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Let me just come back behind and say that I personally don't believe that in order to heap praise on my guitar of choice that it is necessary or even cool to tearing down another builder's work to do so. I don't buy into the whole "Brand X sucks, buy Brand Y" mentality. I own guitars by a variety of builders/manufacturers and always will. Variety is the spice of life.

The only reason I posted this topic in the first place was as an illustration to the recent thread started by someone fishing for unique Thorn features to use on another instrument. I responded then about what happens when other builders decide to surf this and the Thorn Gallery sites. The OP scoffed as if it was delusional paranoia before he bolted.

With every other industry, and artistic endeavors especially, guitar builders have been <ahem> borrowing from each other since the very very beginning. To me this can be fantastic because it keeps ideas that people have adopted and grown accustomed to fresh, interesting and improved upon.

As a guitar builder you can take a mechanical idea and tweak it. Refine the shapes, tweak the contours, give it better balance, improve the tone, whatever. One thing I don't really dig on is the wholesale swiping of visual details that are distinctive to a unique instrument or brand of instruments. This doesn't add anything to your guitars other than to show your imagination is limited only to the creativity of others if someone happens to be around to call you on it. Take it and twist it. Make it better. Own it.

To me there is a difference between riffing off of an idea, and just nabbing it wholesale. In the case of the builder in question, lets just say over the last 6 years there's been more than one (or two or even three) ideas borrowed before this latest one. For a little while it seemed like each time I walked into that booth at NAMM I was guaranteed to spot another.

I have nothing against NH personally by any means. I've met him at NAMM once or twice and the guitars that I've seen are very nicely put together and visually attractive. He definitely has some of his own very distinctive things going on with his guitars and personally I think he's got the talent to be better than this and it's a shame when this stuff happens.

Anyway I just wanted to put a little light back on the previous topic and in this case unfortunately it's NH that caught my notice. My reaction to that recent thread and that of some others was not unwarranted and thus the posting of this one. The boutique guitar market may be world-wide, but it's still a small world and it does not go unnoticed by those of us that actually get around to other boards and see where these ideas end up, and by whom they attract.

I don't want the thread to turn into a builder vs. builder pissing match because that's not what it's here for. It is another observation and nothing more.

-e.