estebanana -> RE: Nodal Bars (Feb. 1 2012 17:39:49)
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quote:
Unless I miss understand, it seems that in Ramirez book, he seemed to think this was a vain attempt to support the soundboard under the shrinking ebony fingerboard that always causes cracks. His way to deal with it was to not glue the edges so as the ebony shrinks from dryness, it does not pull the soundboard with it, or at least in the visable part along the sides. I'm speaking about something different. I mentioned the lute soundboard as an an exaggeration of what happens on the guitar. The notes on the lute over the body, past the neck / body join can be "mushy" or weak. The sound board has a dead spot there usually, but on a lute the frets are glued to that upper area of the treble side of the scale. There is no support under the fingerboard unless the maker puts a brace there or extends the neck block under those body frets. There is something about the difference in support and non support of the fingerboard over the body that the lute an guitar respond to. If the fingerboard has a consistent structure under it all the way to the sound hole, in general this helps the guitar to have a firmer sound in the upper registers. Think about a string stretched over the fingerboard and how solid the neck is. The vibrating sting sets the neck to vibrating, it's a unit working together. Then go over the body and press the string and think about how that disassembles that vibrating unit. The structure is not consistent unless you put more stiffness amass under the fingerboard as it reaches between the body join and the soundhole. In my understanding the at structural continuation helps keep the string feeling the same type of support to react against. In order to vibrate the string has to be stopped firmly, if there is no support under the fingerboard at some juncture in neck the string is not stopped constantly along it length. Builders have come to this issue by bolstering up that area under the fingerboard. Santos used a flat brace I call a "neck graft". Today you can see Humphrey's style raised fingerboard guitars with the neck that goes all the way under the board to the soundhole. Smallman's do another thing that makes this go away because they have a huge plate of wood under the top in the upper bout. And it's true some guitars don't have a neck graft and they work fine. As far as Ramirez book, personally and don't quote me this I think he had a lot of esoteric ideas that were not good ideas. He did some marvelous subtle things in design which we are thankful for. I also think his book reads like an alchemical text, it's not straight forward how to book like many available today. It's dryly philosophical and kind of deals with him painting himself into a corner. ....I never understood all that fuss, trying to perfectly balance a guitar. It seems the cool thing about acoustic guitar is the fact that when we play it, the notes DON't all have same strength. I mean that is why we try to put different notes on different strings when making a fingering of a melody.... I agree. I took lesson wit David Serva a long time ago and I was talking to him about the D'darrio G strings made of that grey composite material. The ones which are supposed to bridge the timbre gap between the D and B by making that transition seem more "samey." he said why would you want to make them sound the same? One of the he great things about the guitar is that the G string is funkier and you can use the funkiness to make your playing have variety. You can wiggle around on the G sting a make it sound like and oud, or play it high up the neck a make it sound "formal" etc. he said you have to explore all the little difference to get your own sound and to keep other for getting bored fro the same sound. he siad if you're the kind of guy who does not have a supersonic picado to occupy the audience you can keep them hooked with subtle interesting changes of sound. I will admit that I don't like a guitar to be extremely bassy or extremely thin overall sounding....but the splitting hairs is silly when a different player comes along. Should we file and contour a guitar bracing and top thickness and tuning for each individual owner? [:D][:D] I think the guitarist comes second in this respect. A guitar maker may be doing a special order or trying go do something for a customer, which is fine, but in the end he or she really answers to the guitar and what the guitar wants. The maker can't will the guitar forcefully to be this way or that way. It's really a dialogue between the maker and the guitar while its being made. You can't force the guitar, you can only bring it along with your skillful means and let it breathe. It's more about getting in the groove and just going with it. If you fight the guitar to try to make it do something in particular you mess it up. Guitarists who let the guitar maker have that natural dialog with the guitar usually get a better guitar in the end.
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