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Stephen Faulk 2016 Cypress-Spruce blanca
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estebanana
Posts: 9396
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Hate my camera not my guitar. (in reply to estebanana)
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I'm not very good at playing taranta, but I did make a video of a few minutes of taranta and accidentaly deleted it from the camera. It sounds really good and the F# chord hangs in the air. My guitars generally havea touch more sustain in the envelope of sound so the libre palos are a no brainer- a lot of guitarists like much 'flatter' less sustained envelope, but this is the way my ear developed and my style so I'm not trying to make someone else's guitars, mine are just mine. The guitar players who want that sound find me somehow- and end up really liking it once they dial into how to play with it. I am slightly critical of the D string, but it is a fret / set up thing I have to smooth over. When I had it strung up in the white it was noisier, part of that was due to the unfinished state and part due to the high action at the nut. It's amazing to me how subtle the nut adjustments can effect the sound and feel. If the nut action is too high it not only makes overtones stand out more than they should, but it lends a brittle tense feeling to the whole guitar. So my way of setting up the nut is to make it very high, set the string placement slots shallow and then tune it up and let it sit. Then I listen to the guitar in that condition before I lower the action. I do it as a listening discipline even though I know I will eventually sink the slots much lower. I may stop doing that eventually, but I have learned a great deal about how a guitar feels and handles by setting it up in an "over determined" way and then easing it into range. Many guitar makers make the first guitar and then are wondering why the treble side E string is too stiff, then they set the nut lower and the problem is cured. I hear that from time to time. I left the top quite thick, it's interesting that the panel of spruce I chose for this one is fairly bendy, like pliable. I don't like glassy hard tops, I like good medium not too heavy, not too light spruce that that has some flex, not looking for ultra stiff when very thin. But because it is a hair thicker, by a hair I mean 3 to 4 to 5 tenths mm's depending, it will take longer to open up. The thing sounds great right now and is ready to play out, but the mid range is still "tight" and not at full potential. In a year it will be more open. Gene warned me not to make what he calls "instant gratification guitars", he said make them well, but follow your instinct on making them ever so slightly robust so when they open out they don't loose juice. This one is going to a really fine professional player who is going to use it as his main guitar, and he has a Media Luna, Barba, Reyes and a Gerundino so I'm pretty happy about being in selection. I've copied his 1969 Reyes for other people and it is old and fragile so he leaves it at home. But it has an amazing sound. The Barba and the Conde' he is not unhappy with,but he said they feel too samey or not varied enough in color through out the range so he said as he gets older he wants a more varied sound to work with. Something he said he can't fully say in words. So I made fantastic guitar in 2014 that just would not sell, I don't know why, but not for lack of being a very great guitar. The people who tried it said they loved it, but it has wood pegs and they can't handle it. Rather than change the pegs for tuners I just sat on it, the guitar lived with a Foro member in the States in Chicago for a year just vegitating. Then the opportunity to get it to David Serva for approval came up and it was sent to San Francisco to await David who would come for his annual visit to CA. The guy who received it in CA and kept it for David until his arrival played it for three months at home and decided he preferred it to his Conde and Barba and asked me to make him one just like it, with tuners. He almost chose pegs. And this is that instrument, David subsequently arrived and took the other one made in 2014 and was very pleased. The person who commissioned it found his particular Barba and Conde have sounds he felt he had personally changed away from. David is I think still a "Conde Man" , but he has a sizable stable to chose from......at least I have one in there. HAHA
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 12 2016 22:59:23
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estebanana
Posts: 9396
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Stephen Faulk 2016 Cypress-Spru... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
About the blancas....you use Monterey cypress for this one, I was curious how you feel about the difference between spanish cypress, Monterey, Hinoki, and other blanca materials. For example the port orford (Lawson cypress) guitar looked like a blanca but that type of wood seemed more like maple guitars I have tried. Interesting question and something I have thought about in the making process. First I'll preface the reply with I'm not one of the types of makers that go at length about the micro differences in sound between back and sides woods so a few words a lot. Anecdotally in my work I'll say I sense very little if any difference between most Spanish Cypress and most Monterey. They are different species but very similar, indistinguishable in my mind except for color. The only difference is that Monterey can have regional or tree to tree differences and some MC will be softer and silkier, other MC can be hard, brittle and ropey, that stuff is unusable. Most MC is in the 'Goldilocks zone' and is neither too soft of too brittle and seems to be very much like SC, for any practical purpose only more brown or pinkish. I like Monterey a lot, if it has the typical best Spanish Cypress qualities it is a superior wood for blancas. Lawson Cypress and Hinoki Cypress are related, they are from the family of false cypresses, but distinct species. Oddly Hinoki is still considered a cypress, but Lawson is a conifer. Lawsoniana is native to the North Eastern Pacific Rim and Hinoki is native to Japan. They grow in different latitudes, but under similar conditions. Where Hinoki grows gives it its qualities. Both woods have some similarities as guitar woods, different grain color, Hinoki is more variable and ranges from practically whitish-yellow to having brown grain lines occasionally Lawson is generally more plain looking, but old large Hinoki trees that grew out of the winds can be very straight an even grained. They could even make tops. I'd say it's fair to assess them as being slightly more transparent than Spanish Cypress or Monterey and you could build with them to get a Maple like sound. I think of Maple as more neutral, slightly like I said 'transparent'. That said, the way you use it means everything. The top means a lot, and how you brace it. Spanish Cypress and Monterey are usually a bit more dense then either Hinoki of LC. With less stiff or dense plates you build thicker, but the differences between these for woods are not so great that the thicknesses must be radically divergent. Hinoki / LC backs I make are usually .50 mm thicker and ribs are about 1.8 to 2 mm for all woods depending on how they feel when scraping them. Hinoki and LC get a couple of stiffeners near the waist of the ribs because that area is fragile unless you splint it. I think the Maple analogy is fair to an extent, only at this point I can do more with the range of sound by the way the guitar is built. That particular one you played was Maple like,but you might say others were more like the other kids of Cypress. One thing they have in common is that they are all 'Cypresses'. Lawson is really a Conifer, but hey close enough. There are also variants of Monterey that grow in Central Mexico like the Cypress from Paracho area. Some of the very best blanca wood I have seen has been from Mexico. I'm working on a guitar right now with a Mexican back and a California side set. Maybe I'll call it 'El Californio' since CA was once part of Mexico. From plant Wiki: *Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, known as Port Orford cedar or Lawson cypress, is a species of conifer in the genus Chamaecyparis, family Cupressaceae. *Chamaecyparis obtusa (Hinoki) is a species of cypress native to central Japan. It is a slow-growing tree which grows to 35 m tall with a trunk up to 1 m in diameter. The bark is dark red-brown. *Cupressus macrocarpa, commonly known as Monterey cypress, is a species of cypress native to the Central Coast of California. *Cupressus sempervirens, the Mediterranean cypress (Spanish Cypress) , is a species of cypress native to the eastern Mediterranean region, in northeast Libya, southern Albania, southern coastal Croatia, southern Montenegro.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Jul. 27 2017 1:38:30
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