Official Luthiers Forum!

It's sad but I think this forum is dying on the vine. Almost everyone has left to greener pastures. Most of the other firms have migrated to FB and Instagram. Would be nice if Lance would have been a lot more proactive here. Oh well

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https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/

Want me to quote Monty Python?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I think it’s still monitored by a lot of folks. Heck Paul Woodson surfaced a few days ago. I always check in every couple of days.

I see this place still as a pretty reliable spot to have questions answered. Facebook groups are terrible!

Too bad the expertise of some of the old timers here is underutilized. With a luthier under every rock these days that surprises me.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Seems pretty biz as usual to me…

I'm here multiple times per day. I just don't post as often because I'm not working as much.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Perhaps it is a generational thing, but I prefer a discussion forum (like here on the OLF) to whatever happens on Facebook or instagram. I have accounts on those platforms, but only to see things from family members who use those platforms.

This place is not perfect, for sure, but I don’t think I would say it is dying. It goes through periods of inactivity, but then some discussions get active.

The archives are a fantastic source for information, and I have made great friends here (not merely internet friends, but meet in person friends), so I’ll continue to put up with the few things about the OLF that are not ideal.

Pretty sure a bunch of 'em ran off to LoothGroup.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Icky icky icky knee whopatang?

*twang…

The tooth Group has definitely taken up some of the slack.

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https://www.instagram.com/fostinoguitars/
https://www.facebook.com/PuraVidaUkuleles/

Same here

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Regarding The Looth Group:

I subscribe to it via Patreon. There is definitely some useful content, so I am happy to help sponsor it. However, there is a downside to it (from my perspective, anyway; to others, it might be a feature, not a bug): there is a lot of unedited content.

Example: A few months ago, I was watching a video on The Looth Group of a prominent builder doing a very specific task. The recording was 100% raw footage; no editing to take out any down time. Well, there was a LOT of down time. And, bluntly, there was a lot of inefficiency involved in what this prominent builder was doing. Like, it was Doc Brown in the old west Back To The Future movie, making one puny brown ice cube after hours of work. It struck me in that moment of impatience that I was paying money to waste my time to watch this builder waste his time. Maybe that has value on its own; the unfiltered video convinced me I don’t want to invest that much time in that sort of task (i.e., the juice is not worth the squeeze). But it involved an hours long investment of time to learn that lesson. Or I guess I can hit the fast forward button, but then I risk missing something important. My point is The Looth Group is a different thing; it is a platform for hours and hours of content that is not edited, and only somewhat curated. That can have value, and it does. That’s why I still contribute to it. But it’s not going to take the place of a discussion forum like the OLF. Or, if it does, I will miss what the OLF offers that something like The Looth Group doesn’t.

I still prefer the forum style of interaction like this. The Facebook thing is still so awkward and frustrating to me that I mostly just use it for the marketplace section and even that has a lot of awkwardness. Long live the forums for us old curmudgeons

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jw ( o)===:::

How many of you are old enough to remember Google Groups?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Robbie O’Brien still runs one. It’s modestly active.

Wow. Surprised they still exist.
I used to run one devoted to Studebakers, but the Studebaker Drivers Club built a website with a forum that was more useful and popular.
I basically spent the first part of the day deleting all the spammers - which was mostly porn.
Can't say I miss it at all.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I check in here daily too, but seldom have anything to contribute. It's all been said before.



How about Yahoo Grouips before Google sucked it up? usenet?

There was 12th fret, and more recently, luthiercom and others, I'm sure. Both chock full of information in their day. Trouble with some of the social media is a lack of good archived threads. The server is taken out of commission; that information is lost.

Newbies (remember, we were all there at one time!) find all kinds of free information, often of poor quality, with no way to filter it, and it's other newbies that seem to be most eager to answer those questions. After a while, the more experienced builders get fed up with questionable replies to newbies' questions and drift away.

I wonder what it would take to archvive sites like the OLF and have it read-only, sort of like Frank Ford's frets.com?

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I have greatly benefited from wealth of knowledge shared by the members and archives here. I particularly enjoy reading live, discussions, and the "what's happening in your shop" section. I also have supported the forum through monetary donations and purchases from sponsors.

However, this version of the phpBB platform is noticeably outdated with minimal additions, upgrades, or modernizations. "Its all been said before" may be true but finding where it was said is a challenge. The search function is useful, if you nail the syntax for queries. Many pictures have aged out (saving photos on the platform's server could resolve this). It's all been said before is why I hesitate to ask questions and turn to search on more modern forums. I still appreciate the character of "the board" and discussions, though am uncertain whether advertisers would share the same.

Usability and design wise, the small icons on the INDEX pages are difficult to read. The "Thanks" button should be renamed. Modern platforms incorporate notification features for each post. Often, I am not "thanking" but rather liking a post and using the button to track which posts I have already read. Also, uploading pictures is cumbersome due to the lack of inclusive photo-processing capabilities.

This phpBB version is like an old car, with a dimmer switch on the floorboard and a choke lever on the dashboard. While it's functional, and has a certain amount of charm, its been left behind by advancements in design and technology.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

Ha, I remember BBS, FidoNet, Archie, Gopher, Ask Jeeves, Newsgroups..... and 1200 dial up.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum

I used Archie and Veronica in something like 1990 to 1992. Never used Jughead though. I then moved on to Mosaic which was the predecessor to Netscape. I used email in the late 80s to communicate with a research collaborator in Grenoble. What was really cool is that you could watch the movement of the email as each node it went through was reported back in real time on a line command interface. I was in Arizona and I remember UC Berkley and UW Madison coming up as nodes on the path a lot.


I think the number of posts per day is less than it was in the past, but I check in pretty much every day and usually more than once a day. I still regularly find things of interest in posts, ranging from points of general interest, to helpful tips I can use, and on up to game changers such as recently finding out about Eagle Abrasives products.

Maybe this forum's platform is antiquated but it's a way better format than Facebook for the kind of discussions we have here. The Seattle Luthiers Group has a FB page and people occasionally will try to have a discussion about a technical point or method, but it never works as well as it does here because FB sucks for that. I also use the forum's search function a lot and with success most of the time. The accumulated knowledge here is a tremendous resource.

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I come here once or twice a week and rarely post. I consider this to be the most helpful luthier site and like the aesthetics and layout of it very much.

Me too. I am old enough to want this place to stay exactly the same please and thank you.

Not meaning to hijack your thread David, but I hink it's an important issue.



Also, it's too bad it's hard for a newbie to tell who's an old timer and who's not. Some newgies don't care, if they like what they read. Some years ago one of the people here started up the Professiona Luthiers Forum, membership by invitation. Seemed like it was off to a start, but it didn't last long. The owner was unable to maintain the demand, if I recall. Anybody remember that?

Yeah, I also think it could be genereational, but you'd need to be able to use it on a phone. That would be a dealbreaker to me for sure.

I'm as guilty about this as anybody who's been building for awhile, but I think it would be helpful for the old timers to post more often, even if it's just a supporing remark. It's all too easy to pass over a question whose answer we know.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I think what happened was that too many builders thought he wanted to start the forum as en exercise to steal all their secrets…

Well, hmmm. I'd never thought of that, but it could be true.

I'm going to make a point of posting here more often.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com