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Ok, I´m back with one of favorites, Pulsation. Thats one of the most important things in a guitar that suits you and its the one you cant adjust because its built into the guitar.
In popular words I would call it stiffness or softness of a guitar. Its something you feel in you right hand, it has to do with how you produce sound. Its also something you cannot adjust by changing string tension. Yes a little bit, but a stiff guitar feels stiff with low tension strings and a soft guitar feels soft with high tension strings.
Pulsation you control mainly by thickness of soundboard and how heavy its braced. These two things interact and also affect the sound of the guitar. If the soundboard is to thick, the guitar might be trebly but also with lack of nuance and dynamics in the basses and midrange. If to thin it becomes bassy and with lack of dynamics in the trebles and high midrange. Guitars with a to strong bracing system tend to have this unpleasant nosy sound.
There´s no right pulsation. It depends on the player and some pro´s like stiff guitars and some like soft guitars. From my experience, a typical stiff guitar is a Conde and a typical soft one is a Reyes. So you see, that you can find all kinds of pulsations in all categorys and its a waste of time to discuss which is best etc, because its so personal.

One of the problems with the internet info you get about good guitars is that the info comes from people who knows very little about guitars, hence the enourmous amount of info about sound and very little about playability. There are lots of "clever" persons writing about how good this and that guitar sounds without being able to really test it and play it with a good strong flamenco technique. If you dont have that techique, you wont be able to test the guitar fully. Its like testing a formula 1 car under speed limitations. Everyone with money can buy a good guitar, pluck the strings and write a raving review on the internet. If you do so many times some people will consider you to know a lot about good guitars, but the only info you get is a personal comparision on how good guitars sound when plucked.
I hope you understand what I mean with "plucking". thats something that has very little to do with playing flamenco. Flamencos dont pluck strings.

So what has this to do with a standard beginner or intermediate flamenco player: Its difficult to get it right the first time. Thats why guitars are being sold. Some people want to think they have a strong right hand and buy or order a stiff guitar (macho type) what they have is maybe an uncontrolled right hand and so, the guitar they buy will always be overpowering them.

My personal goal is to build a guitar which is just right of course. but its relative, so it might be just a tad to soft or stiff for someone.
Now I´m being very honest with you guys, and please give me credit for that because its not what is normally considered good for business and very few luthiers are saying that their instruments might not be correct for all players. In fact most luthiers are very afraid of talking about how their guitars work and thats leads us back to Rons dilema: all this talking about sound. Its so much easyer to talk about the right sound than he right feel of a guitar and this leeds to this misunderstanding that if you have a guitar with a good sound (relative as well) you have a guitar that´ll always be perfect for you

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ORIGINAL: Ricardo
Ander's thoughts:

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Ok, I´m back with one of favorites, Pulsation. Thats one of the most important things in a guitar that suits you and its the one you cant adjust because its built into the guitar.
In popular words I would call it stiffness or softness of a guitar. Its something you feel in you right hand, it has to do with how you produce sound. Its also something you cannot adjust by changing string tension. Yes a little bit, but a stiff guitar feels stiff with low tension strings and a soft guitar feels soft with high tension strings.
Pulsation you control mainly by thickness of soundboard and how heavy its braced.

haven't read this, so does it mean that a high pulsation guitar will feel like it's having high tension strings on it even if it's low tension strings etc?

Funny talking about de conde, my teacher just bought a conde negra a26(or a25, whichever is the negra). I had a play of it an asked him whether it was high tension strings cuz it felt like it, and he tolde it was his usual normal tension proarte strings..

In my guitars strung with all the same strings - pro arte normal tension,
de yamaha feels like the lowest tension and the macias the middle of the 3 and the anders the highest tension.. Does this mean that the anders had the highest pulsation and the yamaha de lowest?

Cheers

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I first heard the term from Anders, and wondered if it was his own personal term for something I understood already as a player. After some discussion, the jist of it is that it does relate to how you play the guitar. For example, some guitars really deliver the goods when you play them harder and harder. It seems these instruments have "high or hard pulsation". If you don't play them with a heavy hand, then it could seem the guitar is stiff and dull sounding.

Conversely if you have a guitar that is very easy and the sound jumps out with a lighter attack, (I assume you would call it low or soft pulsation??) then the heavy handed player may run the risk of driving the guitar too hard and making a bad or "brash" sound. Perhaps some other terms are stiffness, or easiness to the way the guitar responds to your playing technique?

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Just want to add one thing. I think that this with only finding that 5% of the guitars will suit you is a bit exagerated.
Its very often about finding the "sweet spot" Thats where you and the guitar work together and it might be different on different guitars

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ORIGINAL: rojarosguitar

I wonder as an amateur player whether pulsación means how the guitar support your rhythmic attack - similar to cymbal work in playing drums.

Depending on how you play and what kind of sticks you use:
some cymbals support your pulsation (and in percussion work we use this term for he basic feel of the rhythm or time) and some rather resist it, so that you have to work much harder to get it right.

I tend to feel that with different flamenco guitars: some are ore supportive to my kind of right hand playing and some are are more resisting ...

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ORIGINAL: etta

Hope I do understand the concept of "pulsation". It seems the guitar that is overly stiff in string tension can be softened by lowering the action. I have a guitar with very stiff pulsation; I little by little lowered the action considerable to a point where it plays much easier but still using HT strings. It still has a rapid attack but the stiffness that is left prevents undue string rattle; action is very comfortable now with little compromise in volume or projection.

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ORIGINAL: etta

Hope I do understand the concept of "pulsation". It seems the guitar that is overly stiff in string tension can be softened by lowering the action. I have a guitar with very stiff pulsation; I little by little lowered the action considerable to a point where it plays much easier but still using HT strings. It still has a rapid attack but the stiffness that is left prevents undue string rattle; action is very comfortable now with little compromise in volume or projection.

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ORIGINAL: orsonw

Cloth Ears- check the search function there's been lots of debate and explanation on why scale length is only a minor factor in pulsation.


Anders, I know it's hard to resist but please you know better!

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I have searched but cannot find a thread that explains this.

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Personally, I like a medium pulsation. I have played Reyes that were too soft (for me) and Condes that seemed a bit stiff--but a friend has a '73 Gravina media luna that I really like.

Classical guitars exhibit a wide range of pulsation as well.