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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness
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constructordeguitarras
Posts: 1674
Joined: Jan. 29 2012
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
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 RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to Tom Blackshear)
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quote:
when I explained a certain tonal change that could happen just by lightly sanding a certain area of the fan brace with 400 grit paper.
I do not understand how such a slight change could stand out from all the larger changes that regularly happen due to changes in ambient humidity and temperature--regardless of any fancy words you use to describe it ("...[A]djust strut synergy to where things come together in a more even harmonic range"?). It sounds like The Emperor's New Clothes to me.
Moreover, who could build to within the, what, thousandth of a millimeter difference between 400-grit sanded and unsanded by 400 grit at a spot, in the first place? No one, that's who. So you seem to be saying that regardless of the dimensions of the wood in the assembled guitar, sanding a spot with 400 grit will magically even out the harmonic range, whatever that means. Well, I suppose that it could, given that "even harmonic range" has no meaning.
_____________________________
Ethan Deutsch
www.edluthier.com
www.facebook.com/ethandeutschguitars
www.youtube.com/marioamayaflamenco
I always have flamenco guitars available for sale.
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Date May 28 2018 12:51:11
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Tom Blackshear
Posts: 2304
Joined: Apr. 15 2008
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to constructordeguitarras)
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Ethan,
If everything is working synergistically with your guitars, off the bench, then there is no need to go further with it, as age is the normal modifier of tonal quality.
Personally, I needed some extra help to add certain qualities that I thought were necessary for better operational value; Tonal balance, top tension and left hand articulation, etc.
And to be frank, I couldn't add these qualities without these techniques. But this, in no way, means that everything must be done my way.
_____________________________
Tom Blackshear Guitar maker
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Date May 28 2018 13:51:37
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
My question is how did Jose lll transmit his method to his workers and foremen? That would be super valuable info.
I talked to Manuel Contreras, Sr. and Felix Manzanero a fair amount, on a variety of subjects. Both emphasized that Jose III was a very strict taskmaster, and that his design had to be adhered to in every respect.
But, fool that I was, I never asked either of them whether the journeymen (oficiales) had any freedom at all to adjust top thickness or the dimensions of braces. I tried a few dozen 1a classicals over a period of several years, and bought around a dozen of them to re-sell.
My observation was that there was about as much variation in tone and playability within the output of one of the Ramirez journeymen as there was across all the different workers whose initials appeared on the foot of the neck.
After setting up shop on their own, both Contreras and Bernabe did a lot of experimenting with bracing patterns. Contreras tried more radical changes, such as the double back and the "Carlevaro" model. Both seemed eventually to return to more traditional designs, though Contreras stuck mainly with curved braces on his classicals.
Having practiced a creative trade myself, I have always enjoyed meeting and talking to guitar makers. But you learn a creative trade by creating things, and I've never tried to make a guitar, so my interest in guitar making has been purely academic.
I probably played the Arcangel blanca for a year before I ever got out the mirror and looked inside it. My judgment of guitars has always been based purely on how they sound and how they play.
I have only a vague idea how he did it, but Tom produced an instrument that I really enjoy playing. It continues to improve, and I continue to figure out how to play it a little better.
RNJ
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Date May 28 2018 15:16:12
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
As for sarcasm, without it we would be missing Johnathan Swift, Cicero, Voltaire, Rabelais, Mark Twain and Bette Midler, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball and the Borowitz Report and the Daily Show
Satire, sarcasm, and irony are weapons that truly prove the old adage that "the pen ie mightier than the sword" when it comes to deflating the pompous. Weaponized language often leaves the intended target skewered without his knowing it. I would add two names to your list above: The English writer Evelyn Waugh and that great American humorist S.J. Perelman. Both were among the Twentieth Century's masters of satire and irony. Both were extremely funny.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date May 28 2018 19:52:16
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Deflating the pompous is a worthy endeavor Bill, but as a diplomat you certainly know that sarcasm is to be stoutly guarded against in many other endeavors.
While I was the boss of about 250 people, a person in a mission critical job was not performing satisfactorily. He and his boss (one of my direct reports) were invited to my office for a discussion. The problem employee said several rather bizarre things, but the discussion remained focused on performance issues.
After they left the boss circled back to my office, closed the door, and said, "How can you just sit there calmly and listen to what that guy was saying?"
I replied, "I earn 30% of my salary by keeping a straight face in my office. One of the hardest things for me to do every day is to pass up straight lines."
RNJ
For those whose first language may not be English, in a two-person comedy routine, the "straight man" feeds lines to the comic, who responds with sarcasm.
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Date May 28 2018 22:01:00
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to Tom Blackshear)
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I have terribly dirty secret, I'm an English teacher, and have been for a almost a full year now. I was approached by the City council members and asked to teach in the school system as the teachers had neglected to hire a native English group to teach at the Jr high schools.
Since I'm the only native speaker in a city of 25,000 the task fell on my broad and capable shoulders. As an American I am of course qualified to teach the ' reeling and writhing' but luckily I'm not saddled with the maths. The maths are universally understood, as that language uses numbers.
The English is trickier, and 24 hours per week, I pleaded with the city council to make a special part time position for me so I wouldn't have to abandon my highly lucrative position as CEO of SteveCo Guitars, I work with kids to rid them of the bad habits of speaking English through the odd filter of katakana.
Given that I'm the authority on English in this town, I own this bitch. The duck stops at my desk, the wild boar makes no peep and the school superintendent is my lackey to order to and fro. I'm the biggest wheel of cheese to roll up the asses of these local English teachers and I crack the cheddar out of them.
But what with all this responsibility I don't abuse the public trust and I stick to the schedule of sentence diagram and tense that would make these children into diplomats and writers. I don't proclaim word sanding, or pickled salted sentences. No.
I teach them how to bridge paragraphs into each other, string together trains of nouns and verbs - and never leave an article untuned.
Language is flexible. But it only bends so far and then snaps. The art is how far can it bend and still express an idea. Never teach anyone to break language intentionally until you can teach them to arc words beautifully across a sheet of paper.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date May 28 2018 23:17:22
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Estebanana you are admirable in your noblesse oblige. You are performing a wonderful service, manfully shouldering the white man's burden.
Most people think Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" was directed at British imperialism. It was not. Kipling wrote the poem directed at the Americans after assuming responsibility for the Philippine Islands as a consequence of the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit
And work another’s gain
Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly) to the light:
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man’s burden-
Have done with childish days-
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
I doubt that this poem, not to mention Kipling, is taught in university English literature classes today. Clearly dated.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date May 29 2018 1:08:36
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Thanks for the poem Bill. It had been a while since I read it.
As a teenager I read a good deal of Kipling, especially "Kim," "Soldiers Three" and "Plain Tales from the Hills."
Kipling grew up in India, had an Indian nanny, and I believe he spoke Urdu. If so he would have understood Hindi. His pictures of colonial life in the great subcontinent fascinated me.
I grew up in the military, and in the fringes of the South. Two of my great-grandfathers were slave-owning Confederate generals, the other two were colonels in the Union Army, both ardent abolitionists. My parents reflected their respective heritages, and differed in some of their views, politely and with mutual respect.
So the stratified society of colonial India and the prejudices of the various characters were familiar ground to me, though the setting and cultural details were exotic.
I greatly enjoyed Kipling's colorful writings, which presented a variety of cultural viewpoints.
Years later I learned to keep quiet about Kipling around the members of certain old families in England, many of whom resented his views, and consequently looked down upon him as "that sort of chap".
RNJ
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Date May 29 2018 20:35:08
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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I still enjoy reading Kipling, Richard. Kipling spent his early youth in India, was sent to an English boarding school by his parents, and went back to India to edit "The Civil and Military Gazette" while living in Lahore (now in Pakistan). Kipling's stories still resonate. Probably his most famous is "The Man Who Would Be King," which is loosely based on an American adventurer named Josiah Harlan who in 1820 became a surgeon with the East India Company and later struck out on his own and was involved in the court of Afghanistan, finally proclaiming himself king of a part of Afghanistan that was nearly inaccessable.
When I was in the U.S. Air Force I spent a 15-month assignment at our listening post near Peshawar. I took a four-day trip to Lahore, which is still the most beautiful city in Pakistan. (Note: Lahore does not have a lot of competition.) The Shalimar Gardens are still beautiful, and I imagined myself in Lahore during Kipling's time. I still have my copy of "Plain Tales from the Hills" and a book of poetry entitled "Barrack Room Ballads." Still embedded in my mind is Kipling's great poem "The Road to Mandalay," and I've never forgotten his lines:
"Ship me somewhere's East of Suez,
Where the best is like the worst,
Where there ain't no Ten Commandments,
And a man can raise a thirst."
Marta and I are members of the Army and Navy Club in Washington, DC, which has reciprocal relations with many fine clubs around the world. A few years ago, I visited London for ten days and made it a point of staying in one reciprocal club, The East India Club, whose charter still reads "For the rest and leisure of Her Majesty's servants of the East India Company home on furlough."
Sometimes with a pre-dinner copita of sherry in hand, I sit back, imagine myself in the company of Kipling or Sir Richard Burton, and I think to myself, "Ah, good days, those."
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date May 29 2018 21:40:03
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to estebanana)
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I can empathize, estebanana. I lived for 18 1/2 years on a tiny tropical island at the north end of the world's largest coral atoll, Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, ten degrees north of the equator. The view from my top floor apartment was palm trees, a white sand beach and the brilliant blue Pacific.
I had a great job, made very good money, went diving and sailing every weekend, and vacationed in exotic places. I went back to Texas for Christmas and New Year every year, but after ten years or so I said to my daughter, "These Texans are looking stranger and stranger to me every year."
On the island I had a hi-fi rig that I loved, a couple thousand CDs of classical music, and several hundred in other genres, including flamenco. When I would hit San Francisco on my trip back to the USA, I would stop at Tower Records in North Beach. More than once after I presented my debit card at the cash register, the phone rang and my bank wanted to make sure it was really me.
But somehow the tropical environment seeped into my musical tastes. It seemed more and more odd to be listening to Bach, Beethoven, Bartok, Stravinsky, cante flamenco, jazz or rock 'n roll in that remote tropical "paradise".
What seemed to fit my tropical music moods best was Balinese and Javanese gamelan. I didn't begin to lose interest in playing classical and flamenco guitar until the last five years or so, when I began to experience numbness in fingers 3 and 4 of the left hand.
I retired at the end of 2009, and we spent a month in India. Performances of Indian music and dance, of a variety of genres, were very attractive to me.
Finally moving back to Austin, at a performance of the Symphony, much improved during my absence, I said to myself, "Now I'm back home."
The Symphony and the excellent classical and flamenco series of Austin Classical Guitar have been wonderful. Practice has led to an effectively complete recovery of the left hand.
At the Charreada in San Antonio last year the mariachis played "El Gavilan," "El Torito," and "El Riflero," old standards of the Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan, before they became the official mariachi of the PRI ruling party, moved from Jalisco to Mexico City and hired conservatory trained musicians. I managed to refrain from getting up to dance, but the gray haired grandmother sitting next to me in the viewing stand smiled and tapped me on the shoulder. After the Mexican style rodeo we went to Tito's on South Alamo Street and ordered enchiladas poblanas.
We've made plans to make it to the Bienal in Sevilla in the Fall.
Home again...
RNJ
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Date May 30 2018 3:15:14
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Advice on my soundboard stiffness (in reply to Tom Blackshear)
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I'd like to introduce Mr. Bridge to this conversation about Mr. Top-Stiffness. Or rather, to one another.
Hello Mr Bridge, I'm thrilled you made it here to meet Mr. Top-Stiffness. Was traffic bad? Oh my goodness, I barely made it here on time myself.
Say, Top-Stiffness old man, I'd like you to meet Bridge, Bridge may I introduce you to Top-Stiffness? Of course, thank you both for coming.
Let's step into the drawing to shall we? Well I've invited you both here tonight for a few hours to talk about the crucial dialogue between the Bridges and the Top-Stiffness' old family ties. I know you two in particular have only met tonight, but your ancestry, as you so well know, is cemented together in an age old bond of service.
So Top-Stiffness, how does the Bridge family work with you and your family?
T-S : We have a mutual interest in the moderation of flexibility of my family line. Really the Bridge clan has assisted my family on maintaining integrity across the core of our genetic makeup. Our relationship with the Bridges however is more deep than a mere assistance from them. We really achieve a true symbiotic relationship.
Bridge, uh how so?
Bridge: Well my family has had offered additional stiffness to the Top-Stiffness family going back as many generations as I can count. Hundreds of years; what Top-Stiffness said about a symbiosis is really true. Each of us has a separate roll to play but in the end our power to moderate top stiffness is dependent on mutual work and care.
I see, and what of the Braces, that is also an important family?
T-S: Sure, sure, but they have almost constantly mutating genes that we can't keep track of them, nor do we even try. The job I do with Mr Bridge is historically constant and has ancient continuity. That's why we are successful at our rolls.
Adding anything Mr Bridge?
Bridge: Only that yes braces are essential our work too, but they are not the primary concern of the function of the Top family. Basically I'm a giant brace, I'm bigger, heavier and more massive than all the other braces put together, so not to be proud or vainglorious about it, but really my relationship with Herr Top-Stiffness is of more serious import.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date May 30 2018 6:37:04
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