Building a Parlour Guitar

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estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

Building a Parlour Guitar

I have a nice project going right now between making flamencos, a steel string parlour. I have a Stradivari baroque guitar mold that I made to make baroque guitars, I figured why not, make a parlour on the Strad mold.

Here it is in progress- It's like a full length body, but rather narrow. The scale is 640 mm. I'll share it as is happens.

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Attachment (2)

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 24 2017 15:14:18

BarkellWH

Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC

RE: Building a Parlour Guitar (in reply to estebanana)

Have you ever thought about approaching the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC regarding the possibility of making early stringed instruments for the Folger Consort? The Folger Consort performs early (Medieval, Renaissance, etc.) music using replicas of the original instruments. I'm sure there are some original instruments in the Folger, but the performers appear to use replicas built to the original standards. That would be a great gig if you could land it.

Bill

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With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 24 2017 15:46:13

RobJe

Posts: 731
Joined: Dec. 16 2006
From: UK

RE: Building a Parlour Guitar (in reply to estebanana)

I have heard some nice smaller steel string guitars recently. Why did guitars get bigger?

I have heard it was because of loud banjos and barking dogs in vaudeville!

Seriously, now that amplification is ever present might we get better quality of sound by going smaller?

Rob

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 26 2017 15:46:06

Wayne Brown

Posts: 124
Joined: Oct. 22 2012
From: Huntersville, North Carolina, USA

RE: Building a Parlour Guitar (in reply to RobJe)

Guitars got bigger because it is all about that bass ( and loudness ).

There seems to be a trend now (in the steel string world) for smaller guitars.

Had the opportunity to build a version of a Martin "00-28VS" for a friend that turned out to be just wonderful.

Looking forward to see how Stephen's parlor turns out!!

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 26 2017 18:53:01

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Building a Parlour Guitar (in reply to RobJe)

quote:

Seriously, now that amplification is ever present might we get better quality of sound by going smaller?

Rob

Yes.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 27 2017 11:09:16

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Building a Parlour Guitar (in reply to estebanana)

Remember my last project investigating smaller sized bodies? I think there a lot to learn- I'm still on the path of unique tone quality over loudness. Loud is a formula, make a guitar with a thin top and a lot braces. We have better and better microphone technology for flamenco players especially, 'big' guitar remain the goal of builders in general, but I'm not really concerned with big, that is a whole market. Classical players are obsessed with 'big sound' - the same thing happened in opera in the late 1970's through the 1990's singers and conductors were focused on big blown up voices, we found out how that worked, not well. People got tired of the sound and many singers trashed their instruments. Listen to the recordings of Kathleen Battle, she over extended herself to great detriment.

These things are trends, 'big' sound vs. projection that is perceived as smaller, but is simply more focused and individual. When I first stared thinking about guitars in the 1980's the trend was cycling back to smaller guitars with Hauser scale lengths, then in the late 90's the trend was to blow up the sound again. Now we have LOUD guitars, but I hear many ,many players saying ok it's loud now what? These are cycles of what is popular or how awareness moves through the guitar community.

The guitar is an instrument of limited capability compared to a trombone for example, by nature and design it's not very loud. One can make it louder for sure, but there are trade offs. The guitar always goes back to its home base of design after a flurry of lateral development into loudness. There are plenty of good makers who ride those trends, but staying in the home territory just prepares you for the return of the player who just wants an old guitar that sounds like an old guitar. I'm never going to be a star in the world of building, so why follow other stars?

Arnold Schoenberg was very misunderstood, not because of his music, but his teaching. He taught at UCLA for the latter half of his life and he wrote the definitive book on how to teach traditional western harmony. He did not teach his US students 12 tone music composition, he taught traditional harmony work as a foundation. John Cage was his student, Cage asked AS to allow him to work with the 12 tone system, AS told him that was none of his business. AS was known to have told students - "There are still thousands of great works to be written in C major."

Why steel strings, it's because the area I am in most people play dreadnaughts and I'm tired of fixing them. I want to sell small steel locally to keep those f-ing dreads out of my shop.

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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 28 2017 1:57:13

RobJe

Posts: 731
Joined: Dec. 16 2006
From: UK

RE: Building a Parlour Guitar (in reply to estebanana)

Your brain seems to be wired to explore more pathways than most. Make sure that you leave it to medical science.

I am guessing that most musical instrument design involves some kind of compromise or trade-off between conflicting desirable outcomes. It is certainly true for trombones - one of the highlights of my undergraduate degree was working with wave equations to look at balancing amplification against distortion with different shaped horns. Even today there are plenty of unsolved mysteries about this.

In in the case of the guitar would the main conflicting demands be loudness vs clarity and projection?

I can see why reduction in the need for loudness might make the sheer size of some monster steel string acoustics unnecessary, if only for playing comfort. I have also heard some really good smaller steel string guitars, old and new. I played in a concert with Julie Felix some years ago and noticed that she had brought two guitars - one a small 1930s Martin and the other much bigger. She occasionally switched between the guitars for no reason that I could discern and I wanted to tell her (but didn’t) how the little Martin knocked spots of the other.

So to the flamenco guitar. For me, the physical size of the instrument is no big issue within reason. I know that I could play a smaller flamenco guitar as I have a guitar with 645 mm scale, 487 mm body and 356 mm, 268 mm bouts. It works fine in all respects except the 49 mm nut. It is fairly loud and quite focussed in sound. I have owned quite a few guitars. I know what loud and ugly is like. I also know what quieter and more refined is like. But I can’t relate these to size. Indeed my Manual Bellido based on a Fleta bracing pattern is loud without the ugliness.

I am not aware that anyone has taken the bold step of producing seriously smaller flamenco guitars - but perhaps there are some around. We players are a conservative lot though!

Rob

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 28 2017 12:56:20

Richard Jernigan

Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA

RE: Building a Parlour Guitar (in reply to RobJe)

quote:

ORIGINAL: RobJe

I am not aware that anyone has taken the bold step of producing seriously smaller flamenco guitars - but perhaps there are some around. We players are a conservative lot though!

Rob

Here's Richard Brune playing a very small Torres.

Wondering why it wasn't getting any responses. Here's the link:

RNJ

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Feb. 28 2017 15:47:02

estebanana

Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009

RE: Building a Parlour Guitar (in reply to estebanana)

Richard, when you mosey back around please post the link.

Where I left off last night before I attended a karaoke as blood sport event. If I can walk to the kobo today, I'll take the clamps off and begin binding.