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ORIGINAL: tele

How much one can expect the neck to bend when the strings are attached? So how much I can expect the strings to rise from the 2.5mm?
The neck thickness is about 23mm and its spanish cedar. I would appreciate quick answers as tomorrow it should have frets installed

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They never come out the same, but you can get pretty close and the rest you can adjust with fingerboard thickness and taper.

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ORIGINAL: Anders Eliasson

Wood is Wood and every piece react a bit different . Even though your solera is very stiff, there can be a slight difference in the final setup height. Factors can be:
*a floppy solera,
*sides that are not fitted to well to the neck and thus gives stress
* poorly fitted back
* to much clamping, roping or rubbering pressure when gluing the back
Its important when assembling that everything goes together without stress. Its better to have a guitar that is not perfect in shape, but stress free than having a perfectly shaped guitar with a lot of stress built into it. The last affects setup and sound and many guitars are being forced into their final shape.
In the end its all about experience and I had to shave more fingerboards in the start than I do now.


I can normally nail it around the 7,5 - 8,5mm at the bridge with a 3mm 6th string over 12th fret.
If it gets a bit higher than that, I slightly shave the fingerboard after it has been installed.
This setup allows you to go down to 2,5mm stringheight at the 12th fret without going to low at the bridge.
Players, who want a lower setup at 12th fret will need another neckangle. Closer to a classical.
These super low setups can be discussed from now and untill forever. I´ve never met a flamenco with an aceptable buzz and a setup lower than 2,7 - 2,8mm. It does of course depend on playing style, but not even steelstrung guitsr with their much higher string tensión can go lower without excessive buzzing
I´ve also met a few pro-played guitars with 3 - 3,5mm setups. That because the player wanted that because of better volumen and projection.

I hope this helps.

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Cool. So then an experienced luthier should be able to nail it within a millimeter every time. So it sounds. So I agree with your 7-8 mm target height. Not sure why not EVERY flamenco guitar builder shooting for that range.

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The 51 has a bit of a backbow and with the action it had when I got it, it definitely buzzes when pushed. Brune says thats intentional and I won't argue with him on that. When Dennis recorded it he felt it was too low and you can hear that in the videos. Before we went to the guitar festival where he played it in concert he asked me to make a slightly higher saddle for it, which I did and that took care of the buzzing for the most part. The action is still low, just not stratocaster low. It's more like 3.2 to 2.5 now if I remember correctly.

Some guitars just buzz more than others, it really has to do with how the box vibrates IMO. The Barbero should buzz more, honestly. It's a pretty solid guitar, not lightly built at all. Interestingly enough I restored a phenomenal 1970 Reyes that is very similar, pretty solidly built... beefy even (still light weight though). Playing it is like driving a supercharged Bentley.

The 1873 Vicente Arias guitar I currently have is yet another that should buzz way more than it does. Frank Wallace recorded that for me. It has an action that is flamenco low and frets that are more suggestions than actual frets, meaning they are lower than I ever thought possible and still do their job. Maybe it's force of habit with these old guitars....

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Can you tell us about any particular flamenco guitars where the builder has not got it right?

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So Aaron, your post really is weird.
Do you really mean that that 51 Barbero should have back bow?
If so, WHY?
Absolutely NO stringed instrument with a neck Works well with backbow. It doesnt matter if they have frets or no.
Please tell me why not arguing with Brune. Is he to "fine" to argue with. I argue with anyone saying crap.
So why is the back bow intentional?
Maybe the guitar just had a refret one day with some frets with a thicker tang than the original and so the neck bended back. That has happened to many a fine guitar or maybe the neck backboved because of humidity change.

You say that it Works with a bit of buzzing with a 3,2mm setup. Have you ever thought about if the guitar was fixed, meaning having a slight relief a new frets, you could most probably lower the action 0,5mm at the 12th fret and get the same amount of buzzing and at the same time a more even buzzing all over the fret board.

I hope this is not one of these ideas that because a guitars was once owned by a famous player and later inspected by a famous inspector, then nothing can be discussed. Because thats really a nobrain attitude. If someone wants to keep the instrument "original", then its their problem. But who on earth knows how this guitar was setup when it left Marcello Barberos workshop in 1951 and maybe good old Barbero is turning around in his grave, crying: "fix that guitar as soon as posible"

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Whoa settle down there Anders, you need to relax. First of all, the guitar plays great, second of all the degree of backbow is very slight and third of all it does not impede the guitar from being a very viable and excellent guitar. I am sure Barbero is not rolling in his grave.

I trust you are not implying that my feelings on this guitar, having lived with it for a few years is based solely on other people's assessments or who owned it. That would be just a tad insulting and completely off base. I've worked on many valuable and historically important guitars and I do what is needed to make it a viable musical instrument, often that means taking the very long way around a problem due to it's value but at the end of the day, I am confident in my own assessment of what comes through my shop

What I wrote was Brune says the back bow was intentional and I won't argue with _that_. One can intend to do anything, whether or not you think it's a good idea. He is basing this partially on conversations he had with Reyes, if I remember correctly and then of course his own 40 something years of experience with these guitars. You want to argue with him whether or not it's a good idea, ok fine, but you need to be clear that that is not what he said either...He just said it was intentional. And for the record, the action on the guitar when I got it is lower than I do on my own blancas, which generally have almost no relief these days. I don't agree that relief is always a good idea, in fact I use less than I used to and my guitars now buzz less and are easier to play.

As I also said, some guitars just buzz more than others and some guitarists buzz more than others. Besides that set up is incredibly personal I find. Sabicas never buzzed according to Dennis. He said it was one of the most incredible aspects of his touch, he could play anything and make it sing. According to his tech, Hendrix was the same way with his rig and uncontrollable feedback, no one could play his guitar through his rig and get anything but feedback but Jimi could control it just fine and it was set up as he required it to be.

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ORIGINAL: Anders Eliasson

Maybe the guitar just had a refret one day with some frets with a thicker tang than the original and so the neck bended back. That has happened to many a fine guitar ...

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ORIGINAL: aarongreen

I don't agree that relief is always a good idea, in fact I use less than I used to and my guitars now buzz less and are easier to play.

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ORIGINAL: aarongreen

Your other two questions are not germane to_ this_ discussion. Once again, we are discussing Brune's assertion that this was intentional to give a certain kind of raspy attack (he called it rajo, if I remember correctly). That was the whole point of the comment. If he backs that up by referring to something that Manuel Reyes said, someone who knew Barbero.... then I am not going to argue with him because I don't have any way of disproving that.