estebanana -> RE: Shaving or Sanding a Bridge (Jul. 4 2023 15:55:14)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo quote:
If that is done then we lose the original dimensions that the maker intended to get that design to function. What good was the design if it no longer functions? I was surprised to see so many vintage guitars where the frets were re-set in order to correct intonation. That might be extreme. But guitars that have bent or twisted necks that require lower bridge saddle, but have run out of slack, how do you fix those? By studying carefully for a long time. How do you come up with carefully crafted Bulerias falsetas? The design wasn’t wrong, the guitar isn’t a thing that exists in one single perfect mode of operation through the duration of its lifespan. The guitar is a structural/ engineering ‘situation’ that’s going to go through changes over time due to the malleability of its components and materials. This is to be expected, thus a guitar that has changed in its situation isn’t necessarily a bad design, it’s going through a natural course of stress and degradation. Martin guitars tend to fold up, the neck moves forward, the brilliance of the design is that the neck and be removed and the ‘situation’ can be corrected for a further duration. You could cut the neck off and bolt it back on, but that would seem to be a more updated corrective, but the neck will eventually move, so better to preserve the dovetail neck joint that can be re set, as we’re finding out on 180 year old Martins. If you don’t understand the analogy to the Strad cello I made, then my analogy wasn’t that good. Some people like myself are concerned with preserving and conserving, others would strip the varnish off a 380 year old Guarneri, put a pick up on it and spray it with blue lacquer. I’m against the layer and aware of the former. My first teacher was a violin bow maker, architect, painter and and an art conservator. He did each type of work at a professional level. He once designed a concert hall ( Pacific Union College in Angwin CA) it’s got incredible acoustics. During the time he was designing and building it he was making baroque violin bows at night. He sold one to the violinist Ken Goldsmith, who was teaching there at the time. Goldsmith have a concert on his del Gesu and played in the concert hall Mr. Tenney designed. Tenney was watching a rehearsal of Goldsmith when the violinist stopped for a second and mused to Tenney, I am playing my fiddle with your creation, inside your creation. This was before I joined that workshop, and by the time I got there Tenney was retired from architecture and building bows and restoring art full time. Sometimes I helped with relining old canvases and mounting them on stretchers, and sometimes I helped shape abalone inlay pieces for bow frogs. Tenney’s had an art collection, some minor impressionists, a few old Italian, French and German paintings, and a few important Barbizon school painters. The best one was a Diaz de la Peña, a Spanish artist in France in the 1840’s.
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