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RE: Old School Tone
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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 RE: Old School Tone (in reply to RobJe)
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I bought a guitar from Chris Berkov about 15 years ago. it was new then and sounded kinda new. Now its 15 years old and I have played it a lot. It now sounds older and will eventually actually sound real old. You know why? Because the guitar is becoming an old guitar. LOL
Last month I played a Santos that was from 1924, it sounded contemporary in its projection and over all force and playability. I have a Mario Salinas from 1989 in my shop right now that I just refretted ( that came here because the other guy told my client 800.00 for a re fret and a saddle! if only I could charge that, but that would be huge rip off right? ) The Salinas sounds great and it's comparable to many old flamenco guitars from before the 1960's.
Guitars are guitars are guitars, older ones mellow a bit and new guitars play in, but they basically stay with what they are born with. I bet dollars to donuts if people did actual blind tests with guitars they would not be able to tell vintage guitars from year old guitars. Just good guitars from bad guitars according to your feel and taste.
This whole notion of old school building and newer guitar sounds is just a bunch of hooey. You can do the blind test with several guitars and several guitarists, and each guitarist will have a different sound often radically changing the way a particular guitar sounds.
One more thing, this Santos I played sounds different under the ear than a Santos on a recording from the 1930's, this Santos also sounded different under the ear than it does on recordings made by the owner accompanying singers. So this also means that one great guitar can sound different in new and old recordings and live playing contexts.
It's all terribly subjective and everyone has an opinion. And Robbie is correct this is one of the things that drives guitar makers insane. ( If you let it. I tent to ignore this notion while I am actually building. I make my guitars and they sound like me. ) The other thing that drives guitar makers over to the nutty side is that fateful morning when they wake up, stare at their coffee, knowing all these things I mentioned and then realize they are stupid enough to have devoted themselves to a life of trying to please guitarists who are also half raving neurotic about finding the perfect guitar.
I also find it perturbing that some guitar maker sell their guitars under the pretext of them sounding old. This is mythology and touchy feelie romantic clap trap.
When you read this, you should imagine me standing the middle of the street wearing no clothes shouting this angrily to passing cars.
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Date Mar. 19 2011 19:26:53
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Tom Blackshear
Posts: 2304
Joined: Apr. 15 2008
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RE: Old School Tone (in reply to Harry)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Harry
Did guitars that were built/used up to the mid to late 60's have a more nasal dry sound or is it just me?
It seems like in these older recordings the guitars sound completely different. Is it a question of construction, set up, or simply that modern recordings are EQ'd to have a fuller sound?
Does anyone prefer that old school sound? To me it is definitely harsher but the attack just sounds better, more of a raw sound.
Harry,
Going back over my thoughts, I think that the older sounds had some nasal qualities; I like to think more of a growling quality from the bass' that came out of the bowels of the earth, with earthy trebles. And the top timber was such that rasguedos had a certain snap rather than a bouncing sensation some guitars today produce.
This all comes from an accumulated articulation that guitars gain with age. But there are ways to hurry up the process by doing fine adjustments; something similar to stretching out strings to their peak proficiency before playing a guitar. I know some of the old builders in Spain would tweak their guitars to gain a more mature sound when new.
I might add that a friend of mine was in Spain for some time in the 50's and 60's, and knew Arcangle Fernandez quite well. Fernandez did re-top a '48 Barbero for him and it sounded quite different from the first Fernandez flamenco negra that he built for my friend. Richard Brune now owns the negra, and my friend still has the Barbero. These are two very different guitars in sound, articulation, and over-all playing style; all by the same builder for the tops.
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Tom Blackshear Guitar maker
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Date Mar. 19 2011 20:21:52
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Guest
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RE: Old School Tone (in reply to Harry)
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quote:
go back to the drawing board to get a stronger foundation in flamenco.
always...constantly...
no need to cringe...you like the sound of those recordings...most us do...so many great things happening now...not just the players but the 'sound' we are hearing...think we are lucky to be living in this time...so much documentation of the history as well as what's new...
like that saying
what is new is something old rediscovered....
quote:
growling quality from the bass' that came out of the bowels of the earth, with earthy trebles.
that is beautiful!!! 
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Date Mar. 20 2011 3:37:16
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Old School Tone (in reply to RobJe)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
This whole notion of old school building and newer guitar sounds is just a bunch of hooey. You can do the blind test with several guitars and several guitarists, and each guitarist will have a different sound often radically changing the way a particular guitar sounds.
Objection, here! |OD
Though amazing what expectation can do to the senses, and before all to the hearing, to me its seems as if the sound of old guitars can be specifically different from any fresh specimen.
There is that mid level Aria classical that I bought in the mid seventies. This one, I am sure, I couldn´t differenciate for its age alone in a blind test.
But than there is that old Rodriguez blanca estudio, probably from the eighties, which has a distinct timbre to it ... a characteristic I associate with aged wood ... which - as I am convinced - no recently built could reproduce. ( Not meaning that newer guits couldn´t be better in general; only that they could not deliver that certain `old wood shade´.)
Next specimen, and very illustrating example I think, is that 1970 Ramirez blanca ( which quite ressembles sound properties known of Sabicas´recordings.)
This one, I believe, everyone would immediately recognize as vintage in a blind test.
If we lived near by, and could find other recent builds that were only similar enough to serve as comparison, I would be ready for a blind test in a blink.
- Just can´t think of an eventually newly built that one could be mixing up with that distinct old hack sound.
quote:
ORIGINAL: RobJe
Development is not the same as improvement.
If it be about houses and me allowed to chose, a modern blockhouse would be great.
If about stone though, a retro Art Nouveau building would be preferred over nearly any modern design.
With guitars it appears as if both, new and old to be holding their own.
Without neglection of the fact of overwhelmingly beautiful, newly built guitars that can leave you with nothing to be desired. ( - I am deeply impressed by contemporary luthiery.)
Ruphus
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Date Mar. 20 2011 23:07:59
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Old School Tone (in reply to RobJe)
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quote:
Michael Polyani’s classic book “The Tacit Dimension” puts it thus “We know more than we can tell.”
There's another book by an art historian Stanley Elkins, and in it he comes to the same conclusion. He began as an art historian who did not do studio work, his work was purely scholarly, a library nerd if you will. Then he studied painting because he wanted to understand the creative process from the artists side of the brush.
It's a very interesting book, but the part salient to your book example is that Elkins said he thinks there is a kind of intelligence that cannot be verbalized directly. He writes about how we have an interior intelligence that is just as sophisticated and highly articulate that has to do with knowing how to proceed artistically. To explain this interior warehouse of knowledge we often use metaphor to illustrate it. He comes to the conclusion that the knowledge of making something can't fully be expressed verbally, but it can be learned through action, observation and involvement in a particular creative process.
But at the same time he does not paint the artist into the corner of non verbal muteness. ( forgive the cliche' :) ) - A lot of the information can be transmitted to others, but he strives to make the point that a vast body of knowledge can exist in a person that is separate from that which is intellectually transmittable. Like how person can make a mark with a brush and understand if the mark came directly though the nervous system and has meaning of if the mark making was a kind of posturing. It's difficult to explain, but one artist said it this way: I know I made the right mark to end the painting because the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
The problem with guitar making and by relation sculpture, is that these art forms are when compared to painting, drawing dancing or singing, moving at glacial speeds though time. The inner intelligence has a lot of time to engage and disengage according to which part of the sculpture or guitar is being made. When you are making crucial decisions with the inner more difficult to outwardly articulate intelligence, like flexing a top to find a thickness, you are only doing that for a minority of the time you are building a guitar. There is so much physical material to overcome to get a shape correct that we then turn to tools to take big masses of wood off of our necks or sides etc. In that kind of process we use a more outward intelligence that has to do with performing predetermined mechanical processes; it's not the kind of process where you drift in the void of no time and make decisions while you are carving the curves of a heel. In guitar making we move back an forth between a mechanical logical process and an inner non rational process because of the sheer bulkiness of the materials we must shape.
The confusion between guitar makers arises when they can't agree on where one type of process picks up and another process ends. It's highly individual for each person, but that ability know when to shift gears is informed by that huge warehouse of knowledge that one can't readily verbalize. This is the root of that stupidass power tool vs. hand tool polemic. Which is as much of a non starter as old vs. new.
......anyway.....back to work
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Mar. 21 2011 17:08:26
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