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Joshua, Shawn and the rest of you classical afficienados, do any of you know about John Williams's guitar.

While I was away my wife recorded a programme of him playing the Rodriguez at the last night of the Proms which I have just watched. His guitar (as well as his playing) intrigued me. The bridge was certainly padauk and the top spruce, the B&S didn't look like most Brazilian, more like Madagascan Rosewood but I may be wrong, it may just be orangey Brazilian. The fingerboard, also looked more rosewood than ebony, but again I may be wrong, just a streaked piece of ebony maybe.

What intrigued me most was the fact that the guitar had an armrest. It was not inlet into the top but was an additional rounded piece at the edge of the upper bout bass side. I've never seen a classical guitar with an armrest, so do any of you guys know who made it?

ColinColin S38684.3954166667

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Colin, was it perhaps a John Pearse Arm Rest?

John Pearse Arm Rest

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

No it didn't look like that Lance it was slimmer and longer and definitely integral with the construction of the guitar.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

I beleive John Williams plays a Greg Smallman guitar like this. Although don't quote me on that since I'm not certain.

http://www.guitarcentre.com.au/greg_smallman.html

Thanks,

Graham, that looks very much like it,thanks, certainly the bridge and armrest are the same. John's didn't look like it was Brazilian though, very more striped and reddy orange, but haven't seen a very large selection of Brazilian so it might be, but to me looked like the set of Madagascan I've got.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Smallman was the first luthier of note that I'm aware of who began using padauk as a bridge material. He uses it to minimize top mass, since the lattice bracing pattern that he has developed adds quite a bit of mass to the top.

I've compared the density of some nice qs padauk I have here with EIR bridges and they weigh just a little more than half as much as the EIR bridges do, so the weight difference is significant. I've used padauk bridges on a few of my builds. It works well, but tends to splinter easily, so one has to be careful, especially when shaping the edges of the bridge wings (classical).

Best,

Michael

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When I saw Williams last year he was playing a Smallman with cocobolo back
and sides (and padauk bridge). I think this is Smallman's standard materials.
I believe both the sides and the back are laminated; the sides are very thick,
and the back has a high arch.

I didn't like the sound of it. Loud, but strident; lacking warmth and tiring to
the ears.Howard Klepper38684.5960300926

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Micheal:
Smallman uses the lattice system precisely to _reduce_ top mass. The lattice itself is mostly balsa wood, reinforced with thin 'caps' of carbon fiber. The large number of elements in the lattice is used to support a top that is only about .8m thick (.032"). The lattice spacing has to be tight to keep the 'membrane' sections in between from being floppy. The actual mass of the moving part of the top is probably half or less that of a 'normal' top.

Smallman does use a very heavy surround, made of a sort of plywood, in place of the usual linings. He also makes the back and sides heavy and stiff. His idea is to confine all vibration to the top, which is the most effective sound producing part of the guitar.

In this sense, it's a sort of wooden 'reso'. The one I worked on certainly sounded like one to me, but then. I'm not John Williams. Instruments like that tend to 'smooth out' a lot in a big hall, and the projection and power are no doubt welcome when you have to fill one!

I'm not sure I'd use padauk for a bridge, or, at least, if I did, I'd give a lot of thought to the design. It's a pretty slitty wood, and I'd pay specail attention to the tieblock and the section in front of the saddle.   

[QUOTE=Howard Klepper] When I saw Williams last year he was playing a Smallman with cocobolo back
and sides (and padauk bridge). I think this is Smallman's standard materials.
I believe both the sides and the back are laminated; the sides are very thick,
and the back has a high arch.

I didn't like the sound of it. Loud, but strident; lacking warmth and tiring to
the ears.[/QUOTE]

That was it Howard Cocobolo, but fairly straight grain. I quite liked the sound of it, but anything sounds good in the Albert Hall acoustics.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Colin,

You're sure it was Spruce? He's known very thin lattice braced cedar tops. It wouldn't surprise me if spruce sounded better with that design (to me spruce sounds better with every design).

I played a Smallman some time back. It was a very loud guitar. The basses were loud with a lot of loudness to them in all registers, the trebles had this loud loudness quality to them that struck me as being very loud almost as if there were an inherent loudness causing it to sound very loud.

It was loud. To my ear, that kind of novelty wears off almost immediately, and then what is one left with?

It also weighed a good 8 pounds. (No joke!)

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Joshua,

That's all very interesting but did you notice if the guitar was LOUD at all?

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Alan,

I stand corrected regarding the mass of Smallman's lattice bracing. I knew he used extremely thin cedar tops and I also knew about the very heavy perimeter reinforement, so an assumption on my part was that the thin top and padauk bridge were intended to counteract a probably additional weight because of the lattice. Still, seems to me that it would likely weigh more than a 7-fan Torres pattern.

With the padauk bridges I build, I use a fairly hard material for tieblock inlay -- like mammoth ivory or ebony -- and I also set the saddle back a little farther from the front edge so that there is more "meat" between the saddle and the edge. I've found that if I drill a 12-hole bridge, however, that I do get a little tearout where the strings loop back through on the treble side. It's secure enough, just doesn't look all that pretty. For a solution, on my next attempt, I will use some hobby shop brass tubing and insert it into the drilled string holes. I used that approach to reinforce the bridge against the strings digging in with the pinless bridge I built for my lone steel string acoustic, and it has worked well.

Best,

Michael

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[QUOTE=jfrench] Colin,

You're sure it was Spruce? He's known very thin lattice braced cedar tops. It wouldn't surprise me if spruce sounded better with that design (to me spruce sounds better with every design).

[/QUOTE]

It certainly looked like French polished spruce to me, but I was watching on television, if it was cedar it was exceptionally pale cedar. I hope to see him in a chamber concert in the new year when I should have a better chance to have a good gander. I like the idea of the raised armrest to keep the forearm off the top to reduce any tendancy to damp the soundboard.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

I have started using Padauk for bridges, mostly because my supply of BRW is becoming more precious and because I can point to Smallmand and others using Padauk. The lighter weight is the goal but understand the limitations and tendency to split of Padauk.

I do no use quartersawn stock for the Padauk bridges but try to keep the grain at about 30 degrees to the face of the top. As Michael does for his tieblock, I use mammoth ivory or macassar ebony which somewhat reinforces the tieblock area and I also use a 12 hole string pattern. The front edge of the bridge (in front of the saddle) I do not worry as much about as I am using a saddle that is 3mm thick as it gives me more room to compensate. I got this tip from Greg Byer and follow his compensation at the nut as well.

I understand the Smallman arched back and heavier construction but I think that Alan sums it up best when he describes it as a Wooden reso...

I am striving for a rigid frame via thicker sides (but not laminated as in Ramirez) via Fox style kerfing but dont want a thick and heavy back (arched or not). It goes to the debate as to whether the back should be a resonant or reflective sound source. Because classical guitars are not typically held against the stomach as a steel string is often played, a resonant back adds tonal qualities that are eliminated (to my thinking) in "wooden reso" heavy body, paperweight top guitars.

As far as building approach goes I want to aim between a traditionalist builder like Jeffrey Elliot (Spanish construction with extreme attention to detail) and a Modernist builder like Tom Humphrey (lattice top but not Smallman thin top) but definitely not towards Smallman or Dammann whose sound while booming is not as complex or full as the Spanish sound I like. Luthiers like Greg Byers (Spanish sound) or Gary Southwell (Viennese sound) are probably the in between that are that balance that I emulate.

Colin,

That is an excellent armrest he's incorporating into his guitars.

Williams is a helluva player, you'll have a great time seeing him live. I'll be interested to hear if Smallman is indeed making some spruce guitars.

Dave - yep, it was loud, but there was another point in there somewhere.... jfrench38685.576400463

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Michael McBroom wrote:
"Still, seems to me that it would likely weigh more than a 7-fan Torres pattern. "

There's a tendancy to think of the bracies as adding a lot of weight to the top. In fact, we use them because they do the job of stiffening with far less weight than you'd get by making the top thicker. A 'bare' spruce top for a 'standard' guitar, about 2.5mm thick, will weigh between 110-150 grams, depending on the wood. _All_ of the bracing weighs perhaps 30-40 grams, and the bridge might be another 20-25. Most of the weight of the top is the top itself.

Making the top about 1/3 as thick as my example, and doubling up on the bracing, would add up to a top that weighs 50 grams (top) + 60 grams (bracing) = 110 grams; about what the 'bare' top weighed. I doubt Smallman's bracing actually weighs that much: the balsa has a density aa little as 1/10 that of spruce, and there is very little CF/epoxy in the 'caps'.

Wright, in his computer modeling experiment on guitar acoustics, showed that te most important variable in determining the tone was the ratio of top area to mass. Reducing the top mass by 30% made a big difference in the sound.

Alan,

I don't dispute your numbers at all. In fact, it reminds me of what I call the "Spanish School" and the "Hauser School" of top building. As you're most likely aware, most of the Spaniards have followed Torres in building relatively thin-topped guitars with fairly prominent bracing. Hauser, on the other hand, seems to have preferred building guitars with thicker tops and lighter bracing.

I'd wondered about this a lot -- which, if any was better, and what sort of differences would there be in the sound? So, never yet having had the opportunity to play a Hauser, I decided I'd try building a guitar along the general Hauser body plan and emulating his top construction methods. I realized I couldn't duplicate the woods, but I did what I could -- a AAA Euro spruce top and AAA EIR back/sides. I thicknessed the top to the same general measurements that Brune took from the ex-Segovia 1937 Hauser at the NY Metropolitan Museum of art, and I used the brace spacing and contour as shown by Jeff Elliott in his drawing of a 1943 Hauser. Close as I could get.

The result was a guitar that sounded pretty bad for the first few days -- thin and unresponsive. But then it started waking up, and developing this marvelous sweet sound, rich in overtones, with nice sustain. It isn't quite as loud as other guitars I've built, but man, it sure does sound nice. It's been strung up for a few weeks now, and the noticeable improvement in voice and volume continues.

So, to me, the debate rages on.

Best,

Michael

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