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i bought a guitar made by e e cummings this is actually true it had two offset necks one for four strings and one for two i didn't really like it it lacked punctuation and was impossible to tune
RE: Saddle has nothing left (in reply to John Ray)
quote:
Ruck, Friederich Ramirez et al are not innovations, they are far reaching extensions of Torres and Spanish school work.
I see it differently here. I consider Smallman and Dammann as excellent concert guitars no matter how far they are from the Spanish tradition. They are not my cup, but when I could play one, I was impressed. I also see Friederich and Ramirez as extensions of Torres as much as Torres was an extension of the makers of Granada and Sevilla he learnt from.
oh god. you were impressed by smallman? you have lost all credibility in my eyes. That thing is like an anti guitar. Only thing worse was the Humphrey millenium monstrosity.
RE: Saddle has nothing left (in reply to John Ray)
As I said, it’s not my cup of tea, and I mean it.
Nonetheless I don’t agree with over criticism as we are speaking of a 50.000$ guitar played by eminent guitarists, After I had the thing in my hand I could appreciated things that are not apparent from the recordings.
Anyway my point is not Smallman but his contribution to Lutherie which I see as something still evolving. In fact I like and play mainly old flamenco guitars. But in terms of guitar making (I am a maker myself too) the classical guitar I appreciate the most nowadays is made by the German luthier Adrian Heinzelmann. You may read something about him in the Orfeo magazine.
oh god. you were impressed by smallman? you have lost all credibility in my eyes. That thing is like an anti guitar. Only thing worse was the Humphrey millenium monstrosity.
The friend and fine player who bought my recent guitar has a Humphrey, spruce / jacaranda from 2000. He doesn’t play it anymore, it’s nasal sounding. It’s sounds clogged. He said my guitar better, his Antonio Marin is the only thing even close. To be fair, I have heard some Humphrey guitars that were good.
At one of the GAL meetings in the late 1990’s Humphrey said to Gene Clark, “The best thing that ever happened to me was when you left NY, then I got the repair work.” Also funny, the now long gone salesman at Guitar Solo in San Francisco lived in NY at that time. In 2008 he wanted to show me his guitar. I came back a few days later, he pulled out this great guitar, he wouldn’t let me see the label, but he showed me the headstock and let me play it. He says guess who made it? I had no idea and they headstock was sawn straight off on top, no individual carving to show the makers identity. I said I don’t know.
He told me and showed label, it was a Humphrey, but the head was sawn down flat. The guitar was purchased direct from Humphrey in the early 1980’s before the raised fingerboard was a thing, it was a normal guitar. The guy asked Humphrey to saw off the headstock because he didn’t like the carving and wanted it to match his Martin. ( this is weird to me) and he said Humphrey was FURIOUS, but did it anyway. He said something like Humphrey had made him mad about some other situation and he wanted to break his ego, so he wouldn’t pay him until he cut the head to look like a Martin.
There are lots of ‘eminent’ guitarists who have to play guitars that are ‘loud’ but not especially pleasing because they have to make a living playing large rooms. Not ever naming names, but I’ve heard it from same eminent musicians that they prefer traditional guitars, but use a different tool for concertizing.
A well known maker of double tops told me more that 20 years ago ( 2002) that they would teach me to make them without any teaching fee and I politely declined. I’d change to building cellos and violins before I’d have to make any guitar in the classical realm other than a Spanish tradition main line guitar.
It’s really sad that the guitar has been subjected to the lattice and two ply with synthetic core treatments. I don’t even have the attitude that I’m supposed to have where you say “Oh yes it’s not my thing, but I have the utmost respect for the different styles and schools of building.” Because I don’t, I simply and gladly and flatly reject it all.
Why I prefer this less frequented guitar forum over the bigger one. If you were to say you didn’t like the status quo double top world, they’d form a posse’ and lynch you as a witch. No thanks. I do not view any of that as ‘innovation’ nor do I think innovation is a healthy thing in guitar making, I think it’s mental / spiritual / philosophical hang up of white men in the West. I see the innovation especially in America, but also Australia and Germany as an extension of the concept of ‘the white mans burden’, if you haven’t read Joseph Conrad, it’s an idea you can google.
This is why I have a well deserved reputation as a misanthropic arsyhole, but rest assured am quite pleased with this.
I think in the guitar world I’d like to be known as a Balrog, an Uruk hai General, the leader of the Nazgûl or ideally, the mouth of Sauron. But you decide for yourselves, I’m not anyone to force a decision.
That John Williams video interview on VHS from his Seville concert was such a great advertisement for this Smallman thing. Much like Sanlucar and the Ramirez, it is ironic my favorite players use instruments that suck. Well, they don’t “suck” but good grief there have been much better guitars in their hands. The loudest guitar I ever played was a Contreras. Actually two of them I remember were ridiculous loud. My very quiet Conde was louder than the smallman I tried. I don’t get the hype, and it weighed a ton. Perhaps people that like them are annoyed by high frequencies, cuz that guitar sounds like Dolby is fully on all the time.
Posts: 1708
Joined: Jan. 29 2012
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
RE: Saddle has nothing left (in reply to hxwhf72752003)
Sometimes this is due to the neck warping, which can be determined by holding a straight edge against the joint line between the fingerboard and the neck wood. If the joint is curved, this indicates that the neck has warped. If it's not too much--say a millimeter or two away from the straight edge in the middle--it may be possible to correct the situation by filing some of the frets close to the head of the guitar, and then re-crowning them. The nut will have to be lowered. This is assuming that the warpage occurred in the direction that the strings pull.
This effectively straightens out the line or curve that you would have by drawing a line or curve across the tops of the frets, and corrects the angle of the strings. And, of course, lowers the action.
Posts: 3487
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Saddle has nothing left (in reply to estebanana)
Pompano: I used to visit Eglin Air Force Base in Florida in the 1970s. There was almost nothing on the Gulf of Mexico beach except, a few miles to the east, a large restaurant. There was often a good sized boat, maybe a 40-footer, docked alongside. Most days they served pompano, caught early that morning. It was worth the trip.
Two friends and I camped out in Mexico all summer of 1961. We drove a 5-year old Ford pickup. Well into the trip we foolishly drove onto the beach on the Isla del Carmen, at the southern extremity of the Gulf. Now Ciudad del Carmen sits on the island. In those days the island appeared to be totally uninhabited.
Our truck sunk in up to the axles in the sand, wet from a recent rain. We were stuck there for four days. After about ten in the morning it was too hot to work on digging out the truck. On the second day my friend jim C. broke out his fishing rod, waded out chest deep and started reeling in pompano. The pompano school hung around the whole time we were stuck there. We worried about running out of drinking water, but we ate very well while trapped on the beach.
RE: Saddle has nothing left (in reply to John Ray)
I feel kind of bad this thread got turned into a whole other thing, but my point was don’t buy a guitar that’s broken, you’re buying something that’s a headache to the seller. Don’t buy headaches, they come along naturally in life and are completely free of charge.
Ask yourself this: Why doesn’t the seller remedy the problems before they sell the guitar?
Pompano: I used to visit Eglin Air Force Base in Florida in the 1970s. There was almost nothing on the Gulf of Mexico beach except, a few miles to the east, a large restaurant. There was often a good sized boat, maybe a 40-footer, docked alongside. Most days they served pompano, caught early that morning. It was worth the trip.
Two friends and I camped out in Mexico all summer of 1961. We drove a 5-year old Ford pickup. Well into the trip we foolishly drove onto the beach on the Isla del Carmen, at the southern extremity of the Gulf. Now Ciudad del Carmen sits on the island. In those days the island appeared to be totally uninhabited.
Our truck sunk in up to the axles in the sand, wet from a recent rain. We were stuck there for four days. After about ten in the morning it was too hot to work on digging out the truck. On the second day my friend jim C. broke out his fishing rod, waded out chest deep and started reeling in pompano. The pompano school hung around the whole time we were stuck there. We worried about running out of drinking water, but we ate very well while trapped on the beach.
RNJ
Other than the lack of drinking water and stuck truck, this time at the shore of THE GULF OF MEXICO, sounds like my getaway dream. Wading out to hook into fresh pompano and it being too hot to move too much after 10am.
If you could build a shade with some branches and a tarp and find some sticks to poke pompano on the only thing I’d really want after that is a bag of salt to season the fish and an angel to drop a case of beer.
Posts: 3487
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Saddle has nothing left (in reply to estebanana)
There was a thick grove of palm trees bordering the beach, so when we weren't catching pompano we slept in the shade through the middle of the day, and worked through the night digging out the truck.
My other friend Don L. solved the drinking water problem. He wandered across the road where he found a grove of coconut palms. The monkeys in the trees objected to his presence, cursing at him with ear splitting screeches. Don picked up rocks and threw them at the monkeys. He was one of the most forceful and accurate rock throwers I ever met.
Instead of driving them away his intentional near misses further agitated the monkeys. They proceeded to wrench unripe coconuts from their stems and return fire. Don picked up a few and brought them back to the beach, where we whacked off the tops with our machetes and drank the juice.
Attacking the monkeys a couple of times per day kept us hydrated.
The first really good classical I bought is a 1991 Contreras spruce/Brazilian "doble tapa." It's not a double top in the usual sense. The top is solid spruce, with curved braces. It has an additional spruce back, inside the rosewood one.
For a long time it was the loudest classical I had played. In 2000 I bought a 1973 spruce/Indian Romanillos. At first it seemed quiet and a bit tinny. It took about a month for it to open up, and for me to learn how to play it.
At the end of the month i got out the Contreras to see how much louder it was. It wasn't. The Romanillos was louder, and had a much wider range of tone quality.
These days I tend to play my 2006 Abel Garcia more than the Romanillos. It has a softer pulsacion and nearlly as wide a tonal range as the Romanillos.
When I switch back to the Romanillos it takes me a half hour to adjust to it, and decide that yes, it's actually better.
I have heard more than one pro player say that Romanillos's instruments aren't especially loud. I wonder how many who say that Romanillos's instruments are on the quiet side haven't really had time to learn to play them.
The Romanillos that Kaori Muraji plays is quite loud, I guess she knows how to play it. Her playing is big sounding without all the racket that Yamashita makes. Her sound is big and clean. It’s interesting that she also plays a Conde’ blanca for some repertoire.
To me loud means more than one thing, or loud has to be qualified into different categories. Penetration of sound into a space, or projection, but it’s not just how far, it’s how stable the whole envelope of the sound is. And then there’s why is loudness important?
For me it always comes back to the idea that you can build guitars that have high decibel output, but are sacrificing nuance in favor of forcefulness, raw unnuanced power. Or one dimensional power versus lush natural power. I hear forced power as a thing that gets in my nerves, it’s uncomfortable, some flamenco guitars are just loud with no nuance, but considered desirable because they chop through in cuadros. That’s useful and then after the job you want a different guitar to play on the couch, hopefully you have a loud enough guitar that’s also nuanced.
There’s another kind of loudness, which I find intriguing, the guitar sounds more raw and feels like there’s some racket going on under your ear as the player, but out in front 5 feet away it all blends together and the noise drops out leaving a bloom of overtones and fundamental sound that mysteriously weave around each other in pleasant ways. Those guitars are usually moderatately loud in a natural way because all the stuff in the way the guitar is transforming string energy into sound is in structural agreement. You are drawn in because that’s mysterious and satisfying. That guitar may not be the loudest in decibels generated, but it will be the one the ear is more interested in because it tickles more tiny hairs in your cochlea.
To me successfully loud means, the noise of overtones evens out in front of the guitar, its loud, and its more complex and complete sound that doesn’t emphasize bass over treble, but blends them to activate your inner ear to draw the ear, not just make it hearable from afar.
You can hear a siren from afar, but you can also hear a bird singing, which is louder? If you think the siren is louder it’s obviously because it’s about decibel thinking. If you think the bird is louder it’s about perceiving and reaching to meet the complexity of the space between you and the bird. Siren is forced listening, bird song is naturally projective and more mysterious. The question is do you sacrifice birdsong for sake of filling a huge hall with a laser beam decibel loud guitar or use a birdsong guitar and have a better natural sound? Or does a guitar exist that’s both?
RE: Saddle has nothing left (in reply to John Ray)
The comparison between a siren and a birdsong goes a little too far imho: a cypress made Santos and a Smallman are obviously on the 2 opposite sides of the scale but there are many grey shades in between. I listened a sublime concert played with a Woodfield by Giulio Tampalini. Once he used to play with a Santos kind of guitar and recorded many Tarrega works with that guitar: frankly I think he got more from the Woodfield in concert.
What Richard described is usually said about Hauser and to the technique to play such kind of guitars made famous by Julian Bream in the 70ies. Antigoni Goni is a champion in this field and obviously she find herself comfortable with Romanillos.
It’s not the only way though and the kind of Hauser and Romanillos guitars are commonly considered a step further than Torres/Santos as they heavier and tuned to a higher pitch. Many great concert players made famous Fleta and Friederich as loud guitars in a different way than Hauser. Friederich and Fleta opened the Pandora box of rigid box - lattice braced guitars and many have in high consideration their tone. As you said, it’s also about the technique. The concert players I-spoke with, have very clear ideas about their concert needs.
Funny enough a couple of very famous concert players commonly associated with Romanillos at times make use in concert of orange Conde.
RE: Saddle has nothing left (in reply to John Ray)
Much depends indeed on your playing skills and the way the instrument projects. The first time I played my Conde in public was a theater precentation of the flamenco department. There were classmates both in the audience and behind me, waiting behind the curtains (which will temper it as well). The ones in front of me praised the trebbles but not the bass strings and the ones behind me praised the bass strings but not the trebbles (or the other way around).
My father's classical Ramirez has the most beautiful sound you can imagine. Still it didn't realy sound well at all for someone sitting just in front of it. But if you take some/sufficient distance it openes up and can reach the back rows of the biggest concert halls making it a perfect concert guitar especially since it also sounds great to the player. But like I said, not to someone sitting just in front of you so for teaching his students he bought himself an other guitar.
I know that when Paco Peña want a note to stand out/last over a longer period of time he plays it softer, not louder because the loud note sounds louder but dies faster.
Stockholm based Luthier Boulin who made my father's 11 string Alto guitar was also known for using a wooden soundbox to upgrade the volume of the guitar, not being part of the guitar but as a kind of extern resonance box. Not sure how it works
All I can find now is this but I remember a b/w picture from his workshop were in stead he had an organ/churchaltar like construction.
RE: Saddle has nothing left (in reply to John Ray)
My example of a siren in contrast to a bird isn’t a direct analogy of one guitar against another, but more about hearing loud and not so loud sounds.
I know that there’s a PA system in the public park behind my house, it’s used almost everyday to broadcast local city information like where to assemble for a park volunteer clean up event, public safety announcements, and a siren to practice tsunami evacuation drills. And in the same park basically the same distance from my window there are birds singing. I find myself naturally attracted to leaning into the bird sounds, they carry through the air and are clear. The public announcements carry, but are jarring to the ears and nervous system and are to be endured not enjoyed.
That overlays on how I personally listen to guitars.
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