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So, if your're all up for it and have access to kitchen scales, please sit your guitar up there, read off the answer and let me know the weight and make.
Jim, I don't have kitchen scales, (I'm a "proper" cook, so I just "eyeball it" LOL!), so I can't respond to your request unfortunately. I must admit, that Ramirez of yours is the lightest guitar I've ever held. Felt like it was built out of Eggshell. A remarkable instrument.
cheers
Ron
PS (I'm still laughing from that Halloween thing you sent this morning! ....Brilliant!) Maybe you should post the link....on second thoughts...maybe not...LOL! Hope you sent one to Rob!
That Ramirez is a light one too! I bet it is a joy to play on!
The van Gool is not that good! Nice sounding, a real blanca, but with a nice warmth in it. The strings are a little high,so, a little havy playing,but it feels very comfortable, especially when you keep it in the "old style"
Hi Jim, My Burguet 1af is 1.53kg. It appears to be very thickly lacquered which I'm sure makes it less vibrant than I'd like. But I suppose I'm grateful when it gets a knock. I wonder can the finish be a significant contributor to overall weight? Graeme
A similar discussion about the weight of the finish on a guitar and its affects was recently brought up on the Acoustic Guitar forum. The consensus was, “no consensus was reached”! The problem is “what type of finish”?
From my experience, the lighter a guitar is built the less sustain its going to have. It’s simply a matter of energy and mass. A heavier object takes more energy to move, but once in motion will remain in motion longer.
I currently have four guitars and one on the way. My Shelton blanca and a blanca I built about 25 years ago are light as a feather and have very short sustain. My Tezanos Perez negra is lighter than most classicals, but much heavier than my blanca’s. It has sustain that rings forever. My Sigurdson negra has less weight than the Tezanos and as expected, less sustain.
Thing is, Ive had various guitars, Gerundino, Conde, Maldonado, Stephen Hill, Bernal etc. But it was only when I got my Ramirez that I realise how light weight it was. It made me wonder, how heavy should a guitar be?
Makers will tell you about the finish, the wood used on the top, the back and sides, the choice of machine heads, or might be you'd like pegs, but they can't tell you how much they design it to weigh.
I'm convinced that there is a right weight. If too heavy, the guitar dies. If too light, it responds as you describe.
My own thinking is that every guitar using standard strings will generate only so much energy, there's probably some way of quantifying the value. If the guitar is too heavy, it stands to reason that this energy will be swamped to a degree by the mass of the instrument, so there has to be a balance, an optimum weight.
That's why I ask for a range of guitar weights just to see what it throws up.
Perhaps it is nice to know, that the difference in weight between a general set of good pair of peggs and a good pair of tuning mechanisme is about 100 gram.
That will say, the tuning peggs are 100 gram lighter.
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