Guest -> RE: Question for Anders.. Guitar weight (Dec. 20 2005 7:06:43)
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Hi Phrygus. You are not the only one liking very light and short sustained guitars. The question is how light and short sustained do they need to be. I play a blanca with pegs of my own, and it's very short sustained. You can visit me and try it. It's my tribute to old style flamenco guitars, but it's not made to thin or light, and it does have at little bit of harmonies in the trebles and a very deep percussive growl in the basses. The problem with some, to lightly build guitars, is that in order to be light, they have compromised on physics. If you make the backseam reinforcement strip 1mm thick and 6mm wide, then you are building to light IMO. Even worse, If you build (like me) with only one upper harmonic bar, you have to make that strong enough to support the pressure from the neck, if not, the soundboard will sink with time. I build with a bigger neck foot (the piece you see inside the guitar), in order to make the pressure from the neck "stand" on a larger surface and so not distort the shape of the back. If you make the neck with a very light piece of cedar without reinfoercement, and use a very thin fingerboard, you have to accept that the neck might bend. If you make the bracing to light, the soundboard will distort and "dish" ETC I've seen all these things happen in a couple of old Condes and one Ramirez. And I say all in each of these guitars. Bend neck, distorted back, sunken harmonic bar and dished soundboard. Each of these guitars were 'dead'. But mostly the owners thought they had the best guitar in the world, because it featured a label with a certain name on it. This doesn't mean that all old Condes and Ramirez are like that, but take care, there are many of them.
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