Some new techniques in guitar manufacture
being applied at Duvoisin Guitars

Why choose a Duvoisin electric guitar or bass ?

Our products are beautifully finished in top-quality materials. They are delightful to play and a pleasure to own.

Our pride and joy: to bring quality to the most minor details of our products (see the photos below).

As well as the extreme care we bring to every aspect of manufacture, we apply the first six of the following points to ALL our instruments.

Point 7 is an option, at no extra cost:

1) The woods

We choose our woods with care. We have two alternative approaches to the choice of types of wood :

The first amounts to choosing to make our guitars and basses from types traditionally used in lute-making : maple from Canada, Ash, North American Alder, and exotic woods like mahogany, ovengkol, ebony, palissander, amaranth, padouk, bubinga, etc.

The alternative, much less traditional, approach lies close to our hearts because it involves choosing our own native species. In fact, our native forest trees are particularly splendid, for they have evolved in a demanding climate, encouraging the formation of a dense wood, resonating very truly, and ideal for our purposes. Early instruments in museums show us that beech, ash, walnut and fruitwoods were widely used in the parts of instruments carrying the sound (for instance in pianos, or traditional lute-making). Not to mention the celebrated resonance woods of the Risoux or the Swiss Jura, famous and frequently employed in the very best acoustic guitars.

We are currently (april 2007) working on a range of basses and guitars, made from Swiss woods. If you are at all interested, don’t hesitate to contact us. By the end of May we should have an outline up on the site: menu >electric guitars or menu>electric basses).

It remains true that most people’s idea of a guitar wouldn’t include its being made of Swiss woods. Have a browse through our site and the description of each instrument ought to put you fully in the picture about how we use our native wood species. You will find that other wood types are usually offered as well.

We stock our woods ourselves, so we can use modern equipment automatically to control humidity.

Woods are sawn and carefully aged in our workshops. This stage is important in that it allows the wood to settle and take its natural shape in ideal conditions.

We check our woods regularly, and don’t work them until they reach an inner humidity of 7-9%

This policy for wood stocks, these frequent checks and processes, are inevitably long and costly. We hold them to be indispensable, nevertheless, and will always regard them as an important part of our manufacturing process. They are at the heart of the quality and durability of Duvoisin guitars and basses.

2) Sound transmission :

We like to examine any consideration which might affect the quality of our guitars and basses.

Certain important experiments, whose results we’ll publish in a few months, have informed our manufacturing principles. We have approached some factors, often neglected as purely mechanical, in a more detailed, a more horological, way than is usual: for instance the design of the trussrod, the way the bridge is secured, the making of the nut from bone (our supplier), the precision and placing of the frets. Such things are constantly in our minds and point our techniques and our research.

We do all we can to improve these vital parts of the process of manufacture. For example, we have studied and are introducing an improved way of transmitting sound between the nut and the fingerboard.

The nuts, made from bone or brass, are real goldsmiths’ work, finished with great precision. In the case of the nuts in brass, only the visible surfaces are polished; those in contact with wood have been left in their ground state, not smoothed down. That way we keep a better surface for transmitting sound.

3) The geometry of the neck :

We have made a particular study of the geometry of the neck of a guitar and the correct depth of the frets. You will find that our guitars can consequently be adjusted with the greatest of ease, without crimping the strings at all. This fine adjustment, which enables quick and delicate variation, is not available on all instruments. It brings advantages for learners whose hands are ill-used to long straining. Our instruments are easy and pleasant to play. For accomplished musicians our instruments will be a delight. For those who like to play in a more violent way, of course, adjusting to a wider action will pose no problem at all.

4) Precision in the positioning of the frets :

With the help of engineers and mechanics from the Neuchatel clock-making district, we have developed a machine for positioning the frets, carefully and regularly milled. You will be able to hear more about this, either from the site, or by joining our mailing list. We are planning to start selling this machine, designed for the smaller lute and guitar-makers, by the autumn of 2009.

5) The Truss rod :

We have chosen double-action truss rods for our guitars and basses. We have adjusted them so that at neither end is there a risk of cracking even the most slender necks. This refinement allows us to make the most delicate necks on the market with double-action truss rods. The technique also cuts out all secondary vibrations from the truss rod.

6) The hardness of the frets:

Clockmakers have known since the eighteenth century how manually to harden pivots (already made of tempered steel), by burnishing. The process, which involves mechanically working the surface, develops a thin and extremely hard skin by means of a burnishing tool. We have developed a similar tool to address our needs. The frets of our guitars, already polished, are then burnished to make them hard and resistant to wear from the strings. Another benefit of this process is that you will find them magically soft to use, even in the toughest bends.

7) Touch Markers :

These explanations are rather complicated click ‘learn more about this’ below.