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Anders Eliasson -> RE: string action (May 20 2007 10:12:59)
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That sounds good Koella. You are going to sound good now that you´re a bit more dirty[8D]
Ricardo. This with "cool" words very often mess up what we are talking about. So many people mix up the whole thing and in order to not sound stupid they use "cool" words.
I know that "stringheight above soundboard at the soundhole" doesn´t sound very cool, but we all know what we are talking about. I mean if you say: Wow dude, thats a cool guitar. It really has a cool sound, and a cool setup..... What does this say. Well tecnically nothing but maybe that the guy talking has had a good mixture of uppers and downers[8D]
The stringheight above soundboard is very delicate and few understand the factors.
If its to high, the guitar just doesnt feel flamenco. so it needs to be low. I´d say below 9mm or better around 8 mm at the bridge. But equally important is the height at the soundhole. Some guitars have the strings almost parrallel to the soundboard, but MANY have a difference of up to 2mm.... Well in this case you lower the bridge setup so much that at the soundhole it´ll have a max of 9mm. I personally dont like this kind of setup. When you place your thumb on the 6th string, its reference point, which is the 6th string AND the soundboard, changes all the time you move your right hand.
So what about going super low??? Not good. why? because you loose breakangle ovre the sadlle bone and you´ll start touching the soundboard when playing picado.
When the breakangle gets to low, the guitar sounds flimsy its pulsation gets weaker and it looses proyection. Its very comfortable playing rasgueados and golpes and thats why some guitars used for dance accompanying (spell?) are set up like that.
A lot of simple meassures used by guitarists are worthless. The famous cigarete rule, that a cigarete shouldn´t be able to pass underneath the 6th string at the bridge, is worthless, because it very often doesn´t look at breakangle and stringheight above soundboard at the soundhole. These "golden" rules are as most other "golden rules" way to simple and dont really say anything.
To make a bridge setup lower than 7mm at the bridge is like a luthier suicide[:o]. You´ll have absolutely no extra space to adjust if the guitar moves a bit with time. And trust me. They do. They also change setup when the temperature changes during the year. Here in Granada ít suddenly got hot and dry, and I´ve just installed summer saddles on all my guitars. They are around 0,6mm lower... Imagine having to do that with a guitar with a bridge setup lower than 7mm[X(]
Its one of the most difficult aspects of building a flamenco guitar and the biggest problem is that the guitars never come out the same even using the exact same setup in the jig you use for assembling the guitar. There are ALWAYS difference. Sometimes as much as 2mm. Its something I´ve asked a lot of luthiers about. And all of them have agreed that it happens when assembling the Spanish way.
Some luthiers have started doing seperate body and neck. This way you´ll have the chance to controll the whole neckangle thing better. Maybe I will do one day as well, but I still feel that the Spanish heel and heel block makes for the best connection between neck and body and my intuition tells me that its the most "vibrant" way of constructing a Spanish guitar.
Anders
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