she still prefers the sound of the big boy guitar:
charlotte olivia sills, cubs fan in the making:
we caught laura's sister, chrissy, just before she left to fly home to boston:
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Les Cutiepies, non? Mais oui...
we've been out here in del mar playing with sophie (age 3) and charlotte (5 weeks) and i had to share some photos. sophie has expressed a lot of interest in the guitar in her short tenure here on planet earth and you can imagine how excited that makes me... so i went ahead and got the rocker in making her first axe:
she still prefers the sound of the big boy guitar:
charlotte olivia sills, cubs fan in the making:
we caught laura's sister, chrissy, just before she left to fly home to boston:
she still prefers the sound of the big boy guitar:charlotte olivia sills, cubs fan in the making:we caught laura's sister, chrissy, just before she left to fly home to boston:
Touring the Taylor guitar factory
on friday i had the opportunity to tour the taylor guitar factory in el cajon, california. these folks have been in business for 35 years and have created a well respected name for themselves in the acoustic guitar community based on their high quality and consistency of product. next to martin, taylor is probably the most well know and sought after mass-produced acoustic guitar. bob taylor, the founder, turned the guitar building community on its head by revealing and sharing his 'secrets' and design improvements with other builders in an effort to create more of a open dialog between luthiers. nowhere is this attitude of idea-sharing and education more evident than in the free factory tours available to the public during which you are encouraged to snap as many photos and ask as many questions as you like.
stacks of raw wood, cured and waiting to be shaped into guitars:
neck blanks:
view of the headstocks. the taylor logo is inlayed by a machine after a laser cut removes the wood from the headstock. a perfect fit every time. this is one of the many ways in which taylor is able to speed up production in order to pump out roughly 300 guitars a day.
the side bending room: taylor engineered many of its own machines to preform specific jobs in the building process. side bending is one of the most time consuming and difficult steps in crafting a guitar. these machines can bend the sides of a guitar into proper shape in 2-3 minutes. the wood blank is lightly sprayed with water then wrapped in thin paper before being fed into the bending plates. the plates themselves run at about 300°F in order to heat and mold the wood to shape.
these wooden molds retain the shape of the newly bent sides as they cool down after being pulled from the bending machines:
each step of the building process is preformed by 1-2 craftsman. here two guys work on gluing pairs of sides together:
the mold at work:
a stack of completed sides:
strips of kerfing are glued along the inside edges of the sides. kerfing is a strip of wood (typically mahogany or basswood) cut in small intervals so that it may bend and be molded to the shape of the guitar. up close it looks kinda like a wooden zipper. it is used to strengthen the bond between the top and back to the sides of the guitar by providing a larger surface area to glue these all together. the metal clips seen here were designed by talyor as a more efficient means of clamping the kerfing to the sides. a very particular angle must be used to ensure a tight bond. in the past, most builders simply used clothes pins as clamps but bob taylor engineered these specific clamps to provide the appropriate grip and angle necessary for this crucial step:
a quick shot of one of taylor's hallmark innovations, the 3 bolt neck attachment system. typically a guitar neck is attached to its body with a dovetail joint. while this method provides a strong bond between neck and body, it is quite time consuming to preform work on. as years go by and humidity changes and environmental stress add up, many guitars will require a 'neck reset' which means removing the neck from the body and reshaping the joint so that the guitar fretboard is level and plays in tune. this can be a 10-12 hour job and cost upwards of $600 by some estimates since a dovetail joint needs to be steamed open and then sanded, shimmed or reshaped. taylor's 3 bolt system allows the repairman to remove the neck and preform the necessary work in as little as a half hour. below is a neck and body pair set aside for demonstration purposes during the factory tour. you can see a single bolt on the top or fretboard side of the body and two more where the bottom of the neck joins the sides:
our tour guide holding up two tops to show off taylor's bracing system. the top on the left is a jumbo sized steel string, beefed up with extra bracing to compensate for the 150-200lbs of pressure a set of steel strings places on a guitar top. on the right is a nylon string classical guitar top with lighter bracing:
the machines that route out the sound holes:
holding docks with metal molds keep the glued together bodies stable as they setup:
here's a shot of a few cutaway instruments. interesting to note that the areas of the top and backs that are removed for the cutaway are left on until after the top, back and sides are all glued together:
a couple shots of the spray booth. bob taylor sat down with a team of chemists to develop a new finish which can both easily be sprayed onto a guitar as well as producing very little in environmentally toxic waste. essentially, the new finish is positively charged so that when it is sprayed at the guitar body, it is attracted to and instantly bonds with the wood. typically you will spray a fair amount of lacquer finish off into the air when finishing a guitar, wasting expensive materials but this chemical process ensures that the vast majority of the sprayed finish ends up on the guitar. the spray booth here used to be cleaned out and all the filtering material used to 'catch' the wasted finish was brought to the dump twice a day. now they only make two trips to the dump per week. nice way to save $ and the environment, eh?
enclosed in the spray booth is a robotic arm which grips guitar bodies by the three bolt neck attachment system. the arm moves the body around a spry nozzle, going over the top, back and sides in three coats. you can see a guitar body hanging in wait on the left side of the photo. when the robotic arm finishes with one body, it hangs it on a spinning window on the far side of the booth. the arm then pops back over to the other side and grabs the next instrument to be sprayed. a single spray booth operator sets up each new body in the 'ready' to be finished after hanging a freshly sprayed body up to cure.
a close up of the arm in action: you can see the arm on the left, holding the guitar body by the three bolt neck system with a steel rod.
finished bodies hanging with newly glued and clamped bridges:
and the final assembly room:
it takes about 10 days to build a taylor guitar start to finish. the tour was great and our tour guide was very knowledgeable about the entire process. the tour ran for about two hours and was pretty exhaustive in covering all the work that goes into crafting a taylor acoustic. if you're ever in san diego, it's definitely worth visit. pretty amazing stuff to see the whole process from start to finish!
stacks of raw wood, cured and waiting to be shaped into guitars:
neck blanks:
view of the headstocks. the taylor logo is inlayed by a machine after a laser cut removes the wood from the headstock. a perfect fit every time. this is one of the many ways in which taylor is able to speed up production in order to pump out roughly 300 guitars a day.
the side bending room: taylor engineered many of its own machines to preform specific jobs in the building process. side bending is one of the most time consuming and difficult steps in crafting a guitar. these machines can bend the sides of a guitar into proper shape in 2-3 minutes. the wood blank is lightly sprayed with water then wrapped in thin paper before being fed into the bending plates. the plates themselves run at about 300°F in order to heat and mold the wood to shape.
these wooden molds retain the shape of the newly bent sides as they cool down after being pulled from the bending machines:
each step of the building process is preformed by 1-2 craftsman. here two guys work on gluing pairs of sides together:
the mold at work:
a stack of completed sides:
strips of kerfing are glued along the inside edges of the sides. kerfing is a strip of wood (typically mahogany or basswood) cut in small intervals so that it may bend and be molded to the shape of the guitar. up close it looks kinda like a wooden zipper. it is used to strengthen the bond between the top and back to the sides of the guitar by providing a larger surface area to glue these all together. the metal clips seen here were designed by talyor as a more efficient means of clamping the kerfing to the sides. a very particular angle must be used to ensure a tight bond. in the past, most builders simply used clothes pins as clamps but bob taylor engineered these specific clamps to provide the appropriate grip and angle necessary for this crucial step:
a quick shot of one of taylor's hallmark innovations, the 3 bolt neck attachment system. typically a guitar neck is attached to its body with a dovetail joint. while this method provides a strong bond between neck and body, it is quite time consuming to preform work on. as years go by and humidity changes and environmental stress add up, many guitars will require a 'neck reset' which means removing the neck from the body and reshaping the joint so that the guitar fretboard is level and plays in tune. this can be a 10-12 hour job and cost upwards of $600 by some estimates since a dovetail joint needs to be steamed open and then sanded, shimmed or reshaped. taylor's 3 bolt system allows the repairman to remove the neck and preform the necessary work in as little as a half hour. below is a neck and body pair set aside for demonstration purposes during the factory tour. you can see a single bolt on the top or fretboard side of the body and two more where the bottom of the neck joins the sides:
our tour guide holding up two tops to show off taylor's bracing system. the top on the left is a jumbo sized steel string, beefed up with extra bracing to compensate for the 150-200lbs of pressure a set of steel strings places on a guitar top. on the right is a nylon string classical guitar top with lighter bracing:
the machines that route out the sound holes:
holding docks with metal molds keep the glued together bodies stable as they setup:
here's a shot of a few cutaway instruments. interesting to note that the areas of the top and backs that are removed for the cutaway are left on until after the top, back and sides are all glued together:
a couple shots of the spray booth. bob taylor sat down with a team of chemists to develop a new finish which can both easily be sprayed onto a guitar as well as producing very little in environmentally toxic waste. essentially, the new finish is positively charged so that when it is sprayed at the guitar body, it is attracted to and instantly bonds with the wood. typically you will spray a fair amount of lacquer finish off into the air when finishing a guitar, wasting expensive materials but this chemical process ensures that the vast majority of the sprayed finish ends up on the guitar. the spray booth here used to be cleaned out and all the filtering material used to 'catch' the wasted finish was brought to the dump twice a day. now they only make two trips to the dump per week. nice way to save $ and the environment, eh?
enclosed in the spray booth is a robotic arm which grips guitar bodies by the three bolt neck attachment system. the arm moves the body around a spry nozzle, going over the top, back and sides in three coats. you can see a guitar body hanging in wait on the left side of the photo. when the robotic arm finishes with one body, it hangs it on a spinning window on the far side of the booth. the arm then pops back over to the other side and grabs the next instrument to be sprayed. a single spray booth operator sets up each new body in the 'ready' to be finished after hanging a freshly sprayed body up to cure.a close up of the arm in action: you can see the arm on the left, holding the guitar body by the three bolt neck system with a steel rod.
finished bodies hanging with newly glued and clamped bridges:
and the final assembly room:
it takes about 10 days to build a taylor guitar start to finish. the tour was great and our tour guide was very knowledgeable about the entire process. the tour ran for about two hours and was pretty exhaustive in covering all the work that goes into crafting a taylor acoustic. if you're ever in san diego, it's definitely worth visit. pretty amazing stuff to see the whole process from start to finish!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Drivin' West...
hello friends and greetings from beautiful del mar, california! carolyn and i just made it out here to her brother and sister-in-law's house last night after an epic 6 day trip. we are out here visiting with her young nieces, sophie and charlotte. after a few days of baby time we'll be heading north to see some old friends here on the west coast before Boss Tweed begins a three week tour of the pacific north-west and canada. we hit the road last friday, heading first to boston since i had a show with mr brownstone at the paradise. this backstage photo may not sum it up or say it all but it should give you an idea of what mr b is all about, assuming you don't know already:
after rocking boston city, carolyn and i left the next morning in the minivan bound for chicago. funny enough, it was exactly 1000 miles on the nose from izzy's (false mustache on the far left) doorstep to carolyn's hometown of northbrook, illinois. we made it in about 12 hours, crashed at a hotel and surprised carolyn's folks the next morning. we spent the day playing mini golf and relaxing. carolyn at the mini golf entrance:
on monday morning we woke up bright and early and headed south though missouri, oklahoma, texas and into new mexico. powering though these states, we saw lotsa corn, jesus billboards, gun shops and adult book stores... ah the heartland. to keep our spirits up, we hopped out of the car to play some catch:
snapping a quick photo of a great old hunk of junk being pulled down the highway on a trailer in texas:
we made it just shy of albuquerque by about an hour (1200 miles from chicago) and crashed in a hotel in santa rosa, new mexico. unfortunately it was dark as we drove through texas (my first time in the great state) but we had an amazing time driving through the deserts of new mexico, arizona and california during the rest of the drive. craving some tasty southwesten eggs that morning, we hit the road and stopped off at a great little diner in albuquerque. please excuse the shameless plug but i must admit that having an iPhone on this trip has been a real help. we never would have found this place without it!
inspecting the menu:
we both settled on the huevos rancheros although while i prefer the red salsa, the lady prefers the green...
we made great time heading west through new mexico and into arizona. we stopped for a breather at this native american-run roadside tourist stop:
view from the road in new mexico:
our plan on tuesday was to make a quick pit stop at the grand canyon en route to vegas. here we are:
we even had time to swing through seligman, az on the way. known as the birthplace of historic route 66, carolyn had the enormous good fortune of spending a couple days here 9 years ago when the RV she rented with some friends broke down and required a new transmission. this is one of those classic towns full of kitschy souvenirs shops and oddities you (or at least i) hope to find on a trip through the desert. weirdly cool stuff...
we stopped for a bottle of suds at the black cat, seligman's watering hole:
and then we were off to the magical world of las vegas. driving off into the sunset:
i gotta say, i'm not much of a gambler (at least when it comes to playing cards or playing the slots) so my one-night experience of vegas was rather tame compared to some. we drove the length of the strip, stayed at the luxor hotel and took full advantage of the breakfast buffet. i'll confess that i did play some video poker. i dropped $5 into a machine, lost some and won some and in the end walked out breaking even. how's that for living it up?
the next morning we slept in a bit and checked out ed roman guitars... the famous guitar shop in town. more bizarre stuff here, the kind of instruments you might associate with las vegas. case in point, here are two custom built double-neck ed roman instruments. on the left is a joe maphis meets george lynch model complete with an octave neck. on the right is a completely useless yngwie malmsteen-esque 6 string/12 string model. (guitar geeks please note that on the yngwie model both necks have scalloped fret boards... eep!)
we hightailed it out of vegas, heading west on route 15 to san diego. always on the lookout for interesting roadside attractions, we stopped in the ghost town of calico, california located deep in the mojave desert. the terrain and landscape here is beautifully desolate... it looks like you're driving across the surface of mars. at one time calico was a booming silver mining town but now it exists solely as a curiosity for travelers. there are still a few straggling residents who work the shops in town. i wandered into a saddle and boot maker's shop and met henry, an honest to goodness cowboy. he even wore spurs! he's the kind of guy that calls it a "GITar" and means it. some photos, note the town name laid out in white rock on the far hill:
view of the mojave desert from the road:
and now we're relaxing for a few days here in southern california. we're glad to be out of the cr for a few days at least. more stories and photos to come!
after rocking boston city, carolyn and i left the next morning in the minivan bound for chicago. funny enough, it was exactly 1000 miles on the nose from izzy's (false mustache on the far left) doorstep to carolyn's hometown of northbrook, illinois. we made it in about 12 hours, crashed at a hotel and surprised carolyn's folks the next morning. we spent the day playing mini golf and relaxing. carolyn at the mini golf entrance:
on monday morning we woke up bright and early and headed south though missouri, oklahoma, texas and into new mexico. powering though these states, we saw lotsa corn, jesus billboards, gun shops and adult book stores... ah the heartland. to keep our spirits up, we hopped out of the car to play some catch:
snapping a quick photo of a great old hunk of junk being pulled down the highway on a trailer in texas:
we made it just shy of albuquerque by about an hour (1200 miles from chicago) and crashed in a hotel in santa rosa, new mexico. unfortunately it was dark as we drove through texas (my first time in the great state) but we had an amazing time driving through the deserts of new mexico, arizona and california during the rest of the drive. craving some tasty southwesten eggs that morning, we hit the road and stopped off at a great little diner in albuquerque. please excuse the shameless plug but i must admit that having an iPhone on this trip has been a real help. we never would have found this place without it!
inspecting the menu:
we both settled on the huevos rancheros although while i prefer the red salsa, the lady prefers the green...
we made great time heading west through new mexico and into arizona. we stopped for a breather at this native american-run roadside tourist stop:
view from the road in new mexico:
our plan on tuesday was to make a quick pit stop at the grand canyon en route to vegas. here we are:
we even had time to swing through seligman, az on the way. known as the birthplace of historic route 66, carolyn had the enormous good fortune of spending a couple days here 9 years ago when the RV she rented with some friends broke down and required a new transmission. this is one of those classic towns full of kitschy souvenirs shops and oddities you (or at least i) hope to find on a trip through the desert. weirdly cool stuff...
we stopped for a bottle of suds at the black cat, seligman's watering hole:
and then we were off to the magical world of las vegas. driving off into the sunset:
i gotta say, i'm not much of a gambler (at least when it comes to playing cards or playing the slots) so my one-night experience of vegas was rather tame compared to some. we drove the length of the strip, stayed at the luxor hotel and took full advantage of the breakfast buffet. i'll confess that i did play some video poker. i dropped $5 into a machine, lost some and won some and in the end walked out breaking even. how's that for living it up?
the next morning we slept in a bit and checked out ed roman guitars... the famous guitar shop in town. more bizarre stuff here, the kind of instruments you might associate with las vegas. case in point, here are two custom built double-neck ed roman instruments. on the left is a joe maphis meets george lynch model complete with an octave neck. on the right is a completely useless yngwie malmsteen-esque 6 string/12 string model. (guitar geeks please note that on the yngwie model both necks have scalloped fret boards... eep!)
we hightailed it out of vegas, heading west on route 15 to san diego. always on the lookout for interesting roadside attractions, we stopped in the ghost town of calico, california located deep in the mojave desert. the terrain and landscape here is beautifully desolate... it looks like you're driving across the surface of mars. at one time calico was a booming silver mining town but now it exists solely as a curiosity for travelers. there are still a few straggling residents who work the shops in town. i wandered into a saddle and boot maker's shop and met henry, an honest to goodness cowboy. he even wore spurs! he's the kind of guy that calls it a "GITar" and means it. some photos, note the town name laid out in white rock on the far hill:
view of the mojave desert from the road:
and now we're relaxing for a few days here in southern california. we're glad to be out of the cr for a few days at least. more stories and photos to come!
Monday, August 11, 2008
some pro photos from Maribor, Slovenia
ok... just to finish out some more tour photos: we met a fantastic photographer from slovenia named aleksander onisak. he took these great photos of our gig in maribor. this was the first show of our tour where were forced to play sans gretsch... thanks aleksander!
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