My Dad made me my first guitar when I was around 14 years old - he was a carpenter by trade although he had never built such a thing before. Watching this, I now realize, what incredible skills my Dad must have possessed and it's taken this video, 60 years later to realize it.
I am a woodworker and an amateur luthier for 8 years now. I can tell your father is a very skilled and a dedicated one. Instrument making require diffrent skill set from carpentry although the basic is the same. You said that it was his first time making guitar, a testimony of the know-how he have acquired. Sorry for bad English. Best regards
Yeah. Even in a medium-scale manufacturing place, there's tons of specialized jigs, but this takes it to the next level. I'm not sure I saw a single hand clamp in that shop, other than the kerfing clamps. That wheel of vacuum presses was pretty cool.
Thank you for this very impressive tour ! I have been playing guitar semi - professionally since 1968 , and have had many books on guitar construction , but I had yet to see a video showing all the necessary procedures . This is most enjoyable , and again , thank you very much !!!
It's not , it's cheap and easy. I'm a luthier for one of my guitars you'll be waiting 3-6 months while I cut assemble balance and temper to almost perfection Most of these guitars are fit for beginners , for example no balancing and I didn't even see them filing the frets ! Literally slice a finger open !! I saw tons of split grains , unfinished edges, bad glue adherence , weak bridges, weak nuts , cheap and nasty metallurgy and so on and so on and so on . Top not work it certainly is not , but it's important cheap guitars exist as I would have never been able to learn how to play without one .
Thank you for sharing your factory with us. I looked at your website too. What an amazing range of beautiful designs you have. Wonderful accomplishment from many years of hard work. You have every reason to celebrate what you have created.
Шикарное видео!! Я поражён этим действом и в восторге от увиденного волшебства!! Очень достойный звук инструмента!! Огромный респект автору видео и творческому коллективу фабрики!! От всей души, желаю вам процветания!!
I agree in Latin America this happens a lot and it is very sad, however there are many cultures and more so in Asia, where everyone works in businesses and family projects, more than anything because there they find a sense of belonging. Also they don't seem to do any type of work that involves force, they only remove paper tape
Приятно смотреть на работу людей, они дарят людям радость взять в руки гитару и играть мелодию Любви и многое другое, спасибо вам, У меня ИБАНЕЗ акустика, тоже большое спасибо, Поклон Вам 🎸🍾🎹🙏🙏🙏🤠
@@tenypec Yes, and the workers look Korean too. What separates Asia from the West is a sense of national pride, which is being given up in the West - especially in Europe. Asian people are proud of their nations and take pride in presenting the world with good products they enjoy. Their work ethics are much different from ours (better IMHO).
Да вот же. Сидели бы в США ковбои на ранчо и лабали бы себе кантри на гитарах. Так нет же. Надо обязательно залезть везде, принести демократию, понастроить баз во всем мире.
The main guitar that is being built here is the 50th Anniversary Crafter SungEum G-50th CE VVS, with vintage voicing, torrefied spruce & rosewood guitar. A truly beautiful guitar by a Korean builder that began in 1972 (that's why the 12th fret inlay). Although there is a fair amount of automation and CNC assist, I am really impressed with the individual craftsmanship that still goes into the manufacture. Of special note is the binding, inlays and the combination of machining and man that produced the joining of the neck. I own an Epiphone DR 500 mce that also has a similar neck construction and I can only hope that it was made and joined with such care and splendid craftsmanship.
Never seen a Crafter in America. It’s mostly Taylor, Gibson, Martin, and of course fender and Yamaha selling their cheapo Chinese laminates. The issue for me with a Korean made high end guitar would always be the boat journey over with potentially a month or more of enormous temp/humidity swings on a brand new instrument.
@@rxw5520 I had a handmade guitar shipped from spain to florida in an ill-fitting case inside one of those cardboard boxes you see at music stores with cheap guitars. that's it. I was shocked! I complained to the luthier telling him he was crazy to ship a high quality guitar that way. It survived and I still have it so i know it's built to last
성음 was my first guitar. The quality and the sound is top notch at the price range. I even didn’t know that requires this much process. Thanks for the vids.
So much for the tones of woods used in making a instrument, as far as the mass produced version I would have to play some before I’d buy one to hear if it’s a good guitar or not. I’ve played two exact models of a New Yamaha 1986 APX-10 stereo, 1 was a keeper the other was left behind at the shop to sell to someone else. Still have it today some 33 yrs later.
What I think is amazing is that someone had to figure out the exact lengths, for instance, of the sides, and their curvature, to be fastened end-to-end that way, and later have the front & back pieces glued to them, then they didn't even need to trim anything off. Also the routers and the CNC machines all had to be programmed. It's amazing how well they came out!
I mean, you just make one once, and if it's 45mm too long, start with a piece of wood that's 45mm shorter next time. Don't really need to figure much out.
Thank you for this fascinating video. The workers obviously take pride in their company and their guitars. The only moment that left me wondering was the fret installation at around 17:45 I'm sure more work went into setting the frets correctly and would have enjoyed seeing how it was done
I'm certain that they skipped the step where used a fret press to fully seat the frets. You could see they stuck up in the middle, and the he was only seating them at the ends--except where the fretboard went over the body. Drove me crazy!
But lots of people just can afford a guitar like this. And for this the price-performance ratio is incredible good, because this is more than 10 times cheaper but not 10 times worse to a 100 % handcrafted guitar and if you can see still with lots of handcraft.
Im a luthier, and yeah, months go into each instrument. Machines can only do what you command, but a luthier is improvising and making little decisions the entire build. Each piece of wood is different, even from the same part of the same tree, so you have to develop intuition for how minor variances in stiffness, density, etc will affect the overall instrument... Or maybe im just trying to justify doing things the hard way for little pay
Так это же конвейер, мастеров там нет, одна операция - один работник, но качество выше чем у мастера, т.к. одну операцию выполняет сотни раз в день, мастеру такое и неснилось!)))
Показаны далеко не все этапы производства. Но, в целом, весьма познавательный видос, для непосвящённых. Хотя сам бренд и его гитары весьма посредственны.
Assembly production of guitar makes it affordable to everyone. This is the first guitar for young children to start learning then to better guitars later. Great video, thanks.
They are using some rather solid machinery and methods. The guitars are branded 'Sungeum' which means 'accomplishing the sound' and is a well known brand in the Korean market. Crafter is the name of the parent company. HyunKwon Park, founded the company. The first guitars were built in the basement of his home where he had just 20 square meters of space and a staff of 4.
That was really interesting to watch. I’m surprised by how much super glue they use in initial construction and how they use wood glue on the frets instead of super glue. That was interesting. Also I’m curious how long those clamp times were. Cool video.
A good Guitar doesn’t use superglue or wood glue for frets. They use hide glue or something similar like they do to set the neck and the bridge plate. It can be heated allowing the parts to be removed.
@@Acemechanicalservices Titebond Original white glue can be unbound when heated. Hide glue is traditional because it was the only glue available in the old days. Some purists demand it, claiming it transmits sound better, but many wonderful sounding guitars are built with white glue. Manufactures charge a premium for hide glue because it's less convenient .
Nah. It started off with some employee that knows nothing about guitars randomly selecting pieces of wood with no care for the grain. It didn't get much better after that.
Why would you never own one? Have you ever played a Crafter guitar? They are consistently as good as instruments costing three times as much. I own four Crafters, all but one bought cheaply from eBay!
"I'd never own one".... What a foolish comment... I used to build Guild guitars in the Tacoma Guitar Factory, which was arguably the best era of those instruments. The woods, machinery and techniques were nearly identical to those used in this video. The only difference was that I didn't see any Hispanic or white people working along side the Asians, which would have been the case in the Tacoma factory.
@@corkystclair7475 I’m going to buy a F-512 in a few months. I don’t buy Chinese made guitars, period. Japanese, only if it’s made in Japan. I have 2 Yamahas. I’m a made in USA only buyer these days. I’ll remain foolish. I’m against all USA companies having their products made overseas. I want my guitars to say, Made in USA.
I almost bought a Crafter.. To this day I remember trying it in a shop and being surprised how good an different it was to everything else.. In the end I got a Yamaha, but my mind is still on that one magical Crafter..
You should always buy the "magical one" when you come across it. Even in a process as automated as seen here you sometimes get instances when everything falls into alignment: the best pieces of wood just happen to end up in one guitar on a day when everyone on the production line is having a good day...
@@ZonkerRoberts True, maybe the guitar itself wasnt special but it somehow clicked with me.. but the yamaha i got is also a nice guitar, probably better then that crafter, but yeah I would love to play it again, its a small shop there is a chance they still have exact one laying around
As a violin maker who works in the traditional method, by hand, from scratch, I can’t say much good about this except it makes guitars available for people without a lot of money.
... that's exactly what they are? While they are mass produced, there is clearly a lot of engineering and human attention that goes in to them to ensure they play well and look decent for what they are.
Incredible the amount of steps that it takes to create instrument, we are so blessed❤ I thoroughly appreciate and now realize the amount of effort it took to build the ukulele that I enjoy daily❤ embrace me so much happiness John 3:16
Yeah, I wonder what that goop is they used. If it's epoxy, that neck is never coming off. If it 's just a way to make a sort of conforming mold, but doesn't actually bond, then that would be OK. But then they smeared a bunch of what looked like superglue on the fingerboard extension - that could be tough to get off without damage.
I'm surprised that in many parts they just stick the part "by professional guess" not using precise templates. But I suppose doing thousands of these instruments weekly you could make them in dark be one hand and be still reasonably precise.
In order of importance: 1. If it's not a counterfeit version 2. If it's a playable instrument 3. If worker management is reasonable with employees, looks like a relaxing, productive, dedicated workplace making instruments for artists.
I am happy that sound engineering principles can result in low cost instruments for people to play, but fine, engineering and workmanship is not the same as art. Most of what you see is designed to make the instrument appear cosmetically appealing as opposed to sonically excellent. A manufactured acoustic instrument will never sound as good as a handmade instrument because there’s not enough time taken with the elements that are important to making the guitar sound excellent.
@@JonathanRZeko To be fair, that's mostly because they JUST put on new strings. The tuning literally went from bad to worse within that 15 seconds of playing
@@Marg-nt7qm Yet most things are manufactured in China. Quality control does exist there, you just have to pay for it, which most cheaper products and their companies won't do.
I watched a hand made guitar video by greenfield guitars, and it was absolutely stunning, watching this just makes my heart sorrowful. I never want a guitar that I buy to have been made in a place like this. It is still interesting tho
But this is how a beginner can get a precision-built instrument for a few hundred dollars that is perfectly playable. And that means that more aspiring players will stick with it, and mature into real guitarists who will eventually buy hand-made guitars from real luthiers. The guitar shown here is all solid woods and obviously built to last. If care was put into the bracing design and selection and curing of wood, these guitars should play well and sound good. The video maker could have taken ten more minutes to stretch the strings and get them in tune, though.
I bought a sigma guitar for $180 in the early 80s. Twenty years ago my son broke it by accidently sitting on it. I got it fixed and it played and sounded better after that than it did brand new. Any production guitar with a little TLC can last a long time and sound great.
When they installed the bridge, they put it over some clear coat. That bridge will eventually lift. You need to make sure the area the bridge is being glued to has ZERO clear coat under it. Rewatch this part in the video about 18:20 in and youll see at the corners of where that bridge is being installed has clear coat. Also you really need to paint with a brush the glue on.
Also not a fan of the size or material they are removing to install that output jack/preamp box in the guitar. Thats not an area i want to cut a huge chunk of wood out of.
Also be weary of undersaddle pickups, the take away the direct contact with the bridge and saddle. The more contact that the saddle and bridge are making, the better it will sound unplugged.
@@ctcards2636 That's where Taylor put their battery box and output jack, and they seem to know what they're doing. There's plenty of material still there, at least seven layers of lamination. That's why they put a big block of material in there to start with.
I've had my crafter for over 15 years and I've had zero issues with it. Yes it's considered somewhat of a cheap guitar but it sounds great and it's been reliable. I also play a Dean and a Martin 12 string so I do know what I'm talking about. This is a well-made budget guitar.
There is a moment when you can see an intricate inlay for an another guitar. It always gives me shivers. It is like: I want an acoustic guitar with a high quality fingerboard and then I want you to carve out half of it and put a plastic instead. Not to be negative I thoroughly enjoyed the video and Crafter Sungeum 1912 are very nice guitars.
I've built a few good acoustic guitars. This video was interesting, if a little depressing. None of these instruments seemed loved by the craftspeople making them: it was just a job. Call me superstitious but that's going to affect the tone.
I agree, of course I want my guitars made with Love, but these are engineered for production over being crafted for sonic ability and longevity. They want someone to pay $300 for it and go away haha
You do realize most factories that make guitars are exactly that for their employees? Jobs... Do you really think a Squier is made any differently, or more lovingly lmao
В океане средь могучих волн, где дельфины нежатся с пелёнок, раз попался под рыбацкий борт, маленький попался дельфинёнок...я тоже не умел играть, но когда в детстве услышал эту песню, сказал себе.... Я буду играть
