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Jason McGuire is having a great week for guitars. Now he's just received this negra from Stephen Faulk. Perhaps Stephen will be able to say more about it, or post some photos? I'm sure the compound curve cutaway will be beautifully made.
I sent this to Jason as a gift, I’m glad he has it. We’ve been through a lot of changes and always helped each other. I’ve learned a lot from him about what guitars should be able to do. It makes me happy to hang out with him while he plays, and on video it’s good too. Get the feeling he likes this one because it can be pushed quite hard and it still has ‘headroom’. And it sustain or accommodates a low D tuning without getting mushy.
It’s a compound cutaway with a Spruce top and Madagascar back & sides. I hope he does some good work with it.
Hope Jason makes more videos because I want to hear more of this guitar. Originally this guitar was made for a composer in Japan, he went through a deep personal tragedy with a prolonged illness of his wife. He seldom played it, and then asked me to make a tribute guitar to his wife who died. I’m going to make him another guitar with a short scale, 630 mm with no cutaway. He’s composing great music now. I said how do you feel about returning the cutaway in exchange for the new guitar, because I know exactly where that cutaway should be. At J’s house. He said sounds like an excellent idea. So here we are, everyone having fun.
Knowing this composer and knowing Jason, when I finished this guitar I thought it was suited to Jason and always thought it should have been his.
Here are some photos:
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How come Jason is getting all these amazing guitars? Is he 'the guy' where Flamenco is concerned? I don't know who he is, but he sure can play.
Jason is an American from Texas who lives in California. He’s one of the best guitar player/ composers around. I know him because we lived in the same neighborhood for 15 years and with Ben Woods living down the hall in my building.
His wife Yaelisa is an important flamenco dancer on the West Coast who’s been the artistic director of her own company for more than 25 years. Jason is the artistic/ music director of the company. So he’s a well known established professional guitarist and recording engineer.
He’s one of my buddies and slightly more sarcastic than I am, if that’s possible. There’s no quid pro quo between us, it’s just pure joy to see my friend playing. People send him guitars because he’s a powerful charismatic player who can create guitar makers’ reputations by his reviews. I’ve actually tried not to be publicly associated on the level of giving him guitars because I wanted to make it on my own merits. But now I’m doing ok in the Japanese classical market so it’s ok to get his props, if he wants. Mostly he and I have seen each other go through difficult situations and we respect and care about each other.
How come Jason is getting all these amazing guitars? Is he 'the guy' where Flamenco is concerned? I don't know who he is, but he sure can play.
That is funny, pure coincidence that Stephen and I decided to both send him guitars at the same time :D Mine will be moving on to somebody else, but I wanted to hear what it would sound like in the hands of a great player and I thought who better than Jason. I don’t know Jason as well but we’ve interacted online over the years and I can’t say enough about him as a player and his generosity as a human being.
That guitar is stunning and an amazing gift, Stephen.
This is so cool getting to hear these guitars in great hands. Benefits everyone including the shipping companies lol!
Stephen, nice looking axe! Sounds great through the cellphone. Is that a mahogany neck? Looks very light but could be the lighting in the pic. Also not used to seeing a super sharp Spanish heel on a Venetian cutaway. Usually you have those rounded stump heels. Personally, I like the florentino cutaway. Hey, you should make one and color it orange and send to Ricardo (the one he had wasn’t orange) Make sure it’s just a sticker rosette!
SF & AC ... Both very nice guitars. It must be quite a buzz to hear one of your own being played by a master player like that. Great craftmanship btw. I still can't quote, but very pretty in the pictures. Tidy job on that cutaway too SF. I can't remember if you spoke about that once on Delcamp, and something about a twist?
ps. What are you using as the back drop in the pics above?
The Madagascar is beautiful, can you tell us what shellac color you used? I know you’ve said you like to out down a base coat of garnet, or orange, then clear over top right? Gives it that warm color.
The Madagascar is beautiful, can you tell us what shellac color you used? I know you’ve said you like to out down a base coat of garnet, or orange, then clear over top right? Gives it that warm color.
The opposite. I build up an even as possible film with dewaxed super blonde or blonde ( different companies and lots can be slightly lighter or darker blonde) then after I feel like it’s adequate as a basic coverage I will put very carefully applied layers of a darker shade, dewaxed Garnet mixed with blonde or something like that.
Putting on the color layers can be tricky, best to use a thin cut and build the color slowly than try to do it fast. If you try to build it too fast it becomes uneven. It took a long time for me to figure that out.
——- Thank you for posting this Orson, I eventually would have in a few weeks, but I didn’t realize J put it on his YT. I’m sort of waiting for a massive solea or something.
Andy, congratulations on the feather weight guitar. I think Bach sounds better on any kind of flamenco guitar because the sound envelope and attack is more like a lean mean harpsichord than a dreary dull witted piano….
I did show something about how to make a cutaway on the Hellcamp Foro, James Lister was asking. He made a bold move and shaped the compound curve without a form. I can see now how you could make that work, but I’ve always used a special form to assist.
About the neck wood, I usually use Spanish cedar for the neck blank, but I make up the heel with a different wood called Mersawa ( look it up in the wood database) which is used in traditional houses as a shoji door frames.
It’s a kind of wood used in guitar making in Japan, but I prefer Spanish cedar. Once in a while I build the whole neck with this wood. As you can see once the shellac is on it all fits together aesthetically.
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Sounds great. Love the Madagascar, looks cooler than Brazilian even. What strings are on it?
Probably Ddarrio J45s - my composer customer had it strung with the Aquila Baritone set B to B for a recording project. It sounded really good, but he doesn’t really play flamenco.
Just one more note, the bracing of this guitar is precisely based on the Brune’ drawing of the Hauser I that Segovia played that’s now in the Met Museum- the top is European spruce from a German wood dealer, that’s all I know. I don’t remember the thickness, but it’s not 3mm like the original Hauser. It’s more like 2.3 ~
When I heard Jason play this guitar I thought to myself, I want to hear him play an hour of music on it to get a better idea about what the guitar can do. Said the same thing to myself when he played Andy’s light weight Blanca. Would be cool to hear both guitars played back to back, or rather back and forth, not as a contest but just the comparison.
Stephan, what did you think of the Hauser bracing? Was this the first guitar you used it on? Or were you putting us on? ;)
HR
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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.
The opposite. I build up an even as possible film with dewaxed super blonde or blonde ( different companies and lots can be slightly lighter or darker blonde) then after I feel like it’s adequate as a basic coverage I will put very carefully applied layers of a darker shade, dewaxed Garnet mixed with blonde or something like that.
Putting on the color layers can be tricky, best to use a thin cut and build the color slowly then try to do it fast. If you try to build it too fast it becomes uneven. It took a long time for me to figure that out.
Well of course it not easy that’s why you’re the sensei man! I enjoy polishing. Very satisfying. But I did find it challenging to get this warm hue on rosewood, experimented with a solid base coat of super blonde then color. I’ll have to try a thinner cut!
The bracing is straight up, verbatim, carbon copy, 200% on point absolutely posi-authentically Hauser I Segovia guitar of the Epoch.
The Hauser comes out of Santos and is a direct line back to Torres and it’s completely flamenco. All you have to do it thin it and set up the geometry to give a low saddle that flamenco guitarist needs. Lots of basic ‘Kite’ patterns make good flamenco guitars. I think, fix my knowledge if I’m wrong, that all the flamenco brace patterns are simple variations on Torres’ kite system. You can change it to five fans, or even add fans ( I’ve seen flamenco guitars with 9 fans) - you can change the angle of the fans so they are parallel to the grain, or point them higher at the 9th fret center line to not get such a close fan situation. All of pivots off the basic Kite concept, then the issue is thinning it and setting up the action to be rageo friendly.
And some other slightly different concepts work, Manolo with his I think Ramirez classical with flamenco action, and the Rodriguez style similar to the Ramirez with the long diagonal bar, those can make flamencos too, but I find it much harder to get them to work.
I think where the break happened is with the French, Bouchet was himself a flamenco player, but he made that laterally braced top and that’s slightly different. The other break in my opinion was Daniel Friederich, his nature style of bracing isn’t flamenco friendly, but that’s just my opinion. Fleta is veering away from flamenco friendly bracing, but it could argued he’s still working off of the Kite situation, but his work is too robust and over built to be a good flamenco point of departure.
In my opinion Friederich was the important break rom Torres, but still in the family. The alien is the monster from Oz. The lattice, mala leche from the koala - makes my skin crawl
The pudding head forum isn’t awake and breathing, so they’d never get it. The moderators told me to stop making ‘provocative’ posts. Evidently you aren’t as allowed to make analogies between guitar making and zen meditation because it’s ‘religious speech’. I very politely and not in a condescending manner told them to shove their own heads up their a$$es. And given the stupidity that flows like a mighty stream of incoherence and false information that the moderators cannot distinguish from hard won knowledge, it felt pretty good. 😂 the difference between here and there is that if a quorum of knowledgeable people think someone is full of BS, Simon let’s the knowledgeable folks take down the BS by interrogating it. Over there they enable the BS and false information because they have some naive notion that show biz is a democracy. The music world is performance based, you don’t get to vote unless you do the hard work. In politics I’m liberal, in art it’s a performance based grade.
And some other slightly different concepts work, Manolo with his I think Ramirez classical with flamenco action, and the Rodriguez style similar to the Ramirez with the long diagonal bar, those can make flamencos too, but I find it much harder to get them to work.
He had a couple and if you notice his guitars buzz like hell. Not set for flamenco, he just lowered the bone.
About Oz lattice … Jernimo Peña did something similar with great results (I assume). Although mine is kite style (71), I bet his sounded just as flamenco. I have enjoyed the sound of other guys that use that guitar (Manolo, Isidro, Manolo Franco). Here compare the Sobrinos (Colombians) to the Jernoimo Peña (Minera).
And some other slightly different concepts work, Manolo with his I think Ramirez classical with flamenco action, and the Rodriguez style similar to the Ramirez with the long diagonal bar, those can make flamencos too, but I find it much harder to get them to work.
He had a couple and if you notice his guitars buzz like hell. Not set for flamenco, he just lowered the bone.
About Oz lattice … Jernimo Peña did something similar with great results (I assume). Although mine is kite style (71), I bet his sounded just as flamenco. I have enjoyed the sound of other guys that use that guitar (Manolo, Isidro, Manolo Franco). Here compare the Sobrinos (Colombians) to the Jernoimo Peña (Minera).
I like the minera guitar better. The first guitar has a flabby farty bass E. Could be set up, if you lower the saddle on some bass E they lose potency and become gas bags.
The minera guitar is crisper and the E isn’t flabby. For a loose slappy E with a tubby sound isn’t a successful bass string sound. At least I don’t like it. People say that with nylon string guitars it harder to accomplish good trebles, but for me it’s the nuance of the basses that I find satisfying in flamenco guitar. Give me any punchy treble sound, but complexity and mystery in the mid range and bass.
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