Kyle McCrocklin — Oilfields, Laboratories, and Luthiery
Our speaker this week was Kyle McCrocklin, the founder of San Francisco Guitar Company. He shared the story of his cross country journey through oilfields, laboratories, and woodshops in pursuit of a childhood dream. Over the course of the evening he engaged with the audience in discussions about luthiery, the physics of music, and deforestation.
Kyle grew up in rural Indiana and studied Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. It was there that he got his first taste of luthiery through self-guided projects in pickup winding and guitar refinishing. He also discovered Purdue’s basement machine shop and learned to operate its mills and lathes.
After graduating Kyle moved to Bakersfield, California to work for an oilfield services company. Bakersfield is home to some of the oldest and largest oil fields in the country and has produced billions of barrels of oil. Oil was discovered there in 1865 and new wells are still being drilled today.
Working in Bakersfield’s oil fields is a dangerously fast-paced lifestyle. After completing his evaluation of the Kern River Oil Field with a pulsed neuron generator Kyle hung up his flame retardant blue coveralls and left for Colorado to research and develop a next-generation gravity meter. With this opportunity came many brilliant mentors who nurtured a love for the
scientific method.
In 2015 Kyle moved to San Francisco — a city he had made many trips to while living in Bakersfield and Colorado — to pursue the art of luthiery.
A.Q.: How confident were you in your skills before you dove into making guitars?
Too confident — I had the beginner mindset. I thought that I would be making top quality guitars in less than a year (before my oilfield savings ran out). What I actually dove into is a lifelong pursuit.
A.Q.: Is there more of a craft involved in making acoustic guitars than electric guitars or are there master craftsmen for both kinds?
There are master craftsmen of both electric and acoustic guitars but in my opinion the
acoustic guitar is a little more complex. In an acoustic guitar the instrument itself is the
speaker — the entire guitar vibrates with the strings to produce sound we hear. In an electric guitar the strings’ vibrations are detected by sensors called “pickups” and sent to an amplifier. The sound we hear is generated by a loudspeaker.
The top of an acoustic guitar is a stiff, lightweight piece of wood with a complex pattern of
bracing on its underside. A master luthier can tap one of these tops and, based on the sound, remove material from the braces to fine tune the guitar’s sound.
A.Q.: So what does determine the sound of an electric guitar other than the pick-ups themselves?
The stiffness of the guitar over the length of the strings plays a big part. This is determined
primarily by what materials the guitar is made of. The scale length (the length of the strings)
also has an impact on the guitar’s timbre. In addition, the positioning of the pickups and the control electronics they are connected to have a drastic impact on the electric guitar’s sound.
A.Q.: Can you discuss the tapping a little bit? What kinds of things does the tapping inform? What decisions do you make based on this information?
When a luthier taps a piece of wood he is listening closely to the pitch it produces. Because stiffness and frequency are closely related the luthier has just made a rough measurement of that piece of wood’s stiffness. This informs material selection. When tuning an acoustic guitar top the luthier shaves off material from the braces based on the “tap tone” until the desired pitch is produced.
A.Q.: How does the age of the wood determine the sound?
Older trees have tighter growth rings and this is desirable in an instrument. Also, many guitars require wide pieces of wood which only old, large trees can produce.
Kyle’s plan was to work in a shared workspace known as a makerspace until he had the skills and product to found his own shop. In San Francisco the makerspace of choice was Techshop — a for-profit makerspace that filed for bankruptcy just days before this talk.
TechShop provided access to a wide range of industrial equipment including CNC routers, laser cutters, and water jets. Kyle taught himself to use these machines and the 3D modeling software required to operate them.
Kyle is now operating out of a shop in San Francisco’s rapidly developing Dogpatch neighborhood. Coincidentally, another local guitar company began in the exact same workshop — Blackbird Guitars. At the center of the shop is an industrial CNC router that can bring a 3D model of a guitar to life using a unique, organic process that Kyle has developed.
Kyle didn’t have a video of his process but the following is a generic example of a CNC router carving a guitar body out of a block of wood:
A.Q.: What parts of a guitar are standardized? What parts do you have a lot of freedom with?
With electric guitars almost anything goes! The freedom to experiment with any aspect of the instrument is what makes the electric guitar so unique and exciting. One thing that is pretty standardized is the length of the strings, a.k.a. scale length. They are usually around 25 inches on an electric guitar. I even experimented with this though! All of my first guitars were multi-scale instruments, meaning all of the strings are different lengths!
A.Q.: How do you differentiate yourself from other guitar-makers?
When I started designing guitars I looked at every aspect of their construction and asked “can this be improved?”. The answer was often “yes”.
For example, my guitars have frets made of stainless steel instead of the traditional nickel-silver alloy. They are much stronger and won’t wear down like the nickel frets will. I use other modern materials such as carbon fiber to make my guitars outlast and outperform everything else in a guitar store.
Multi-scale guitars are another way I have differentiated myself from other builders. Like pianos, these guitars have longer bass strings and shorter treble strings. This has many advantages for the guitarist including improved playability and tone!
Kyle then gave us a taste of the physics behind musical instruments, specifically the concept of “timbre”. Timbre is what makes all musical instruments sound different even when they are playing the same note.
When a string is plucked on a guitar it vibrates in a very complex fashion. The main vibration is called the fundamental and it produces the note the musician intended to play. But there are also many smaller vibrations that produce higher pitched notes — these are called overtones. Each instrument has a unique series of overtones that gives it a unique voice.
The following video is a very cool visual illustration of this:
We then discuss the environmental impact of guitar-making. The demand for rare, exotic woods used in many guitars has resulted in widespread deforestation, poaching, and displacement of indigenous life.
Take ebony for example — prized for its black color and hardness it is one of the most common materials for fretboards. We harvested it from Gabon, Africa until there was none left. Then from Congo until there was none left. Then from Madagascar. Now we are harvesting it from Cameroon in Western Africa, the last place on earth where ebony can still be harvested.
Sitka spruce is another major wood used in luthiery. It is the material of choice for soundboards on acoustic instruments and, pound-for- pound, it is stronger than steel. Most of the world’s Sitka spruce comes from Tongass National Forest in Alaska where the 250 to 1000 year old trees required for guitar making are being clearcut, milled into building materials like 2x4’s, and exported to Asia.
A.Q.: Are there steps being taken to save these trees?
Yes, one effort is being made by Greenpeace MusicWood Coalition — a partnership between Greenpeace, Taylor Guitars, Martin, Fender, and Gibson. Their focus is on Sitka spruce.
There are also companies building guitars out of alternative materials such as carbon fiber. Blackbird Guitars in San Francisco is pioneering a new, environmentally friendly material called Ekoa. It is made from flax fibers and plant resin. On my guitars I use a synthetic material in place of ebony that does not promote the exploitation of foreign forests.
After Kyle’s talk the SF based musician (and his roommate) Ryder Musselman obliged the audience’s requests for a performance.
And that’s a wrap!
Kyle runs the San Francisco Guitar Company.
Ryder Musselman has a new album out (with Kyle’s Lullaby on it) called Resounding Thud.
The Salon is a community driven effort. We welcome talks on interesting life-experiences, art and culture. Contact us via our facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stanfordsalon/
