Jackson56 said:
As a Roberto-Venn grad and a certified Luthier and not taking anything away from the skill level of the people here, but my only complaint is people throwing around the term "building" loosely. The only people who build a Warmoth guitar are the ones who work at the factory and craft the necks and bodies. Anyone who buys them and puts them together is "assembling" a guitar, not building it.
What is everyone's thoughts on that?
I understand your frustration and sense of disenfranchisement. But, some fields are just that way and there's little you can do about it. Proper credit will only come from those who know where credit is due, and that knowledge is often esoteric so credit is rarely given. For instance, an honest-to-god computer programmer is capable of designing and implementing code on a machine code or assembly language level or slightly higher. The higher the level gets, the easier it gets until even children can do it. To hear script writers, HTML authors, spreadsheet arrangers, and database managers describe themselves as programmers really rankles hardcore programmers because those people are simply using what programmers create. To call those people "programmers" diminishes what actual programmers and computer scientists do.
The medical and legal professions don't tolerate that kind of thing. You're either a doctor or a lawyer or you're not, end of discussion. There's no confusion.
It's like calling garbagemen "sanitation engineers". What? What exactly are they engineering? Most of the guys who do that work can barely sign their own name or read the daily paper, let alone
design something.
But, sometimes there are grey areas. Somebody can build a house without designing it or fabricating the various components involved. Some might even say they were their own architect because they picked various features, and it's possible they were, but that would be generally be a gross exaggeration. In fact, in many cases, they didn't even do any building at all, let alone any design or fab.
With guitars, at least when using pre-fabricated parts, I don't see any problem with calling those who put them together "builders". The line between "builder" and "assembler" is pretty nebulous. Did I build that small-block Chevy engine, or did I assemble it? I submit there's little or no difference. In either case, one is putting together pre-designed pre-fabricated parts to create a whole. In no way did the assembler/builder design it. One might make different decisions about which parts to use, but whether or not those parts are appropriate for any given task has already been determined by the engineers who designed the whole as well as the parts. Whether or not they'll work in concert remains to be seen, but that's largely determined by whether or not the builders/assemblers properly used the parts the designers came up with.
Luthiers are the practical engineers of the stringed instrument world. They know what works and what doesn't and why. They can produce guitars from toadshite and wax paper because they understand all the underlying principles and the characteristics of the instrument and the materials they're traditionally made of. But, lest your ego get too outsized, it's still essentially a "skilled trade". Luthiers aren't mechanical engineers, they're still essentially technicians; just more educated than builders.
