Monday, April 21, 2014

Tales from the Tanglewood

After receiving an unexpected scholarship bonus after my first year in University, I received a cheque for around $300 USD. With it, I purchased a Koa Pili Koko from a shop in Hawaii. It was a nice little instrument with a strange design decision. Instead of using a plastic saddle as many companies do, they used a rosewood saddle, which fairly quickly expanded in the humidity of Taiwan, splitting the bridge.

In my effort to get a new bridge placed, the ukulele got delayed for months and the guitar shop owner was eager to make it up to me.

As a result, when he got a pair of dealer's special guitars direct from the factory, he offered one to me at whatever price I wanted. I was not familiar with the brand, but it sure sounded nice. Fantastic separation of notes, sweet trebles and bass that feels like a punch in the chest.

So I paid $350 for it. And when I got home, I googled it and my jaw hit the floor. Prices showed up between $1300 and $1550 USD. Alright.
TW1000-SR-CE-H. Top of the line flagship model. Engelmann Spruce top. Indian Rosewood sides and back.

It's surprisingly heavy and I suspect that the woods chosen are not actually the highest grade wood in the batch as advertised - especially with a few imperfections in the top and finish, but it's still an excellent guitar.

Also, the original spec indicates a Fishman Sonitone, but it did not have a pickup. I had saved enough money on the initial buy, so I splurged and installed a Fishman Ellipse system. Piezo under the saddle and internal mic inside the body.

Since installing the pickup, the tone has suffered a little. It sounds a little stifled, has lost a good chunk of the bass resonance and the guitar picked up a couple of wolf notes. The Fishman representative for Taiwan did the install for me and I paid extra for that, but it did lose a bit of the punch and glisten that it had before, so it's a bit of a disappointment. Still, as time goes on, the guitar does seem to improve in sound quality.

Having a guitar with the pickup is fun and gives me a chance to explore some different styles and the Fishman blender

Saturday, April 19, 2014

The Beginning

What do I know about classical guitars? What can I do with a classical guitar?

Two fundamentally different questions, but each addressing a different area of skill. Personally, I tend to lean towards the area of "knowing stuff" rather than being able to "do stuff" - something I often wish were not true.
However, this blog will be a storehouse of my musings, grumblings and ramblings on the subject, primarily as a place for me to keep notes on the subject for my own reference. 
If you are a visitor, I hope you find something interesting.

My guitars: 
My Replicant
Smallman Replica (Chinese)
Double top, double back. Two layers of cedar with balsa/carbon fiber lattice bracing. Indian Rosewood sides and carved arch shaped back. Since this is a replica of the Smallman and Sons guitars, they are not 'all solid', but they do use rosewood for the inner and outer layers.
(link to article about the guitar - use a picture with a caption.)
http://classicalguitarnotebook.blogspot.tw/2014/04/the-gold-standard-and-chinese-copy.html

Cheap Gold
Valencia Classical
Solid mahogany top, laminated mahogany curly koa sides and back. Bought from a shop who had brought it in as part of a batch lot of damaged and factory reject guitars, this guitar has really surprised me. It's only an $80-90 guitar, but to have brought it to a store here, it probably would have retailed for about $119-$129 $139 equivalent. I paid around $75. I haven't been able to find any defect in it though.

link to article about the guitar - take a picture after tuning it up and putting on new strings.

Tanglewood Two-Off
Tanglewood Two-Off - TW-1000-SR-CE-H
All solid, Spruce top with Indian Rosewood sides and back. Based on the TW-1000 model, these were made by the factory owner for the local guitar shop owner when I lived in Sha Lu. Really nice guitar. I bought it without electronics and put a Fishman Ellipse dual source pickup in it (mic and Piezo).


I also have a Koa Pili Koko tenor uke, a generic factory spruce top tenor uke, an 8 string tenor uke and a pretty nice tenor uke with spruce top and zebrawood with a handmade wooden inlay on the back (part of a pair, where the other one was sent to my sister).

I also have a cheap 5-string cello made in China. The sound isn't very good and it's really, really hard to play because the bridge is *very* wrong for it, but one day I'll get back into it and get a new bridge working for it.

Cheap Gold

It's amazing what $100 will get you.

I had been looking at guitars at all different price levels and actually had already purchased my Tanglewood already when the shop I used to frequent told me about a batch lot that they had picked up at a factory rejects auction in China. Two guitars were worth looking at.

Somewhat visible but not excessive
One was an unbranded cedar classical that had a lovely soft tone with a tiny bit of a modern smoky jazz feel. There was a moderately visible defect in the top that had been repaired. The other was a "Valencia" brand (not even remotely affiliated with actual city of Valencia in Spain).

Both had solid tops and laminate sides/back and were priced fairly well, but not really that much lower than normal retail. Further, the Valencia was mahogany - a wood I usually don't like since it is far too bright for my taste and usually sounds plasticky. The finish was satin over raw, unfilled wood and quite rough. It would catch on long-sleeved shirts and just didn't look very nice. But look as I might, I could not find a defect in it anywhere, so I figured it was an OK guitar at a decent price that might be suitable to take outside or as a beater guitar.

I preferred the sound of the cedar and the price was 2/3 that of the Valencia, so it was clearly the better deal, but I decided to persuade my friend to buy it and I bought the Valencia. I asked nicely and for a few extra bucks, I got an old used bone saddle from the shop.

Too bright? Yep. Plasticky? Yep. Maybe the bone saddle would fix it.

So I took it home and sanded down the saddle. I was thinking about taking a bit of sandpaper to the surface to bring down some of the sharp bits when I had an idea. I grabbed a few vitamin E capsules and rubbed them into the surface with my hands. To my tremendous surprise, that dull, lifeless satin finish revealed a brilliant flame pattern in the wood of the sides and back when the oil brought up a sheen*. Ugly Duckling indeed!

A few hours later and the saddle was in place to reveal another transformation. The sound went from plasticky to crisp. The sustain suddenly woke up and the tone became full and balanced. As the oil hardened, the sound just kept getting better and better.

Not long after, I stumbled upon a pack of Hannabach Gold strings. They were the most expensive strings in the store - at almost a quarter what I paid for the guitar - and knowing that classical strings usually last a long time, I figured it would be worth it.

And indeed they were. The Golds brought something the guitar had been missing. Warmth. And this was no ordinary warmth. This was warmth like butter melting on homemade pancakes on a sleepy, sunny Sunday morning, cinnamon on freshly baked banana bread and thick wool sweaters while sipping mulled apple cider around a crackling fireplace on a late autumn evening.

I used this guitar in my attempt to do what I felt was impossible. I had been looking for an extra guitar at the time because I was so taken by the Koyunbaba Suite and so overwhelmed by the skill required that I felt that in a million years, I could never, ever learn it and play it. Impossible!

Truthfully, I had not actually learned to play a single song or piece yet, even on my folk guitar. Just messing around with chords and stuff.

It was on again and off again with the Koyunbaba, but slowly and surely, as time moves along, I have learned the first three movements and have even gained such familiarity that I can play most of it with my eyes closed. Each time playing has become a chance to tell a story, not just "play a song". Repeating sections are played as "the bleating of a sheep" or "the echo of the voice of a bleating sheep from other nearby mountains", or "the sound of a voice in a memory both cherished and painful". Progress through the movements represents a journey from memory to angst to being overwhelmed and finally a descent into madness and a leap from a cliff into a few moments of final reflection.

You know, depending on my mood at the time...

The Valencia literally sits at my right hand, closest to me when I sit at my computer, where I spend much of my spare time and where I spend most of my guitar practicing time. It is far, far cheaper than any other instrument I own, yet it has the strongest emotional connection, with a rich, full sound, a fantastic journey from tepid to epic and the ability to literally bring me to tears as I play one of the most engaging pieces of guitar music ever written.

*Curious thing. In researching this, I discovered that the model was a CG Ltd 2. Which was a $140 guitar with laminated curly koa sides and back. So that explains the figure on the sides. That makes it something like the guitar equivalent of a 'gourmet' burger at MacDonalds... 30% off! It might not be top shelf, but it's filling and still manages to taste pretty good.

The Gold Standard and the Chinese Copy


John Williams and his Smallman
Some people put Bream at the top, while others prefer Williams. Personally, I much prefer Bream's passionate playing and delightful character. But he mostly played conventional instruments, made by highly skilled master builders. To get a high quality sound from instruments like that takes patience, wise selection and a budget far, far beyond my reach.

However, Williams uses Smallman guitars and since their design has become something of a revolution in the world of guitars, the Chinese economic boom has resulted in good quality copied instruments that have a similar sound.


One day when I'm rich and famous (or far more likely, when I'm old and have decided that there won't be anything better to spend my modest savings on), I would love to get a high quality European instrument chosen with care, insight and an expert hand. But for now, I'm far from an expert, so I chose instead to get a decent guitar capable of a good clean sound that is at least nominally capable of the same type of tone produced by John Williams.

For me, that was my Chinese replicant.

My Replica (with Hannabach Golds)The real deal. A genuine Smallman.

Lattice bracing
The Good:

Yes, it does indeed have the same crisp, tight sound that you might hear on a typical recording of John Williams. When I was trying to learn Asturias Leyenda, I listened to it on YouTube many times, but never really came even close to resembling the sound (the grand location it was recorded in probably didn't do me any favors). But with this guitar, it can indeed have that same precise, clean, bell-like tone.

The Smallman is often described as having lots of clean volume, well defined bass and mids and shimmery highs. This guitar absolutely does that. To be fair, it probably doesn't do it as well as the genuine article, but it's still pretty darned respectable. It can be gentle or brusque, crisp or smooth. Playing anything between the 9th and 15th frets is jaw-dropping. Sympathetic resonance goes on for ages and the harmonic overtones are rich and sweet.

It might not be worth $20,000-50,000 USD, but it's certainly head and shoulders above any guitar I've ever played (up to around $4000 in the shops).

The Bad:
It lacks the fit and polish of an experienced, top level guitar builder. Heck, the fret finishing is worse than on my ~$100 "Valencia" and it is actually one of the more difficult classical guitars to play that I've ever tried. I've had the action adjusted twice at the shop and it is susceptible to fret buzz and just isn't low enough for quick playing beyond the 7th fret. Tall frets also make it easy for the fingers to slide or roll off the string - worse if your hands are sweaty. I often keep thinking that I want to lower all the frets around 0.5mm, but I don't have the experience to make that much of a costly decision, so I choose to just deal with it and try to adapt. I'm sure it will benefit my playing in the end anyhow.

This is all splitting hairs though. This is a factory made guitar and it is really nice absolutely everywhere. There are zero cosmetic flaws and it sounds really, really good.


Endangered Brazillian Rosewood on the real deal.
Mine only has Indian Rosewood.
The Ugly:
Well this is certainly an overstatement. I was already nitpicking just to find something "bad" about it. So a more fair subtitle would probably be "The Slightly-Less-Than-Stunning-Beauty". Maybe a bit like complaining that Cindy Crawford's eyelashes are a different number on each eye or that the Italian leather in the Ferrari you just bought tends to make your legs sweat in the summer.

The sound of this guitar is very well suited to Williams. It could never really be said to be 'warm' and its personality is at best a little distant. I'm going to try some Hannabach Golds on it to see if that warms it up, but I don't really expect much. It's a bit like using fine crystal instead of normal plates and cups. It can sound like it belongs in a concert hall, but it's not the tool you would choose to tell a story of love, passion, betrayal or sorrow. It is all about performance and playing something that 'sounds nice'.

If you want to play for emotional impact, it's probably not the best choice.

Looks good. Sounds good. Win-win.
Since my playing style tends to be heavy on emotion bordering on the cliche and low on 'pristine perfection', I have never found a strong emotional connection to the instrument, nor to the music being played. On the contrary, it has been a fantastic tool for me to help calm my emotions and focus on a mentally challenging task.

At the height of my proficiency with the Koyunbaba Suite, I have actually been so moved by the music played on my cheap "Valencia" that I was actually brought to tears in the third movement and could not bring myself to play it again for months (ok, so that probably had something to do with the loss of my grandmother and the fact that the last time I spoke, she had no energy to converse, so I played it to her over the phone while on the other side of the planet). On the flipside, in one of my darker moments battling a severe depressive episode in the middle of the night, I put the light on and amidst roiling emotional turmoil, I was able to sit down and force myself to play Villa Lobos Etude number 1 a few times until I calmed down and regained control.

It's a great guitar. Worth every penny and many more. It might not be like an old, trusted friend, but it's a fantastic tool for making music.
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