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Only just discovered this place, some great info. Wonder if someone could help.
I recently bought a guitar that has turned out to be a bit of a donkey, the soundboard was basically ruined, which I have removed, before doing this I ran a straight edge down the fretboard to the bridge, it was pointing about 4-5 mm from the soundboard, which is entirely wrong is it not?
Anyway the gist of this question is, would it be possible to remove the neck and try to change the angle? is this a waste of time? does this require a lot of experience even to try? can I at least try and salvage the back/sides/neck?
At the end of the day this "guitar" is basically firewood as it stands so there is not much to lose.
Any advice would be much appreciated, even if it is a "get the petrol out"
btw the back and sides are maple, neck looks like one of those premade ones from madinter.
if you want to reset, take off the back too, you'll have to change the angle on the foot a little
its going to be a bear of a project, but you will enjoy it. it willbe tedious, and probably frustrating. but it can be done. i think we had a discussion about it not so long ago, if you want to search for it im sure there'd be lots of helpful info!
Thx for the reply, you opening two words fill me with confidence .
I have included some photos, running a straightedge along the neck it seems to be almost parallel with were the soundboard should be, is this correct? I've also noticed there is about a 2mm gap between the back of the heel block and back of the soundbox, which would explain why the action was so bad, as soon as I put any strain on the neck, string tension for example, the heel block is going to move until it rests against the back, surely?
What's the best way to get the back off, steam iron? v carefully, then try and get the neck parted from the sides?
Is it possible that this 2mm gap is the source of the problem and no need for a change of foot angle?
well. see that is the problem. but in finding that, you've found another one
however that piece of wood came off, never do anything like it again!
use heat (not a hot air gun or blowdryer) to melt the glue, and gently pry.
after you clean all that garbage out of there...which may be a while, i want you to go to the library or order william cumpiano's book, and any other guitar building books you find. YOU WILL NEED THEM
basically, it looks like you need a new top. and some kerfing. so you will need those books big time.
boy oh boy. theres a lot to be said about this project. the simpel answer is, stuff some wood shims in there and you may not have to re angle the foot etc. however, it may turn into a piece of crap. couldnt tell ya.
i would recommend though, that you kill whoever sold this to you. then go to lmii.org and buy either a flamenco kit or a new top, and a new precut neck.
I am guilty of destroying the top in such a manner, there was nothing worth saving and I sat thinking about "gently" taking it off then thought f@!K this and got my knife out and hacked it into strips, I was gentle round the edges though
I'll still have to take the back off to properly fix the kerfings for the front will I not?
btw I used to have Mr Cumpiano's book, but I don't remember it covering anything like this.
About the neck angle, should it be straight in line with the soundboard? then fix the angle with the fretboard?
This may well become firewood yet.
The only thing that's stopping me is the fact that when this piece of junk was strung up it actually sounded ok.
Making a new top for this, as I don't have a solera, is it a huge disadvantage to build the top flat, what difference will this make? from what i've read the curvature strengthens the top, so will the top likely fail at some point?
First of all, I am not an expert but I have read some books about guitars and I have seen some pictures and texts from builders (on this forum) and they all seem to have some curvature on the top. Its in the fan bracing or in the lower cross strut and perhaps somewhere else but not totaly flat.
Why not make a solera? Its not so hard to make one and you seem to be in to the woodworking, otherwise you would not have taken the top off in the first place. I made one in a couple of hours and used the book from Roy Courtnall for the plans.
But, I think its a bit strange the way you approached this problem, first take the top off and then wonder how to repair this guitar, if you still call it a guitar.
Maybe you should wait and hope the builders on this forum join this toppic and give you some usefull advice.... I do hope you have a guitar to play on for the time beeing :-)
ORIGINAL: Why not make a solera? Its not so hard to make one and you seem to be in to the woodworking, otherwise you would not have taken the top off in the first place. I made one in a couple of hours and used the book from Roy Courtnall for the plans.
You made a solera in a couple hours? The last one I made took four days not counting gluing up the base. It's an extremely tedious and exacting project.
I haven't commented on this thread to avoid sounding cruel but at this point what's left of that guitar would make an interesting wall hanging and judging by what I can see of the craftsmanship there's nothing there to retrieve. Build a new guitar from scratch, it would be much easier and more satisfying than wasting your time with this one.
I have to agree with John. This guitar is not worth all the effort you have already put into it and all the effort and work that it will take. You'll have a better time building a complete one.
tom, when you dome your tops, do you trim down the profile of the sides to match?
i see alot of builders who make classicals that do a 20" radius for the back and a 22" on the top, and then they use a disk with sandpaper to trim the sides up so the dome is maintained
what i want to know is, why the hell would you bother with all that? classical builders are almost stunt builders lol.
personally i see the advantage of doming the top, but i don't think he needs to worry about it right now, esp when basic woodworking skills need to be considered.
Yes, I shape the sides and the linings where it will meet the top. My dome is not very much. About 2mm at the deepest part right around the bridge area. If you leave the rim flat and force the top down when gluing it, the top may show a flat area all along the edges where it is glued to the sides.
I "bother will all that" because I want a guitar that is structurally sound and one that will hold up through the years. The guitar will be exposed to changes in climate and I want the piece of mind knowing that I have taken precautionary measures.
Every builder has his own ideas and opinions though. These are just mine. At the end of the day, if your happy and confident with what your doing, it's all good.
personally i see the advantage of doming the top, but i don't think he needs to worry about it right now, esp when basic woodworking skills need to be considered.
Sure you know what they mean about the dome and the solera? I was confused on this issue until recently. It is just a slight curve you can see clear under the bridge. Pretty much every guitar I ever owned or played that was spruce top, yeah all the flamencos too, have this dome. If I read it correct, only some of the guys that use Cedar tops a lot make a true "flat" top. Not be confused with the "arch top" which is what I always thought they were talking about.
You can build a flat top if it was only for the acoustic side of it. I mean, as a luthier you are right to choose what sound you want. But, as Tom points out, there is a more important thing with doming and that is how the top is dealing with the climate. Without the doming it is much more prone to cracking.
Thank you all, at least that's made my mind up, all things considered, doming the top is the least of my problems. I will make a solera at some point but I don't think it's worth the effort for this, I have some spruce arriving in a couple of days, I did start making a classical a couple of years ago from Mr. Cumpiano's book, got as far as making the neck, jointing and thicknessing the back and sides, then I starting working shifts, had another baby and here we are!
I am certain that I can make a new top fairly easily and steal the bracing design off of per hallgren's excellent post (hope you don't mind Per) just to get this strung up and take it from there. As someone pointed out this is at the very least something to make mistakes on and if it turns out playable so much the better, if it doesn't, take it apart and start again.
I think it took me four hours to make one. But I made a simple one, just the outline of the guitar, a scooped out surface for the top and a neck angle of 2mm. No shims and blocks to fix the sides with. Here is a picture of it.
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ORIGINAL: Ricardo If I read it correct, only some of the guys that use Cedar tops a lot make a true "flat" top.
All of the cedar top guitars we make and all I've examined have domed tops. I don't know why cedar would be any different from spruce regarding the advantage of using a solera. Ricardo is it true that you've never played a cedar top flamenco guitar? What about Ramirez or Gerundino?
ORIGINAL: Ricardo If I read it correct, only some of the guys that use Cedar tops a lot make a true "flat" top.
All of the cedar top guitars we make and all I've examined have domed tops. I don't know why cedar would be any different from spruce regarding the advantage of using a solera. Ricardo is it true that you've never played a cedar top flamenco guitar? What about Ramirez or Gerundino?
Remember I said "some of" meaning, well, J. Ramirez III I guess. Point being most guitars are not "flat", so why would you want to make a flat one??? I have owned Ramirez in the past, and played pedro de miguel and Gonzales guitars that are Cedar top flamencos, but at the time (meaning not long ago), I never was aware about the dome thing behind the bridge. I always assumed that was the way the wood bends from the bridge tension overtime. So I never examined a Ramirez to know for sure if there were any flat tops. My statement that "some guys" make flat tops was based on the info of a.arnold in this post where he talks about Ramirez. I assume "M ramirez" is a mistake, and he refers to J. Ramirez III:
quote:
Ricardo,
John Shelton is spot on with his description of how guitars are arched. As I'm sure you know, this is completely different than the strong arching one sees in a lot of American steel-stringed (usually f-holed) guitars.
Torres' guitars were arched as John S. describes, as were the guitars of his predecessors and contemporaries in Spain, but it is a subtle arch -- a few mm. Lay a straight-edge parallel to your bridge and it will be obvious. I have seen 19th century Andalucian gut-strung guitars in the Smithsonian collection (when I worked in their instrument restoration lab) that had 2 cm of arch.
EXCEPTION -- Manuel Ramirez started building nearly flat-topped guitars in the 60's. Segovia's guitar was one, and it was so widely copied that a trend toward flat tops started and arched tops almost disappeared in the "Madrid School" during that time, and they still tend to be flatter than the Granada school. These near-flat guitars were a departure from Jose Ramirez I guitars, which were arched like Torres'. Segovia's M. Ramirez had a cedar top, too, and I've heard it said that the reason M. Ramirez started making those flat tops was that cedar was too stiff to bend easily; luthiers: is this true in your experience? I have an arched cedar, and I don't think they are a particular rarity these days. Dieter Hopf makes cedar tops and is renowned for his precise control of the arching, but his are designed to draw level under tension. His principle seems to be that the top should be just strong enough to resist deformation by string tension (no stronger) and free to vibrate in both directions. Cedar tops were virtually unknown before M. Ramirez, but they got a reputation for loudness that made them popular with professionals who followed Segovia into the large concert halls. My personal experience tells me the loudness difference is overrated, if not fictional.
Of course nowadays, there are a lot of cedar-topped negras and classicals made, but cedar-topped blancas are a relative rarity, at least before the 80's.
I' be interested in the Foro luthiers' opinions, but I suspect the arch works like an architectural arch to stiffen the top and force it to vibrate as a "rigid" unit -- at least more so than a flat top would, which is structurally more free to bow inward and outward in response to string vibration. Thinning an arched top at the edges and arching it in the middle causes the whole top to (tend to) move as a unit since it CAN'T flex inward (much) any more than an architectural arch could, so it flexes more around the edges, while a flat top tends to "flap" both inward and outward. (Think of the whole arched top jumping up and down rather than flapping in and out). I'm exaggerating the difference, obviously, since cedar tops (reportedly) compensate by gaining stiffness from the material rather than from the arch design (so take words like "flap" and "rigid" as illustrative hyperbole) but I think this structural behavior may be responsible for the greater punch in arched-topped (mostly spruce) guitars. They can be thinner (Huber reports that flat cedar tops average 10% thicker than spruce) and yet still be stiff; less mass means they accelerate faster in response to bridge vibration. The arch architecture means they accelerate as a unit. Sounds like a recipe for punch to me.
Anyway, the Granada school generally stuck with the (Torres/Jose Ramirez I) arched design. Shifting bracing around can result in refinements (Mike Kasha, a physicist here at Florida State U., where I teach (not music), developed some pretty radical brace design innovations that really made his guitars loud, but the off-center hole looks too unconventional for my taste), but I will go out on a limb and say that the combined effect of the arch and the reduced mass on sound is major (compared with fan bracing arrangement).
Huber's book says that the Granada school arched top is much more sensitive to string selection (compared with flat cedar) because of this tendency to vibrate as a whole unit. I'm not quite sure I understand why that should be, but my guitars (all but one are arched spruce) do sound very different with different strings. The cedar one (Rafael Morales of Granada, 1972, also arched) doesn't seem to change much with different strings.
Remember I said "some of" meaning, well, J. Ramirez III I guess. Point being most guitars are not "flat", so why would you want to make a flat one??? I have owned Ramirez in the past, and played pedro de miguel and Gonzales guitars that are Cedar top flamencos, but at the time (meaning not long ago), I never was aware about the dome thing behind the bridge.
I guess I should read more carefully, sorry Ricardo. With all due respect to Mr. Arnold I think he's wrong about the flat top Ramirez classics. Every one of them that I've examined had a domed top (i.e. built with a solera).
either way, for a practice rebuild, he doesn't need to go overboard if the guitar isnt worth it.
he has yet to establish the proper woodworking technique on the basics. i guess it would be beneficial to build a solera, but still a lot more work for somethign thats firewood anyways.... 6 of one half dozen of the other
I actually finished this about 6 weeks ago, waiting for it to ping apart at any moment!, but so far everything has held.
Overall there were no major disasters (apart from buying it in the first place) many minor annoyances, things moving while being glued ( the fingerboard moved about .5mm down and slightly to the treble side, but amazingly it's mostly ok), managed to get all of the bracing from the offcuts of the soundboard.
One thing this has been good for is the fact that it was basically a lost cause, there was no, carefull, carefull to the extent of carefully making it worse, it really was a ballpark attempt eg the bridge was glued on using a coupla heavy books and some steel rules.
The attempt at french polishing was a disaster, quickly scraped off and finished the whole guitar in danish oil.
I've already started from scratch on a 1933 Santos Hernandez using canadian cedar (is this monterey cedar?) spruce and cedar neck, we'll see how this goes, thanks for all your help.
Regards
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. 
(hope you don't mind Per) just to get this strung up and take it from there. As someone pointed out this is at the very least something to make mistakes on and if it turns out playable so much the better, if it doesn't, take it apart and start again. 
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