Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi folks. After muchado my website has finally been relaunched. It's a little short on photos as the photographer *($%#ed up. So I'll be updating it as I get the next several batches done. Lemmekno what you think. --db

Berkowitz Guitars

All the best,

David D. Berkowitz
Berkowitz Guitars

David, it looks very nice to me. I like that it is not all cluttered up.

It was pretty slow to load for me. It could be an issue with my ISP, but everything else seems to be loading at a reasonable speed. Could be increased traffic from posting the link here too.

BTW, that's osme pretty cool shop help you have there

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

I think this is a really nice site. What is wrong with the photography (other than I would love to see more examples of the guitars.)?

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

David
It looks very nice but I noticed that when I tried to pull up the specifications I got a pop up but was unable to get rid of it. abd then I couldn't click anything else and had to close my browser to procede. I am using netscape v7.1. Anyone else have this experience, it happened to me twice.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

I am on the latest and greatest IE and I was fine.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Also now when I got back to view a model, the spec popup is still active and I cannot click anything else on that page. I don't know if this is an issue with my computer or your site.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

OK, I looked at it with IE and it works fine although the graphics seemed to a bit slower. The problem seems to be with netscape, when you open that spec page there is no "hide specs" button as there is in IE. Mayhaps an incompatablility.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Brock, that's the point. The photography that is there required hours of work in Photoshop to make them usable. With few exceptions they're a bit flat in their lighting. You knew how bad the images were as soon as you looked at the histograms in Photoshop. So there were lots of photos (four CD's worth, each at 35mb per file shot with a 15megapixel camera) and we simply couldn't use them.

I'll look into the problem with Netscape. It doesn't appear to be a problem with Safari, IE or Firefox.

Thanks for your comments, everyone. --db

David,

I like it, clean and uncluttered. I notice two things that might need corrected, I am not sure.

You have ziracote, I am use to seeing it spelled ziricote. Not sure on that one.

And, under the wedge page the last sentence in the 1st paragraph seems to have a word or two out of place, "she body pitched in".

That was all I could find, otherwise, very nice.

Jeff

David,

I also caught a repeat in your excluded from warranty section, not sure if it is supposed to be there twice. Although, it should be!!

"Any unauthorized modifications or alterations made to the guitar."

Jeff

[QUOTE=dberkowitz] Brock, that's the point. The photography that is there required hours of work in Photoshop to make them usable. With few exceptions they're a bit flat in their lighting. You knew how bad the images were as soon as you looked at the histograms in Photoshop. So there were lots of photos (four CD's worth, each at 35mb per file shot with a 15megapixel camera) and we simply couldn't use them.

I'll look into the problem with Netscape. It doesn't appear to be a problem with Safari, IE or Firefox.

Thanks for your comments, everyone. --db[/QUOTE]

For what it's worth, you should be able to pull the dark photos up out of the mud. Are the pics tiffs or RAW? If RAW, you have a really good chance of correcting them.

Other than some of the photos, I love the overall layout. Clean and uncluttered. For an "artsy" site (as it should be) it serves very well. Good job!

Steve Brown

David, I went onto your site but the navigation was so slow that I finally gave up. Anyone else having problems with the speed of the site?

Hi folks, thanks for the comments. For those experiencing problems, if you could please give me your operating system, browser and release number, mac or pc and what your ISP speed is, i.e., dial up, DSL (and at what rate), cable (and at what rate).

I'd really appreciate the details because its hard for my designer to answer to these issues without them. If you're uncomfortable in posting the details here, feel free to email me at ddb@berkowitzguitars.com

All the best,

David

Hey David.

The site works great from my work computer but from my home computer it is a mess. Fonts don't line up, they are huge, the tables seem to be out of whack. Clearly there is something going on.

At home I am on IE 6.02.2800.1106. My security patches are up to date (I have found this to be a problem with compatibility issues in the past) my os is W 2000 Professional, and I am connecting via a cable modem.

Let me know if you need any assistance figuring all of this out. I know these compatibility problems can make you want to pull your hair out.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Hi David,
No problem loading with my modem. I too believe your photographer might have done you a favor; much can be said for simplicity. Perhaps some muted color backgrounds for guitar photos will add to the wonderful understatement in use of photos.

I am very intrested in the Wedge concept. I have been thinking of using the idea for a guitar for my daughter.
Do you make up for the loss of total volume in the box with additional depth, length, or width added to make up the volume? Is bracing the same, ie basic x bracing?

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Brock, try changing your font size from the [VIEW] drop down menu in IE6 and choose [text] [medium] which is the normal viewing mode and the image will correct itself. --db

I ran a few tests of my pages against several other instrument makers pages and at least based upon theWeb page analyzer my load times are better than many sites including, Taylor, Greenfield, McCollum, Borges, and our beloved Lance's site (guitars, not forum). Some of this is ISP driven and hard to figure out. I've got a Verizon DSL connection running at 1488.6KBits and I had rediculously slow times this very morning. So its hit or miss. --db

The site looks good! Everything is running perfectly fine on my computer.

David,

I was having some problems similar to Brock--big, jumbled text--but now the pages look good. However, the pull-down menus still have a HUGE font.

Carlton