Official Luthiers Forum!

hi there,

this is my first post in the forum so hello to one and all!

i have been asked to build a guitar for a friend, he uses tunings down to C, but he also does a lot of percussive tapping on the body of his guitar. because of this he wants a small bodied guitar (playing a larrivee parlor currently) so that it is not so boomy when he hits it, he also likes the idea of a cedar top, as a lot of
modern fingerstylists seem to go for that to give a more explosive sound.

i must say i am a bit confused as to the best way to tackle this one, and thought i might throw it out there for you guys to maybe give me your advice?

Paddy

PaddyD,
I know for a fact that Western Red Cedar is pretty tender for a top material, you may want to rethink that, Sitka, Adirondack, Carpathian or other Spruce might take that a bit better.

However, I know Phil Keaggy's SJ is cedar topped, the one he got in 1984. And he's a percussive player if there ever was one. But it's true what everyone says, cedar and redwood too, must be treated with kid gloves in the shop environment.

The Olson SJ I peered inside of was made in 1983 and it has scalloped braces, an oversize bridgeplate and one of the tone bars hits the bridgeplate about dead center, rather than an x-brace. I take it Jim knows what he's doing.

Welcome to the forum, I bet you do a great job, and we want pictures, lots of pictures.Dickey38730.7408912037

Hi Paddy, welcome to the OLF!

Serge

Paddy,

One of my best customers (not a forum member but peeks in every once in a while) builds killer flamencos and is talking through one I have to build for a customer. He and I tlked about using cedar and he advised, well actually just disallowed it for a flamenco as he said that cedar just wouldn't hold up to the tapping that accompanies this music. You can't safely thin cedar as much as spruce to that top to 'come alive'. Having said that, tere are always exceptions. If you use cedar I would suggest tight grained and stiff!

Welcome to the OLF!

Bruce, glad to see you are the move my friend....

Shane

_________________
Canada

Hi Shane,
Yeah, constipation isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I was just somewhat concerned that the IRS was on your tail or something. Ter in US one day, Brazil the next and now Cape Verde (I assume that is still Brazil but a little more specific because you feel sorry for the feds and they might get lost on the beaches in Brazil somewhere).

Anyway, it is great to get your experience and wisdom back here, we did miss you!

Shane

_________________
Canada

Shane: keep in mind that flamencos are very, very, VERY lightly built (I've seen the technique described as 'build a classical as lightly as possible, and then take off a good bit more, and you're there). Steelstring tops, I'll wager, could be almost twice the thickness and still sound good.

i guess this is why i'm so confused, i have already said to my friend that we may not get it right first time (or even second or third time!) but i'm will ing to keep scratching in the dark,

you see the first thing this guy does when he picks up a guitar is he hits it all over, but mainly behind the bridge, and if he likes the sound of it as a drum then he tries it as a guitar!

i was thinking along the lines of a roughly 00 size guitar, with cedar top, mahogany body, 24.9 inch scale, to allow a bit more headroom for the low tunings, dare i mention it "parabolic bracing" which i am going to check out on monday when i can get a camera inside his larrivee parlor.

the thing is its too easy to just think along the lines of a straight guitar, and forget about the drum part..... and then the low tunings, as far as i can figure out i should leave the braces slightly higher, so the guitar may sound a little less vibrant in regular tuning, but should hold up better "down-there", but again i don't know!!!

Shane, oh, that kind of move!

I agree Mattia,

Ya know taht people should just not be afraid to try some things out and see where they get and Paddy has the right attitude for that when he says they may not get it right for a couple or three guitars. It is just my experience that spruce has more 'structure' than cedar and wold withsatnd the pounding better IMHO. I think I would experiment with different spruces and brace patterns to get the warm sound he is looking for especially if he is going to tune down to C. THere are a lot of other things to consider also probably like scale lengths and and top stiffness (me thinks a 'looser' top would be better for something like this).

Good luck Paddy

Shane

_________________
Canada

IMO, and for what it's worth, bass response is effected quite strongly by body length. I find my 12-fret 000s, which are as long as a Dread, but narrower, tune down to the low pitches better than the 14-fret OM style.

The string tension drops off fast as you tune down, and the energy in the string is proportioal to the tension if the amplitude (action height) is the same. The rule for good accelleration is 'small engine, light car': if you want responsiveness in those low tunings you'll have to keep the top light.

Also remember; the stiffness of a beam of a membrane rises fast as the span decreases. A .125" thick top on a 00 will be a lot stiffer than the same one on a Dread, and you can reduce the thickness and brace height of the top on small guitars safely.

A deep body, and a large (but not huge) soundhole well up toward the neck will help get 'punch' and keep the bass response good. Scalloped bracing will also give you more 'punch' than 'tapered' or 'parabolic' (which, to me, is just another form of taper).     

OK, this is the last time I'm going to say it, It's not rocket science, just logic. If you play a lot in altered tunings have a dedicated guitar set up with a balanced string set that give normal tensions in the altered (dropped) tunings. I've been playing in DADGad since Davy Graham invented it and it's the only way to get a properly balanced sound. It's the reason I got into building. OK I have to take 3 or 4 guitars (plus lute) to every gig but they all sound good.

Oh, and because of the frequency of high capoing and playing up the neck in altered tunings, the longer scale and 14 fret (or cutaway, which I don't like) is the way to go.

OK off my soap box.

ColinColin S38732.2402083333

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

[QUOTE=Colin S] I've been playing in DADGad since Davy Graham invented it . . .
Colin[/QUOTE]

Hi Colin,

I know this is the popular belief but Martin Simpson reckons that DADGad goes back a long way and is based on an old timey banjo tuning (as are a lot of modal tunings) with it's roots probably way back in Africa. He thinks Davy stumbled into the tuning "under influence" in North Africa when he was trying to get into open D.

Who knows but Davy certainly has the credit for establishing and pioneering this tuning into modern day fingerstyle.

_________________
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

First of all hi Paddy and Welcome to the OLF.

Colin is spot on in my opinion seperate guitars for the task. In a C tuning you may want to go with a slightly longer than Normal (Whatever that is) scale length.

Colin what scale do you use on your droped tunes?

I'll add my 2? and say that a 24.9" scale will be very hard to tune and
intonate with a low C. You might want to go with at least a 25.7" or
longer. I built my 1st guitar with a long body 000, like Alan says it
enhances the bass response a little more than a 000/OM 14 fret body,
and I used a 26.5" scale because I almost always play in ornkey or
DADGAD tunings. The 26.5" scale didn't seem a stretch compared to
25.4", although when I go back to a 25.4" it does seem a bit tiny.

_________________
Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

[QUOTE=Dickey] Hi Shane,
Yeah, constipation isn't all it's cracked up to be.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Dickey] Shane, oh, that kind of move![/QUOTE]

I'm SO glad Bruce is back...that was hilarious!

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Hi Don,
Sometimes I don't know if the other luthiers are cognizant in their coffee and caffiene induced meditations.

Dave, shall we say Davy was the one who introduced it to the world, popularised it,and showed it's potential. I'm a great believer in nothing being new! A lot of the lute tunings switch to guitar really well, and look at Robert Johnson, hardly ever used standard tuning.

Russell, I use 645mm (25.4") standard OM, I find any longer scale that 650mm a bit of a stretch. But I'm capoed a lot of the time. I tried a 670mm (26.4")but found that any benefit was outweighed by decreased playability for me, so I renecked it and went with balanced string sets.

Colin

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

Colin, now there's a term for you renecked, if you added a d you'd have a rednecked guitar........

hi guys,

thanks for all the info so far,

i hear what you are syaing about a separate guitar, i have already explained that to my friend, and he hasn't made up his mind about one dedicated guitar, because he does change about quite a bit, i will probably build the guitar as a buzz feiten intonated instrument also.

at the moment his main guitar has a 24.1 scale, and he likes that but it does geet a bit farty when he is in orkney, thats why i though i would try 24.9 as a start to see if he likes the extra, my logic behind the whole project is that he likes thee guitar he has presently, so i am trying to stay faithful to that but tailor it slightly more to his needs, if i suddenly change everything, we wont know what has made the difference for him,

i think you are having the same problem as me, i have to constantly remind myself that this has to be a percussive instrument as well as a responsive guitar do to a lot of single handed playing on the fretboard, e.g his right hand plays the rythym part (percussion and bass) and his left hand does the melody and chords, its quite extraordinary to watch, but some of the music is beautiful.

Paddy,

The late great Erich Roche used a lot of the percussive techniques and his main axes were Lowden O10's in Cedar and I think mahogany. That would have been around 650mm scale length. I know he had a guitar built for him by Nick Benjamin in Sussex so you could comtact Nick (Benjamin) and see what he did to accomodate Eric's style.

My personal favourite is 655mm scale length and with a good stable neck (carbon fibre rods pluss truss rod) I go between all of the tunings with little trouble and find that the low C sounds good with a 0.053" string - you need to be careful about the saddle slope to get good intonation though, a lot of builders don't have enough slope in the saddle for these tunings.

Colin is right though in one sense, the C and G tunings have a different tension gradient across the strings than the D ones, so you can customise string gauges to tune in better if you have a guitar dedicated to each tuning. One guitar per tuning - at least that's what I tell potential customers They don't seem to want to act on the advice though

_________________
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

thanks dave,

yes i was a big fan of erics... i took classes with him at the bath guitar festival one year. my friend is a big afficianado also, hence the cedar and mahogany vibe, i also have talked to nick as i was doing a classical guitar building course in the same place he works, but obviously i didnt want to totally grill him on his "secrets", i will talk to him some more though, i'm probably seeing him on wednesday.


here he is playing the guitar i built whilst on the course!

[QUOTE=Dickey] Colin, now there's a term for you renecked, if you added a d you'd have a rednecked guitar........[/QUOTE]

Surely that's what Padauk is for...