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Posts: 15725
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: About the soul of guitar. Just f... (in reply to jmb)
Interesting. I agree about the microphone issue...but I am curious about luthier's thoughts on the pitch issue...he says a master guitar has to be lower pitch to be good quality. In my experience, flamenco guitars with a lower pitch often have a nice punch and bottom end, but oddly lack in the trebel response. Most guitars I find are closer to pitch A or G#...and guitars I prefer don't have too much of the actual frequency jumping out as it makes the guitar unbalanced.
RE: About the soul of guitar. Just f... (in reply to jmb)
Fascinating stuff. How do I find out what my guitars soundboards are tuned to?
------ @ 3:47 My Berber friend Said with his Martin steel string in Mirador San Nicholas. He plays like Michael Hedges et al. and is the most relaxed person I have ever met. I will have to send him the link!
RE: About the soul of guitar. Just f... (in reply to jmb)
Those bass strings are robust!
It just goes to show how luthiers are a breed apart. For a guitar without a saddle it works and sounds remarkably well. What player thought, that a saddle was not a necessary functioning part of the guitar?
RE: About the soul of guitar. Just f... (in reply to jmb)
I have infinite respect for working guitar-makers, especially ones who make excellent instruments. The theories and fantasies of an engineer and "restorer" about great guitars are not so interesting. Here is some information about Benno Streu http://liuto-forte.com/team_streu_benno_en.html It is written by someone who has great respect for him but it does support the information I have that he never made a guitar. He was one of those people who tried to tell guitar-makers how to make guitars whithout having a clue! I have never heard anything so ridiculous as: "In master grade instruments (guitars) this note (F zero) is F#." I'll stop now because I am getting hot under the collar as I write.
RE: About the soul of guitar. Just f... (in reply to jmb)
What a nice find! Benno Streu lived in my hometown and was a really generous man with a big heart for guitarists and their instruments. He and his wife always were smoking like hyperactive volcanos so that the guitars still were stinking two weeks after they left his house.... When I first met him he had one hand in the soundhole and the other was holding the inevitable cigarette, he looked at me and said: "You have to treat the guitar like a woman"....and his wife eagerly agreed.
RE: About the soul of guitar. Just f... (in reply to Thomas)
quote:
When I first met him he had one hand in the soundhole and the other was holding the inevitable cigarette, he looked at me and said: "You have to treat the guitar like a woman"....and his wife eagerly agreed.
I don't know who the guy in the video is Benno, or if he knows anything, but it should not matter. The F# comment might be some thing he has heard from builders. Many very fine makers consider the F# to G# range for the main air resonance to be a median area to hit. The guy may not in fact know anything, but what he said is not controversial.
I was checking out the La Leona a few years ago when Wulfin Lieske came into owning it. He made a recording with it that is pretty nice. It really does interest me that this guitar sounds some wonderful but has not saddle, the bridge is really like large baroque guitar bridge. Its one of the few guitars I have an itch to make a bench copy of, but of course I'll probably never even get to see it in person in my life. But if I could I would like to copy that one as carefully as I could.
He is good player too and the composers he chooses to play are not what most other guitarists are going for. The guy Benno may be a crackpot, but for some reason Lieske lets him handle his Torres.
" He and his wife always were smoking like hyperactive volcanos"
This is really funny, next time I meet a chain smoker I will remember this.
Posts: 15725
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: About the soul of guitar. Just f... (in reply to SephardRick)
quote:
ORIGINAL: SephardRick
Those bass strings are robust!
It just goes to show how luthiers are a breed apart. For a guitar without a saddle it works and sounds remarkably well. What player thought, that a saddle was not a necessary functioning part of the guitar?
I talked about this for a while now, about how the break angle ain't no big deal as we had to repair a students's guitar that had the string holes damaged such that you could not lower the bone. Actually we lowered the bone for sake of action and there was zero break angle and the resulte was the guitar was clear and loud as before....so you can take any bone out of the bridge the guitar sounds just fine (so long as neck angle allows the action to clear the frets for a clean enough sound)... but there was a problem we noticed. The strings rattle or buzz at the bridge, and annoyingly so if you play hard. So it is as if the saddle functions only to allow the player to fine tune he action, and prevent buzzing.
So the guy playing in the video with no saddle has that annoying buzzing at the bridge I am talking about, but the guitar is as loud as any other thanks to the action being high enough. About the song the guy is playing, the first thing that hit my mind when I heard the intro was Caracol: http://youtu.be/jQgb6oRgHUQ
About the old guy being nutty, it's what I thought, though faulk seems to agree that that many luthier seem to think it IS important (about F# vs other being ideal), a clear divide in opinion. Interesting.
RE: About the soul of guitar. Just f... (in reply to jmb)
Ricardo,
Thanks for sharing some insight on the bridge only design. That makes perfect sense that a saddle is used for adjusting the action. It is much easier to change out a saddle than a bridge.
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My Berber friend Said with his Martin steel string in Mirador San Nicholas. He plays like Michael Hedges et al. and is the most relaxed person I have ever met. I will have to send him the link! 
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