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Concert Guitar vs Student Guitar
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Ricardo
Posts: 14797
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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 RE: Concert Guitar vs Student Guitar (in reply to trivium91)
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“Student”, “pro”, “concert” and “studio” are all marketing labels used to sell a product. The price points are all over the place. Factories help to produce guitars that can be bought in mass quantities and this lowers the costs. In reality if you wanted to build “student” Yamaha classical guitars at the lowest end ($100) it would be impossible to make profits on anything that approaches their quality level by hand. The cost of materials alone is well over the $100. One would have to try very hard to make errors deliberately to justify losing money on such guitars. Any guitar below $3000 is such a guitar (meant for a mass production market). I remember in the music store they had the cheapest Yamaha, and it sounded fabulous. There was no finish on the bridge and other parts. The $250 upgrade had beautiful finishing details, glossy shiny finish job, a real rosette, etc. It sounded dull and was hard to play. But inexperienced players that had the money always skipped on the cheap $100, ready to waste their money. You can extrapolate the concept upwards toward $4000 where things change a bit. In that range you might be getting a truly personally prepared instrument that is better than the Yamaha lowest end somehow. In Valencia the factories produce some of the most magnificent instruments I have played for so cheap (Ricardo Sanchis/Hermanos Sanchis lopez especially).
I did a blind objective test on myself with my own guitars and was shocked that I could not tell any sonic differences on playback. It means what you pay for is the label look and feel, basically, the inspiration the physical thing gives you to make music. The instrument I use the most today is a thin body cordoba FCWE (gipsy kings model, 1999), and I always thought it was $1200 cheap junk. But it has supported my career for decades now.
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Aug. 15 2022 17:09:07
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Concert Guitar vs Student Guitar (in reply to Mark2)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Mark2
My best guitar allows me to play some passages that I literally can't execute on the cheaper guitars.
It must have been 1965 or '66...
My first guitar was a Paracho special I bought for 300 pesos in 1957--$24.00 at the exchange rate then. Its scale was long, it was pretty loud, its tone was a bit coarse. After a few year of work I could play on it the Mario Escudero transcriptions published at the time. They were fairly accurate. Also a couple of Niño Ricardo pieces copped off LPs, and a few other bits. Sabicas was beyond my ability to copy.
There was (may still be) a big music store on the ground floor of the old Convento de las Vizcaínas in Mexico City. In those days the main street was called the Calle del Niño Perdido. These days it's the Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas. The convent is a couple of blocks from the Mercado de San Juan and the Salto del Agua. They had a used string instrument department that often had some interesting pieces.
In those days in Mexico City, if you could afford to dress decently you did. I wandered into the music store dressed in a sport jacket, slacks, recently shined shoes. I noticed a nice looking guitar hanging on the wall behind the counter and asked if I could try it. The attendant was a blonde, blue eyed woman, maybe 50 years old. She wore a nice cardigan over a blouse, a pleated woolen skirt and sensible shoes. She handed me the guitar.
It was a Santos Hernandez blanca from the 1930s, in perfect condition. At the time it was the best guitar I ever had in my hands, by a very wide margin.
There was a row of chairs along the wall opposite the counter. I took a seat, took out my tuning fork in its tooled leather case, and tuned up the Santos.
I played Escudero's Rondeña, pretty close to the original of his teacher Ramon Montoya. While I played two urchins came in off the street, sat down beside me and gazed admiringly. The guitar was marvelous. It played easily. It delivered nuances of tone and dynamics I had never experienced on my Paracho beast. It was simply exhilarating.
When I finished I returned the guitar to the woman behind the counter. I noticed she had tears in her eyes. She said, "Gracias, jovén. Soy de Ronda....hace muchos años."
She offered to make me a good price for the guitar, but I couldn't come anywhere near affording it.
I turned to pick up my tuning fork, but it and the two urchins had disappeared. I walked immediately to the door and looked for them on the sidewalk, but they were long gone.
Despite the loss, and the embarassment of being swindled, I was still on a high from the sensation of the guitar, and the compliment.
A great instrument can make a very big difference.
RNJ
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Date Aug. 17 2022 18:34:58
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trivium91
Posts: 208
Joined: Jan. 24 2022
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RE: Concert Guitar vs Student Guitar (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan
quote:
ORIGINAL: Mark2
My best guitar allows me to play some passages that I literally can't execute on the cheaper guitars.
It must have been 1965 or '66...
My first guitar was a Paracho special I bought for 300 pesos in 1957--$24.00 at the exchange rate then. Its scale was long, it was pretty loud, its tone was a bit coarse. After a few year of work I could play on it the Mario Escudero transcriptions published at the time. They were fairly accurate. Also a couple of Niño Ricardo pieces copped off LPs, and a few other bits. Sabicas was beyond my ability to copy.
There was (may still be) a big music store on the ground floor of the old Convento de las Vizcaínas in Mexico City. In those days the main street was called the Calle del Niño Perdido. These days it's the Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas. The convent is a couple of blocks from the Mercado de San Juan and the Salto del Agua. They had a used string instrument department that often had some interesting pieces.
In those days in Mexico City, if you could afford to dress decently you did. I wandered into the music store dressed in a sport jacket, slacks, recently shined shoes. I noticed a nice looking guitar hanging on the wall behind the counter and asked if I could try it. The attendant was a blonde, blue eyed woman, maybe 50 years old. She wore a nice cardigan over a blouse, a pleated woolen skirt and sensible shoes. She handed me the guitar.
It was a Santos Hernandez blanca from the 1930s, in perfect condition. At the time it was the best guitar I ever had in my hands, by a very wide margin.
There was a row of chairs along the wall opposite the counter. I took a seat, took out my tuning fork in its tooled leather case, and tuned up the Santos.
I played Escudero's Rondeña, pretty close to the original of his teacher Ramon Montoya. While I played two urchins came in off the street, sat down beside me and gazed admiringly. The guitar was marvelous. It played easily. It delivered nuances of tone and dynamics I had never experienced on my Paracho beast. It was simply exhilarating.
When I finished I returned the guitar to the woman behind the counter. I noticed she had tears in her eyes. She said, "Gracias, jovén. Soy de Ronda....hace muchos años."
She offered to make me a good price for the guitar, but I couldn't come anywhere near affording it.
I turned to pick up my tuning fork, but it and the two urchins had disappeared. I walked immediately to the door and looked for them on the sidewalk, but they were long gone.
Despite the loss, and the embarassment of being swindled, I was still on a high from the sensation of the guitar, and the compliment.
A great instrument can make a very big difference.
RNJ
This is an awesome story! so perhaps the instrument is more of an emotional response and how it subjectively 'feels' that can make you a better player which is impossible to measure objectively through sound quality and what not. After all it is our emotions that give us the motivation to practice the same falsetto over and over again and again our emotions that propel us a player.
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Date Aug. 17 2022 19:35:14
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ernandez R
Posts: 737
Joined: Mar. 25 2019
From: Alaska USA
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RE: Concert Guitar vs Student Guitar (in reply to trivium91)
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About 30 years ago I was telling a guitar playing buddy how I had studied classical guitar for a few years as a young man and he invited me on a guitar shop tour in Seattle, I think we visited a hand full of shops, seemed the better guitars were about $2000 up to $4000 USD but there was this $500 dollar made in Mexico one that just blew all those others out of the water. Solid top but the inside looked like a kindergarten art project, I recall rough braces and white glue globs. We went back to a couple shops the following week ends to try a couple I liked again and again. I recall telling my buddy Little Bear, he was a dead head, that the cheap one from Mexico was it. He laid it out for me, how guitars are so much more then looks and how one guitar isn’t for everyone. Years later I figured out out a decent player can make a **** plywood guitar sound beautiful. Sadly this guitar burned up I a fire and after years of trying to find her equal I decided to build one…
HR
_____________________________
I prefer my flamenco guitar spicy,
doesn't have to be fast,
should have some meat on the bones,
can be raw or well done,
as long as it doesn't sound like it's turning green on an elevator floor.
www.instagram.com/threeriversguitars
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Date Aug. 18 2022 15:26:42
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