Tikahtnu -> RE: Small body torres for flamenco guitar? (Aug. 16 2021 20:59:43)
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Let me address your points. I think you should be posing these questions to the person in Spain who will be teaching you. I had just received my reply from him this morning, right before I came here for what I would consider to be a diverse knowledge-base of what a very complicated field that I’m obviously naive in. Being on opposite sides of the planet, communication usually takes an extra day or so. I could only talk to him, you are correct. But why would I do that? Is his course really that open-ended that you can show up with your own idea for plantilla, own selection of woods, etc....and he’s supposed to somehow transform this into a workable solution? 100% of the wood is being provided by him. His response to my questions was that any of the Torres models will be acceptable. The teacher should be able to advise on plantilla, scale length, and material choices. I would expect he may cover a lot of that territory during the first day of the course, which kind of makes all this preselection stuff superfluous. I have no doubt he will, in about 8 or so months. It’s a big commitment traveling to Spain for a month to build a guitar so I’m definitely not wasting any time trying to figure out what I would like to have come out of it. I only recently started thinking about the smaller body Torres after seeing a beautiful FE-17 that Thames built. I asked the guy i take flamenco lessons with if he’s played on any and he said he really liked them. And again I figure this forum has a diverse knowledge base to be able to help me try to pinpoint my understanding of this very complicated field in general. I guess it boils down to what your goals are. If you want to take the long road, that’s your choice, but if you build something that in no way, shape, or form resembles a traditional flamenco guitar, then it follows that it may not sound or behave like a traditional flamenco guitar. It’s really that simple. Forgive me for my naivety but as far as I understand, there was no distinction between a classical and a flamenco guitar when Torres revolutionized the guitar design? Or at least not in the way we see classical and flamenco guitars today? To me, if a small body Torres is suitable for flamenco, then it’s absolutely a traditional flamenco guitar, at least in regards to my definitions of the words. As long as it isn’t completely unsuitable for flamenco, which I think is my question posed in this thread. I’m taking two guitar builds next year, a 6 day classical guitar build with Robbie O’Brien in Colorado and then a couple months afterwards I will be in Spain for approximately a month with this guitar. This will be an electricity free course, all hand tools, traditional methods, no synthetic materials. My goal from this course in Spain is to refine what I learn in Colorado, and to see how viable it would be to make guitars on my 17 ton blue water sailboat that I’m restoring, and will be my primary residence until I die someday. I’m not sure if I will come back from Spain confident that I could do that, but I hope to be sure to come back with something I can cherish until I’m dead. I’ve had probably 70 or so different instruments, few of high quality but I’ve had ukuleles (every kind), charangos, balalaika, Puerto Rican quattro, irish bouzouki, 14 string Filipino harp bandurria, banjos, that’s just the strings I could keep going on my but point is that a small body Torres really doesn’t seem non traditional to me, and if we have a differing in opinion that’s fine as long as you know that my god is stronger than your god One of the reasons I composed that post was to subtly and gently steer you, as you have been talking about using Sitka spruce and Alaskan Yellow Cedar for the guitar. I truly believe your best chance at success is through traditional and proven methods using traditional materials. Save the Sitka and AYC for a later project when you have more knowledge, it’s important to get the first one right and you’ll be busy enough just keeping up with the multitude of steps required to just make the darned thing, let alone worrying about how to make something that’s an outlier work. From my understanding the quality and quantity ratio of current stocks of Sitka and AYC is favorable to traditional European spruces and Mediterranean cypress. The woods that were offered for the soundboard were Sitka, wrc and redwood. Redwood is a mixed bag from what I’ve read, but some people think it’s very exceptional and carries the positive characteristics of both cedar and spruce. For the backs, it was Spanish cypress or Alaska yellow cedar. The neck will be Spanish cedar. When I get my boat done, I hope to live in southeast Alaska where I was born, where Sitka and AYC is happiest. So it makes sense to me to have a guitar built out of similar woods wih someone who knows how to use those woods to produce a traditional Spanish guitar, this makes much more sense to me. But I’m stupid still I’m very open minded, plans always change, I’m just trying to figure things out and pinpoint my ideas. I’m definitely not doing any of this with the explicit goal of building guitars as a means of getting by, but if I could build awesome guitars to give to friends then I’d be happy
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