because many if not most new ideas, those that fail and those that strike it rich, have their roots in the intuition - a little creative spark devoid of reason.

Many have brought their intuitive “hunch” to life despite the objections of other scientists and countless other naysayers.

If you’re being objective about creation then you have probably just found a great way to hide behind your fear of failure.

Take the plung and all the criticism that goes with it!

You can measure it and tell us why it works later ;)