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Building one for myself, it’s about to blow up like a fugu fish into a big fat wood box. Just finishing up the neck today then I’m gonna jamb this thing together, but carefully.
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I’m working outside in my sculpture bomb shelter room 😆- it’s a concrete building that is engineered to be strong enough to park two cars on top of. Its at road level.
Golden hour, I’m working out in this room so I have easier dust clean up, just sweep out the door.
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So when you’re building ‘the’ guitar for yourself what does that mean. Just taking that time? Special woods or not so special? …?
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.
It's amazing to me that glue joint between the heel and neck never seems to be a problem. I think it's called a heel ... does this thing ever rupture, or is the hide glue that good? Also, Is that a Japanese lily? Nice pics👍
It’s for me to play. What’s unusual is the top. It’s Yakusugi, cedar from Yakushima an island four hours by boat south of Kagoshima city. So that’s like the latitude of Datona Beach Florida ( mas o menos) it’s not a tree from high altitude, maybe 1600 feet, but it’s a true cypress ( remember last weeks talk about tops made of ‘cedar’ are really cypress.) Some trees we call cedar are cypress botanically speaking. I’m trying out in my own guitar, to my best knowledge no one has made classical guitars with this wood. It’s kind of like a cross between redwood and western red ‘cedar’.
I acquired several sets on seeing two giant slabs of it at a lumber yard near me. I had the slab ripped into 4mm thick tops.
The ribs are macassar ebony, quite mis matched, maybe from opposite sides of a small flitch, just leftovers after culling out the prime ribs ( *rimshot cha cha*) and the back is figured Sakura a bought locally five years ago.
It’s a mis matched set that I’m going to make into a sorta negra-
We’ll see how this goes. Otherwise I’m making conventional blancas and classicals.
Using an old solera, improvised blocks to keep it together. I’m excited about this guitar because I’ve begun a long term project of studying the Bach lute sonatas and this will be my vehicle. I looked at all the intermediate guitar music one day about a month ago and I thought what use is it? You learn it and then discard it. I thought about it and realized a great majority of the position work regarding fingering and decision making about where on the fingerboard to play a particular phrase is accomplished by studying the Bach lute music and I said to myself life is too short not to study Prelude, Fuge and Allegro.
I put on my big boy pants and dove into Bach, then immediately dreamt of this guitar as my access tool. Now I’m building it.
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Keep in mind Bach realized those on a "lute harpsichord", and according to anecdotes made Weiss sit in the adjacent room to listen to his "lute playing" do to shyness.
Keep in mind Bach realized those on a "lute harpsichord", and according to anecdotes made Weiss sit in the adjacent room to listen to his "lute playing" do to shyness.
Guess what? I’m putting snakewood and ivory keys with quill string pluckers on this one, it’s going to be a ‘guitarpsichord’.
I quite like the top. I remember Ernandez building with a similar top and I think it's cool to move away from the typical master grade cosmetics. Is she going to be classical spec?
I quite like the top. I remember Ernandez building with a similar top and I think it's cool to move away from the typical master grade cosmetics. Is she going to be classical spec?
Ideally I’d like to hit some hybrid point between a proper negra as and square classical. Rasgueado friendly, but a classical with a husky voice. We’ll see in a week or two
Keep in mind Bach realized those on a "lute harpsichord", and according to anecdotes made Weiss sit in the adjacent room to listen to his "lute playing" do to shyness.
Guess what? I’m putting snakewood and ivory keys with quill string pluckers on this one, it’s going to be a ‘guitarpsichord’.
Keep in mind Bach realized those on a "lute harpsichord", and according to anecdotes made Weiss sit in the adjacent room to listen to his "lute playing" do to shyness.
Guess what? I’m putting snakewood and ivory keys with quill string pluckers on this one, it’s going to be a ‘guitarpsichord’.
too late.
Oh how you overly underestimate me. I’m going to incorporate the harpsichord element inside the guitar body, thus eliminating the need for any non intrinsic free standing keyboard.
The back is Sakura, also the strips are Sakura, but a different kind. I think I’ve seen four different kinds of cherry wood, or four different qualities in cherry woods, light sap wood, medium brown with some reddish feel, very bright golden brown with an orange tint and a light brown/ grey biege. Maybe it’s all one kind of tree, but has different qualities in the look of the wood. I’ll have to study this.
Anyway, it’s sick how compelled to arduously detail the inside of the guitar some of us become. I usually don’t do stuff like that, but I have a thing for occasionally French polishing the back strips.
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The wood I’m making the top out of is a risk, it might sound horrible, one dimensional, muddy, unresponsive, thudding. I have no idea what will happen, but I hope it works.
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Have you used laminated sides before? Does it make any difference in sound?
I’ve used laminated ribs several times at least. I can’t remember how many times. I use the process when I have a rib material that could crack later, unless backed by laminate layer. Ziricote, persimmon etc.
How it effects the sound of course depends on lots of other factors in the structure. In general it might create clarity, I really can’t say. Supposedly laminate ribs makes the rim of the guitar stiffer so it move as the top moves and this isolates the top. My view on all this is that it’s anecdotal evidence because it’s difficult to really create tests to definitively prove these things.
I’ve heard guitars with thin ribs with the same attributes that guitars with laminated ribs and vice versa. I’d point out that perpendicular reinforcement of the rib on the inside at three or four locations also significantly stiffens the ribs. In combination with glue blocks and the counter shear force created by attaching the top to the glue blocks or liners, perpendicular braces on the inside face of the rib adds incredible stiffness with fraction of the mass of an extra laminated rib….
See it’s all highly anecdotal. Just try it and see what happens. Although for a flamenco, it will make the body heavier, so if you’re shooting for light guitars it will be heavier.