I once thought that making a guitar was the simplest thing in the world, but I suppose that everybody with a history in this profession is barely aware of his skills. Then I started offering luthiery classes and over the course of a few years around 30 of my students had tried to build a guitar. Slowly I came to realise that it is not easy at all, seeing as they had a hard time with it. Even though an electric guitar is easier to build than an acoustic, it still requires a lot of craftsmanship. That is what separates a good guitar from an excellent guitar.

I began as an apprentice to another luthier. He taught me many things, but most of all- to think before one begins. Later, I opened my own workshop. At first I built custom guitars to suit whatever idea or design anyone imagined. After making much of what someone else designed, I wanted to create my own models, and now I am at a stage where I build mostly my own models. I have five models: 2 acoustics, 2 basses and 1 electric guitar.

The electric model is named "Reflection." During all those years of doing repair work I examined many old instruments. Every time I noticed something about a certain guitar that was attractive to me, I took notes. By now I have my own archive with details from many old Strats, Teles and Les Pauls, as well as basses, archtops and acoustics. Details like: neck shape, fingerboard radius, type of frets, dimensions of the neck, etc. Then I took all my favourite dimensions and playing characteristics and melded them all into one neck for the Reflection. That is what this guitar stands for, a new design but with many nods to the past. Take the neck shape for instance. Whether or not a neck feels thick has more to do with the contour than with the actual thickness. I make my necks quite thick, because I have found it adds to the tone. At the same time, they don't feel thick at all because of the shape. That way I am able to create a neck with great tone that still plays smooth and easy.

When I was asked by a Dutch magazine what I thought had the most influence on a guitar's tone, I said, "Probably the pickups." They had expected me to say wood of course. But when you think of it, if you change the pickups of a Strat for humbuckers, gone is your Strat sound. But if you would change the maple fingerboard to rosewood, then you would still have your Strat sound, just a different Strat sound.

Even though pickups probably have the most influence on the tone, wood is still very important. If you use only soft woods, you would never get much definition even if you tried all sorts of pickups. The same goes for using only hard, dense woods; you would never get a warm, compressed sound. I concluded that the choice of wood sets certain parameters, and within those parameters you can manipulate the sound in a certain direction with your choice of pickups, but you cannot cross (or ignore) the parameters.

Consequently I usually create a mix of harder and softer woods. I prefer harder and stiffer woods for neck and fingerboard and softer woods for the body. ("Hard" and "soft" are all very relative here. If I'd hit you with my favourite soft wood I am sure you'd call it very hard wood!) Until recently, I used alder as standard body wood for the Reflection. This gives an accent to the mid-range, but then I found another wood that has never been used in guitar making. It is called abachi and is commonly referred to as "cheap wood" used for insignificant construction work. That is probably because there's so much of it. (Wasn't that Leo Fender's motive for choosing alder.?) Testing it with listening, knocking, scratching, tapping I found out that abachi has a lot of tone in it, much more than alder at least. It is lightweight, light coloured and has music in it. Wouldn't that make it excellent body wood?

Nonetheless, I will introduce albachi gradually, without throwing away my alder, swamp ash or mahogany. That's because I found out that if I fly too much in the face of public opinion I have a hard time selling my guitars. It has always seemed strange to me that I can explain the benefits of the hardwood/soft wood mix, demonstrate those benefits to a degree noticeable to the acute listener, and still hear them say, "I hear it, yes- but give me tradition anyway."

So what do you do? You give him what they want. I remember a few years ago how several new ideas for improving intonation appeared on the market. One of them was Fretwave from Australia. I ordered it and installed it on a guitar and indeed it was easier to tune and had better intonation. My thought was, "This is revolutionary; I'm going to use it on all my guitars." Then over the next year I had to conclude that there weren't many people who heard the difference like I did. And when you don't hear it, why use it? So Fretwave more or less passed away slowly. And even though it was a great idea, I don't use it anymore on my guitars, strictly because of public opinion.

Back to wood. For the neck I prefer stiff wood, like rock maple and high-quality rosewood. Many factory guitars feature Indian rosewood fingerboards. If you would hold a piece of Indian rosewood and blackwood for instance, a very superior rosewood from Madagascar, you would immediately choose the blackwood for your guitar. For large factories blackwood is too expensive, but for small shops like mine, it is a must. It is one of the ingredients that makes the difference between a good and an excellent guitar.

So wood selection is very critical to me, even though I said that pickups probably have more influence on the sound. I want every part to be the best in its category. The fingerboards for a Reflection are either blackwood, ziricote or Brazilian rosewood or something similar.

Another small but important detail to me is the nut. I have made nuts from many different materials, including some very unconventional ones. For the Reflection I stuck with unbleached cow bone. It still has the fat in it. That makes it easy to tune. I like the sound of it more than graphite or anything else, and I like the way it looks.

The Reflection is available with different pickups to suit your personal taste. I like the look of a lot of chrome (or nickel) on this guitar, so I mainly use covered pickups like humbuckers or Tele pickups on this model. I also use TV Jones pickups which I like a lot. But about a year ago I started designing my own pickups. These are standard pickups now on the Reflection. I call them "High Cholesterol" with the conviction that 'fat' sound is what most people like. These are fat-sounding single coils. I would further describe their sound with words like big, loud, strong, clear, defined and- not to forget- quiet. Very quiet. It is not the P90 [found on the Gibson Les Paul and other models], but rather a traditional single-coil tone, somehow more mature.

I endorse the philosophy of less is more. On the Reflection, you won't find extra buttons, mini-switches, tricks, or gimmicks. It has no extra-special wiring nor 13-position tone filter, rather just 2 pickups, a 3-way switch and accessible volume and tone pots. The volume has a nice sweep and treble bleed. The tone pot plus cap have been selected to match perfectly with the pickups. If the pickups are too bright or direct, you can turn the tone knob by 30% and take off only the top end and add some compression to have a more vintage tone, without changing the character of the pickups. By the way, you may think it goes too far to try different material capacitors in a guitar, but I did just that and perceived a difference. I am not aware of what is popular today, but I settled for ceramic disk caps. To me they sounded better than anything else. (And yes, I also tried the orange drops and Mallory caps custom amp builders rave about.)

Every guitarist seems to be an expert regarding finish. I believe in thin finishes, but I don't believe in the magic of nitrocellulose. "Old" doesn't always mean better. Most of the time, old means worse. If you want to create a relic finish, then nitrocellulose is the way to go. I am not against nitro, but if you want to create a durable transparent finish, then I'd prefer polyurethane over nitrocellulose. I don't want the finish of my guitars to crack and discolour after 5 months, and my customers don't want that either. You can apply PU lacquer just as thin as nitro. And when a coating is that thin (like a plastic bag) you cannot speak of a 'hard' coating anymore, whatever chemicals it is made off.

I realize that instruments from the Far East may have a coating 1 mil thick or more. I am not talking about that. I apply a very thin coating of PU or PE, depending on the guitar. I've often heard the argument that "wood needs to breathe." Wood doesn't breathe. You seal the wood because you don't want it to be so sensitive to moisture and humidity. So why are the so-called pores of nitro an advantage then? People tend to assign many human characteristics to wood, as if it could be choked by lacquer for instance. I want my finish to be as thin as possible, but also transparent, clear, flexible and resistant to UV radiation. I believe modern 2K lacquers achieve a better score than nitro in this regard. But relax, I wouldn't fight anybody over this point.

By now you are probably beginning to empathize with me and feel the tension of being a guitar maker. On the one hand stands public opinion which must be considered in making every decision. On the other hand there is the freedom to creatively let yourself go, to be an artist, to fly high and dream big. The tension lies in finding the middle of the road, which I've tried very hard to do with my Reflection guitar.

You may also begin to see why there is a difference between a factory-built guitar and a handmade instrument. It's the little details that count. At the same time you need to be a tone freak to recognise and appreciate a handmade guitar. The Reflection guitar is an instrument you have to explore. It won't give away all of its secrets the first day, nor the next.

Sander de Gier
www.degierguitars.com

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