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Over at the yahoo 10string forum, I learned of a book written by Jose Ramirez III over 10 years ago, called Things About the Guitar. Gotta hand it to the guy for his understatement. It's been out of print for a while but my understanding is a new edition is out now.

Amazon.com has information on it, even though they don't have the book itself in stock. So, you know how often you can read through excerpts of a book there? Such is the case with Ramirez's book, and I found his views on building very interesting, especially his comments on top thickness vis-a-vis an instrument's longevity. Here's a link to the book at Amazon.

Ramirez was one who has bucked the trend of what I often call the Torres School of classical construction. Many Spanish luthiers (and others) tend to follow the construction methods of the great Antonio de Torres, one of which was to construct classicals with rather thin tops and more prominent bracing. Hermann Hauser was the first one I know of (although probably not the first) who bucked the trend, building guitars with thicker tops and more shallow bracing. Even though I owned a Ramirez for many years, I never realized his top construction techniques were closer to Hauser's than to Torres'.

Prior to reading this excerpt, I felt that these two approaches were just two different ways to solve the same set of problems. After reading it, however, I am no longer so sure. Ramirez points out that all the best violins that have survived over the centuries were built with relatively thick tops, and that surviving examples of violins with thinner tops have lost their sound. He cites examples of guitars he himself built that, many years later, sound better now than they did after their playing-in period.

Now, this I can attest to. I sold my 1973 Ramirez, which I had bought new, in 2003. I sold it because I just wasn't playing it anymore, prefering an instrument that was a bit easier to play. But I have heard it and played it a few times since I sold it, and every time I hear it, I fall in love with its sound all over again. Without a doubt that guitar sounds as good as, if not better than, it ever has.

One of my recent projects was to build a guitar in the Hauser style. Obviously I could not duplicate the woods he had access to, but I got as close as I could. I used a master grade Euro spruce top and a master grade set of EIR for the back/sides. Then, using soundboard measurments obtained by R. Brune from the ex-Segovia 1937 Hauser in the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art, I contoured my soundboard as close as I could to these measurements. I duplicated the bracing pattern as shown in the plans of a 1943 Hauser, drawn by Jeffrey Elliott, and I shaped them to the same contour.

The completed guitar was a bit disappointing at first. It was on the quiet side, and a bit thin sounding. That was this past October. Since then, it has been my regular instrument, and it has opened up a surprising amount. Sustain, balance, and its resonance are all I could have hoped for. I considered it to be a successful experiment, but the guitars I've built since then are more in the Spanish tradition -- thinner soundboards and more prominent bracing.

Now, after reading the excerpt from Ramirez's book, however, I've begun to rethink things. I thicknessed five tops today. None of them are as thick as the Hauser emulation's top -- 0.120" at the center, tapering to 0.095" at the edges. Rather, I've chosen a middle ground, thicknessing the spruce tops to 0.100" at the center and 0.090" at the edges, and the cedar tops to 0.110" to 0.100" or so. All have about the same amount of flex.

As I complete these guitars, it'll be interesting to see how they turn out.

So, anyway, I'd be interested in reading what top thicknesses you prefer on your classicals and why.

Best,

Michael

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Live to Play, Play to Live

Michael,

I have the Jose Ramirez III book, and if I can find it you can borrow it. Time is precious commodity lately, but I'll let you know once I come across it.

It is a funny book. Its mainly a self promotion on the part of Jose Ramirez III, who probably never built four guitars in his life. There are some interesting points, but its far from anything that I think would make one want to reevaluate their building. But forgive my cynicism, as I have very critical views of Ramirez and their instruments. Part of this stems from seeing so many 1A's that are $9000 duds. Another part is that I feel Ramirez III has put his ego in the way of historical fact to an almost childish degree, particularly in regards to the issue of who made Segovia's Manuel Ramirez. But thats another issue all together.

In terms of Hauser and Torres, I think it is important to note the cultural differences between the two. Hauser was doing his best to achieve the "Spanish sound" of Torres, and as I'm told by people with far more experience with his instruments and Torres' instruments than I, he never achieved it.

Germans are well known for overdoing things - making things that will never come apart, etc. As craftsmen they are incredible, but as it comes to me from a guitar making mentor who happens to be German (and makes guitars in Germany), there is a tendency to overbuild things rather than take a chance on treading too close to the edge in making a lightly constructed instrument.

A cursory look at a couple of Hauser's he has measured, against the Brune and and another's measurements of Segovia's Hauser (which differ, one set being taken with a hacklinger gauge, which is the one I would go by) do not show much difference. Among these is the "most Spanish sounding" Hauser, deemed such by people who have perhaps the most first hand knowledge of his instruments. The measurements show more thinning toward the soundboard edges. But it is not thinner in the center than other, less Spanish sounding Hausers.

The interesting thing - the pitch of the guitar (1940 Hauser) is E - 35cent, amazingly. This is where Romanillos designs usually land, which is what I base some of my guitars on, and my tornavoz guitars which are strictly Torres land near here.

I'm not sure what you mean about Torres using more prominent bracing than Hauser or others. In fact, I'd say it is the other way around. In general Torres used fan struts 3mm tall by 7mm wide, same as Hauser - Hauser sometimes leaving them taller and not scalloped toward the soundhole. But certainly Torres used thinner soundboards. I still attribute this to the culture of Germany, where at the time no instrument makers guild would ever tolerate anything that might lack longevity. To this day, Germans must pass tests imposed by governing agencies to be a "Luthier", and after significant training.

You are quite right, a Hauser is much different than a "Spanish" guitar. But to me it's a lot closer than a Ramirez, no matter what country they're made in.


Please forgive my tainted reply. I've been greatly affected by the few Torres guitars I've gotten to experience in the flesh, which have surely not lost their sound. Its no wonder Hauser tried to emulate him. But the Spanish have a flamboyancy and a daringness, a free flowing and spirited approach which the finely structured and more "proper" German approach of Hauser must be ultimately difficult to reconcile with. jfrench38834.8884837963

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I've got the Ramirez III book, too. It's apparent that the maestro had seldom "soiled" himself by actually having discourse with other luthiers outside his own kingdom. On the other hand, it's still an interesting look into the mind of someone who was born into guitar building, however pompous that mind may be.

I certainly don't want to insult anyone here, but I've always felt that the "Spanish" guitar sound, which to many people is the Ramirez sound, is seriously flawed. Those guitars are too easily overdriven into distortion when chording, and sound mushy overall.

The best unplugged classical I've ever heard in concert?--a Thomas Humphrey Millenium! It was loud, clear and toneful.

You guys all bring up some interesting points. As a player, I must say the Ramirez guitars are about as hard to play as any. I wonder if the thicker tops on the Ramirez is why so many of his guitars were 660 or longer, and why the action was so high. Maybe he needed that increased tension to get the top to move? Also, I believe Ramirez preferred cedar which sounds pretty good right from the start compared to spruce which may take 3-5 years of regular playing to open up.

Michael--have you built a Hauser style using the '37 plans with a cedar top? I am building 3 now with that exact plan-- 1 cedar/EIRW, 1 spruce/EIRW, and 1 spruce?maple. It will be interesting to hear how they all sound side by side.

Cheers!

John

Perhaps it's best to say "I heard guitar X in setting Y,
and liked it for reason Z". Or vice versa.

Ill-defined terms lead nowhere.

The best classical guitar I ever played was made by Tony
Johnson, an English maker strongly influenced by J. Romanillos, and by extension, Torres. Much tactile and also audible feedback for the player, and clear focused projection for the audience.

The 'Spanish Sound' imho is nebulous. A long-scale
Ramirez from the 60's or 70's might be one person's
ideal(not mine:boomy bass, tinkly treble, little in between), while a Santos Hernandez, say, from the 20's or 30's is a different
guitar entirely, though both nominally 'Spanish'.
I would go so far as to say that the Ramirez guitars
mentioned above gave Spanish guitars a bad name!

But opinions vary..   Best, Carey.

Carey,

You are quite right that people's perception of the "Spanish sound" differ. But it is still important... the sound of Torres, Santos Hernandez, Enrique Garcia, et al - it defined the Spanish guitar, it made the guitar a beloved instrument amongst many at a time when it was a young and oft overlooked instrument.

This surely means something important.

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Joshua- I don't disagree with anything in your post, other than matters of emphasis. I've heard too many players say
'I don't like Spanish guitars' to just let it go..

What is a Spanish Guitar, anyway? For me, it is rooted in
the vihuela and its concentrated music. So what is a vihuela? We don't know; other than two possibly spurious
examples, no instruments survive. So I look at the music,
and try to understand what instrument (imp't word) it would
best be played on. As I hear it, an instrument that allows
the voice-parts their due, but also an earthiness which
keeps the music from being over-refined, airless.

Rambling again, but I'll mention a couple of recordings:

Toyohiko Satoh 3: 'Conde Claros and other Spanish Vihuela Music' Channel Classics 3091.

Narvaez and Fuenllana:Music for Vihuela. Dolores Costoyas, Vihuela. Glissando 779-016-2.

And anything by Julian Bream- his recordings of Narvaez,
Milan, and Francesco da Milano especially.

I'm freely admit to being no expert on classical guitars, being in the process of building my first (with Joshua's advice) after many years of only building steel strings and lutes. My first build is based on Torres FE19. I have taken Torres' thickness of 2.2mm (.086"), and his fan brace dimensions of 3mm x7mm.

The top thickness is about where my lute soundboards end up using top grade European spruce.

Both of these instruments were designed to be driven by lower tension gut strings, which is what I intend to put on the FE19 copy. Might it be that Torres' tops, like those of the lutes, were designed around the properties of the strings? And the thicker modern tops for the higher tension, but no where near as nice sounding, Nylon strings.

Colin

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

Colin,

Good thoughts. I was lucky enough to hear a lute in person for the 1st time last weekend, and I was blown away! It was like auditory emotion for me. I was like Jimi, "hearing colors."    It realigned my thinking about stringed instruments.

Carey,

I am enjoying your contributions. Sounds like you are both player and builder? Please tell us more about yourself.

Jeff

Funny thing about Ramirez guitars -- people either love 'em or hate 'em. This may sound a bit strange, but I was one of the 'hate 'em' folks until I bought mine. I didn't like the long string length and the high action that was common to Ramirez guitars in those days, and the sound of a good Ramirez, while nice, was not the sound I preferred. To me, the Bouchet and Romanillos guitars that Julian Bream was playing back in those days were some of the best sounding instruments I had ever heard. And Pepe's "chuchdoor" Rodriguez was simply stunning.

But I bought my Ramirez for one reason and one reason only. At the time Ramirez and Rubio were the only builders I knew of who were building 10-strings, and I didn't like the sound of the Rubio I'd heard (Macaluso recordings). But the recordings of Yepes with his Ramirez were captivating. So that's what I ordered, a Ramirez 10-string. Fortunately for me, while the string length was too long (664mm), at least the action was quite good. And the guitar had that 10-string sound, which is quite different from any 6-string, regardless of the maker.

Regarding the guitars that Ramirez began producing in the 1960s, it has been my understanding that he adopted the longer string length, modified bracing pattern, and higher action with a sharply tapered fingerboard on the bass side, at the urging of Segovia, who was after greater volume and projection.

Regarding the Spanish sound, it's one of those things that's hard to describe, but you know it when you hear it. Ironically, one of the best sounding guitars I've played recently that has an authentic Spanish sound, was a cedar-topped Alvarez Yairi, probably built in the late 80s or so. A friend of mine, who also builds guitars, owns it. He even made a drawing of the bracing pattern, and gave me a copy. It's pretty much a Torres pattern with the addition of a transverse brace set at a slight angle between the lower harmonic bar and the fan braces. This seems to be a popular mod to the basic Torres pattern. I've seen it in quite a few other guitars, albeit not taken to the extreme the way Ramirez and Rodriguez did (esentially, making an oblique X-brace between the angled brace and the bottom tone bar).

John, so far I've only built the one Hauser emulation. Personally, I like the sound of cedar topped classicals, so I don't have any reason to think they wouldn't sound good as well, using Hauser's building style.

Best,

Michael

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[QUOTE=John Elshaw] You guys all bring up some interesting points. As a player, I must say the Ramirez guitars are about as hard to play as any. I wonder if the thicker tops on the Ramirez is why so many of his guitars were 660 or longer, and why the action was so high. Maybe he needed that increased tension to get the top to move? Also, I believe Ramirez preferred cedar which sounds pretty good right from the start compared to spruce which may take 3-5 years of regular playing to open up.

Michael--have you built a Hauser style using the '37 plans with a cedar top? I am building 3 now with that exact plan-- 1 cedar/EIRW, 1 spruce/EIRW, and 1 spruce?maple. It will be interesting to hear how they all sound side by side.

Cheers!

John[/QUOTE]

John,
I would be interested in hearing about the results of your experiment.
Good luck
Robbie

Colin- It will be very interesting to hear how your FE19
copy sounds, esp with the use of gut. I have only used gut
once- by LaBella, but I don't think they were representative of a good gut string. I also think the lower
tension itself is a big factor; as the tension goes up, the
overtones I like diminish. A battle to have enough tension
to drive the top, while not losing the beauty of sound..

Jeff- The lute live really touches the heart-strings, doesn't it? There are some very good recordings, too,
but no substitute for live. About me: I'm a classical
player who loves the intimate sound of the lute, and a
novice, slow, builder.

Michael- Re the Ramirez issue- It does seem quite polarized, doesn't it? I too liked the sound of Yepes's
recordings, and one of my very favorite players, Goran
Sollscher, plays a '70 Ramirez when he's not playing
alt-guitar, and gets a very focused sound imo..
Being a ten-string player and builder, have you heard
Jonathan Leathwood by chance?   
                                      Best, Carey.

Carey, I both build and play the lute, the first better than the second, though I do sometimes get to play in a consort at the RAM. Here are a couple of recordings of my 10-course Venere.


Colin


Lute playingColin S38835.6178356481

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

Colin- the instrument is gourgeous! Fantastic work.Patient
attentiveness; difficult for me-
Looking forward to the music, when I can download it
(dial-up, argh).   

Do you have a preferred maker of gut strings? I'd like to try some again, on guitar, alas..

                                      Best, Carey.

I build mostly Torres school influenced mostly by Romanillos but have built German Hauser style (both his Viennese designs and later Spanish) as well as French school (Bouchet and Fredrich).

I also build an earlier pre-torres style based mostly on Panormo but with some Mirecourt LaCote details as well.

I have played with Nomex (jury is still out for me on that) in an effort to get more volume. I know I do not want mine to sound like a Smallman as it does not appeal to me and Thomas Humphrey builts great classicals but the sound is less and less Spanish but really good craftsmanship.

For me the biggest difference in a Torres school is not that the tops are thinner (which the are) but rather that the focus is on getting the most freely resonating guitar by careful graduation and not worrying about a certain thickness or thinness of the top. It was Torres that said that the secret to his guitars was the distance between his thumb and forefinger meaning that it was about a sensitive touch and hearing when the sound was most open.

Romanillos describes the German style guitars as "tight" which would speak to their being overbuilt. The French (modern) builders also tend to build heavier. While it can be true that a very lightly built classical can have such a big boomy sound that it can be unfocused, the best spanish style guitars are loose but with good note separation.

For me the tonal separation on my guitars got much better after hearing Alan Carruth demonstrate and lecture on Chaldni "Glitter Pattern" voicing at the 2003 ASIA symposium. I have incorporated it into how I build and I am getting much more consistent results and a more resonant guitar overall.

There are no great newer "guitars of our epoch" of Rameriz to point to to justify the much longer string length and larger plantilla. Just the opposite it shows that if Panormo or Torres could achieve sufficient volume without using a longer string length then it really comes down to how well the builder has gotten as much as he could out of the wood.

Others like Smallman and Damman have pushed the limits in design and construction in a quest for more volume and projection but at the expense of tonal color with some of their instruments sounding more metallic or dry instead of a sweeter, looser and sometimes darker spanish sound.

I have 2 Panormos that are both quite loud despite having a much shorter scale length (608 and 640mm) and Torres did not vary much in the overall size of his guitars volumetrically. It has to come down to a thinner top if most other elements are relatively equal.

If the modern classical guitar comes from the Vihuela and by association the Lute then look at the existing examples of that to see that the classical guitar was just a refinement of the construction of the Vihuela and Lute but built to be able to more easily play more demanding compositions and styles that would have pushed the construction of a vihuela or lute to the limit.

Look at why there are so few great early flamenco guitars still around. Im not talking about whether they are a lesser material classical as in Torres time, I am talking about the flamenco guitar built in the 20th century in which the playing style became more stylized and popular. Those instruments literally have been played to death (as did Segovia's Santos built Rameriz).

Today while there are a number of great classical builders, the person that I think balances the spanish sound and Torres school design with modern methods of construction is Romanillos. If you look at the bios for most of the great european classical builders you will see that many of them took part in Romanillos workshop and have then incorporated those Torres derivative elements into their own building.

I wish I could say the same for newer great builders coming out of the Spanish guitar houses but there are very few trailblazers there. Many of the great houses are now in the hands of the grandchildren and nephews of the great builders of the first part of the 20th century and even Rameriz could be seen as not treading new ground. Even Hauser III, while he still does hands on building is really not straying much from Hauser I and II designs.

I collect guitars as well and used to string everything older with Gut. If it is an instrument that I will be performing with, unless it is a performance I will keep them strung with Nylgut as it has the characteristics you would expect from gut but with a much longer lifespan which is the number one compliant with gut other than that it is expensive.

[QUOTE=Shawn] I collect guitars as well and used to string everything older with Gut. If it is an instrument that I will be performing with, unless it is a performance I will keep them strung with Nylgut as it has the characteristics you would expect from gut but with a much longer lifespan which is the number one compliant with gut other than that it is expensive.[/QUOTE]

I am not experienced with classical guitars but on my lutes and Panormo I do use gut, as in performance there does seem to still be a difference in sound over nylgut especially when blending into a consort. However on my current build, an 8-course Heiber, I intend to string it with Nylgut as this is the lute I want next to my chair to twiddle with when the mood takes me. How, in your opinion does the nylgut hold its tuning?

I'm just building my first classical FE19 copy. I decided on that simply because I believe that just as in the steel string world you should start with a Martin brace pattern and body shape, for a classical you should start with pure Torres, plantilla and bracing, so that you can establish a base reference for later development. There must always be a control in any undertaking.

Colin

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

Colin,

Is that you playing your lute? Simply wonderful.

Jeff

[QUOTE=Jeff Doty] Colin,

Is that you playing your lute? Simply wonderful.

Jeff[/QUOTE]

Yes Jeff that's me on my 10-course Venere, thanks for the compliment .

Colin

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