See the whole build over at http://decibelguitars.com/proto1.

Check out those stripes.

My band has a CD release party on July 12th, and i’d love to be playing a brand-spankin’ new Decibel on stage, so i’m doing a big push this week to try and get Proto 1 into playable shape.

I’ve put 3 coats of polymerized tung oil on the body so far. I’m aiming to do at least 2 coats per day for the next few days. I’ve filled a couple of minor holes and all the fret slot ends along the edges of the fretboard. Left to do:

• Apply the logo to the headstock
• Clearcoat the headstock face
• Fit the tuners
• Glue on the nut
• install side marker dots
• Install pickups and wire them up
• Install the bridge
• Make and install a control cavity cover

This guitar will eventually be getting a GraphTech piezo system, but i’m going to forego that for now, since i won’t need it for the show, and i still need to do some milling on the bridge base plate to accommodate the piezo wiring.

Check out the Proto 1 page for the whole picstory!

Years later, i finally acquired a stunning Parker Fly Classic, and it did not disappoint. Well, except for the fact i found that i wanted to be able to move between the magnetic and piezo sounds while playing, and with two hands already occupied with picking and fretting, that seemed like an ideal task for one of my feet.

Read on…

I was surprised to learn that nobody had made a true “blend” pedal that worked the same way the magnetic/piezo balance pot worked on the Fly. At one end of the knob’s travel, it was full magnetic. At the other end, it was full piezo. In the middle, it was 100% of both, with any blend available between the two extremes.

Stereo volume pedals tracked two inputs and two outputs in parallel. Pan pedals usually swept one input between two outputs. And the occasional “blend” pedal i found either allowed the player to add the piezo sound to a fixed magnetic sound (like the Fishman PowerBlend pedal) or didn’t allow 100% of both signals in the middle position.

So i took it upon myself to design and build the pedal i envisioned.

My design criteria were that the pedal had to work exactly as i wanted and be a 100% passive design, so i wouldn’t have to mess around with preamps, buffers, batteries, impedance matching and so on. I wanted it to be universally workable for anyone with a magnetic/piezo equipped guitar like a Parker, a Music Man, or any guitar equipped with an aftermarket bridge and preamp from Fishman, L.R. Baggs or GraphTech.

I had to make a few assumptions, the first of which was that the guitar’s magnetic signal would be buffered by the piezo’s preamp. I know that GraphTech’s AcoustiPhonic preamp does. The advantage of this is that a 25 kOhm pot can be used because both circuits are active. If the magnetic signal is not buffered, then a 250 k, 500 k or 1 Meg pot would have to be used.

I found empty wah pedal shells available at Small Bear Electronics, bought blend pots through StewMac, found various jacks locally, and set to work creating the first prototype.

In my R&D process, i discovered that the automatic stereo/mono switching used in some preamp circuits (such as the AcoustiPhonic and newer Parkers) presented a problem. From my testing, it appeared that a tiny amount of voltage is sent down the piezo (ring) signal wire, and when that voltage is detected on the ground circuit (which would happen when a mono TS plug is inserted in a stereo TRS jack… the ring would be shorted to ground), the preamp switches into mono mode, sending both magnetic and piezo signals down the “tip” of the connector. It’s my understanding that newer Parkers that lack the red mono/stereo button next to the output jack also work in this way.

Wiring the pot backwards succesfully isolated the voltage from the guitar’s onboard preamp, but resulted in a faint “zipper-like” sound as the pot was moved through its range.

I worked around it by putting an effects insert in the piezo circuit, where i placed a Tech21 Acoustic DI. This active preamp effectively isolated the voltage from heading back up the ground wire to trip the preamp into mono mode. But it didn’t meet my “100% passive” rule, so i knew i wasn’t done.

I left it alone for a while, because in my pedalboard at the time, it worked. But as my rig evolved and changed over time, i knew i’d have to revisit it. Further research into balanced and unbalanced circuits gave me an idea to try a “pseudo ground lift” whereby a resistor and a capacitor in line with the ground, which filters any voltage from travelling back up the ground wire. Eureka!

And here i present to you the schematic diagram for the pedal:

Click here to download it in PDF form.

I don’t believe in keeping what seems like a common-sense solution a “secret”, or trying to apply for a patent for what is essentially a blend pot stuffed into a wah pedal casing. (Chances are, a patent would not be granted for such an obvious solution.) So i’ve published the schematic here for anyone who wants to DIY their own pedal together, or improve upon my design.

On customer request, i will be including one of these pedals with each Decibel guitar that’s equipped with a GraphTech AcoustiPhonic piezo system. In my opinion, it’s the simplest, most elegant way to handle the switching or blending between magnetic and piezo sounds in a hybrid guitar.

Currently, i’m using a Dunlop-style wah pedal shell from Small Bear, but i would love to be able to retrofit this into an Ernie Ball VP or VP Jr. pedal. Unfortunately, the Ernie Ball pedals use a long-shaft pot, and i have not been successful in sourcing a long-shaft blend pot that would make this retrofit possible. If anyone can point me in the right direction, that would be great!

Most of my effort over the last couple of weeks has gone into getting some bodies and necks prepped before the shop move. I’ll likely be on a bit of a hiatus for a few weeks while my own space gets finished. Then i’ll be ready to start acquiring more tools and moving into the space to get back to building.

The body for Proto 3 has been trimmed out, along with a nice figured mahogany Javelin body, and another AMX out of swamp ash. These will likely become dB1 and dB2 respectively!

More to come soon!

Decibel Guitars is proud to announce a revolutionary new pickup design. After over 20 years of research and development, the Aurora pickups are now available as standard equipment on all Decibel Guitars.

“We looked at every pickup technology available when developing these,” notes Decibel Guitars founder, Darren Wilson, “and we discovered that just about every combination of magnets, exotic materials and wire had already been explored. One factor that had never been taken into account in magnetic pickup design was the earth’s own magnetic field.”

Tone purists know that the frequency response and noise floor of traditional electric guitar pickups can change dramatically depending on the orientation of the guitar in relation to the amp, among other factors such as oxygen content in their cables and battery brand. Until now, the solution has been to shield the guitar extensively, insulating it from its environment. Decibel’s R&D department discovered that the orientation of the guitar in relation to the Earth’s axis also played a significant factor when all other variables were isolated from the signal chain.

Aurora pickups are designed to be sensitive to changes in electromagnetic fields in the guitar’s environment, and to have their magnetic response dynamically react to these changes, yielding powerful, consistent and dynamic tone previously unheard of.

Instead of solid bar or rod magnets, Decibel Aurora pickups use 1/4″ diameter glass capsules filled with a proprietary Ionized Liquid Ferromagnets licensed from 3M. The ferrofluid contained in the ILF capsules use nano-scale polarized metallic particles suspended in an inert carrier fluid. This allows the ferrofluid to behave as both a solid and a liquid, depending on the application of an external magnetic field.

In the application of a magnetic electric guitar pickup, the ferrofluid “pole pieces” allow the magnetic field of the pickup to dynamically reconfigure itself to its surroundings, allowing ambient electromagnetic fields to either be neutralized or enhanced, depending on the position of the Dynamic Polarity Control (DPC) on the guitar. Players no longer need to shield their guitars with copper foil or graphite paint to eliminate electromagnetic interference from their signal chain.

With the three-position DPC in the “isolate” position, the pickups dynamically sense and reverse the polarity of any stray signals, effectively silencing any noise or interference. In the “enhance” position, the DPC allows environmental EM fields to be essentially “multiplied” by the pickups, creating unique and previously unheard tones that are infinitely responsive, with dramatic sustain. The third mode of the DPC is “fixed”, which locks the magnetic polarity of the pickup into a fixed mode, allowing it to behave more like a “traditional” magnetic pickup.

The tone in both dynamic polarity positions can be described as having a very warm, “earthy” fundamental, with wide open and spatial harmonic overtones. Since the pickups actually use the Earth as the basis of their frequency response, this statement could not be more true. In all positions, the guitar’s sustain is significantly enhanced due to the ferrofluid’s almost non-existent string pull, compared to other magnetic pickup designs.

“These pickups are nothing short of revolutionary,” says Kevan Geier, inventor of the Tremol-No, and holder of several patents. “Every guitarist and guitar manufacturer is going to use this technology in their instruments.”

Aurora pickups are available starting today, in 6- 7- and 8-string configurations, with both humbucking and single-coil options. They are currently available exclusively from Decibel Guitars, with OEM and aftermarket licensing agreements available.

For further information, please visit the Decibel Gutiars website at http://www.decibelguitars.com/Aurora

-30-

Update: If you’ve read this far, you may be thinking, “Wow… this is cool!” Or you may be eyeing it with a degree of suspicion. Either way, we think you should read the headline again… a little more carefully:

Decibel Guitars announces Aurora Pickups: Revolutionary Ionized Liquid Ferromagnets Optimize Output, Lengthen Sustain

G O T C H A !

For those who got it, thanks for playing along!

In some of the guitar forums i frequent, i encounter players (or hear stories passed on from other builders) who are looking for the custom-built guitar of their dreams for $800 to $1000, with a laundry list of exotic woods and high-end hardware… and they want it in 8 to 10 weeks.

There’s an old axiom that goes like this…

GOOD — FAST — CHEAP

Pick any two.

Click past the break to read on…

You may be able to find someone good who can build within your budget, but you may have to wait over a year (or more) for it to be completed. You may be able to find an amateur luthier who can build what you want fast and cheap, but the resulting product may be… less than spectacular.

There’s even a small group of elite builders who run small shops, and deliberately limit their production to maintain quality and remain personally involved in the build process where much of the work is still being done by hand. Many of these builders have long waiting lists, command prices well into the five figures, and have no shortage of satisfied customers and eager future customers willing to pay the asking price and wait as long as it takes.

So the bottom line is that if you want a good guitar in a reasonable time frame, you’re going to have to pay a reasonable price for it. And to understand what i mean by “reasonable,” please see Part I of this series.

Probing the price perception gap.

In the last few years, there seems be an increasing number of people in my experience who are looking for “cheap custom guitars”. I’m not sure from where this trend has come, but there seems to be a gross misunderstanding among certain groups of people regarding how much time, energy and effort go into building a good guitar. And conversely, there seems to be little appreciation for the fact that the people committing their livelihood to luthiery (or those who are doing it as a sideline, a second career, or even as an intense hobby) actually deserve to make money at it. If you want to get a very high-level sense of the economics of being a small guitar builder, please read my earlier post on the subject.

Guitar building takes time, money, tools, materials and resources, not to mention skill, creativity and passion. For a small builder to make a “custom,” a selling price of $800 would mean pretty much zero profit for the builder… they’d essentially be building it for barely more than the price of parts and materials only. Not exactly a fair deal, and certainly no way to run a sustainable business.

When is a “custom shop” not a custom shop?

Many people point to Carvin’s “custom shop” prices when questioning why small builders charge what they do for their instruments. Carvin is very much the exception and not the norm in the guitar manufacturing business. They aren’t so much a “custom” builder… they’re a fairly large-scale production operation that happens to have technology and workflow in place to build excellent quality “semi-custom” guitars to order. Profitably.

Even with that, while it is possible to price out some Carvin models for less than a grand, the specs end up being pretty basic. Starting to pick from Carvin’s very attractive options list gets the price up fairly quickly. A well-equipped one can even run $1800 or more, which is getting up there for high end production instruments, but the bang-for-the-buck ratio with Carvin is very good. Carvin doesn’t have a distribution or dealer network to support, so they cut out a lot of layers of profit-taking, allowing the consumer to get their hands on top-notch instruments for less. But as i said, Carvin is very much the exception and NOT the norm in the business, and guitarists need to appreciate that.

The custom compulsion.

Many young players on limited budgets seem to become obsessed with the idea of owning a custom instrument. Years ago, custom guitars were a rarity, and only the most elite of players could afford to commission a completely unique instrument from a boutique builder. Most other players “got by” with modified stock instruments, with slightly modified neck profiles, upgraded hardware, aftermarket electronics, and so on.

What drives this desire for a “custom” over a modified production instrument? Is it sound? Feel? Aesthetics? It seems that modifying production guitars is still happening quite a bit… there continues to be a healthy aftermarket in pickups, electronics, replacement parts and hardware.

Yet with all these options available, some players still become obsessed with the idea of owning an instrument they’ve had a hand in designing to meet their own tastes and needs… and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Sometimes a totally custom-built guitar is the only thing that scratches that itch. But we need to be wary of that obsession potentially leading to unrealistic budgets, expectations and deadlines. Prices aren’t always negotiable. Low-balling on price can come across as disrespectful of the luthier’s time and experience, not just as a bargaining strategy.

Keeping things simple.

Everything i’ve written here is i suppose a long-winded way of communicating my business approach for Decibel Guitars. I’ve given very careful thought to my observation of these issues over the last couple of years, and i’m taking very careful steps to start this venture slowly and build it at a sustainable pace.

Decibel Guitars is currently a sideline… an intense hobby that i’m engaged in fully as something i’m passionate about, something i love to do, and something i’d like to see grow into something more at some point in the future. But it is not currently structured to be my primary source of income, and i think my customers and potential customers need to be aware of that, if only for managing their expectations.

That said, i’m still treating it more or less like a business, and would like to have it be a self-sustaining one that does not require infusion of large amounts of my own personal funds to keep it running. Yes, that does mean that it has to be profitable. If it’s not making money, i can’t possibly afford to keep doing it.

At this time, i have no current plans for Decibel Guitars to become a “custom shop” or even build guitars to order for the foreseeable future. As soon as money changes hands for future delivery of a product or service, i feel there are expectations for deadlines, update frequency, response times, and so on. (And a lot of these expectations are justified… paying customers should be kept up to date with where their instrument is in the build queue and when they may expect to get what they paid for… within reason.) However, even the process of preparing quotes and discussing specs with customers – not to mention managing change orders once a build is in progress – takes up tremendous amounts of time and energy that i’d rather spend on more productive pursuits, like actually building guitars.

Becoming a “custom shop” or being able to engage in a build-to-order process is not something i feel i will be able to do reliably and consistently until i’ve been doing this for a LONG time, and have my workflow down to an exact science where i can accurately forecast production times and delivery dates. Even then, i’m not sure it’s worth the potential risk. As i’ve learned in the last couple of years, both first-hand and from friends and colleagues around me, is that life does sometimes get in the way… illness, deaths, other extenuating circumstances and life events can throw small businesses into turmoil, and not everyone wants to share every intimate detail of their life with their customers and/or the general public. I know i don’t. But as a one-person shop, if you’re accountable to people who have already given you money for a product you have yet to deliver, you almost have no choice. (Again, within reaonable bounds.)

I’d rather produce short runs of instruments i’ve spec’d out, designed and built, then sell them when they’re done… which is exactly what i’m going to do. My business model is essentially this:

I design what i want.
I build what i like.
I take as much time as it takes.
And i only sell completed instruments.

It’s simple and straightforward, customers know what they’re getting, and they can get it as soon as their payment clears.

And i get the satisfaction of knowing that every instrument has been conceived, spec’d out and built by me, without compromise, and without the stress of deadlines or keeping up extensive communication with each individual customer. I can truly pour every ounce of energy and passion into building each instrument, instead of trying to manage all the other day-to-day crap that a “custom shop” would have to go through.

Will it limit my business somewhat? Absolutely. But it will allow me to keep the business small and manageable, and have me not go insane or broke in the process, or worse yet, lose the passion for something i love to do, and hope to keep on doing well into my retirement years.

A big part of what i’m hoping to achieve by using this blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media to interact with customers (past, present and future), is a level of openness, honesty and transparency about the process of designing and building guitars, but also about my business practices and what people can expect from Decibel Guitars now and in the future. I don’t want there to be any guesswork or potential for misunderstanding along the way. And by laying the process bare, i hope to de-mystify it somewhat, and hopefully help people to gain an appreciation for the creativity, passion, skill and process that goes into crafting fine guitars. I also hope to help other small builders to think about their business practices and pricing policies, in the hope of having more small builders survive and flourish. If you have any thoughts or comments, i’d be happy to hear them… please post in the comments section below, or hit the “Contact” link in the top right to send them to me privately. – darren.

Why guitars cost what they do.

I’ve noticed in the last few years that there has been increasing demand for “custom shop” instruments. It’s one of those things that ebbs and flows over time, and the current economic situation notwithstanding, we seem to be on one of those upward swings where guitarists reach a certain level in their playing, and they’re no longer satisfied with “off-the-shelf” instruments, and start looking for something unique, something different, or something that just suits them better.

Along with this trend, i’ve also noticed (in general terms) that the average age and pocketbook depth of people seeking boutique or custom-shop instruments seems to be inversely proportional to the demand. I can’t count the number of threads on guitar discussion forums i’ve seen where a young player thinks he or she can get a guitar built to their spec for $1000 or less. A worrying trend is that there have actually been a few luthiers who will take them up on it.

Yet when you stop and look at what the true costs of building guitars as a small independent builder, you get a very different picture. No matter how you frame it, penny-pinching, perpetually broke musicians often don’t seem to understand why their dream custom guitar from a small builder should actually cost much, much more than the $1000 they’re willing to shell out. They can’t comprehend why the price list at a big-name custom shop like Jackson starts at around $3500. Click past the break to read more…

Lots of luthiers command premium prices… and they should.

It’s really hard to make a living at building guitars full-time. Unless a luthier is charging premium prices for their product, (or they’re cranking stuff out in volume) in order to have a profitable business that’s going to grow – and pay themselves a decent wage so they can have a house, a car, a family and a life – they need to charge what the guitars are actually worth, and not be afraid to actually make a profit on every instrument sold.

For example, take a look at the range of pricing on David Myka‘s site. He’s a small builder whose work i admire a lot, and he’s been gradually building a stellar reputation for the last few years. His cheapest guitar starts at $2750, and they go up from there. Way up. Just taking a wild guess, but i wouldn’t be surprised (knowing his work and the kind of players he’s likely attracting) if his average selling price – once the guitars are optioned-up with killer woods and top-notch hardware and pickups – is pushing $4k.

Simple economics.

Say you’re a luthier just getting started. How much do you need to make in a year to have a comfortable life? How much money does your business need for a shop (plus heat and light), tools, raw materials, consumables (blades, drill bits, router bits, paint, glue, etc.) and enough cash flow so you can buy and stockpile wood, hardware and other parts? Add those two numbers together, and that’s your minimum profit you have to make every year.

Let’s just say you want to bring home a modest income of $50k per year. Assuming a cost of about $500 per instrument for the raw wood, hardware, electronics (all at wholesale prices – not retail) and a fairly modest final selling price of $2500, let’s assume half of that profit goes to the business and half goes to pay yourself a fair wage… you would have to build 50 instruments a year at that price to pay yourself that $50k.

That leaves only $50k for the business, for rent, utilities, tools, materials, etc. And that doesn’t even take into account things like a marketing plan to help grow the business, or potentially having to pay a bookkeeper to help run the numbers, or eventually maybe having an extra set of hands to answer phones, take orders, help pack and ship instruments, maintain a Web site, etc. This also doesn’t include the cost of building prototypes, getting tooling, templates and jigs made, the time spent doing research and development, legal fees, taxes and so on. That’s actually a pretty slim profit.

Drop the selling price by 30% and the volume has to increase considerably to maintain a comfortable profit, because your costs are fixed and dropping the selling price has just eaten up your margin. Drop the selling price too far, and the business isn’t profitable (at best) or you can’t make ends meet, can’t even pay yourself, and the business folds (at worst).

Of course, working out of a home workshop will save some of those costs, but it’s still hard to make it a profitable business if you want it to flourish and grow. And some people are actually embarrassed about making a healthy profit. If you’re one of those people, you really need to get over that. Businesses are not sustainable without profit. Period.

The seduction of production… doing it in volume (or die trying)

I think a lot of luthiers chronically under-charge for their work, especially when they’re starting out. Many of them get seduced by the idea of keeping their prices artificially low to spark demand, and then trying to meet their revenue and profit targets by trying to build stuff in volume. They end up keeping the business afloat for a short while on all the deposit money that comes in with the customer orders – robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak – and before they know it, they’re in over their heads and staring down a three-year backlog of orders and they’re STILL just barely squeaking by.

These backlogs of work result in lengthy wait times, which inevitably leads to unhappy customers, and real potential for the business to collapse under its own weight. They’re also not likely paying themselves a decent wage while doing this, because they’re working with slim-to-nonexistent profit margins to begin with. And slim profit margins means there’s no money to hire extra hands to try and process the work more quickly. Even if they could build more quickly, if their margins are too slim to begin with, building twice as many instruments won’t make them more profitable… the economies of scale only really start to take effect when you get into larger-scale manufacturing. For the small builder, either you profit or you die. I’ve seen this happen numerous times, when talent, skill and ambition meet terrible business sense.

Based on the numbers above, you’re looking at producing about an instrument a week, on average. With no vacation time or sick days. I think it would be quite a challenge for a one-person shop to deliver an instrument a week. Stretch that timeline out to an instrument every two weeks, and you’d have to double your selling price to $5000 to make sure the cashflow stays in positive territory and you pay yourself a living wage.

As you can see from this very basic introduction to the economics of building guitars, it really is not unreasonable for boutique or custom-shop instruments from small independent luthiers to cost $3500 to $5000 or more.

Now, some people are doing it as a hobby or a part-time pursuit, and aren’t expecting to make a living from it… but guitarists should not make that assumption and pressure prices unrealistically downward.

For a more detailed analysis of what it costs to run a small CNC-equipped shop, Mike Sherman (who worked in Hamer’s custom shop and later ran Washburn’s custom shop before moving out on his own) wrote a summary of some of his hard costs… quite an eye opener!

Watch for Part II, coming in a few days…

Even in their unfinished state, people were able to pick up and hold both models, to get a sense for the ergonomics, the neck carves and the on-strap balance. Both the Javelin and the Aviator were very warmly received. Thanks, guys!

Proto 1 has been fretted, and all the extra little bits of drilling and routing have been done. I still have to thin down the headstock a little to accommodate the tuners, install side dots and do a little bit of filling and sanding. Then it’s just a matter of applying the tung oil and beeswax finish, installing hardware and electronics, then doing the final setup.

Proto 2 is almost at the same stage, it’s just awaiting fret installation, then it’ll be the same steps, with the exception of the finish, which i’m still thinking about sending out for a solid white paint job. (With a secret twist…)

So i’m likely going to start doing a big push on getting bodies and necks glued up and cut out. Proto 3 is on deck and just about ready to go. And i have some wood for the next couple of instruments after that… a mahogany Javelin and a swamp ash Stealth. These will very likely be officially designated dB1 and dB2… the first serial-numbered Decibels!

But don’t hold your breath… I also want to update you on what’s happening with Decibel’s shop space. Thus far, i’ve been borrowing shop space from our good friend Brian Bowes. For the last couple of months, life events have resulted in Brian needing to close down his workshop, so Decibel will no longer have a dedicated space in which to work as of the end of April.

But fear not… in the few weeks we have left, i’m hoping to get at least a couple more bodies and necks cut and prepped, so i can keep working on my own in a limited capacity until my own shop space is up and running. (If anyone out there has a shop i can borrow time in, that would be awesome!) Hopefully things will be back on track by the end of the summer, but i’ll continue to post updates and get whatever done that i can.