Büttner Guitars: “You leave with a perfectly crafted instrument”

At the 2024 Guitar Summit in Mannheim, FretboardFrenzy.com caught up with Felix Büttner, whose Leipzig-based custom shop crafts hand-built guitars. The German luthier also teaches courses for those wanting to build their own instruments to personal specifications. And that aspect particularly caught our attention.

Felix emphasizes that these are not luthier courses. They are for anyone who wants to make their dream guitar a reality.

As an experienced luthier, he guides his students through the entire process to an amazing looking and sounding finished product.

Do you need any woodworking skills before signing up for your courses?

Since each class is individualized, no woodworking skills are required. In my classes, I adapt to your abilities and decide which tasks you can do on your own and when I need to take over and finish them for you.

I will always make sure that you leave with a perfectly crafted instrument. I have had clients right out of high school with no knowledge of how to use their hands, to qualified carpenters who just needed a workshop to build their guitar.

Your courses let people design their own guitars. How do you help newbies figure out what they want and come up with a doable plan?

In these cases, I will ask you what kind of music you would like to play later. From that, I can choose a previously built design that I think will work best for you.

And then we can begin to modify and reshape it until it is your very own instrument.

Lots of guitar players dream of building their own axe. What do your students find most rewarding about the process?

The finished guitar afterwards. And the memories of building it.

You teach both electric and acoustic guitar building. Which one’s trickier to teach, and why?

Acoustic guitars are much more complicated. Most of the decisions I make when designing the interior are based on trial and error over the last decade. Wood selection and construction have a huge impact on the sound, but the standards you hear every day may not be the best to adapt in your case.

The instruments made in my classes are only prototypes, and when we have the opportunity to tune them, we do. All this is difficult to communicate. Especially when different sources tell opposite solutions, which is quite common in luthier books.

That is why I am really involved in the construction of the acoustic guitars. I take care of many of the recurring steps that require some specialized skills to be done properly. In the short time of a class we will only scratch the surface of understanding how the parts all influence each other.

In all my years of building and studying acoustic guitars, I’m far from understanding everything, and the same goes for scientific research on acoustic guitars. The acoustic system is far too complicated to be truly understood.

The finish on a guitar is important for looks and sound. Can you break down the different ways you teach to finish guitars and how they affect the final product?

On electric guitars, the finish only affects the look (if done right). On acoustic guitars it can also change the sound.

Because the process of polishing or lacquering an instrument is extremely time consuming, it cannot be included in a guitar making course and is always done after the course.

I offer separate crash courses for wood oil, shellac or nitro lacquer. You can decide if you want to give it a try or leave the guitar in my workshop for finishing.

For people who can’t do a full guitar-building course, you’ve got some less time-intensive options. Which of these do you think would be most useful for the average player to get to know their guitar better?

I offer shorter courses on any topic you ask for. The evergreen of these one-day courses is clearly “re-fretting and fret leveling”.

This is a job that comes up regularly and can be done with a few well-chosen tools.

How do you mix old-school guitar-building methods with new technologies and tools in your classes?

I go with the tools I have in my workshop. From now on only hand machines and regular tools.

If someone wants to become a professional luthier, what benefits could they gain from your courses?

First of all, my courses are not designed to train you as a luthier. That is what special schools are for. An apprenticeship usually takes three years.

My courses are about building your one and only guitar. You design it, you build it (for the most part), and in the end it is yours.

People often think of guitar-building as a solo gig. How does working in a group change things up in your courses?

With more people, things get done faster. That is why we can hand build a fully customized electric guitar in one week and a classical guitar in two weeks.

As the owner of Büttner Guitars, what new guitar-making trends or ideas excite you the most?

I like the trend of shaping guitars more ergonomically. I think it breaks away from the standard shapes we all see every day. It gives smaller luthiers like me the opportunity to not just design the next Strat for a customer who wants a ‘guitar-shaped’ guitar.

It opens minds and changes playing styles for those who want to discover new sounds.

How do you think hands-on experiences like your courses contribute to the future of guitar playing?

Many people are not aware of where the high prices for high quality instruments come from. The course gives the opportunity to participate in the making of an instrument, to see all the things that have to be considered and could be changed to fit your ideals, with all the time it takes to do the work properly.

For me as a luthier it is nice to have this as an argument to explain the prices of my own work.

As a customer, it is always good to know what your instrument can and cannot do. Most guitar and bass designs have flaws that you have to work with.

Most tremolos do not work as well as promised; different pickups produce different sounds; the frets do not fit some scales used in classical music; the intonation cannot be set perfectly on some bridges, and many other minor inconveniences.

If you know these limitations, you can take them into account and perhaps set up the instrument so that it’s the best fit for what you want to play.

Your students get to build guitars their own way. What are some of the most extraordinary or innovative designs you’ve seen?

Just a few weeks ago we did a material test with Ebonite, which is a hard rubber mixture that is intended to replace ebony. In guitars it has only been used in some discontinued electric guitar series of a few manufacturers in the early 2000s.

We built a 6-string bass neck with a fretboard made of twirled coloured Ebonite to see if it is hard enough to be used as fretboard material in these extreme cases.

It turned out it works, but the smell during work is quite disgusting. So maybe not too many more of those. But it really looks fabulous.

Do you have any plans to put together online guitar-building courses for people who can’t make it in person?

I thought about that, but currently I don’t have the time or knowledge to do that properly.

People are getting more aware about sustainability in instrument making these days. How do you deal with that in your courses, especially when it comes to picking wood and finishes?

I can offer several native woods for those who want to focus on that. There are also some vegan options to consider for your instrument.

How do your courses set people up to tinker with their axes later on?

Many start by getting all their other guitars set up properly. Others start by changing parts like pickups or tuners. And a few slowly sell off their guitar collection because they only play the guitar they built.

You say some projects, like carved tops or neck-through designs, take more time. What makes these extra tricky for beginners?

They take more time. Just that. Most are not especially tricky.

How do you incorporate new developments, like modern pickups or alternative materials, into traditional building methods, if at all?

Sometimes alternative materials can be used. It really depends on whether my tools will survive them and if they can be used for handcrafting.

Some have been tested for various applications, such as ebonite, RichliteTM or carbon fiber.

Guitar players love to argue about ‘tone’. How do you talk about tone with your participants, and how does it affect how they build their guitars?

Tone is always difficult to predict. The small amount of influence that comes from the wood and construction of the guitar is determined during design.

You can change the behavior slightly by changing the stiffness of the neck or the weight of the body during production, but most of it is fixed in the design.

However, the main goal of the lutherie course is to build an instrument that fits your hands. It is much more important that you can play it easily and that you can shape the tone with your hands.

If you end up with a tone that is not yours, a lot of it can be easily changed. Pickups and strings can always be changed and have by far the most influence on your tone. If your main focus is on your tone, then a course is not the best option.

I would really recommend trying out as many guitars as you can and just buying the one that suits you best.