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Leavin' on a jet plane

12/30/2010

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It's a robust 24 degrees this morning, our woodstove is doing its best to keep us warm and Chloe the Food Cat gives me that look that says: You have no freakin' idea how drafty it is down here! Why the heck don't you fix those leaks around the doors and windows?!?

After the holidays pass I always begin to look south to those islands in the Caribbean that I know so well and dearly love, and to the Keys where I'll be meeting my friend Dave in a couple months for some fishing and the mandatory Duvall Street Crawl.

Dave suggested I bring a guitar along this time and if that Takamine I have for sale right now doesn't sell by then, it will most likely make the trip. Sitting on the porch of a little motel, watching the sunset over the Gulf, strumming out a few Buffet tunes and certainly some nice bossa nova with a cold adult beverage close at hand..... ah..... heaven!

The only problem is - it means that yet again I'll have to hassle with the uncertainty of traveling with a guitar. This is a subject of ongoing discussion on many of the guitar forums and there is almost always a feature in at least one of the guitar magazines at this time of the year on the subject. If I had deep pockets and was traveling with a prized, valuable instrument I might even consider doing what some pros do, which is actually buying a seat for the guitar. Alas, that ain't me, so I'm confronted with the dilemma: how to get my guitar from A to B via an airline, without hassling with surly flight attendants, cranky ticket counter guys, and other passengers who glare when I take up half an overhead bin with my guitar.

I could always give it over to the baggage loaders of course. But that is a last resort, and here's why:
United Breaks Guitars

This You Tube video has been viewed over NINE MILLION TIMES.  I guess that tells us something about the hazards of handing our instruments over to the retired UFC guys in baggage. Fortunately, guitar makers are aware of the problem and in the last few years quite a few "travel" guitars have hit the market. I've owned Martin's version, the LXM and it sounds surprisingly good for a guitar that is small and is made from something called HPL, which is super durable and impervious to most normal travel hazards. It comes with a very nice padded case with shoulder straps and the whole things fits in the overhead just fine. Don't confuse the Martin Backpacker with the LXM - the Backpacker is a very narrow guitar, made entirely of wood and I just don't think it would survive the rigors of air travel.

Taylor makes a similar instrument called the Baby Taylor and although I don't think it sounds quite as good as the Martin it is another way to go if you're more of a Taylor person than a Martin person. Washburn has one too and one of my students has a very cool all-graphite travel guitar made by a company called Blackbird (you can find them on You Tube too) and it sounds quite good, if a little on the artificial side, for lack of better description. It is also rather pricey, costing almost three times as much as the previously mentioned guitars. In any case, if you can afford it a travel guitar is well worth looking into. There are no doubt quite a few other brands out there that I'm not familiar with but whichever one you choose, base your decision on both size and durability. And sound, of course, keeping in mind that no travel guitar will sound as good as an all-wood, standard size instrument.

So what happens when you get to the airport? Well, assuming you've decided to go for it and are going to try to get your guitar on the plane with you, you'll need to be both cagey and bold. If you don't have any luggage to check you can proceed through security if you've printed out your boarding pass in advance. If you do have to approach the counter to check your luggage, try to keep your guitar in front of you on the floor as you stand up tight to the counter. Smile, be cool, act like you've done it million times - don't even mention the guitar unless asked. If the counter person wants you to check it, explain nicely that you intend to do a hand check at the gate. The law requires they allow you to do this. Of course, that is not really your plan but they don't know that.

Next you'll have to go through the dreaded security check and x-ray process. I highly advise NOT keeping things like an electronic tuner and spare sets of strings in the case. These may get unwanted attention from the person watching the video screen. Probably the worst that will happen is that you'll have to open the case and let them examine the tuner and strings but that should only be a minor inconvenience. But (drawing from my shore fishing experience now) the cardinal rule is: never, ever draw attention to yourself!

Then it's time to approach the gate and get ready to board and this is the trickiest part. There are two schools of thought here. One says that if you board as early and quickly as you can, you may encounter the person scanning your boarding pass and/or the flight attendants before they are stressed out with trying to get the herd of cattle into the pen with a plane behind its take-off time. If you really luck out, and you smile and ask really, really nicely a flight attendant may agree to let you put your guitar in the small coat closet where the crew stashes their stuff. This is not likely however, as modern jets have much smaller closets than ones in the past and the closet may well be already filled. But again, it's worth a try - assuming you get that far.

But suppose the person scanning the passes says: You need to check that - hand it over and someone will bring it down to the plane and it will be loaded. This is a worst case scenario (see United Breaks Guitars above!) because if you've followed my advice so far you have a guitar that is only protected by a padded gig bag. Scary indeed. So if this happens to me - and it has - the next strategy is to 1.) stay cool, and 2.) grovel. And here is where the idea of not being first but being close to last may pay off.

If you've waited to present your pass until just a few people are left, the ticket people and the flight attendants have only one thing one their minds: get that plane loaded and outa here. So they are unlikely to spend much time listening to your pleas. And here is where the whole thing comes down to nothing more than the mood and attitude of the ticket lady and the flight attendants. Without delving too far into the mind set of those folks I can tell you that I've stayed in hotels where flight crews stay over and overhearing the conversations at breakfast you would think they worked somewhere that should be profiled on that World's Dirtiest Jobs TV show! Most people bitch about their jobs from time to time but from what I've seen, flight attendants take it to a new level. So again: be as nice as you can be, be calm, state your case ("It's a new guitar for my sister and I would hate for it to get broken!" "I make my living playing and it would be just awful if anything happened...please, please, PLEASE, let me bring it on board!") and hope for the best.

Of course if all this works and you make it through the gauntlet of airline employees and security, you have one more obstacle to overcome: the disgust and possibly outright anger of other passengers who only see your guitar as something taking up THEIR precious overhead space. Time to employ the "Boston MTA Stare" - gaze only at some undefined point in the distance and never make eye contact. Good luck on that one.

So there you have it. And just think - you'll have to go through the whole thing again when you're ready to head home!
Still, for me anyway it's worth it. Just be prepared for any eventuality and the reality that you may have to hand over your guitar and you'll most likely do just fine.

Peace & good music,
Gene

! 



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Merry Christmas! Songs of the season & ruminations on the past year

12/25/2010

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Well, I blew it again! Every year I vow to make a recording of Christmas tunes but the problem is the inspiration hits about the same time as radio stations begin playing songs of the season. Which is right after Thanksgiving (thank God - I couldn't take it if they started any earlier!). And even though I have the tools and technology to make recordings pretty efficiently and quickly I am pretty picky (no pun intended!) about the quality of the recordings I make so doing a Christmas CD is bound to take quite a bit of time.

You see, the problem with recording songs everyone knows is that.... everyone knows them. In other words, even the slightest miscue will be starkly on display, which is NOT acceptable in my book. If you record your own arrangements of less familiar material or better yet, original music, a little slip-up here and there will probably not be noticed. Not the case with Christmas songs that most of us have known since childhood. Also, factor in that they are supposed sound relaxed, reverential or jolly - all things that tend to slip out of my musical reach if I start making mistakes in the recording process!

My intention this year was to put together an EP of five or so familiar, traditional (read: in the public domain) songs to send out to family and friends along with a card as kind of a "musical Christmas card." Well, three songs into the project it was obvious that to do it right was going to take way more time and effort than I could afford.

Positive result: three songs recorded that will make a nice basis for the project when I start it again next year. Assuming I can get it together to begin in September! I did have a couple dozen requests for a Christmas guitar CD at my coffee shop gig so I know the project is worthwhile from a cash perspective. Oh well.

Musical trends in the last year, or at least ones I've observed:

1.)  Acoustic guitar is more firmly entrenched in the music scene than its been since the days of the folk music and folk/rock movements of the 1960s and early 70s. Yes, teenage boys still have their "guitar heros" who play pyrotechnic licks on screaming electric guitars but with younger singer-songwriters like John Meyer, Jack Johnson and others doing the bulk of their recording and performing with acoustics, younger beginners are trending toward being "unplugged" now more than I've seen in decades. What a refreshing trend!

2.)  Melding of styles is becoming more common. "Americana" is the new catch-all term for the musical melding of country, old-timey, rock, blues, a touch of jazz and even some latin influences, all played on primarily acoustic instruments or electric instruments with very little ornamentation. I was watching the great movie The Last Waltz the other night, for the hundredth time I think, and it occurred to me that The Band may have been the first "Americana" group, although they didn't call it that of course. I think it is very cool to mix styles and come up with something fresh and new. I hope this trend continues.

3.)  The guitar market is starting to rebound. Whether or not reading about how bad off we were a year ago was a self-fulfilling prophecy is a whole separate discussion, but for whatever reason it seems that people are beginning to buy guitars again. One result has been the prices of good quality used instruments, especially ones by American and Canadian builders are again on the rise. I can't confirm this, but general observation leads me to conclude that good quality used and recent guitar costs about 10% - 20% more than it would have a year ago. Vintage collectables keep going up, no matter what. But if you're considering buying a good used guitar, I think you should do it sooner rather than later. And I'm not just saying that as one who buys and sells guitars - this rise is affecting my buying decisions too.

4.)  Many younger guitarists are looking back to find a good repertoire of music to add to their knowledge base. Why is this? Much of the popular music a few decades ago was very much melody based, whereas that is often not the case today. As much as I respect Dave Matthews' musical abilities, can you actually sing a DM song acapella and have it be recognizable? Unlikely. I could cite many other examples. But a Beatles tune or a Crosby, Stills and Nash favorite, or a classic by Paul Simon stands by itself, musically speaking. The melodies are strong because in many cases the arrangements came later. I suspect that many songwriters today (country music being an exception) begin with a riff or a lick or a chord sequence and then try to insert a melody. That can work sometimes of course but I really don't think that way of writing leads to strong melodies. So many younger plays who are naturally drawn to what they'll be singing with their guitar playing find a wealth of strong melodies in the music of a previous generation. Or am I just sounding like my parents when they described rock music back in the 60s ?!?

5.)  Technological advances have resulted in many, many new devices to make our playing easier and sound better - and there is no end in sight. When you consider that Sgt. Pepper was recorded with equipment that was less sophisticated and much harder to use than the average hand-held digital recorder of today
that retails for less than a hundred dollars, it positively blows the mind. And that is were some of the biggest and most dramatic advances are taking place - in recording technology. For well less than a thousand dollars you can assemble a home studio that will produce recordings of astounding quality. One of the best aspects of the advances are dropping prices. I well remember when digital tuners hit the market. They were unreliable, fragile and expensive, often costing close to $100. Today you can buy an excellent tuner - accurate and durable - for less than $20.

There are many other things that are happening or came to the forefront of acoustic guitar playing in the last year. I can't wait to see what 2011 holds! (maybe a Christmas CD by Yours Truly?!)

Peace & good music,
Gene
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Rating upgrades - is that fossilzed walrus ivory saddle worth it ???

12/19/2010

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We can't leave well enough alone. I don't know about you, but I think I'm like a lot of guitarists in that I'm addicted to tinkering with my supposedly perfect guitar. Time was that you only brought your guitar to the repair shop when something went wrong. That's not the case anymore. Everyone seems to want to fool with their instrument for improved sound, or looks, or both. So what I'm going to do is offer a totally subjective review of various upgrades, rating them on a scale of 1 - 5, with 5 being: Why didn't I think of that before? and 1 being: probably should have spent that money on new tires for the car so I won't crash on my way to the gig!

Pick guard replacement:  A purely cosmetic upgrade of an arguably necessary part. Martin went to all black pick guards some time in the late 1960s. Why, I do not know, but in recent years many guitarists pined for the faux tortoise shell guards used from the 1930s until that point in time. So Martin began putting them back on all their mid to upper level instruments, and the boutique makers followed suit, as did virtually all the makers of imported guitars. My own tastes run toward those type of guards but I would not be adverse to owning, say, a 1969 D-28 with a black guard. Some Martin owners really, really hate the "pixilated" look of some of the new guards - i.e., if you look very closely you can see individual dots in the guards, the result of being generated via some sort of computer generated production process. Some guards are downright ugly in my book, such as the "tiger stripe" ones used on some Gibsons and the pale amber with dark brown splotches type used on certain imported models. I would definitely replace that one if I bought a guitar that had one! The replacement process can be kind of scary as it involves using a hair dryer to loosen the glue holding on the old one and the possibility that the new guard won't quite match the footprint of the old one. Bottom line - I would only do this job out of desperation. Rating: 2 (at best!)

Bone saddle & nut:  This is the single best way I know to improve the sound of virtually any acoustic guitar. You notice I group nut and saddle together. This is because I don't think you realize the benefit if you only do one. This is a job best left to a luthier and depending on the materials used (bone of various animals, even fossilized bone or tusk) it can get kind of pricey. However, if I plan on owning a guitar for a while I view this job as an absolute necessity and I think you will too once you try it. Rating: 5

Bone, Ebony or Tusq bridge pins:  If your guitar has plastic pins, this is an inexpensive way to get somewhat better tone. Best done in conjunction with the above mentioned bone nut and saddle. Just be sure to order the correct size. I have some nice pins available in my store.

Tuning machines:  This is one of the most inconsistent aspects of guitar construction. I am constantly amazed by playing some very nice instruments that come through with mediocre machines and some inexpensive ones that have nice machines. If you're not satisfied with the tuning function of your guitar, this is definitely a good investment. Some of the good names are Grover, Gotoh, Schaller and Waverly. It is a job that you can so yourself with some patience, care and good tools. Rating: 4

Strap button on neck heel:  Most new guitars come through with one already and every guitar I've owned for the last 15 years or so has or had one. However, there is a lot of debate about whether or not this affects the value. One well respected store owner in Pennsylvania won't even look at a used guitar that has one. But my guess is that he is in a small minority. If I had a 1950 Gibson or Martin that didn't have one, I'd think twice about doing it - that tiny hole that needs to be drilled will most certainly affect the value of a true vintage, collectible guitar. In the real world of playing though being able to attach the strap at that point rather than up at the head is a no-brainer. Rating: 4

Custom inlay:  I once had a very nice 1970 D-28 that I wanted to make unique and recognizable should it ever be stolen so I had diamond and snowflake inlays done on the neck (side note: if you live in New England and ever happen to see that guitar for sale, please contact me! I would dearly love to get that one back, mostly for sentimental reasons). Not many people do custom inlays on their guitars but generally I do think it adversely affects the value of a higher end instrument. Your call on this - if you like the way it looks, who cares? Rating: 3

A better case:  Although not technically an upgrade to your guitar, this is a great idea if the one you have is in bad repair or you're only using a gig bag. Not only will your guitar be better protected but this is one upgrade that almost always adds to the overall value of your guitar, assuming it's included in any sale. Rating: 5


Electric pick-up:  Another of the options that are disdained by some but viewed as a necessity by others. I tend to break it down into vintage vs. non-vintage guitars. No matter how much I wanted to use it in a professional setting, I would never add a pick-up to a pre-1970 Martin, Gibson or Guild. Doing so would surely make those guitars lose value, even if I used the fanciest and priciest pick-up on the market. However, I pretty much always have a K&K Pure Western mini (the BEST sounding passive pick-up on the market!) put in any guitar I'm going to gig with if that guitar is fairly recent. Part of it has to do with the wonderful, pure and true sound I get from the K&K and a decent little tube pre-amp but also because using a pick-up with an acoustic allows much, much more control over my sound when I'm playing out. Playing into a mic is just too restrictive and prone to feedback.  Rating: 4.9 (assuming we're talking about a non-vintage guitar)

So there you are. Obviously, these are only my opinions but they are opinions based on better than 40 years of owning guitars.

Peace & good music,
Gene


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Thoughts on exclusivity, melding of styles, and "good music"

12/15/2010

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"There's no accounting for taste," my grandmother used to say. I finally figured out what she meant when I reached something approaching adulthood. In the world of music you can see examples of that statement just about everywhere. There's an inherent danger in that statement though because the thinly veiled implication is that the person saying it has better "taste" - whatever the heck that is - than the person who is being commented on. 

What we like in music is directly related to our experience, I think. Most of us don't think it through that much but our upbringing, what we were exposed to and how we reacted to that exposure count heavily in our tastes in music. It is natural that we compare things - that's a survival skill on the most basic level. But when ego rears its ugly head and we go another step and verbalize the value judgements we've reached, the results can't be good. My goodness, Gene, how preachy you are! But I'm speaking from personal experience and I wasted a lot of valuable time cutting myself off from music that I didn't think as "good."

When I was young my dad would often play big band jazz records and try to tell how great the various bands and players were. That was because he was a superb drummer and had toured with a number of bands in the late 1940s and he absolutely loved jazz. As with most kids when they reach a certain age, there was no way I was going to admit anything good about my parent's music. It was not until I reached my late teens and began listening to the wonderful blues/swing band Roomful of Blues that I began to understand what my dad was talking about. Live and learn!

Through those years I also attended the Newport Folk Festival (I've talked about that in this space before) and the music I thought was the absolute worst was what I thought of as country music. I remember walking past one of the small stages where a couple hundred people were listening to a group of very serious looking guys in cowboy hats, suits and string ties. I couldn't get away from there quickly enough. It was Bill Monroe, the legendary Father of Bluegrass. I had the same reaction to Flatt and Scruggs, and the White Family - legends all, mostly gone now. I am not a huge fan of bluegrass but I still kick myself for not stopping and listening.

Then in the mid 1970s a musician friend kept telling me about a group he had heard a few times at a place called Paul's Mall, now long gone. He gave me a copy of their record and I listened. Nah, I said, I'm not interested in hearing them. That music is just too basic and I don't hear any energy. At the time I was listening to a lot of what was called jazz fusion, which featured pyrotechnical guitar solos of great complexity. So I didn't go to Paul's Mall with my friend. The group was Bob Marley and the Wailers. I thought reggae was lame music played by stoners. When I took my first trip to the Caribbean about 15 years ago, I finally "got it." Not seeing Marley is right up there for me with not hearing Sinatra or Elvis live, although I think Marley's reach was and is much, much more significant and important than either of those two. My closed mind denied me a huge opportunity, now long gone.

That trip to the Caribbean also opened my eyes to what we now call World Music. Paul Simon introduced many people to the concept of the melding of styles with his Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints albums, which I love. Great, great stuff.

So now I don't discount much out-of-hand. Well, perhaps hip-hop. My son Matt keeps telling me I need to open my mind to this type of music but I still can't get past the violence and drug use that some of this type of music seems to glorify. But maybe I'll come around.

My point is this. You don't have to like a certain type of music to find something of value in it. That value might be a new way of approaching the guitar or lyrics that convey an honest representation of what it's like to be a member of a society that is way beyond your experience. It might be a fresh way of combining totally different styles of music. All you have to do is get past that issue of what constitutes "good music."

And if that sounds too preachy, so be it.

Peace & good music,
Gene
  
    
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Part 3: Fingerboards, bridges and tops...but first a special announcement!

12/12/2010

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Well, after mucho frustration and knowledge gained I'm happy to announce that my web store is now LIVE! Please check out www.capecodacousticsstore.com and tell me what you think. What you'll see is just the beginning; I will be adding lots of new products in the near future, along with cool stuff like video reviews of various gear. As I say on the homepage, what I'm trying to do is offer guitar-related gear (and fine guitars too) that I have used and found to be both high quality AND a great value. If there is anything you'd like to see on the site or products you'd like me to offer, please let me know.

Now back to examining wood as it's used in guitar construction.

To the untrained eye of a non player the neck of a guitar appears to be one long piece of wood but of course it is not. Except for a very few electric guitars like the Fender Stratocasters with maple necks, guitar necks consist of two or more pieces. There are a few reasons for this. All modern guitars have some sort of metal or graphite brace between the main part of the neck (the mahogany I talked about last time) and the much thinner, flat portion with the frets, which we know as the fingerboard. It is much easier for the guitar maker to bevel out the mahogany, place the brace in, then glue a fingerboard in place than to try to drill a long hole in a single piece of wood and then push in the brace.

The two woods used almost always for fingerboards are rosewood and the more expensive ebony. Some guitar makers including Martin have begun using man-made materials for fingerboards on their less expensive instruments. You have to look very, very closely to determine a Martin has a "micarta" fingerboard (although you can always check the list of materials used via their web site). The non wood fingerboards I've played all look and feel just fine - very hard and dense material is used - but some purists object to something other than wood being used. I guess part of me agrees but if it means companies can keep some of their guitars at a more reasonable cost by doing so, more power to them.

Rosewood works well for fingerboards. It is hard wood but is easier to work with than ebony and is less prone to cracking over the long run. Some guitarists prefer the slightly softer feel of rosewood to ebony too. It looks quite beautiful and ages well.

Ebony is the premier wood for fingerboards but it is more expensive than ever, as fine hardwoods become harder to find. There have been a few unfortunate attempts to use different varieties of ebony including something called "striped ebony" which in some cases bled into the tops of guitars. This didn't happen on all the guitars made with the stuff (primarily in the 1990s) but it happened often enough for makers to give up on it.

You will also see some fingerboards that are "bound" with white plastic (in the old days it was ivory). It makes a very nice look but if you're considering a guitar with a bound neck, know that a re-fret job will cost you twice as much as with a guitar with an unbound neck. This is because the luthier must carefully shape the ends of the frets to fit over the binding.

Speaking of such things, you will certainly see some amazing inlay jobs on fingerboards. Most "regular" inlay consists of small round or diamond shaped pieces of mother of pearl (or plastic on cheaper guitars) but inlay is often where a custom guitar maker can really express his creative energy. My feeling is that it can go way overboard at times however. As much as I love Martins, the top of the line 45-series instruments have just too much bling for me, but of course there is no accounting for taste and many guitarists absolutely love guitars with tons of inlay. It has no effect on sound or play-ability though, assuming a good, careful job was done.

Bridges are very similar to fingerboards in materials with rosewood and ebony being most common. You will see some more exotic woods used for bridges occasionally, stuff like African Blackwood. Bridges must be made of hard, dense material to transmit the vibration of the string to the top of the guitar. The micarta stuff is used for bridges too by Martin, and many, many of the inexpensive guitars coming out of Korea, China and other parts of the Far East use plastic, which is often colored with "grain" like lines to imitate wood. I do think that wood bridges are superior to plastic ones in terms of sound.

Tops of acoustic guitars are a very complicated subject and the area where most of the luthiers' skills come into play. Usually made of spruce of some sort (Sitka, Adirondack, German, Italian) tops of guitars must be sawn, glued, braced and finished with the utmost care. This is where the tension of the strings becomes a source of wonderful resonance or destructive power. Spruce is a relatively soft wood, which is why it is used: those vibrations are transmitted through it very well and the top must vibrate to produce the sounds we love. Straight grain must be used to evenly transmit vibration although some guitarists love the look of "bear claw" in their guitar tops - wavy, almost 3-D variations in certain places on the top, as if a bear sharpened his claws on the tree from which the wood was cut! Whether it has any effect on the sound is open to debate but a top with a lot of "bear claw" is highly desirable on an expensive guitar.

The wood of the top should be "bookmatched" - this means two pieces that were cut in sequence, then glued together down the center so the grain variations are identical on either side of the top.

On inexpensive guitars it was once common to use laminated wood for tops and although much easier to work with and less expensive than solid wood, most players agree that guitars with laminated tops don't sound anywhere near as good as ones that are solid. That being said, there is a small but vocal group who are obsessed with early/mid 1970s Yamahas, which had laminated tops and these folks claim they sound every bit as good as guitars with solid tops. I can tell you that back then I had access to new Yamahas for my students and I sold well over 100 of them. Maybe, maybe one in twenty sounded ..... pretty OK. Not great, but pretty OK. But hey, what do I know? Today, "red label" Yammies from that era are bringing 4 - 6 times what they sold for when new! No accounting for taste, as I said earlier!

Some guitars are made with cedar tops. This is an interesting wood to use because it is somewhat softer than spruce and vibrates more, which is why it is often used on very high-end classical guitars. With steel strings, which exert much more pressure than nylon strings, extra care must be taken by the guitar maker to brace cedar tops in such a way that they can resonate well but do not crack or warp. The Taylor company has some beautiful guitars that fit this description.

So that's it as far as wood goes. I'm sure if you asked around or did some research you would find opinions that vary from the ones I've expressed in my last three entries. But just like the wood itself, there is a lot of variety in how players feel about the stuff that makes our guitars such magical things!

Peace & good music,
Gene

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Part 2: Guitar Necks: what you need to know

12/8/2010

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Strings on a steel string acoustic guitar put a tremendous amount of stress on the instrument and wood being a natural material, that stress has to be handled with attention to the fact that wood is basically unstable. The challenge that makers face is simple and at the same time tremendously complex: how to allow the vibration of the string to be transmitted using the lightest materials and bracing possible and at the same time maintain structural integrity. Not an easy thing, for sure!

The three parts of a guitar that carry the stress most are the neck, front and bridge. Guitar makers have settled on a few types of wood for those parts based on literally centuries of trial and error. The neck may be the most important.


Picture
This is the back of the neck of my Martin 0000-28H. The neck is made of mahogany (that small diamond shaped section near the top is called a volute - it gives the neck a bit more strength at the point where the angle of the wood changes). Mahogany is by far the most popular wood used for necks because of its nice straight grain and resistance to warping or twisting. Some makers use laminated sections of wood, which may be even stronger than a single piece of mahogany.

In the last few years good quality mahogany has become harder to find for the makers and because of the flattened shape of the top where the tuners are installed and that slight angle so the strings will press firmly on the nut, a much larger piece of mahogany is required than one would think looking at the long, narrow shape of a guitar neck. This has forced makers to make compromises. Martin makes some guitars with what players refer to as "wings" : small pieces of flat mahogany bonded to each side of the head. I've heard that this small alteration saves something like 25% of the wood needed to make a single piece neck. Although it is generally recognized that the use of wings has no affect on the sound or the strength of the guitar, some players object to the look of them - although Martin goes to great lengths to stain the wood and match the grain so that the wings are not obvious. Wings are a big subject of discussion on the guitar forums such as the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum and and The Acoustic Guitar Forum and to my mind, the jury is still out on that subject. I do know that Martins with wings are often less desirable on the used guitar market. Time will tell whether that will always be the case.

Taylor Guitars often gets around this by using a "finger joint" at the point where the angle changes between the head and fingerboard. Personally, I don't like the way that looks at all and it might even be a deal breaker for me if I was considering buying a Taylor. Not all Taylors have the finger joint however; some are a single piece, some have a tapered oval shaped joint. I have read about both types of joints failing on a few Taylors but the company must feel this is not a big problem because they continue to use those solutions to wood shortage.

Some companies have begun using a man made composite for the necks of some of their less expensive guitars, including Martin with their new and very popular 1-series instruments. They also use it in their popular travel guitars. They call the stuff HPL and while it is quite different in appearance and some have complained about the weight of necks made with the stuff it is apparently all but impervious to changes in humidity and is much stronger than mahogany. Does it affect the sound? Most say no. This may very well be the future of less expensive acoustic guitars.

Speaking of the affects of temperature and humidity, although mahogany is extremely strong and quite durable, it can be prone to changes as the seasons progress. This is somewhat annoying but should not be a huge cause of alarm if your "plays like butter" guitar suddenly has strings that are much higher off the fingerboard, or worse, buzzes begin to appear as you play because the action is too low. In most cases these things can be dealt with by turning the inset screw mechanism that will be found either just under the upper bout inside the body or under a plastic plate up on the head. What happens is a long rod that is installed between the fingerboard and the neck will slightly change the angle of the neck- this is called the "relief." A big, big word of caution here. Keeping in mind that turning in a clockwise direction will result in less relief (lower the action) and turning counter clockwise will do the opposite, ALWAYS  loosen the strings, look down the neck to get an idea of the relief before adjustment, then make about a quarter to a half turn, tighten up the strings and check the effect. If it isn't what you want, go through the process again. Resist the temptation to give it a few cranks right off the bat because it is highly unlikely you'll accomplish what you set out to do and you could potentially do severe or even fatal damage to the neck. If you have any trepidation about the process, bring your guitar to an accomplished repair person.


Sometimes though a more serious neck issue can develop. If a neck "goes out of set," the action will get higher and higher until it is virtually unplayable, the result of that steel rod not giving the degree of support it should and the wood reacting to the stress of the strings. You can make a basic determination if this is happening by looking down the neck. If you see an abrupt change of angle at some point, rather than a curve, it could very well mean a net reset is called for. This is a big decision because a neck reset is essentially open heart surgery for a guitar - the neck will have to be removed, the rod reset and the heel may have to be sanded or shaved to get the right angle again and low action. Luthiers can charge anywhere from a couple hundred to $400 or more for this job depending on the complexity. You then have to decide whether your guitar is worth that investment. For what its worth, guitars with a mortise and tenon neck are less expensive to reset than ones with a dovetail joint. This is because M&T neck attachments usually are nothing more than a large bolt that is hiding under a plate of wood inside the guitar. It's worth considering this job carefully - before I even knew what a neck reset was, many years ago, I traded my first Martin, a D-35, for a ...... gulp...... Yamaha because I thought my D-35 had a warped neck! Live and learn.

Next time we'll look at fingerboards and bridges.

Peace & good music,
Gene

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A Primer on Wood: Part 1, guitar bodies

12/6/2010

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I'm often asked by students and others who hear me play and are guitarists about the different woods that are used to construct guitars. This is a huge subject and players with experience often have very definite opinions about the relative merits of different types of wood. The two qualities that are most often discussed are tonal qualities and durability. I'm going to plunge in and offer my thoughts based on owning more than fifty acoustics over the years and playing probably twice that many. As with most things that are purely subjective you may very well hear entirely different opinions and that's fine. Ultimately the choice is yours.

The three most common types of wood used for the backs and sides of acoustic guitars are rosewood, mahogany and maple. Each has strengths and weaknesses, both in tone quality and structural integrity. I'll start with rosewood.



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This is the back of my primary guitar, a Martin 0000-28H. It is made of East Indian rosewood, which is the choice of virtually all guitar makers these days who make guitars from rosewood. Time was that rosewood from Brazil was used but this became scarce and very expensive around the late 1960s when the government of that country decided to forbid the export of log-length, uncut rosewood. Guitar companies were unwilling to use rosewood that they couldn't cut themselves to ensure quality control so they turned to rosewood from East India. Today you can still buy Brazillian rosewood new guitars but they are incredibly expensive. Why? Because of its scarcity and beauty of course but also because many guitarists feel it has the best sound in terms of complexity and resonance.

That is fairly subjective but one thing is for sure. ALL Brazillian rosewood guitars by Martin, Gibson and others built before 1970 have shot up in price radically in the last few years. Some sound great, some are good but not spectacular. There are other factors involved beyond the materials, things like bracing, top wood grain, finish and a few other things.

Generally, compared to mahogany and maple, rosewood guitars sound much complex with subtle overtones and often a pleasing, soft "waa-waa-waa" sound that sustains for quite a long time. Rosewood is also quite beautiful with various shades of chocolate brown. If there is some "swirl" in modern East Indian rosewood as was common in the Brazilian stuff, so much the better at least in terms of value.

That's "the good." The bad is that rosewood is much more prone to cracking if not properly humidified and the tonality and overall sound can change quite radically on a seasonal basis if you live somewhere with warm, humid summers and cold, dry winters. Also, rosewood rapidly loses its beautiful tonal complexity as the strings go dead. I've heard guitars that cost many, many thousands of dollars that sounded awful with strings that were old but gloriously came to life when new strings were put on. As an example, when I was recording with fiddler Marie Rhines back in the 1970s, during one two-week series of recording sessions I changed the strings on my D-28 four times! And I don't even have particularly sweaty hands - I just wanted my Martin to sound its best for the recording.

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Here's am image of one of my recent guitars, a new Martin D-15, which is made out of mahogany. Or is it? Mahogany, like some kinds of rosewood is becoming scarce and many guitar makers are choosing to go with a wood called sapele, which is virtually identical to mahogany. Martin has been pretty cagey about whether some of their guitars are made of sapele or mahogany although very recently they began producing a line with the suffix "M" to indicate that they were in fact mahogany.

I can't tell any difference in the ways that matter, although in some cases mahogany with a gloss finish tends to have more of a quilted look that is quite attractive, while sapele is pretty even and uniform.

Mahogany is less expensive than rosewood and while some might argue this statement, mahogany does not have the complexity of sound that you find with rosewood. It is preferred by many guitarists however because the tone is even, easily controlled and mahogany guitars record very well because those overtones aren't something a recording engineer has to contend with via equalization. Mahogany has a nice punchy sound and usually has better treble than rosewood, although that is not always the case. It is also more durable, less prone to cracking and less affected by changes in humidity. Strings last longer too - unless you happen to have very sweaty hands, a set of strings will sound good three to four times as long on a mahogany guitar compared to rosewood.

Unfortunately, even true vintage mahogany guitars do not have the value of similar rosewood models, even by the same manufacturer. This doesn't mean they are bad instruments - far from it - they just are not generally as desirable in the vintage, used guitar market.

Picture
Lastly we have maple. This is the back of one of the guitars I presently have for sale, a Guild CV-2. Maple is absolutely striking in appearance and as with this guitar, is often has an almost 3-D sheen. I think the reason maple is much less popular than the other two body materials has to do with tone. Sadly, many maple guitars are pretty dull specimens, sound wise, with very little resonance, complexity, sustain or volume (that is NOT the case with this one by the way - it is possibly the best sounding and playing maple guitar I've ever had the pleasure to play - GREAT treble, deep bass, sustain and just as loud as any guitar of its size). So why do companies make maple bodied guitars? The looks, for sure, but they are extremely durable, unaffected by all but the most radical changes in humidity and they sound wonderful when strummed.
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Then there some more exotic variations of guitar bodies, such as these two combining two types of wood. The one in the case is a Martin OMC-OGTE and the one standing up is a Takamine OO size. The Martin has mahogany with a center wedge of rosewood and the Tak has rosewood with a center section of quilted maple. Both are very striking and beautiful. I don't think the combinations have much effect on sound (the Martin sounds like what it mostly is: mahogany, and the Takamine sounds like its primarily rosewood body. But they sure are pretty and for me at least a pleasing look counts for a lot.

Next time we'll take a look at necks, fronts, fingerboards and bridges.

Peace & good music,
Gene
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Innovations: My Three Favorite!

12/2/2010

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Things are changing rapidly in the world of guitar accessories and ways to improve both our overall playing experience and sound of our instruments. New and in most cases, less expensive alternatives to items that have been around for a long time are at our disposal. I think this is GREAT and the best part may be that new and improved gear seems to appear on a weekly basis. Here are three things that I know have improved my playing experience and if you don't use them, will improve yours too.


Electronic tuners:  It wasn't long ago that guitarists had to totally depend on their own ears to keep their guitars in tune - what a radical thought for younger players, eh? Whether it involved a tuning fork, pitch pipe, a fixed pitch instrument to tune to like a harmonica or a piano, of just tuning the strings to each other, it was all about how good you were at differentiating between pitches very close together. An inexact science at best!


Today we have a huge array of inexpensive digital tuners that are inexpensive, accurate and easy to use. For dinosaurs like me, the idea that you don't even have to actually
hear the guitar to get it in tune is absolutely revolutionary! My point is: today there is NO REASON to play with a guitar that is out of tune. If you don't already own one (or would like to try a design that is different than the one you already own), this is a great item to ask Santa for!


Acoustic guitar pick-ups/Acoustic amps:  I remember my first "acoustic guitar pick-up." It was nothing more than a humbucker designed for use on electric guitar, with a spring mechanism to hold it in the sound hole, and a wire that dangled off the side. It was awkward to use, scratched the edge of the sound hole on an expensive guitar, had the annoying habit of falling into the guitar, and most importantly, sounded like someone had stuffed my guitar full of socks. Yuck. 


Then came the first generation of piezo-type pick-ups the worked by amplifying the vibration of the instrument. They sounded abrasive and "squawky" and were prone to horrible, self generated feedback just about the time you went to the bathroom between sets and the guitar was sitting in its stand on stage. 


But the companies that made pick-ups and many newcomers realized that what guitarists wanted was quite simple: an acoustic pick-up that just made their guitars louder, with a natural sound and minimal feedback issues. The result was the new generation of pick-ups, some pre-installed in guitars from manufacturers and some available as add-ons. Most of them sound terrific and their sound is easily tweaked to get just the quality you're looking for. Some featuring "modeling" to make your Martin D-28 sound like a, say, Gibson J-200. Amazing. And priced reasonably too!


As far as amps go, designers are coming up with wonderful sounding units. We no longer have to depend on amps designed for electric guitars (high impedance; prone to feedback) or having to plug into a big PA system. There is no question that a microphone, especially a good quality one, will always give the most natural sound if you need more volume but mics are very restrictive and must placed absolutely right for the best possible sound. And then there's that feedback issue...


There are dozens of amps on the market that are specifically designed for acoustic guitar. I use a
Carvin AG-100D (with a tube pre-amp) and I love the sound it gives me. The Roland AC-33, -60, and -90 are good choices too, as are some of the amps from Fishman. If I could afford it I would buy the Bose L1, which is an absolutely amazing amp that sounds incredible and features zero feedback issues, even if the sound column is placed directly behind the guitarist. 


Bone nuts, saddles and bridge pins:  My last fave items are decidedly low tech compared to the previous two. All acoustic guitarists want their prized guitars to sound as good as possible and the best way I know to make this happen is by replacing the standard plastic saddles, pins and nuts with bone ones. Some very expensive guitars still come through with plastic, which amazes me. If you own one of these - check the manufacturer's spec sheet to be sure - buy and install a new bone saddle and bridge pins to start, and if you don't mind spending just a few dollars, take the guitar to an established luthier and have him or her replace the nut with bone. Bone is a much denser material than plastic, therefor it transmits the vibration of the strings better, which lets the instrument vibrate more - and produce more resonance and volume.


You may have to sand down the under side of the new bone saddle a bit, which is easy to do but do a tiny bit at a time and re-check the string height often. I always do this with old strings that I'm going to be changing anyway. Bridge saddles should NEVER be glued in, by the way.


You might also want to try a man-made material called
Tusq, which many people feel is just as good as bone. 


You'll find a great selection of all these items at
Stewart-McDonald and through Bob Colosi guitar supplies. 


Peace & good music,
Gene



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