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Where are you located? In Sevilla?
The guitar sounds overbuilt for flamenco.
If you are in Sevilla take it to Barba or Postigo and have them help you search for a local builder with knowledge of what to do.

Or make the trip to Huelva and see Anders!

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If you don't have a problem with tuning down a half or a whole note, you can make your guitar much less stiff to play...
Cheers,
Dave

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How high is your stringspace between the top and the 6 th string at the bridge?
And the string space between the upper side of fret 12 and the underside of the 6 th string?

It is a possibillity that the bone is way too high so the tension is big.

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i went many times to people like these, the only thing that they do is criticize your guitar like its a peace of crap, pull out a fabric guitar that theyve put their label in and pretend like thats the guitar of your dreams to try to sell it to you for 1800 euro.

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ORIGINAL: Rmn
If it gets warmer, the guitar will have more harmonics (seems like the strings have a longer vibration time) and it wil become reasonable to play.

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Hello luthiers,

I have a question about the stiffness of my guitar. It's a palosanto guitar, built by a luthier from a village near Sevilla. Its nice and well built but the playability and sound change drastically.

what is bothering me is that it gets way too stiff often. then its very hard to play (It destroys my left hand and my right hand technique gets poor because of that) and the sound changes not to my liking. The sound changes to less harmonically and "bigger" more metallic and ugly sound. It really looses harmonics and aura, it looses its "sweetness".

My question is: because it's a nice guitar and was quite expensive, how can I change the stiffness of it? Can I putt something to suck out the humidity inside the guitar or go back to the luthier to scrape off some from the bracings or to sand the top to be less thick? He doesnt have any idea himself, so i have to look for a solution.
I have some serios theater concerts and a lot of practicing hours and in the studio. so i'm quite dependent of the guitar....
I also must add that he finished the guitar three months ago. But the label sais 2011. So it took him more than half a year to make it.

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I recognise the problem and I have owned a couple of guitars (one blanca and one negra) that were like this. On some days they were very hard and unappealing to play. I felt that humidity was a factor. Both guitars were quite stiff to play at any time but they did produce very good sound when played hard. Both guitars were made in semi-factory production shops and I believe that in such places tops are often made too thick - perhaps because there is no time or expertise to consider how thick each top needs to be based on the properties of the wood and perhaps because a thicker guitar is more robust and less likely to be returned with a crack in it.

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RMN,

You shouldn't have to make ANY modifications to a new guitar. If you do not like it, you should have the right to return or exchange it. Was this guitar built for you or did you just buy it? either way, do not spend any money or waste time trying to get a new guitar to play right. The way you like it. Don't waste anymore of your time and stress over this. Return it and find something that you like.

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I have two Pedro De Miguels, Blanca and Negra. They are EXACTLY like this.
They sound great when played hard, and on some days are just wonderfull.
Other days you have to work harder. They never sound bad, just require
more work. I still like them though. I have a Carillo as well, which is much
more supple and easy to play all the time. However it lacks a certain sound
characteristic that the PDM's have ... They are all definetly affected by humidity.
Which of course they should, because they are all made of wood.

Regards,
Jeff

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I think you should strive to meet Anders for an in person evaluation of the guitar. It is too difficult to address this problem abstractly without actually laying hands on the guitar.
In the end this may not be your guitar. You guitar should be more reliable than this.

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ORIGINAL: Rmn
If it gets warmer, the guitar will have more harmonics (seems like the strings have a longer vibration time) and it wil become reasonable to play.


I dont think its the guitar itself that suddenly "gets" more harmonics, and if so only to a low degree, but rather the air molecules move differently when at a higher temperature. After all, all the sound we hear is the movement of molecules in the air. The playability also increase with temperature, but there again im not sure how much of that is due a warmer guitar rather than to simply having warmer hands.

But its an interesting topic and still not fully uncovered as i see. Im not sure if this is something you wanted to address to too, but i am particularly interested in finding out what determines the tension of a string on a guitar. So far it always bothered me that the strings have all different tension and when choosing strings, i try to pick the ones with the lowest tension possible.

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For that, to prove to myself that I'm not crazy I want to buy a newton meter, a hygrometer, thermometer and keep a logbook.
I just don't know if there is a method and an instrument (newton meter) for measuring the tension on the strings of the guitar. and wether I should measure the humidity and temperature inside the guitar or outside it

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You should just sell the guitar and get another one.

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thanks for the reply. i wish I could, the situation is a bit more complicated because the guitar was made for me in the end