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Can you correct a too soft pulsacion?
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3321
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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 RE: Can you correct a too soft pulsa... (in reply to Ricardo)
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The Ramirez blanca and the Arcangel blanca have about the same action. If they differ at all, the Ramirez may be 1/2-mm higher. Both have been strung with Savarez 520R "red cards" since I have owned them, with one exception. For about six weeks the Arcangel had Hannabachs on it.
Both are easy to play for the left hand. The Arcangel feels stiffer for the right hand to get a brilliant tone, but it will go louder than the Ramirez. When classical players try the Arcangel, the trebles often sound a little dull. It takes a firm flamenco attack to get it going. I think that's the kind of difference most people are talking about when they say "pulsacion."
When I tried Tom's most recent "Reyes" model negra, I thought it was, if anything, just a little stiffer for the right hand than the Arcangel, though the trebles were more brilliant. (The Arcangel trebles are brilliant enough to suit me, but I think I might have come to like Tom's guitar quite well.) Tom said that after comparing the two, he sanded the braces of his guitar to make it "pull" a little more like the Arcangel.
RNJ
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Date May 28 2018 19:28:11
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estebanana
Posts: 9006
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Can you correct a too soft pulsa... (in reply to Echi)
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I've often thought about what makes one guitar feel harder tension than another. It's part saddle. But some guitars are intrinsically more stiff than others. There are several factors working at once to make an overall effect. Geometry is one thing, saddle hieght and also how the transverse braces especially the lower one, allow the strings to feel the top.
A stiff transverse brace can absorb some of the tension the top gets and hold the top in such way it's not giving up as much pull to the strings at bridge. If braces are making the top really rigid in front of the bridge I perceive that as a factor. Also areas on the bouts that are too thin will give a soft feeling.
And it surely has something to do with the stiffness of the top itself.
To try to back engineer stiffer feel into a guitar is probably a dead subject. Guitars are born the way they are. Breaking them down to be less stiff is a reductive process. You can weaken a guitar very fast by sanding it thinner, right? But putting the structure back in is tough.
The way I look at Flamenco guitar is that voice doseni matter, or building for certain voice doesn't matter too much. Building for the good feeling under the right hand is the trick. And if you can do that, those guitars always have something to the voice.
Guitars or specifically flamenco, if they have a sloppy or floppy cross dipole they are almost always too soft. That means the side to side rock across the grain at the bridge is too loose. That area is critical for flamenco, if too uptight you don't get any juice. If too loose, no substance.
Saddle hieght us important, but there are problems too much and it brings too much overtone series forward, too little and you get dull and thuddy muddy response. So ideally you can punch up the tension by raising the saddle, but sometimes this also introduces some high partial stuff you don't want.
Keep looking. I hear conde can be good for tension mavens.
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https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date May 29 2018 5:45:39
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Ricardo
Posts: 13949
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: Can you correct a too soft pulsa... (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
quote:
Again: do you think that a bridge lowered of a couple of mm would stiff the pulsacion?
I have no idea, but my guess is no.
I think pulsacion is an illusion (nothing to due with top stiff or thickness) caused by the action which may or may not be optimal due to initial set up and neck angle, coupled with individual playing style.
What I hear: “ this guitar is stiff and requires a heavy hand”. Or the opposite “this guitar requires a soft touch or the heavy hand will over play it”.... and of course there is Goldilocks guitar nobody says anything about it being too stiff or too soft, just perfecto.
Since it was brought up again, with Amalia Ramirez basically saying what I said, it is action, not the “stiffness” of the top wood. To clarify the above….if the neck angle is not forward exactly right, then the bridge has to go way UP in order to clean up the buzzing over the fingerboard to “soften” the pulsation, but a high bridge results in the blood you see in my photo above, despite the “low action” or “soft pulsation”. Conversely, if you have the correct neck angle for flamenco, you get a clean action over the fingerboard with an extremely low saddle at the bridge. The danger here is when the Goldilocks set up changes because the neck bends even more forward, and you don’t have the room to lower the saddle anymore. The action over the fingerboard raises despite the low bridge set up and you get “hard pulsation”. Suddenly people argue that low tension strings and dropping the saddle, nothing changes the “stiff pulsation” as if it is built in to the guitar body. You can remove the saddle altogether and it is still too high over the fingerboard. “Feels like driving a truck!” I heard one guy say.
Because so many flamenco guitars are going for that Goldilocks set up, this “stiff pulsation” problem becomes a “thing” that classical players never discuss. Hence a myth about what is going on. Neck angle and action, is all it is about. Deal with those two issues and you can have whatever magic pulsation you want.
Other factors that might go in to the subjective thing is “punch”, meaning low frequency response, and humidity which can affect EVERYTHING, including treble response, but also action etc.
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CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Dec. 21 2022 16:19:53
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