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Yesterday I had about 18 people here from MTV filming a visit from Rodrigo y Gabriela for whom I was installing a new experimental hybrid D-TAR pickup system.   Also out of that will come my designing some new nylon string guitars very specific to their separate musical needs.   The place was a total zoo, but the MTV crew could not have been nicer, and they just loved shooting film in a guitar making shop. They are so tired of back stage scenes and funky club shoots, so to have all the visual treats of a small guitar factory with wood and parts and guitars in every state of being was great for them.

They showed up first with a catering truck, set up tables right outside my office and served a gourmet late lunch before coming in and filming.

Rodrigo and Gabriela were just terrific, both as people and as exciting musicians. Check them out on their website and also on YouTube. He's a blazing lead player who uses a flatpick on nylon strings; she's an amazing rhythm player who incorporates an almost Irish style of drumming into strumming the guitar. For her, the guitar top is a percussion instrument, and that's where developing the amplification gets really tricky and interesting.   They play at very high on-stage volume levels, so feedback control is a big part of this, too.

Right now the solution is one of our undersaddle pickups (the Wavelength) on one channel and a soundboard transducer (the Perfect Timbre) on the other to get the percussive work. They were extremely pleased with the installation I did in their spare Yamaha 14 fret "classical", and now I'm going to do a couple of tweaks to it, prepare three more complete systems, and then deliver it all to them when they go into rehearsals in LA at the end of August.

This, to me, is where it's at...developing solutions for really fine guitarists and helping them make their music more easily. This helps me push the state of the art, and it also helps me understand guitars better. It's not about bling, it's about music.

Rick,

Rodrigo y Gabriela are fantastic and went down a storm at the Cambridge Folk Festival last year. I used to see them a few years back busking in Grafton Street in Dublin before they made it big time so I can see where the Irish influence comew from. Apparently they both started in Heavy Metal bands - but hey

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Rodrigo y Gabriela are cool. Rick, if you can, give us a heads up as to when the show will air. There is so little music on MTV these days I never watch it. The celebrity reality junk they contantly show makes me cringe but I would love to see A) Rodrigo y Gabriela and B) your shop on the tube! Thanks

Cool Rick...

Yeah, let us know when that will air.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

[QUOTE=Dave White] Rick,

Rodrigo y Gabriela are fantastic and went down a storm at the Cambridge Folk Festival last year. I used to see them a few years back busking in Grafton Street in Dublin before they made it big time so I can see where the Irish influence comew from. Apparently they both started in Heavy Metal bands - but hey [/QUOTE]

Way to go, Dave!!

I absolutely love this duo, their energy and passion for music is something you don't see much these days. Their life story is amazing too.

I only go to local gigs due to the time and logistical commitment to my young children, but I'd love to see Rodriego and Gabriella live one day.

Rick, that's just fantastic. When I hear them playing live, I'll think of your wizardry with the hardware. I'll also add to the request of knowing when the show is going to be aired!

This is all a part of a "back to the music" movement for MTV, and the folks who came to the shop are all passionate musos.   What they're doing is featuring 52 musical acts, one per week for a year. They're filming them, and then editing the footage into dozens and dozens of 20 to 45 second shorts that will be peppered throughout the days for a week for each act.   MTV is promising the acts a total of 10 hours of air time, so I think what you'll see is little snippets about every half hour or so every day. I don't believe there is any plan to edit together an hour special or something like that.

The topper of the day was when Kevin Mackall, the senior vice president in charge of on-air promotions at MTV bought one of our Renaissance fretless basses.

And yes, R y G were in a thrash metal band in Mexico before moving to Dublin and switching over to acoustic guitars and busking as a duo. Their story is great and is a reflection of how passionate they are about their music.

MAN! I just had a flash back to the 80s and Dire Straits!

Cool deal Rick! Congrats!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Sure...

From an electric eclectic luthier's perspective, they are pushing the limits of what can be done in amplifying a nylon string sound so it sounds "acoustic" at very high volume levels, and Gabriela's style requires that the guitar top be treated as two separate instruments: a guitar, and a drum.

I don't see much contrast. MTV came to my shop to document a step in the technical development of guitar amplification and also guitars for a couple of artists. I do not think they have filmed in a guitar making facility before, and my shop got to be "it."   You may not like it, but this is how TV and on-location film really works; it takes a lot of people, many of whom may appear to be unneeded, but having lived on the periphery of this kind of entertainment business, I know that this is indeed how it works.   When I had my shop in Topanga Canyon, Entertainment Tonight came up to shoot a bit on the "Unplugged" phenomenon. That was six people, a two hour shoot, and about 12 seconds of air time...the next night.

For me, the meat was also in the fact that Rodrigo trusted my work enough to suggest to the MTV producers that they document this meeting. Neither he nor Gabriela had been to my shop before, and they didn't really know me as a guitar designer/maker; they knew me as being involved with pickups and amplification. So this became a kind of "reality TV" but without all the freak-outs and shouting and melt-downs. This was them getting to know me and learning about how I might be able to help them present their music more transparently to their audiences who are getting more and more numerous.

I got a lot out of it from a lutherie point of view. I got to really examine their very different techniques; I got to hear and see where on the guitar top Gabriela does her percussive work...leading me to what may be a design for a guitar that really enhances that; I got to see how I had made the right calls on pickup style and placement; and I got to show them how I approach guitar design...which will lead to some guitars for the two of them.

Without the MTV crew there it would have been a great day with them, and the amazing thing was that with the crew there it was just as good. I can't say that we forgot that there were cameras and a lot of people in our faces, but it almost got to that point, especially near the end of the shooting where they came into my office. So what was documented was "Reality TV"...it was a real meeting between a duo of guitarists and a luthier who has some solutions to their amplified nylon string guitar problems and wants to develop more. I now know them much better, and my head is brimming with ideas for new pickup mounting schemes and new guitars. It doesn't get much better than that for me.

I think anyone who is fortunate enough to sit near Rodrigo and Gabriella and watch them play will never fail to be inspired.

That thunderous percussion technique Gabriella uses- my mind boggles as to how a classical can survive such pounding- unless she has an extremely developed technique with an incredibly sensitive soundboard.

There are tutorials she has posted on the internet I watched a while ago where you *could* examine her technique.

Very cool! They certainly are very talented! It's great to see them receiving their just reward after so many years of heart aches...

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I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

[QUOTE=Rick Turner]
Right now the solution is one of our undersaddle pickups (the Wavelength)

Rick, You are one fortunate man. I discovered them about 6 months ago an the same CD played in my truck stereo for about 2 months. Do you guys build those pick ups? Tell us more please.

Cheers,
Danny

I have two companies that I'm involved with, Renaissance Guitars, aka Rick Turner Guitars, and D-TAR...Duncan (Seymour) Turner Acoustic Research. D-TAR designs and makes acoustic amplification gear...pickups, preamps, etc. I got to know R y G through the D-TAR side of things when their sound tech, Graham Higgins, discovered our Eclipse parametric EQ units and ordered four of them...two apiece for R y G.   One thing led to another and we wound up having my pal David Neely, a great luthier/repairman in LA do a quick install of one of our experimental pickup systems designed for nylon string guitars.   It was a significant improvement over what they'd been using and then I met them at a gig and suggested some further refinements. Well the side story is that we got along famously after that gig, and Rodrigo suggested to MTV that they come here to my shop when they came to check out my next-generation suggested pickup configuration. That happens to be the "Load'n'Lock" version of our Wavelength UST (undersaddle transducer) with our SA-2 Perfect Timbre soundboard transducer added into the second channel output. So that's what they saw and heard last week under the scrutiny of the cameras.

So the next generation is to add volume and tone slide pots to the Wavelength and a volume and maybe tone to the Perfect Timbre channel and put all that on a replacement plate for the "barn door" electronics that came out of the guitar.

One of the main things we've been able to achieve is a drastic reduction on the amount of EQ required to dial in the sound. So the better I do the pickup side of the equation, the less they'll need the EQ that was the whole introduction to them in the first place!   From my point of view, that's perfect. We can use the EQ not to correct for gross inadequacies, but rather to fine tune the tone they want.