Wizard wrote:
Here's an arbitrary thought that may be complete rubbish ... but here goes anyway.
When stuff was made in a more manual way, with more of the human factor involved ... then the variability from one instrument to another would be greater.
This may mean that there was opportunity for a few really good instruments to pop out ... better than the cookie-cutter consistency of a modern production line.
Sure... but when was that age? I don't think that that age was 60 years ago. By then there was already a high degree of assembly line work.
I'm convinced that there was a major quality drop off for some brands - notably Fender and Gibson - in the 70s. That was because they started building to a price rather than to a specification. This can happen to any company in any industry.
The theory goes that Martin were less effected by this than other companies because everything stayed in the family and guitars were still built the same old way. Hmmm.... in the early 70s there were thousands (this is not an exaggeration) of Martin dreadnoughts built the old way (templates given to workers) with the bridges 3mm forward of where they should have been. On the production line (which is what it was and still is) workers were given a pair of templates for necks. As long as it was no smaller than the one and no larger than the other then it was OK. This allowed for "off - center" necks, vee shaped necks where the apex of the vee did not actually run down the center of the neck. Some people like this (I've played one such D28 with the vee noticably off-set, and I found it very comfortable) but these kinds of things lead to the need to play all examples you can of a guitar because some were going to really blow your socks off and some were going to leave you cold.
Cookie-cutter consistency is better in many ways. The guitars will be more consistent and you won't get things like neck pockets cut too large or bridges 3mm out of place. Taylor and Larrivee (for two) both make use of a lot of computerised cutting and shaping. Larrivee still fit the neck by hand, because there isn't a machine that can do the job as well as a human.
These days there are many low-volume, high-end luthiers who do a lot of the work themselves and use minimal machining (more than you might think). Prices are high, waits are long, quality can be very good indeed (but this is not a given).
I actually do believe that a handmade instrument is going to sound better than mass produced ... if only because the maker; with real ears samples the sound and rejects and/or fixes instruments that sound.
And there was probably more of this human intervention going on back then.
So I think it's more an issue of human involvement vs. mass production than it is vintage vs. modern.
Maybe. But by WW2 Martin were already making a lot of guitars and couldn't devote that much time and energy to them. They would be careful about buying wood, and they'd weed out blanks with knots or run-off, but after that? They probably made a whole load of dreadnought tops and then had somebody sort those into piles. The best examples would be 45s, the worst would go to 18s and 28s, with a small percentage being tossed completely.
People making guitars can't afford to discard or re-work part-made items. They do, but they'll keep it as low as they can.
The exception here, as always, are the guys who build themselves, slowly and in low-volumes. They can afford the time (because they've built it into the price and told you that you will wait a year for instrument) to shave each brace a little at a time until things sound just right to their ears.
