Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to silddx)
Before you get too harsh on my playing, let me show you what I deal with. I have eczema on my hands. It’s absolutely a F&cking 24 hour sh*tshow. It itches like hell and hurts, the corner of a piece of paper hitting my hand hurts. So I’ve more or less discontinued playing in any serious way. Still teach my ensemble class on Saturday, but fit now not practicing more than an hour of two a week. Which is very f*cked because I had planned on learning new material the next couple years and getting down on my compas.
So I conserve my hands for building guitars, which is a bit more difficult now. I suspect all the over washing of hands during the brunt of the Covid scenario contributed to this situation because soaps and the alcohol based hand sanitizers are not for the skin chemistry. And stress with genetic factors have something to do with it. The dermatologist says it’s an allergic response to zinc in the blood system along with an over reactive immune system. He gave the the steroid ointments and such, but they only help about 50% at best.
Don’t mess your hands up. Too much washing and letting them get dry is a bad deal. Use a hand cream every day even if you think you’re doing ok.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to silddx)
This guitar is for sale, I’m open to reasonable offers, send me a message and I’ll give you a range. But I realize this isn’t what flamenco guitarists are looking for and this guitar was really aimed at the classical musicians who play period instruments. This guitar is focused toward 19th century Spanish music including flamenco but also all the other guitar composers who were not straight flamenco.
It’s significantly different than a contemporary flamenco guitar, but it’s still the same animal family. You could accompany cante’ with this little beastie boy, but our big modern hands might find the higher fret positions cramped.
So when your singer says “Listen maricon, cinco por medio” you say back “ you listen maricon, I don’t have your grandma’s tiny hands. You sing open.”
Posts: 15329
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to estebanana)
One time in college, I took a summer job in a car garage. They were having me clean hoses and stuff with simple green. I made the mistake if “washing” my hands with degreasing soap. So they they turned orange and glazed over (my fingerprints literally disappeared) and then for the next weeks looked like your hands. Obviously that was not good for guitar so I quit that job! Yes I was thinking the same thing with the hand sanitizer Shyte plus all these immune booster vaxing things, bad combo. Hopefully it will go away on its own.
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
Don’t mess your hands up. Too much washing and letting them get dry is a bad deal. Use a hand cream every day even if you think you’re doing ok.
Yep. I have eczema too, all over, since birth, but it's controlled well with steroid ointment and vigilance. Aoparently I can't produce two protective proteins on my skin so I get constant immune responses.
My hands are not good, too. On the top though, palms are mostly ok. I completely agree about keeping any exposed skin moisturised. Limit sun exposure, watch those detergents and chemicals.
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to silddx)
quote:
ORIGINAL: silddx
quote:
Don’t mess your hands up. Too much washing and letting them get dry is a bad deal. Use a hand cream every day even if you think you’re doing ok.
Yep. I have eczema too, all over, since birth, but it's controlled well with steroid ointment and vigilance. Aoparently I can't produce two protective proteins on my skin so I get constant immune responses.
My hands are not good, too. On the top though, palms are mostly ok. I completely agree about keeping any exposed skin moisturised. Limit sun exposure, watch those detergents and chemicals.
I hope your hands recover soon Stephen.
Silddx,
I’ve been thinking about your post for days, I’m sorry to hear you have eczema. It seems I’ve had some very mild reactions throughout my life, but have never equated the reactions with eczema, it seems it’s coming on with more serious reactions as I get older. This week I’ve had a good turn in in the condition of my palms through diligent treatment by corticosteroids and hand creams. I started using a daytime cream with ceramid which is supposed to be good for building the kinds of barriers your skin naturally produces.
I think from here I’m going to have to be extremely observant of my skin and the sensitization from materials. One of the reasons I’ll never and have never used cocobolo wood. I used it for a few bridges 20 years ago and it gave me a bad runny nose and a mild rash. I stopped using that wood.
A lot of the wood we use has toxicity, and once checked out a book from the library on recommendation from a friend who was a horticulturist. The book was called Dendro Toxicology- the book was as thick as an old phone book. Trees are filled with crazy chemicals. Maybe trees have some chemicals we’ll find someday that will cure eczema. That’d be wildly ironic and wonderful.
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to estebanana)
Mate, thanks, however I am a lot better off than some, and it's well managed these days. Can't deny that for many years it was a fakkin nightmare though :)
A cure would be lovely. It's not really a priority as I believe the medical world do not perceive it as life threatening. However many people have taken their own life because of it, including young people. It it can be a thoroughly miserable life-limiting existence if it's not properly managed or treated. Lot of ignorance about eczema too, some think it's contagious and whathaveyou so you get treated like an outcast.
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to silddx)
I wasn’t intending for this guitar to go to market, but Muse Guitars in Nagoya took at interest in it when I loaned it to a composer in Nagoya to use in a recording. He took it to Muse and the staff fell in love with it. Very surprising to me. They took a nice set of photos:
Posts: 15329
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
I wasn’t intending for this guitar to go to market, but Muse Guitars in Nagoya took at interest in it when I loaned it to a composer in Nagoya to use in a recording. He took it to Muse and the staff fell in love with it. Very surprising to me. They took a nice set of photos:
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
He took it to Muse and the staff fell in love with it. Very surprising to me. They took a nice set of photos:
Visually it is beautiful, everything about it: all the parts, and the coherence and proportions of the whole. I imagine that in person it's even more impressive visually, haptically, sonically.
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
I wasn’t intending for this guitar to go to market, but Muse Guitars in Nagoya took at interest in it when I loaned it to a composer in Nagoya to use in a recording. He took it to Muse and the staff fell in love with it. Very surprising to me. They took a nice set of photos:
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
One of my friends called this ‘the Batman model’ which kind of crushed my feelings, not. 😂 I used a headstock design that Torres used very early on which he took from a maker sho shop he allegedly learned in.
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to orsonw)
quote:
ORIGINAL: orsonw
quote:
One of my friends called this ‘the Batman model’ which kind of crushed my feelings, not. 😂 I used a headstock design that Torres used very early on which he took from a maker sho shop he allegedly learned in.
I saw this recent video of someone playing a 1838 Manuel Gutiérrez, which reminded me of your guitar.
Thanks Orson, sorry for the late reply. I was thinking over how to make a witty comment, but after a week of thinking I couldn’t come up with anything.
But I did score some new Tochinoki ( Horse Chestnut Wood) that’s amazingly flamed and with boards long enough for ribs. Saved enough of it for a viola with a slab back, if I ever get back to my plans to make a viola.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
Posts: 1704
Joined: Jan. 29 2012
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
Before you get too harsh on my playing, let me show you what I deal with.
Holy ****, Stephen, that looks nasty. I kind of understand because I am delaying making a video with my latest guitar because I've torn my hands up a bit trying to fix my clothes dryer. Honest, when we said you should be more appealing, we didn't mean this.
Before you get too harsh on my playing, let me show you what I deal with.
Holy ****, Stephen, that looks nasty. I kind of understand because I am delaying making a video with my latest guitar because I've torn my hands up a bit trying to fix my clothes dryer. Honest, when we said you should be more appealing, we didn't mean this.
Nothing worse than doing the laundry by hand.
I just bought a new drum sander, less plane work for my hands. It’s the scraping that really makes guitar making difficult for my hands.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
Posts: 1704
Joined: Jan. 29 2012
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
RE: 19th century spirit guitar (in reply to estebanana)
Stephen, it is amazing how much sound that little guitar produces. I always wonder what the algorithm is for going from air volume to sound volume, if there is one. And there are violins....