"Ability to Resonate"

I've just received a technical paper from a Canadian supplier (one prepared particularly by a research scientist working for a Canadian organization which carries out scientific research for the Canadian forest industry) which compares, among other factors, a variable called the wood's ATR or Ability To Resonate. Interested?

"In the musical-instrument building industry, researchers have established the importance of Modulus of Elasticity (MOE) and wood density (Krzysik 1967, Ono 1983). They have developed the following equation for selecting suitable woods, by calculating the acoustical coefficient; also known as the ability to resonate (ATR):

ATR = Square root of (MOE/ wood density3)"

Furthermore, "The Ability to Resonate is calculated as the square-root of MOE/relative density cubed. The higher the value, the greater the ability to resonate." Essentially it is a function of the wood's elasticity relative to its density. Allow me to share the paper's findings, listing in order the ATR of common instrument soundboard conifers. In order of the species' ability to resonate:

Englemann Spruce picea englemannii    373

Western White Pine pinus monticola      400

White Spruce picea glauca                     404

Sitka Spruce picea sitchensis                  428

Western Red Cedar thuja plicata            463

These were all well above the rest of the tested species, including larches, pines, and cypress. But all were below one species: Rocky Mountain Fir abies lasiocarpa that topped all the rest and came in at a ringing 470. Curious, I looked and found Rocky Mountain Fir to be plentiful and available in log sizes that compared favorably to the other spruces. The list confirms my preference for WR Cedar for classic soundboards but makes me interested in finding out about sources of this plentiful material (prominent across Western US and Canada) that seems at present to be used essentially only for general construction, paper pulp and ...Christmas trees.

Another interesting finding was that samples with middling annual ring width (not too small or too wide) i.e. about 11 per inch showed the greatest ATR among the test samples. Also that wide ring width actually was no more resonant than the very narrow. The paper concludes with "The tonewood industry could benefit from trying other British Canadian species with relatively high ATR values."

I was privileged to have befriended an expert woodcutter in British Columbia that supplied coniferous softwood to musical instrument makers. I asked him if he had abies lasiocarpa in his area. He responded that it was "all over the place" but it was considered "junk wood" because it had a skunk smell and much of it displayed patches of green color. I asked him to send me several split soundboards from the material. He selected the little of it that was perfectly white. I dried it and used it. It was beautiful! It had fine, silky medullary rays and a splendid, whiter-than-white color. The several guitars I made from it were outstanding! I've been using the material ever since, but tragically, my friend died from a stroke, ending both my friendship and my supply of these tops. Anyone who can connect me to a future supply of abies lasiocarpa will receive my undying gratitude.

Minimum adequate structure

I recently received an interesting inquiry:
 I am a senior mechanical engineering major at The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C. Part of my group's senior project entails for us to build a carbon fiber top of a classical guitar and analyze the sound using spectrograms. I was wondering if you had any guidance as to how thick the carbon fiber top should be and why? It would be really helpful to us. I would be really grateful if you had the time to respond. One more question, do you know how to design a bracing system or pick a bracing system for the soundboard? We are struggling to find resources online.

There are almost as many schools of thought regarding bracing systems and patterns as there are luthiers. My approach is different from the great majority of builders. The more common view is that besides limiting the distortion of the tension-loaded soundboard, the particular pattern or scheme molds or “guides” the sound to some undefined ideal, and insist that the traditional “Martin” x-brace arrangement produces the iconic sound on steel string guitars and the “Torres” fan bracing system produces the iconic sound on nylon string Spanish or Classical guitars. Beyond that, most luthiers will add or subtract braces, or create braces that arch over other braces or play with the angles between them or their size and numbers in an effort to reach some sort of elusive or ill-defined sonic goal. The vast majority of builders are however, unschooled in even the most fundamental tenets of wave physics or acoustics, so they are flying blind or expecting to be winners in some sort of sonic lottery.  Others fall into the trap of chasing traditional myths, such as the belief that the soundboard produces all the sound of the instrument [it produces only a limited part] and that it can be divided into bass and treble halves, i.e. that the bass response can be manipulated by altering the braces under the bass strings and the treble response the braces under the treble strings. So the field of guitar making is largely populated by finish carpenters who think they can handily control and mold the resonances of an impossibly complex vibrating system.

My having been mentored by an acoustics scientist has freed me from much of that baggage. Accordingly, my approach has been a stark departure from the norm. My approach is to work within the traditional forms while striving to achieve what I call minimum adequate structure. What that implies is that the guitar is not the creator of the sound, that the true source of all of its musicality is the string's harmonic series. Thus Mario Macaferri's dictum, the string is the heart of the guitar. Indeed,  the guitar actually gets in the way, clouding and diminishing the string’s perfect signal—because it is essentially a cultural artifact, not an optimized energy transformer. The result of this fact is that it is a crude and inefficient energy transformer, succeeding in transforming only a small fraction of the string’s kinetic energy into acoustic energy. The major portion of the string’s kinetic energy is frittered away by the guitar as heat. So the luthier’s dilemma is how to take this fetishized cultural artifact—which due to its traditional form and structure, is inherently a poor acoustic  machine—and create out of it a usable, hopefully desirable, tool for musical expression.

The way I reconcile this dilemma is to try to get as much of the guitar out and away from the strings, that is, to make its impediment to the strings' signal as minimal as possible. I’ve reduced as much mass and structure from the traditional model as is possible, while focusing primarily on the architectural requirements imposed on the structure by string tension. This is what I call minimum adequate structure. If the structure is excessive, the beauty is muffled, limited, impaired. If the structure is inadequate, the guitar will slowly fold under tension and become unplayable.
So my guitars, then, emerge as the inevitable product of my unique approach. You’d have to hear and play them to know what that means exactly. This is admittedly a long answer to your request for bracing information. If you’re using carbon fiber instead of spruce you have to be aware of 1) the different stiffnesses/mass ratios of the two materials 2) the amount of tension stress which is being dumped onto the soundboard and 3) that little detail that luthiers usually ignore, that the distortion of a plate under load increases as a cube of its span. Obviously, the width of the soundboard plate and the actual load at the bridge are crucial factors that must be taken into account if you’re optimizing the system.

Fingerboard Oil, ad infinitum

Here’s what I can advise about fingerboard oil. (Spoiler alert: there is no indisputably “best” fingerboard oil!)

What’s the point of fingerboard oil? Given, it’s to coat the fingerboard surface to slow or impede moisture loss or gain. This is desirable because it slows the fingerboard from shrinking or swelling on the guitar. And since we usually chose hard, glassy woods such as ebony as ideal for fingerboards—ebony being notoriously reactive to ambient humidity changes—sealing is important. Literally anything oily: motor oil, Crisco, 3-in-1, lard, will do the job. But they stink. So there are additional criteria.

If sealing was the sole criteria, lacquering the fingerboard surface would be ideal. Lacquer wouldn’t display the problems that oiling presents, as I detail below. But it makes little sense to lacquer a surface meant to be abraded constantly by the fingers and by the strings. Experience shows that lacquered fingerboard surfaces become flaked and pitted within a year or two of hard use. So, although many Latin-American luthiers lacquer their fingerboards on their folk instruments, it’s generally considered bad practice. You probably have seen what happens to lacquered maple fingerboards on old Tellies and Strats. Coatings become easily uncoated. The only good thing going for lacquer is that it doesn’t attract and hold dust and crud like the other alternatives do.

So what’s left? Oil or wax. First, wax. My finishing-chemist friend says that a light coat of any clear furniture wax, like Carnauba, would be ideal. He says that you’ll need to replenish it periodically as it wears off, but new wax actually redissolves the old, and if applied moderately, won’t build up: it’ll always have just one coat of wax, after buffing. And after it’s buffed and dry—and this is a good thing—like lacquer, it doesn’t attract and hold any dust or dirt. So wax has no downside, it seems—just that I haven’t heard of many luthiers waxing their fingerboards, although I’ve heard that some old timers used wax. But I’m not in the habit of using it, myself.

Oil, which is considered a penetrating finish, is far more commonly used than wax. Besides sealing the surface—albeit it, temporarily—the advantage of oil is that it does not flake off or get pitted. But on very hard, tightly-pored fingerboard woods such as rosewood or ebony, very little actually penetrates, so it eventually wears off and needs to be replaced at intervals. This is particularly true in areas of the fingerboard that are played on. But on areas that are not often played on, the stuff just sits there and builds up. 

As far as oils for wood finishing is concerned, here is what my finishing-chemist friend says: there are basically two kinds of oil: drying and non-drying. The non-drying don’t undergo a chemical reaction (i.e., oxidation). The most common non-drying oils are lemon oil, orange oil and mineral oil. These oils have a very slow evaporation rate and remain on the surface in a microscopically thin semi-liquid state for days – even weeks – after application. So they’ll wear away where the surface gets used a lot and build up and attract dust and dirt where you don’t play. But many guitarmakers like them, and recommend that their customers periodically (i.e., on every string change) replenish the playing surface with these non-drying oils—and less often, scrub the buildup off with spirits of turpentine and follow with a new coat of their favorite non-drying oil. Some people like to do that because they think they’re coddling their beloved.

Drying oils such as tung oil or linseed oil actually undergo a chemical change as they dry and attempt to bond chemically with the surface. As they become hard through oxidation, they become difficult to remove and over time the accumulation of layers of dried oil forms a shell over the surface. So they build up and they don’t come off, looking rather badly after a long while. So I stay away from them.

Alas, there is no consensus among “experts". My teacher, Michael Gurian, clearly an expert in his field, used his own blend of Cocoanut and Eucalyptus oil. All I could get out of him to justify it was that it smelled nice and always stayed a little oily because they are non-drying, so it would actually lubricate your fingers as you played and your fingers wouldn’t squeak on the wound strings while playing.  He used to supply it commercially, but he doesn’t anymore. My stash of Gurian Fingerboard Oil is long used up, sadly.

Most current commercial fingerboard oil preparations usually say they include something called “lemon oil”. You’d think that it came from lemons. In most cases, you’d be wrong. My finishing-chemist friend revealed to me that “lemon oil” on the market is artificially-lemon-scented-whatever-oil-they’re-trying-to-get-rid-of, drying or non-drying. So you take your chances. REAL lemon-oil preparations are a good candidate, and like most non-drying oils, they will temporarily seal the wood surfaces, making the wood look nice and smell nice. So you wouldn’t be WRONG to use  them—assuming you can confirm that it actually comes from lemons so it’s lemon oil and not “lemon oil”, AND that they don't contain any silicone oil.  Before applying any oil to your fingerboard you have to know that it doesn’t include any silicones or silicone oil of any sort. “Contains no silicones” is what you’re looking for on the label. Silicones are very bad to have on your guitar. So most commercial “furniture polishes” are verboten because typically they do have silicones (i.e. Lemon Pledge and the sort). Silicones “migrate”: they spread from the fingerboard to your fingers and eventually cover the entire guitar—making any future regluing or finish repairs problematic. My warranty is void if I find any evidence on my guitars of silicone polish or any fingerboard treatment that has the typical slick, silicone look.

Finally, after using up my last jar of Gurian Eucalyptus/cocoanut fingerboard oil, I’ve settled on a commercial preparation that is essentially light mineral oil, thinned out a bit with mineral spirits. Some commercial “lemon oil” preparations are actually lemon-scented mineral oil. Read the label. Look up the company’s website. Ask questions. Finally, Baby oil, which is essentially mineral oil will serve as an excellent fingerboard oil. If its too thick to handle and apply, thin it out with  a bit of mineral spirits.

Luthier acoustics

A student of mine has become an intimate personal friend. Enrico Schiaffella resides in Rome, Italy, and has become noted as a fine classical builder in his own right. He wrote to me to recount his discomfort at being interviewed on TV, with questions that assumed that he knew just how guitars worked and how they sounded like they do. He wrote: "...but he is not the only who talks about scientific aspect of sound. I cannot bear it: I mean, the luthier is just an artisan—kind of a specialized  carpenter. He is no PhD in physics. How should he know about acoustics? I would not know what to say. These people are just crazy. They make a lot of talking about nothing." I responded,

I thought this was just a stupid American weakness. Your message is proof that it is a universal weakness.

People look at a string. It is silent. They look at a guitar. It is silent. But when the string is moving, beautiful sound is created. It must be magic. It must be science. The builder must know precisely how to make the inert material sing. He must be steeped in great, ancient wisdom. He must be a shaman. Or at least an apprentice shaman. 

So with this illusion, they are excited to ask you to explain the magic. You don't want to deflate their expectations. That would be rude. Besides, if you admit that you are working at the edges of true knowledge, they will think, "wrong guy. Impostor. I should be interviewing a real shaman. Later for you."

But the truth will set you free. You simply refuse to play the game. When someone asks you to answer a "loaded" question like "have you stopped beating your wife?" You can't answer just yes or no, because in either case you are admitting to being a wife-beater. You can only answer. "How did you come to the conclusion that I am beating my wife?" THEN you can respond to that.  

The guitar-making version of a loaded question is , ""Do you build with a thin back so that the whole guitar vibrates, or are you married the modern school where the back is very thick because you don't want it to vibrate? In this case, the soundboard is mainly responsible for the sound generation"

The only answer is "I build the back to the same thickness of the traditional models that I admire." and then, "I am only married to the school of Hernandez y Aguado." and then "where did you hear that the soundboard is mainly responsible for sound generation?" They might then answer, "well I heard it from great guitar builder so-and-so, who affirms that this is true." 

Your response would then be, "did you ask him how he came to that conclusion? I would like to know how he found that out! Did he study acoustics? Did he do double-blind experiments? I hope he didn't just make it up!"  

You may be fearful of being seen as an ignoramus because you aren't sure why your guitars sound so good. But instead, I would look forward to this opportunity to deflate and perhaps end this bullshit-propagating process. All in a polite, non-threatening or insulting way, of course. 

Don't answer his questions directly at first: question the questioner's assumptions. The assumptions that he is trying to make you validate. You simply don't validate the assumptions.  You can reveal that the emperor has no clothes--that there is no Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. The posture of being fascinated by the many mysteries of sound production is not an unattractive stance. You can say that it is these mysteries that keep you fascinated and energized to pursue this ancient craft. But for someone in your position--as a scientist--working in a realm of mystery, you remain skeptical of the many scientific claims made by non-scientists. You tend to trust empirically-derived conclusions, such as: 

• That soundboard timbers cut in a certain way give a more satisfying response than if they are cut in a different way.
• That an extremely wide array of soundbox wood choices give satisfying results, not just rosewood.
• That the closer you can come to the choices and techniques of the great masters of the past, the better the chances that your guitar will sound like the models that we all have come to love and admire.
• That guitar acoustics is in such a state of infancy, that it can only shine very little light on how the guitar works. But a basic knowledge of acoustics helps dispel the many made-up popular explanations of how it works, such as "the soundbox amplifies the string sound." and, "the back is a sound reflector" or "the soundboard generates all the sound of the guitar." 
• Until guitar acoustics matures, your only reasonable recourse is to simply look for the answers in the work of the great masters. The closer you can get to their solutions and decisions, the more masterful your guitars will result.  

Does that help?

Abrazos, mi hermano...

William

Can re-stringing hurt your guitar?

Dear Bill,
I am having what's turning out to be a rather heated debate with a few of my friends on the topic of re-stringing an acoustic guitar. They are saying that you should NEVER take off all the strings at once, but rather change them one at a time. They think that removing all the strings at once is somehow detrimental to the guitar. Having built a few steel-strings from your book, I say "hogwash". Take off all the strings if you want. It won't hurt a thing.

A note from you on this topic would settle it once and for all. 

A "heated debate" about how removing all the strings are "somehow" detrimental to the guitar, huh? Anybody advance any...evidence on their side? I did'nt think so. It must have been battling Beliefs.

The Belief most likely originated from rather good advice for players of all TAILPIECE instruments (violins, cellos, arch-top guitars): if you take all the strings off, the bridge falls off! —and in many instances, the soundpost falls, too. This useful tip apparently jumped at one point from one instrument world to another, starting as sound advice on violins and arch-tops and becoming dopey advice on guitars. The skewed information subsequently got handed down uncritically from teacher to student over the years and thus became generally enshrined as a Belief. By the way there are dozens of similar religiously-held myths among players/teachers/makers—like, never cut the strings. "It damages them" I heard. I should try to list them all some time.

I also love watching proponents "reverse engineering" a justification for a myth! That is, they start with a myth, and then create an elaborate set of highly logical and credible reasons why it must be true. A quintessentially human trait. 

Musical fascism

60 Minutes on CBS interviewed Andres Segovia during the 1980s. During the interview he was asked, why he played the guitar. His answer: "I play the guitar to save it from the Flamenco players."

The Artisanal Sublime

     I was recently privileged to be asked to be a reader for a manuscript for an upcoming book by the Yale anthropologist Kathryn Dudley. The 2-inch thick manuscript covered in marvelous detail almost every aspect of the artisanal guitar making scene of the past fifty years. Previously, she had interviewed me--and as well a host of other prominent North American artisanal guitar makers and personalities in adjunct fields--and my comments and the comments of the others, and her analysis, formed the basis of the work. Dudley approaches the guitar makers' universe with the clear eye of an anthropologist, with insights on the social factors that knit this unique world of buyers, makers and suppliers.
     I was flattered to find that Dudley began the manuscript with my story and then pursued as a recurrent theme throughout the work the metaphor that I had used to describe the original source of and continuing fascination for the craft. It was my account of the power and magic found in the old Pinocchio story, i.e., the humble Gepetto artisan witnessing with surprise the sudden animation of the artifact he had just fashioned from dead wood, springing off his work table and acquiring a life of its own. Pretty heady stuff--but I think many amateurs that find themselves driven to pursue the mysteries, agonies and glory of artisanal guitarmaking, can likely identify something of that story in themselves. Ms. Dudley asked me for comments after reading her manuscript, which I will share with my readers below:

I'm returning your manuscript with appreciative thanks for your thoroughness. It is really was a great revelation to me, as I will discuss further below. You were able to fill in all the blanks in a field that I've been living in for over 40 years! It is indeed an amazingly encyclopedic overview of the luthier's world in the United States. I'm flattered you included me--nay featured me, by placing me first-- along with all the principal figures in the American "artisal" guitar universe, from Linda Manzer and James Olsen to Golab Gidwani and Dan Erlewine. I couldn't put it down, it was so satisfying and insightful. A true delight. A serious masterwork!

It was also quite a revelation to me: It seems that I'm the only nationally-recognized, professional luthier in the United States not making $20,000+ for each guitar! Now that I can clearly see the full landscape of my own field, I feel something like a odd bird—in contrast to many of my colleagues. I seem to be different from most of the accomplished makers described in the manuscript, in that the market I want to serve is almost entirely composed hard-working session musicians and serious up-and-comings. I price my instruments at what I need to support myself in a modest lifestyle, to support the costs of my studio and materials and to support the careers and art of the working artists that I esteem so highly. If that works out to $4-5000.00 per instrument, I feel it rather grasping to charge $25,000, essentially for a 20 inch wooden box with somebody else's strings and tuning machines attached to it. I suppose that makes me an odd bird in this aviary.

You've made me aware of the careers of handful of self-made builders who have leveraged their career success on the purchase of one or several of their guitars by some superstar guitarist or other. This good fortune of happenstance now permits them to command $20,000-$30,000 for all their subsequent instruments. Now, they can't make them fast enough at that price¡ Well, far for me to begrudge the financial success of others. But I feel that it is legitimate to point out the distance between us: between what I think drives them and what I know drives me. I serve my craft. I don't expect it to enrich me. I'm privileged that it does afford me a living stable enough to continue doing it, free from financial anxiety, yes. But striving to a level that makes my work largely inaccesible to the working artists which I serve, no.

Becoming a jet-setting guitar-craft superstar, the darling of wealthy collectors and acquisitive dilettantes, or pursued by the agents of celebrity musicians—may be the aim of some artisans, but it was never my driving ambition. The pursuit of my craft is my religion, not a ticket to fame and fortune. My aim always was always simply to make working tools that facilitate artistic expression, not producing sexually-tinged objects of desire, aimed at attracting the acquisitive urges of people who like extraordinarily expensive, shiny fetish objects. 

You've made me realize, for a starter, I simply am not pursuing the same market as any of them. I'm satisfied with my choices and the freedom and flexibility that this market affords me. I choose to make tools for every-day working musicians, and I make my instruments to be accessible to them. I identify with the struggles and the earnest commitment of these artists. I appreciate that they haven't yet been driven into excess and eccentricity by wild fortune and fame.

I'm often told that I'm crazy not to just jack up my prices, and how that, in itself, will attract high-rolling customers, like flies to honey. I have no doubt that, perversely, jacking up my prices in this curious upside-down artisanal guitar world will indeed encourage sales. But my refusal to do so comes from my recoiling from the prospect of my then having to suck up to wealthy, acquisitive, entitled dilettantes who view the guitar as a "work of art" that they are so clever to invest in, and feel proud of the discernment that their purchase displays among their equals. 

What was eye-opening was that virtually every luthier on that list of makers commanding astronomical fees was previously struggling, making guitars for years and years--and starving. Many were about to give up and throw in the towel. It's a story repeated over and over: then, virtually without exception, fate runs them into some celebrity superstar that wanders into their shop, buys one of their guitars (or whose agent buys one of their guitars)--and soon after, the value and commercial appeal of their work skyrockets--not because the technical quality of their guitars suddenly improved 500%, but because of its fetishistic transformation, as if their work now was elevated in esteem simply by the fame--and by shaky extension, the implied discernment--of their patrons. But that's the American Story, isn't it?

So it appears that one of your conclusions is that for that astronomically-priced market, the guitar is not a simple commodity, but a fetish object. Success in that market is not directly proportional to the amount of some specific kind of special "sound" or technical excellence that these guitars possess or fails to possess--Just to the fame of the luthier's past clients. To enter that world, you must be touched by Grace to prosper. Those celebrity luthiers are really selling guitar-shaped sculpture to collectors. All the more power to them, they deserve each other. The rest of us are selling tools to inspire working artists.

Another remark: yours is a great encyclopedic work that should nonetheless be titled the AMERICAN artisanal guitar, following as it does the distinctive world of mainstream guitar making, starting from about the early 1960s. There's a lot of tantalyzing history missing, for example, of the New York City guitar artisan scene during the 20s, 30s, 40s and even 50s, which consisted essentially of highly skilled Mexican, Puerto Rican, Greek, Italian and Armenian tradesmen toiling away under the radar in hole-in-the-wall shops in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. Just from my Hispanic background I can point to my wishing to know more about of Freddie Mejias, the Mexican luthier; Juan Orozco or the Puerto Ricans Tito Baez, Yomi Matos (who recently got a lifetime fellowship recognition from the National Endowment of the Arts), and Nate Tirado. Perhaps the greatest living luthier Manuel Velazquez is given woefully short shrift. Also un-noted is the owner of Casa Ronda on Lexington Ave. Efrain Ronda, who was building artful guitars and cuatros during the mid 30s--and who's shop was the social gathering spot for all the great Hispanic artists of the day, including Andres Segovia. True, William Del Pilar's prominence in the city when my first teacher Michael Gurian was just a kid sniffing around various shops—is mentioned, but not explored. Maybe that is the stuff of another book. Maybe I should write it. That's a good way to learn, isn't it?  

   

Culture wars

     Over the years, I often received mail and phone calls with compliments or questions from readers of my book, Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology, which has been in print since 1985. One day in 1992, I took a call from a reader, John Sotomayor, who was a staff photographer for the New York Times.

     Sotomayor was gathering information on makers of the Puerto Rican cuatro--the Island's "national instrument" -- in the United States, for an article he had proposed to his editor. He saw a cuatro template illustrated among others in the template section of my guitar making book. He called to inquire about my cuatro making.

     Sotomayor was an aspiring amateur instrument-maker himself. He practiced several other hobbies besides: carving duck decoys, researching genealogy, antique stenciling.  Also, and for many years before becoming a professional photographer, he was a professional "segunda guitarra" (second guitar) in several New York bolero groups. He had recorded with trio Los Duques for the Ansonia label in 1957, and had become rather well known within the great city's Latino guitar scene for his great skill as an accompanist. He also established the New Jersey Classic Guitar Society.

     His inquiry about cuatros and cuatro-making reflected a passion to learn about all things Puerto Rican. Indeed, it is a fever many Puerto Ricans succumb to after living for decades in the United States. John Soto, the guitarist and New York Times photojournalist was in the process of becoming once again Juan Sotomayor, the cuatrista and cuatro researcher. It was an affliction that had also bitten me several years earlier.

     Like Juan, I too, had come around to "becoming Puerto Rican" again. I was born in San Juan forty-five years earlier, raised in Rio Piedras, the son of a father who was native of Rincón, P.R.; and a mother born and raised in an Eastern European Jewish family in Boston. After high school on the Island, I came to the United States to go to college and ended up in New England constructing my eventual career in guitar making. I visited my Puerto Rican family on the Island periodically as I did my American family in Massachusetts. My white skin and English language skills allowed me to blend seamlessly into American society, a stealth-Puerto Rican with a latent, late-onset cultural schizophrenia.

     The time finally arrived, and I became restive. Like Juan, I found myself unable to repress a compelling urge to search for my other lost half. The form it took in my case was a burning curiosity about my own native land’s “guitar,” the small ten-string cuatro. During a return to the Island I took the opportunity to visit established makers such as Cristóbal Santiago in Carolina and Manuel Rodriguez Feneque in Rincon. I learned the traditional enterizo method of instrument making: the hollowing and carving of a thick-walled soundbox and neck from a single, thick slab of hardwood.

     The ancient enterizo instrument-making technique stands in contrast to the (only somewhat less) ancient way guitars and violins are made. Violins and guitars are assembled out of dozens of small blocks, grafts, braces and thinly sawn, heat-bent wooden plates into a light and delicate soundbox, into which a separate, carved neck is joined. The two techniques were once appropriate to the particular social environments of each. On the one hand, the enterizo technique fit into exigencies of folkloric rural craftsman—with their reliance on rudimentary tools and resources on the one hand—and de piezas [built up from many parts] reflected the highly evolved and refined standards of the European craft guilds on the other hand. The early jíbaros saw the Spaniards coming off their galleons: the conquistadores and clerics with their airy, elegant vihuelas and the lowly sailors with their diminutive seventeenth-century soprano guitars, called guitarillos. The mixed-breed jíbaro natives returned to the hills to carve out their own versions of the instruments they saw in the blanquito Spaniard’s hands, using the same home-made knives and hatchets that they always used to fashion all their kitchen and farm utensils. A family of native stringed instruments was born, and a subsequent treasury of musical traditions sprang from them.

     I took my scribbles and diagrams back to my New England guitar shop and there I made several cuatros—one which I sold to a New York Puerto Rican stand-up comic (whose name I’ve since forgotten), who like the vaudevillian Henny Youngman and his violin, strummed his cuatro between punch lines. Hence the appearance of a cuatro template—originally traced from Don Cristobal Santiago’s—in my guitar-making book. And hence that fateful phone call from John Sotomayor.

Juan was dismayed at how little, after an assiduous search, he was able to find in the standard bibliographic sources. One established music encyclopedia had even gotten the cuatro’s tuning wrong! Even the Library of Congress came up empty of any published materials on the national instrument of Puerto Rico. Juan found only two short academic research papers in the University of Puerto Rico that dealt with jíbaro stringed instruments.

     Giving up his bibliographic search, he then interviewed several established Puerto Rican instrument makers and cuatristas in New York and New Jersey. Alas, they could reveal little more about the tradition than the craft techniques they had devised, essentially on their own. They ventured some of popular myths about the origins of the tradition. Most assumed that the cuatro arrived from Spain with four strings, that it caught on in the island, where someone then doubled them to eight, and then someone (some said Heriberto Torres, the greatest cuatrista of the first quarter of the twentieth century) added the fifth course to make it into the ten stringed instrument it is today. But as far as what their antecedents were, the great makers or players of the past; or how the traditions had evolved, and from what or where they had evolved, or how the instrument had found its way into the heart of the Puerto Rican soul…John came up empty-handed. I could not help Sotomayor, either. Like the others, I too, only knew the builder’s sequence and had nothing to add but my faded memories of the slightly nasal, sizzling sound of the cuatro that characterized Christmas to me as a child in Puerto Rico. We both pondered the empty glass before us. We then resolved to ally ourselves in an effort to search deeper into the cuatro's history. The Puerto Rican Cuatro Project was born.

     When we got back together, and when we revealed what scant news we had for each other, we realized that the institutions usually charged with documenting culture had just not been very interested in the jíbaro music tradition, let alone the culture’s defining stringed instrument. Up to at least fifteen or twenty years ago, the field of ethnomusicology was primarily interested in the aboriginal and African music in the Americas and other countries. Somehow, the music of the mixed-race rural jíbaro folk fell into the realm of “popular music” and hence, was seemingly unworthy of serious attention. That has since changed, of course, and the subject is now well established as a legitimate field of study. But to this day, not a single researcher, or institution has devoted itself solely to the study of the origins of jíbaro instrument-making traditions.

     One of the great centers of the study of popular music is at the University of Austin, with Gerard Behague at the helm. Yet a survey of articles in its journal, Popular Music, displays scant attention to the Puerto Rican jíbaros and their music. And so we found it to be in Puerto Rico, where all the prominent musicologists who weren’t studying European music appeared far more interested in the Afro-Puerto Rican bomba and plena, for which a rich literature and much documentation had evolved. But interest in a comprehensive search for the corpus of jíbaro musical traditions has never materialized. What could be found on the origins and music of the cuatro and its Island cousins was truly scant and fragmentary. A remarkable state of affairs!

     One exception was a rather short-lived effort by the Puerto Rican government itself. In the mid-nineteen fifties the first elected governor of the U.S.'s island colony (and erstwhile bohemian poet) Luis Muñoz Marín charged anthropologist Ricardo Alegría to gather together, among other things, the remnants of jibaro lore, and to promote native arts and culture in an effort to “humanize” Operation Bootstrap—Muñoz´ master plan to industrialize the island. In turn, Ricardo Alegría charged Francisco López Cruz (guitar accompanist to the legendary composer, Rafael Hernandez, in his Cuarteto Victoria), to gather all that he knew and could find on jibaro music, and to write a definitive method for cuatro players. Lopez Cruz, who had recently returned from Spain with a doctorate in musicology, compiled knowledge of the different folk and “popular” genres of Puerto Rican music into a seminal but slim volume, La Música Folklórica de Puerto Rico, now long since out of print.

     Alegría founded the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture as a quasi-independent government agency to promote the native arts and crafts. The formative years of the Instituto de Cultura was characterized by great vigor and commitment under Alegría’s command: under Alegría, the Instituto gathered together the works of the great writers and poets, inventoried all the great monuments and cultural treasures on the island. He sent Walter Murray Chiesa (currently being honored by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC) to scour the remote hills to find and catalog folk crafts, with the aid of his inventories established competitions for instrument makers, players and traditional singers. Francisco Lopez Cruz went on to champion the rescue of native instruments that had virtually disappeared over the years, encouraging makers to start building again the diminutive tiple and the large bordonúa. A cuatro and bordonúa orchestra was formed under his name, which survives him to this day.

     But the focus, commitment and energy of the Instituto waned soon after the passing of Lopez Cruz and the retirement of Alegria. The Instituto became an entrenched bureaucracy and a political football. Indeed, under the previous Republican administration, an effort was made to subsume the Instituto under the wing of the Department of Tourism: the new function of the cultural patrimony was to entertain the tourists. We were soon to discover that on the Island people fight over culture. What the jíbaros accomplished, or didn’t accomplish—or whether it had any value--has been the subject of intermittent quarreling over the decades. Puerto Rico’s colonial history has rendered the subject of a unique and seminal Puerto Rican culture--with music as its centerpiece--a controversial matter with troubling political overtones.

     Given the fragile support that academia and government had historically given to what we saw as seminal and defining cultural manifestations, and given that the musical and musical craft traditions of Puerto Rico has barely survived--not in books and documents--but in the evanescent memories of ever fewer and fewer Puerto Ricans, we felt an urgent mission had been thrust upon us. Sotomayor had skills in research and photography; I had proven skills in technical writing and instrument making. Upon acquiring a third member, Wilfredo Echevarria--a prize-winning independent video documentary producer and media expert, and then a fourth, Myrna Perez, director of the Francisco Lopez Cruz Foundation, orchestra conductor and musical educator, we dedicated ourselves to this task of cultural preservation. Our informal motto became, "if you want something done well, well, do it yourself!" We were amateurs, of course, but amateurs in the original sense of the word: “lovers.” We were amateurs in the tradition of the naturalists of days past, those amateur scientists who wanted to make a lasting contribution to science.

     But no good deed goes unpunished. The Island’s culture warriors did not readily embrace our new, research-based hypotheses of the development of our iconic stringed instruments. When we partnered with the Casa Paoli in Ponce to sponsor a cuatro-making competition (according to the form we had discovered the instruments had taken in the nineteenth century), our event was threatened by pickets and a local shock-jock on the radio, demanding to know, ¿Qué se cree esa gente que viene desde allá para tratar de cambiarle el cántico al coquí? [Who do those people from over there think they are, coming over here to change how the coquí sings?]  The coquí is the iconic chirping tree toad that Puerto Ricans treasure as a culture icon.

     Our new hypothesis differed from the common narrative. They didn’t want to, indeed, didn’t need to examine our evidence. The accepted narrative was that the cuatro started with four strings, later it was doubled to eight, and then someone (the names of several apocryphal players emerged to take the credit) added two more to make ten. We had new evidence that indeed, there were at times four string cuatros, eight string cuatros and ten-string cuatros all coexisting in different parts of the island. They all were shaped and strung differently. But they were all different instruments, not a single instrument that changed incrementally.  The earliest form was created by the first jibaros with four strings made of twisted rawhide--and later, gut--strings and with a peculiar keyhole shape. This cuatro antiguo was modernized at the turn of the 20th century by a change of shape and a change of its stringing to eight metal strings, an thus become the cuatro de ocho cuerdas. Then, at mid-century, that branch all but shriveled and disappeared. 

     By then a completely novel form was already established, its stringing rooted in 19th-century (not ancient, as the antiguo) Spanish instrument-making. A ten-string cuatro appeared first appeared on the Island's northern coast in the late 19th century, inspired in its stringing and tuning by the contemporary Spanish instruments of the time. It was a new instrument when it appeared, it was not an evolution of the cuatro antiguo. 

     Puerto Rican radio started on the northern coast of the island, and on the occasion of the station's inauguration, Ladislao Martínez played the modern 10-string, violin-shaped cuatro that had caught on in his region. Everybody who heard it, loved it. It eclipsed the earlier form in its sound and versatility. That factor, and Ladí's awesome mastery of the instrument, insured it's universal acceptance and spelled the end for the ancient four string cuatro.

     We responded to the protesters accusing us of interloping in Ponce--ready to picket our competition--by inviting them inside, and giving them an opportunity to speak on our podium. I told the crowd that during our research we had learned that “culture is not a thing, it’s a process.” Later, a protester walked up to me, his pointing finger raised in anger, stressing that “yes, culture is a process. ¡Pero la cultura es ÚNICA!” [It is only one way.] That is, the beloved cuatro is singular, unique: don't come here telling us it isn't.

     Maybe this is why over the years, so few academics did much cultural field research in Puerto Rico. Culture was more than an emotional subject, it was a battlefield. The accepted narrative was hallowed. As I was told after the event, “it’s no wonder you guys did your project over there. It wouldn’t have been possible over here.”

     Today, however--and fifteen years later--I'm glad to report that our persistence and the obvious quality of our work turned many minds around. We have become widely accepted as "authorities" on the subject and appreciation is shown for our website all around the Island. Our Project is the subject of “homenajes” during festivals and events. Our persistence and lack of agenda apparently won over many quarrelsome hearts. 

     Puerto Ricans now everywhere are displaying a thirst of ownership for these delicate cultural manifestations--their own--and the cuatro is experiencing something of a Golden Age today. Virtually every town now boasts of an amateur cuatro orchestra and a yearly culture festival. Young cuatro-playing prodigies arise in seemingly every region of the Island, and even in the barrios of the frigid Northeast. Now politicians are currying favor with the masses by placing more resources and talent at the helm of the Instituto. A major Island TV network included a cuatro in its logo. Politicians in the U.S. show up looking for Hispanic voters at annual cuatro festivals in Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles. Every one is looking for a cuatro to learn to play En mi Viejo San Juan on: lawyers, bureaucrats, college kids, and housewives alike. Smiling when you hear a cuatro seems to be firmly coded into the Puerto Rican DNA, along with Taínos and pasteles.

     But it makes you wonder, will this Golden Age fade as quickly as others did during the last century? This periodic cycle of cultural resurgence and oblivion goes hand in hand with our inbred talent for sporadically loving and then disdaining our jíbaro roots. The old saying goes, “I’m a proud jíbaro...(but don’t you dare call me a jíbaro)!

     Our colonial-era schizophrenia persists through the ages: “Aren’t we great? No, we’re not. Aren’t we great? No we’re not.” But we've presented to the present-day jíbaros the enormous forgotten treasury of poetry, music and musical craft that their forebears left for us. Time will tell what its eventual impact will be, whether it will be preserved, or once again, left to fade and languish.

Quantum guitarmaking

Tim White has been my close friend and guitar acoustics mentor for many, many years. He has a deep, deep understanding of what he terms "the secret life of the guitar." So much so, that we've embarked on a project to make his take on guitar acoustics accessible to a wide audience. Here's an example of some of Tim's musings about the guitar's "secret life.":

I would see a journey into the guitar starting with some of the basic physical attributes of sound and psycho-acoustics by everyday example, then off on a hike to the frequency mountain tops.  First we wander into the valley of the lowest frequency range, below what we can hear - "infra-sound" used blue whales and elephants for long-distance communications, hardly more than the winds really.  Then walk further up the valley of low audible frequencies where we begin to encounter the directionless sounds of the low-end of the guitar and the human (male) voice range.  Coincidence?  How we are almost deaf to these low frequencies. How they encode body mass information.  How the rum-jug "air" resonance works.  Then the path begins to slope up a bit.

About an octave above the low range of the guitar, just about where the typical female voice begins, complexity creeps in.  The guitar's face and back flutter across their entire surfaces, in a phase relationship which manages to squeeze the enclosed air in each cycle.  The wavelength here is still pretty big - roughly 5 feet, so must be created by a point source mechanism.  The beam resonances haven't kicked in quite yet.  The slope gets a little steeper, and we find ourselves in the foothills of the mid-frequency range.

The third octave of the guitar spectrum starts getting really interesting and complex.  The beam resonances of the guitar appear.  The face is seen to rock fore and aft, and side to side. The asymmetry of X-bracing becomes apparent as the nodal line of the face rocking rotates from the longitudinal orientation common to symmetric bracing patterns, the rotation putting the sound hole in the anti-node in the former to produce the highest point source sound, while remaining on the nodal line in the latter, and remaining silent.  We have to work now.  

The path upward begins to branch into numerous clefts in the frequency mountainscape.  Every guitar follows a different path.  As we go up the next two octaves higher, the wavelength halves, then halves again to a fraction of a guitar's size. We have climbed out of the relative simplicity of the point source world, and no level of human ingenuity can master this landscape.  The complexity begins to overwhelm our rational senses, and a kind of darkness begins to descend - our analytical mental eye is blinded by the complexity, and we must develop our other senses and ways of understanding to continue the path upward.  Eventually we will have to let go and simply dream the rest of our way to the summit, but not yet.  

Now we pass into the 6th octave of the guitar's spectrum, and a remarkable transformation takes place. Where we found ourselves in darkness, the world suddenly becomes illuminated with ideas and knowledge -   We have reached the range of human voice formants where we convey meaning and words from one mind to another. To see the voice formants illuminated in their own light, we need only whisper, where the low-frequency information is gone, and men sound the same as women.   Our mind is so finely tuned to extract voice meaning from sounds in this frequency range that we can not hear the separate frequencies making up the formants, where at any given moment during speech the three resonant chambers of the human voice tract, by changing their size and wall stiffness, form what is essentially a continuously morphing musical chord.  Rational thoughts are conveyed, ideas, knowledge, and memories are passed around and stored. Stories are told.  To hear the world without voice formants, simply try humming and try to speak while you are humming. By whispering you heard the voice formants alone, while by humming you reverse the filter, and find your vocabulary suddenly limited to growls and body language, a very primitive stage in our evolution as humans.  We have reached a vast frequency plateau where in fact we spend the bulk of our mental time and effort.  Our physical behavior is substantially guided in response to the meaning in the speech we are exposed to.  This is the glue of humanity.

The 7th octave leaves voice formants behind, and strangely re-enters the world of subliminal perception.  We do not hear voices here, but rather deeper meaning such as pain, fear, anger and joy.  This frequency range, with a wavelength of an inch or two, requires a lot of energy to produce.  In the human voice it is created by the inner faces of the vocal chords being pressed very tightly together, fluttering along their length in shorter and shorter wavelengths in a manner that only applying great air pressure from the lungs can create.  Combine a short blast of this with your mouth open like a megaphone, and we call it a shout. Press harder, add yet higher frequencies, and we hear an angry shout.  Here we can hear when a crying child is not just whining, which only uses the voice formant frequencies, but is really sick or in pain.  

At the beginning of the journey we learned that low sounds travel the furthest.  As we approach the highest frequency range, the distance we can hear these frequencies is greatly reduced.  At normal levels, they convey intimacy by requiring close proximity to be heard - literally pillow talk.

When we buy guitar wood, we focus our attention on the soundboard, which is the planar source of all of the higher frequencies.  The less internal vibrational damping a piece of wood has, the better it will be able to convey tones of the 7th octave, where love, hate, ecstasy and pain leave their mark on the sounds we make.  Such wood, with new strings and percussive playing creating the full suite of low and high frequencies, allows the highest emotional content to be conveyed to the listeners.  

Here we finally stand on the tonal summit of our frequency journey, and with luck and an open heart we imagine shapes in the starscape now visible to our souls.  We do not see this, or even hear it.  We feel these forms shifting and changing as we feel the universe expanding away in all directions.

Yes, playing guitar is good for you!

What is sound?

The following is a translation into English of the chapter on instrument-making in our recently-published textbook in Spanish on the folk stringed instruments of Puerto Rico: Cuerdas de mi Tierra [Strings of my Land]

===================================================


      Variations in air pressure against the eardrum, and
their subsequent interpretation by the brain, create the
experience of sound.
      The sounds that we recognize as musical are periodic
or regular variations. Those we recognize as noise are
random, or non-periodic.
      Musical sounds, like all other sounds, radiate outward
from their vibrating source in the form of energy waves
that travel through a medium such as air, water, or dense
solids.
      The simplest case is a single sound, called a "pure
tone." It is very rare to hear single, or "pure" tones in
the natural environment. Most sounds we hear are complex
tones, sounds made up of many tones happening together.
      When two or more different sound waves occur together
they interact: their pressure variations variously
reinforce and cancel each other to create a single, more
complex sound wave.  Our brain can still isolate the
individual simpler components of those complex sound waves
in order to recognize their source. Thus we can recognize,
without seeing, whether it was the sound of a pencil
falling on a carpet, or a spoon falling on a marble floor.
Also, our brain can decode the various components of the
sound in order to react appropriately: whether to ignore
the sound, whether to pay attention, whether to be alarmed,
whether to be soothed.

The Harmonic Series

      Every individual tone component of a composite
acoustic pressure wave has two distinguishing
characteristics: the frequency of the wave's rise-and-fall
and its amplitude or power. The frequency and amplitude of
the components of most ordinary sounds we hear--a door
shutting, water dripping from a spigot, someone sneezing--
are random.
     However, among all the sounds we can hear, there is an
extraordinary subset: those composed of frequencies that
line up in precisely numerical order. In these complex
sounds, the first component, usually the most predominant,
is the "fundamental" frequency; the next is twice the
frequency of the first; the next is three times the
frequency of the first; the next is four times the
frequency of the first; and so on until the frequencies
become too fast to perceive. Each of these components are
called "partials" or "harmonics."
      This ordered sequence is called the Harmonic Series.
Sounds whose component tones correspond to a Harmonic
Series are perceived as musical and are called musical
sounds. They sound like a musical note because its
fundamental provides us with its pitch and its ordered
series of accompanying partials, occurring at different
amplitudes, provides us with that tone's "color," or
recognizable distinctive sound.
      Sounds that are not ordered in this way, rather are
made up of random frequencies, we perceive as noise. It is
interesting to note that at one end of the spectrum, sounds
with random components like an explosion; a frying pan
falling to the floor; or a door slamming cause us alarm;
but sounds with components that are numerically ordered,
like the whistling of the wind; or the sound of a bird, or
the twang of a plucked string, bring us delight--and we
yearn to repeat the experience over and again, if we can.
It is as if we have an ancient, ingrained need for these
ordered sounds, sounds that are "musical" to our ears.

The stretched string 

Strings are truly magical: that nothing more than an stretched 

elastic fiber could produce so complex a series of hierarchically 

ordered tones has historically placed strings in the realm of 

extraordinary, mystical objects. The ancient Greeks, and later, 

the Early Church considered the harmonic content of a stretched 

string as nothing less than proof of the existence of God.    
         History has yielded up to us strings made of many different
materials: strings made of strips of animal hides, sinews
or intestines, nylon polymer and drawn metal wire. What
makes them all able to produce musical tones is that they
possess, to a high degree, three qualities: elasticity,
tensile strength and uniformity. This is what allows them
to behave as musical strings. In fact, how closely their
tone approaches a perfect Harmonic Series--and thus how
"musical" they sound--depends directly on the degree to
which they posses these three qualities. The history of the
string-making craft is marked by the quest to create ever
more uniform, ever more elastic and ever stronger strings.
      Strings made up of different materials differ,
however, in the amount of tension they impose on the
instrument and the “color” of the sounds they naturally
produce. The maker must be aware of and account for the
difference.

The string's signal

      When we stretch a string we charge it up with energy,
like a battery. The stretched string then exerts a
constant, static tension force on the instrument while at
rest. When we pluck that string, we disturb its static
state and release the stored-up energy in the form of a
complex, periodic vibration. The pulsating string create
tiny changes in the tension that it exerts on the
instrument’s neck and soundboard. These evanescent tension-
changes are the string's signal. Encoded within this signal
is the product of all the components of the Harmonic Series
the string is producing. The string-pulses set all the
instruments' surfaces--and the air inside of the soundbox--
into corresponding motion.
      Those distinct regions of the instrument that are able
comply with specific frequency components in the string
signal begin to vibrate in response. This is the phenomenon
called resonance. But there are many components of the
string signal that the instrument simply cannot comply with
and resonate. Those wave components stay bound up in the
string. Those that are matched are “sucked” out of the
string and their energy is what drives the resonances in
the instrument. So we can say that each instrument
“chooses” it’s own distinctive portion of the signals that
the string is feeding it. This is why a guitar sounds
different from a cuatro, or a violin, or a mandolin, even
though they all have similar vibrating strings. This also
explains the differences in sound between one cuatro and
another. Each instrument chooses which particular string
components to respond to and which to ignore.
      The difference in the sounds of two similar
instruments, or two completely different instruments, is due
to differences in their individual physical form and
structure. If one instrument has slightly thicker walls, or
if the soundbox is deeper or wider in size, or if its wood
is softer or harder, it will draw out of its moving strings
a slightly different combination of distinct frequency
components than the other can.
      So the sound of the instrument comes from its strings,
but what determines the portion of the string’s sound we
actually get to hear is the result of how it’s made, what
it’s made of and its physical shape and size.
      We must keep in mind that most instrument makers are
or were usually not engineers or acousticians, but instead
specialized craftsmen more familiar with wood than with
acoustics. Their stock in trade is not wave motion but the
capacity to recreate acoustic devices whose form was
derived from a specific historical, cultural and aesthetic
tradition. Instrument makers lack the ability to actually
see acoustic waves or perceive the wood surfaces vibrating
in all their daunting complexity. Their skill is solely
that of recreating cultural artifacts and transforming them
into tools that a musician can use to create art.
      Their sound and form is thus predominantly dictated by
history and tradition, rather than acoustical knowledge. As
Luciano Berio explained,

"They are concrete depositories of historical continuity. And
like working tools and buildings, they have a memory: 
they carry with them traces of the conceptual and social 
changes through which they were developed and transformed."
   
The first stringed instruments

      Evidence of how deep, primitive and compelling the
power of musical sounds is, is how early it was when
musical instruments arrived in the course of human
evolution. Evidence exists that musical instruments go back
as far as when the first humans hunted with bows and
arrows. Indeed, the first stringed instrument is thought to
be the actual hunter's bow.
      Undoubtedly, a hunter was once distracted by
rhythmically plucking the string of his bow, eliciting its
soothing sound. Soon he found that he could vary the sound
by flexing the bow, changing the strings tension and thus
the perceived pitch of its sound.
      The basic components of the hunter's bow are: the string--
elastic strips of rawhide, usually twisted to enhance its
uniformity-and a curved, elastic wooden rod. By virtue of
its elasticity, its tensile strength, and particularly by
its uniformity, the stretched string, once set into motion
by plucking, creates an ordered chorus of sounds. The bow
keeps the string in tension, and vibrates in response to
the dancing string--allowing the hunter to hear it. But not
very efficiently: the thin bow, while enabled by its form
to propel an arrow over a great distance is not very good
at converting the kinetic energy of the stretched string
into acoustic energy. But improvements followed.
      As time went by, the bow--originally a purely
utilitarian implement--became transformed by culture into a
specialized artifact of musical craft. This must likely
occurred after these early hunters placed the bow against
the cheek and discovered that the twanging sound could be
modulated, or changed in its harmonic content, by changing
the shape of the mouth. This is what the North American
Plains Indians did when they created their Mouth Bow. The
hollow cavity of the mouth became the first musical
resonator or soundbox.
      Later, certain indigenous tribes coupled the bow to
hollow gourds, further increasing the instrument's musical
efficiency. Examples of these are still found in Brazil and
Paraguay, with the Berimbau and Gualambao. These can even
be heard in Brazilian pop music today.
      Over the millennia those extraordinary objects,
capable of creating ordered and compelling sounds, evolved
from Africa and traveled to the Mideast. There they became
the earliest members of what became known as the lute
family. The musical bow’s rawhide strips became twisted
animal gut; the bow itself was transformed into the neck,
and the cheek or gourd became the resonant sound box.
Formally speaking, string instruments composed of a
soundbox with a neck attached at one end, over which
strings are stretched are members of what organologists
call the Lute Family.
      That family includes the Puerto Rican cuatro, as well
as its other native stringed instruments. But that is not
to say that the cuatro was derived from the lute. The word
"lute" has over the centuries been used to loosely describe
a myriad instruments from many different countries and
different cultures, each with distinctive shape and
stringing. So while our modern cuatro derives some of its
characteristics from the New Spanish Lute (Nuevo Laúd) of
the 19th century, it is in fact significantly different in
history, culture, form, size and stringing from the French
lute or the German or English lute. The only thing we can
say is that the cuatro is a member of the lute family
because it shares with the Spanish, English, German and
French lutes its neck and soundbox configuration. In turn
this form links them all back to the the Arab/Persian lutes
of great antiquity.
      The earliest examples of instruments from the lute
family were most likely crafted by early agrarian societies
with the same simple tools, available materials and
rudimentary techniques they used to make other implements
of their daily lives: the spoons, bowls, furniture, kitchen
tools, and farming implements.

Guild techniques
      The craft aspects of Latin American stringed
instruments point to an interesting social phenomenon. For
centuries, the manufacture of instruments made for the
elites and the bourgeoisie was overseen by ancient craft
societies known as the Guilds. The Guild system propelled
the refinement of the musical crafts to the greatest
heights ever known. They embodied an ancient tradition of
rigorous training and of strict standard-setting that
precipitated a flowering of the decorative arts over
hundreds of years, up until the system faded in the 19th
century with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.
      The highest technological advancements of their times
were utilized: treadle-powered machinery like bandsaws and
drills were introduced and edge tools and handsaws of the
best steel available were utilized. The finest exotic
hardwoods were imported from around the world.
      The strings themselves were the product of highly
specialized guilds, originally an offshoot of the nautical
cordiers or rope-makers. The ability to create strings of
unsurpassed uniformity--the principle requirement for the
most musical-sounding strings--was their stock in trade,
and a set of strings alone could cost more than several
instruments.
      The Guilds were closed shops, that is, you could only
be born into them or at best, be invited in by existing
members. If your standards flagged or your work turned too
far afield you could be punished. Penalties for displeasing
the Guild masters included banishment from the profession,
banishment from the region, and even incarceration.
      Guild craftsmen developed the technique of sawing
plates thinly and planning them accurately so that they
could be curved with judiciously applied heat and moisture
into light, resonant, fancifully-shaped soundboxes.
Instruments made this way produced velvety-smooth,
sustaining notes that were appropriate for the refined
parlors and drawing rooms of the day. Often laden with
semi-precious stones and other rare inlay materials, they
served as presents to state officials from status-climbers,
or gifts of state between noblemen and kings.

The enterizo technique
      Because of their cost, instruments produced by the
Guilds were largely unavailable to the common folk.
      Folk musicians could only turn to local woodworkers,
rustic but resourceful craftsmen who brought to their task
slabs of local lumber and a sparse kit of tools that
included little more than knives and hatchets, scrapers,
hammers and awls. They lacked the technology and resources
for making saws that are required to slice wood into
bendable, thin sheets. Thus country folk in the Spanish
colonies, as their counterparts all over Europe, had to
make instruments in what they called enterizo or "whole"
way. The enterizo technique consisted of hewing the entire
body of the instrument: headstock, neck shaft, heel, sides
and back to shape from a single, continuous slab of solid
wood. A soundboard was then fashioned by chopping and
scraping a flat plate of softer wood, often with the bridge
carved out integrally as an rectangular lump on its
surface. The enterizo or unitary construction was an
ancient way of making instruments, dramatically different
from the way the Guilds did, building instrumentos de
piezas, that is, sawing thin sheets of wood into thin
plates, bending the sides and curving the plates,
assembling them into a complex soundbox by glueing them
together with small individual blocks, braces and grafts.
      Pablo Nassarre, theorist and organist of the Royal
Convent of San Francisco of Zaragoza, (1664-1730) described
the enterizo instruments of his day in his book, "Escuela
de Musica, segun la practica moderna" [Musical Method,
following the modern practice], Zaragoza, 1724, Book IV,
Chapter XVI in the section titled "de las proporciones" [on
the proportions].

"The form of this instrument is pyramidal, its lower extreme 
having a semicircular form. It was ordinarily made entirely 
of one piece (except the top) hollowed away in concave 
fashion."

      To this very day, the enterizo method of making
musical instruments is common among many of the members of
the plucked-instrument family that evolved in Latin
America, notably the folk instruments families of Mexico,
Panama and Puerto Rico. The consequences of utilizing this
unique acoustical architecture with metal strings is a
loud, piercing tone--ideal for outdoor festivities and
community gatherings, be they secular or religious.
The enterizo technique in Puerto Rico
      Puerto Rico was a nation of carvers. As the prominent
Puerto Rican instrument maker Luis Acevedo Flores put it:

“ because the Puerto Rican artisan was eminently a wood 
carver, naturally, it occurred to him to carve his 
instruments, because that is what he knew. He was a great 
carving artisan: he carved his farm implements, he carved 
his kitchen implements, he carved the yokes for his oxen, 
he carved his mortars and pestles, he carved the beaters to 
shell coffee beans, to shell rice. So it would not be odd 
for them to take a piece of wood, hollow it and make a 
concave shape. And all that was left was to put on a top 
and play. Well that is what they did with the cuatro.

“ When we studied the furniture that was made in the past 
in Puerto Rico, we noted that they were generally carved 
furniture, where the finish work was always carved. And I 
can?t imagine, in any way, that in Puerto Rico the 
technique of wood bending was known. I don't think that 
wood bending techniques were known. I believe that 
craftsmen never used them because even pieces used in 
agriculture that appeared to be bent were actually cut from 
a solid piece of wood. They were never bent. And for me, it 
is difficult to imagine that if they knew bending 
techniques, they wouldn't use them when making instruments.
"When you observe someone who works in wood, you would 
definitively think it most logical to bend, from a 
structural point of view, because of the wood’s strength. 
Because that’s when the wood’s fibers are kept in their 
longest and most complete form. When we carve a curve we 
end up with “short grain” which is fragile and easy to 
break.

“I honestly understand that perhaps it is conceivable that 
some people would know bending techniques, some coastal 
craftsmen who would work in shipbuilding, that had to bend 
the wood, and had to bend them cold, not with steam. By 
then in Spain, steam bending was known for a long time. But 
we don’t see that in Puerto Rico."

It's not easy being a luthier

I suspect that most instrument-making hand-builders have always been more than a bit jealous (and maybe even a bit resentful) at the way the large factory firms have always been able to command the lion’s share of the guitar-buying market. For years, many of us have had to struggle for the fickle attention of those few guitarists who remained unimpressed by the extraordinarily persuasive ballyhoo, shameless claims, image-manipulation and artist-endorsement ploys spread throughout the guitar media (and echoed compliantly inside music stores) by large guitar-making firms and their mass-produced instruments.

The irony is that many of us builder-technicians have had to correct, on a daily basis, the consequences of the bad judgment, failed design and shoddy workmanship of these same factory instruments. We are often dismayed at the customer’s passive resignation when told that they must now pay for the downside of mass production.

Indeed, what is most ironic is that such resignation is rare when customers of hand-made guitars spot a tiny rub-through or a little dot of glue squeeze-out, or other such oversight on their handmade instruments, and then proceed to nail luthiers to the wall for these sins.

That, perhaps, is as it should be. Yet, it all seems so colossally unfair when luthiers are nonetheless obliged to peg their prices to the price-ceiling of the factory lines, and not to the amount which the luthiers need to survive and prosper as they make these things at the slow, deliberate and careful pace that such strict standards require. It is interesting to note that professional violin-making luthiers, who largely don’t have to compete with a mass-produced product (and whose instruments are far smaller, less complex and require less expensive materials than guitars) commonly command over twice the fees that their equally-experienced guitar-making counterparts charge. If you want an excellent (new) hand made violin by a highly-regarded, expert maker, be prepared to pay $20,000 and up. If you want an excellent hand made guitar by a highly- regarded, expert maker, be prepared to pay between $5-10,000. Add to the asymmetry the fact that violins are made of maple, and fine guitars are expected to be made of distant, expensive exotics.

But I digress. Perhaps, once they’ve shelled out their hard-earned cash, customers find it far easier to hold the luthier's feet to the fire because there they are, the actual makers, in the flesh, standing right in front of them. On the other hand, large factory instrument-makers are more effectively shielded from their mistakes behind their sales staff, the store managers, the warranty restrictions, and a battery of lawyers on retainer. All these stand between the new-instrument buyer with the non-operative truss-rod, the elusive rattle, the misplaced bridge, or the new guitar in need of a neck reset—and the individuals whose mistakes, bad judgment, or expedience actually caused the problem.

Not for us, though. Rather than complain that we are a much abused, dying breed, we should take note of some heartening new developments in the market. A book published by a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reveals how the market is increasingly turning to small production handcraft and losing its unquestioning loyalty to large factory mass-production.
The book, "Made in America: Regaining the Productive Edge," resulted from a study of American manufacturing trends. According to that study, the decline of American productivity and losses to foreign competitors is a reflection of "dinosaur strategies" such as the continued adoration of mass production."

Mass production has, until recently, insured the preeminence of American industry. Jobs became increasingly specialized and innovation in machinery was substituted for the skill of workers. A hierarchy was created, putting great distance between the person who designed the product and the person who assembled it, and both of them from the buyer.

As it did during the Industrial Revolution, mass production largely wiped out all other forms of production, such as craft-type manufacturing. At present, luthiers represent the few who remain, trying to recall, recreate and relive a bygone past.

True, mass production insured that things could be made cheaper by less-skilled workers, but it resulted in a reduction of the quality and variety of products available in the marketplace. This systems has worked fine, as long as store-bought meant status and people wanted precisely what their neighbors had. But things have apparently begun to change, and in a big way.

People now want products that suit their individual taste, needs, and self-image. Luthiers are poised, as a group, to best supply this need for personalized instruments, and although the large firms are taking note and are beginning to diversify their lines (witness Martin’s recent "new-guitar-model-of the-month" policy and factory "custom shops"), individual guitar-making artesans are best equipped to offer the unique and the one-of-a-kind better than they.

According to the same study, the world is coming around to what we always  figured: if you put your heart into your work; put excellence foremost among your intentions; keep a close watch on your checkbook balance; and hang in there, the world will beat a path to your door.

How Good is This Guitar?

I'm including an old article written under commission for Acoustic Guitar Magazine. Just some basic practical advice presented in a breezy, gee-whiz style. That's what they want.

How Good is This Guitar?

by William R. Cumpiano

© 1995 All Rights Reserved

You're buying a guitar, and it's time to make a decision. You've tried out a dozen different instruments: several brand-new ones and some used ones on consignment at the music store; an older guitar you liked that a friend is willing to part with; and some you found in your local paper's classified section. Finally, you've narrowed it down to just three or four that seem to fit your ear, your hand, your style, your wallet.

But wait! Have you asked all the RIGHT questions of each instrument? Can you tell which factors point to quality construction? Can you tell which factors point to a manufacturer trying to cut costs? Were you able to spot potentially expensive problems in the making?

A wry remark I've heard inside the luthier's trade goes, "if a guitar is easy to play and it stays in tune, you'll find someone who'll love it." This implies that people aren't usually willing to go beyond first impressions when evaluating a guitar for purchase. This may be true, but it needn't be thus. After you decide you "like" a guitar, it's far better to evaluate it the way a professional technician would: dispassionately.

An evaluation of this sort begins with a once-over. First, examine the guitar's stressed seams--those between the neck and the body, between the neck and the headstock, and between the bridge and the soundboard. Are they closed and tight? Next, scan the entire guitar, looking for ripples or bulges that really shouldn't be there. With a knuckle, rap all over the front and back and listen for rattles.

Now check the height of strings. The critical questions to ask are,

* "If the action is high, is there sufficient saddle protruding above the bridge to adjust it downward?"

* "if the action is low, is the saddle too high already to adjust it further upwards?"

Clearly, a excessively low (barely protruding) saddle or an excessively high (tottering or tipping-over) saddle can signal serious problems. They may reveal that the neck angle, and thus, the action, has changed--and someone has tried to make do rather than fix it.

The reason these all are crucial as primary observations is that they betray the instrument's general integrity, the precision of its construction, and its success in bearing up to string tension--matters of basic importance for the future prospects of the instrument. Make mental note of any marginal or suspicious observations for closer scrutiny later.

Now play the guitar. I usually like play a series of difficult or challenging rapid passages, and then perhaps several slow, singing musical fragments. This way, the guitar as a tool for making music is quickly revealed: its tactile responsiveness, its playability, its musicality. Often, these qualities are thought of as elusive, mysterious gifts that only a few rare instruments possess. Instead, they are rather straightforwardly the result of thoughtful design and accurate execution by the builder.

While determining a guitar's playability and responsiveness, note how much effort, how much concerted intent is required to achieve clear, well-formed individual notes, particularly rapid arpeggios. I pay attention to how well the guitar "forgives" my less-than-perfect articulation. This quality of "forgiveness" is a crucial quality which exists to varying degrees on different instruments. I wish I had a nickel for each time I've heard the remark, "I've never been able to play THAT passage quite as easily before." Some instruments let you play your best, others slow you down.

Evaluating the guitar's musicality is best done in the upper positions, while playing slow, singing passages. That satisfying sensation when the instrument wants to make music (rather than just a sequence of notes) is the result of its ability to produce accurate pitch, volume and sustain, evenly, in all positions. These qualities are most sorely tested in the upper positions, where pitch distortion is most noticeable and where short vibrating string lengths (with a corresponding reduction of the string's output) demand the most from the whole system. These qualities--playability, tactile responsiveness and musicality--exist in direct proportion to the fretboard accuracy, scale accuracy, and fretwork quality on the guitar. Fretboard accuracy demands not only that the fret intervals be cut true to formula, but that the fretboard's inclination (the "neck angle") be precisely correct. Scale accuracy requires that the bridge's placement be exactly correct. The quality of the fretwork depends on the firm, level seating, and the accurate milling of each and every fret. The ravages of time and tension, however, can take their toll, bringing on an inevitable, gradual degradation of all those qualities.

Such precision requires concerted attention and care on a new instrument when it's made, so you're most likely to find it on guitars made in the smallest batches, from shops with the most motivated and experienced builders. Or, you could have a reputable technician improve the instrument's fretwork and action, where it falls short--but later, and at a price. So if it has it now, you're ahead of the game.

Now let's check the stuff this guitar is made of. Your first interest should be the soundbox's materials: its "plates". First question: Are they laminated or "solid"? What's the difference? Does it matter? It certainly matters a great deal, to both the tone and cost of the instrument. Of all the timber which is commercially available, only 1% is suitable for instrument-making. This is partly due to the fact that many species that are prized for acoustic responsiveness are scarce and come from distant lands. When those species CAN be obtained in commercial quantities, they must then be accurately sawn in a way that, unfortunately, yields a lot of waste. Quarter-sawing, which results in a lot of wood in the sawmill dumpster, insures that thin wooden slices can retain maximum strength, resilience, and stability.

Laminating several paper-thin sheets of less valuable woods into plate thicknesses is the expedient, cost-cutting alternative. Now, as long as the outside surfaces are covered with the more valuable, prized material (cut in the more economical way), you can hardly tell it apart from the real thing. Laminated plates, however, have significantly greater sound-absorbing properties than solid plates, due to cross-plying and all the glue in between the sheets. Thus, a guitar with all its plates laminated--top, back and sides--comes to sound, typically, rather thin and sweet: pretty, but not much there.

The major cost in tone quality is paid when the SOUNDBOARD is laminated. The laminating of the back and sides has considerably less adverse impact. Thus, solid top, laminated back-and-side guitars usually result in the best sound-to-price value.

Can anything positive be said about laminated plates, other than their reduced cost? Yes, laminated plates will not crack due to dryness and will absorb greater abuse before breaking, making laminated instruments ideal knock-about guitars. Also, laminated instruments are easier to amplify: the reduced sensitivity of the plates reduces feedback problems to virtually nil. The venerable Ramirez builds many guitars with laminated SIDES. Classical-guitar sides are especially thin and thus, particularly fragile. The slight acoustical cost for using laminating sides is borne on these expensive Classics.

"So, how can I tell for sure?" Scrutinize the edge of the soundhole. A layered, sandwich effect betrays a laminated top. If, however, the grain lines on the top drop down across the entire thickness of the soundhole, the soundboard is solid. If the soundhole-edge is painted or otherwise covered, don't be fooled; it's laminated.

Making out the back and sides is tricky. Closely examine the interior back and side surfaces through the soundhole. Look for color variations or distinctive grain features on the surfaces. If these features do not have corresponding matches on the outside, assume the plates are laminated.

Guitars that are made up entirely of laminated plates are student-grade, entry-level instruments. You shouldn't be asked to spend over $250 for any of them, least of all if used. The addition of a solid spruce soundboard, however, initiates the instrument into the next quality category. Modest specimens of solid-soundboard guitars sell in stores for as little as $250, with the fancier (the ones with finer-quality tops and better hardware) going for around seven to eight hundred dollars. The finest guitars, however, are made entirely of solid-wood plates and start at around $1000 and go up from there.

All of these price-categories have been ratcheting steadily upwards over the years. During the fifties and sixties most tropical timbers, including those ideally suited for guitar construction, were cheap and plentiful. Even low-priced instruments of that period were made of solid woods. So, it's quite possible to find high-value used american-made guitars in that category which are superior in sound and construction but cheaper than newer, laminated ones. You've got to find them, though. If you have a new or used solid-wood guitar, what are the quality "signposts" to look for? Let's look closely at the soundboard. Take note of the fine comb of grain lines ("reeds") that travel lengthwise over the top. The tightness, or density of this grain pattern, contrary to popular misconception, is NOT the definitive sign of superior-quality tonewood. Acoustic quality derives from superior stiffness coupled with light weight. This occurs without regard to the number of reeds per inch. Far better evidence of a superior, well-selected soundboard is the UNIFORMITY in the grain pattern and the presence of medullary rays. Medullary rays (also called "silk") are cross-linking fibers that run perpendicularly across the grain lines. They impart not only a beautiful luminescence to the top, but superior strength and resilience as well. They are found in their richest profusion on the very best quarter-sawn soundboards.

On newer guitars, a pale-orange color denotes Alaskan ("Sitka") spruce, the most commonly-used soundboard wood by far. A paper-white color and a finer texture denotes either European "Silver" spruce (also known as Bavarian or German spruce) or Englemann spruce. These are rarer, more expensive species found only the more expensive factory and handmade models. Characteristically, the white spruces impart to the guitar a smoother, silkier tone than Sitka, which lends the tone more of a "bite".

Other coniferous softwoods such as cedar and redwood are slowly gaining acceptance as alternatives to the spruces on classic and steel-string guitars. You may note them on some guitars because they appear decidedly darker than spruce tops. Their growing popularity is due to their remarkable loudness. But spruce-top guitars invariably "mature", becoming fuller and richer in sound due the cumulative effects of many hours of playing. Cedar and redwood are reputed not to mature, however, and to be more fragile and fracture-prone, besides. Their characteristic loudness is certainly a plus, however, and you'd be surprised how well a factory-made, laminated-back-and-side, solid cedar top classical guitar can hold its own when compared to an expensive hand-made solid-wood instrument.

The specie of wood chosen for solid back and sides--usually maple, mahogany, East Indian rosewood or Brazilian rosewood-- dramatically affects a guitar's cost and perceived value. Maple is known as a "blond" wood, while mahogany is reddish-brown in hue. Both East Indian and Brazilian rosewood are chocolate brown, but you can tell them apart by their darker-pigment figure: Indian is streaked with dark brown, soft-edged flecks and lines, while Brazilian displays spidery-sharp blue-black lines meandering along its surface. The difference between the rosewoods, in terms of their acoustic quality, is in fact rather insignificant. Nevertheless, a mystique has grown around Brazilian rosewood which clouds objective assessments of its value. Whereas mahogany and maple can be had for a few dollars a pound and East Indian rosewood (albeit costly) is still relatively plentiful, Brazilian rosewood has become one of the rarest and most expensive exotic hardwoods on the planet! Needless to say, many "connoisseurs" are unduly swayed by this fact. Yet truly, a well-made mahogany or maple guitar can be every bit as "good" as one made from Brazilian rosewood. The difference is the subtle tone coloration imparted by the different species: all other things being equal, maple and mahogany are associated with a warm, blended tone, while the rosewoods lend a glassy clarity to it. In this instance, the right question should be, "which do I prefer?" not, "which is the best?"

Now let's look at the guitar's neck. Here, straight and homogeneous grain is crucial. If you can spot any dramatic sworls or striking changes in the grain texture, put the instrument back on the rack--it's likely to be a "reactive" neck. Sharp, protruding fret ends can be a danger sign, too. They may betray a ill-seasoned fingerboard, so suspect other poorly-selected materials on the guitar. Alternatively, they may give evidence that the guitar has been exposed to a chronically dry, overheated environment. In either case, you should suspect drying out (i.e., cracks, shrinking) on other parts of the instrument. Examine the frets and the fretboard surface, especially under the strings. A guitar that has been played a great deal will develop characteristic wear patterns on its frets, such as dents, valleys and "flat-tops". A sharp detective can reveal a lot about the previous owner's playing style and musical preferences from these patterns. What's more important to you, however, is that fret wear significantly degrades an instrument's tone, playability and pitch accuracy. Resurfacing the existing frets, (or replacing old with new) is a fairly expensive proposition. On a new instrument, a good benchmark for workmanship is how uniformly shaped the fret-ends appear. On an older instrument, uneven fret-ends can show a long history of fretwork, and the likelihood that some frets may have come loose.

"Sighting" the neck is an exercise that can reveal several important faults. You can sight the neck (like a carpenter sights a board) by bringing one eye close to the edge of the fingerboard, and view it down its length towards the bridge or conversely, towards the nut. Thus, it is possible to see the fingerboard in a foreshortened way, making some special relationships easier to evaluate. You can, for example, determine if the neck is twisted by comparing the level of the upper frets, seen in foreground, relative to the level of the nut, seen in the background. If they do not seem parallel the neck is twisted, meaning that optimum action and playability is not possible until it is remedied. Also, any "kinks" along the length of the fingerboard, which would otherwise be unnoticeable while looking straight on, can become obvious while sighting. A popular misconception is that the ideal sighting is a fingerboard edge which is dead-straight along its entire length. Instead, a better sighting would be a very slight, evenly-swept upward curve--barely noticeable on a Classic, but more evident on a Steel string--and about equal on both sides. A dramatic upwards- crook right where the neck meets the body can signal that an expensive neck-reset is in the cards for that instrument.

As far as neck comfort, it's surprising how slight variations in neck-shaft contour can affect playing comfort. An inappropriately-contoured neck will rapidly tire the hand muscles at the base of the thumb. The neck should feel unobtrusive and graceful in the hand. Don't hesitate to play a guitar at length to fully evaluate its comfort over long playing periods, but keep in mind that, if you like all else about an instrument, you can have the neck recontoured later by a skilled technician.

A major quality-benchmark on an instrument is its finish. Cheap finishes are thick finishes. Like the drooping film covering a candy apple, a cheap finish is thick and wavy, with bright but indistinct highlights. All protruding corners are rounded over, and interior corners are rounded, too. On older guitars, thick finishes have a propensity to check, displaying a pattern of spider-web fracture-lines. The worst finishes (and, alas, the most ubiquitous) are thick, catalyzed-epoxy finishes that can shrink and crack over time, forcing the wood below to crack also and to pucker, like baked mud. High-quality finishes are usually clear and untinted, crystalline in texture, uniform in gloss like a fine mirror, and with sharply-focused highlights. All the guitars edges and features remain sharp and well-defined. Ideally, the function of the finish is simply to keep the wood surfaces from accumulating dirt from handling. Unfortunately, the finish (especially on new guitars) also acts like a damp blanket, muffling the sound: so it is a necessary evil, and so less is truly more. The reason you'll find thin finishes on more expensive guitars is because it takes great skill to apply a thin finish evenly and then polish it without rubbing through. The large-factory solution is to apply dozens of coats and then to press the whole instrument up against a large polishing machine: the likelihood of rubbing through is thus reduced.

Talking about cracks, some are trivial and some are not. Cracks in the finish can travel with and across the grain. Cracks in the wood (excepting impact damage) travel strictly along the grain. Cracks can point to the guitar's being subjected to an adverse environment for extended periods. While finish cracks are indeed trivial for the most part, cracks in the wood may or may not be. One test to ascertain the seriousness of a wood crack is to alternatively press on the plate on either side of the crack. If the plate behaves as if it were still joined across the crack, it is often just a thin, hairline split that can be quickly repaired by working a little white or yellow glue into it and applying light pressure over it to close it while the glue sets. If the two sides of the crack move independently from each other, the crack must be knitted together by a skilled person. If left untended, the crack may just remain stable indefinitely, or (if in a region of stress) will grow in size, and eventually pucker. Then, a difficult, expensive repair job is in the works. Regardless, two or three soundbox cracks on a good guitar (if tended to) should in no way affect the future prospects of an otherwise good instrument. Neck cracks are a different matter altogether. While splits in the fingerboard are usually inconsequential, cracks in the shaft, heel or headstock region are extremely serious. Have a skilled technician evaluate them before buying the guitar.

Tension stress eventually takes a toll on every guitar, and it is the natural result of how guitars are made. The effect of string tension, normally, is to bow the neck upwards slightly and to cause the bridge to twist downward towards the soundhole. The presence of tension distortion of the neck to a greater or lesser degree is not unusual, even on the very best instruments. Soundbox distortion is, however, and should cause great concern. Whereas tension on the neck slowly causes the string action to rise, tension on the soundboard is trying to cause the soundboard to collapse. That it doesn't on a lightly-built fine instrument over the span of a lifetime is a tribute to the skill of the builder. Indeed, well-made guitars do react to tension, but they usually stabilize into a more or less permanent configuration. Other guitars, nevertheless, are time-bombs which are actively collapsing, in slow motion. Evidence of slow (and slowly accelerating) collapse is a marked tipping-over of the bridge, strings laying exceedingly low on the fretboard (notwithstanding a tall saddle) and an ugly bulging of the soundboard behind the bridge. Ripples, lumps, or hollows on any of the plates should be cause for alarm also, being evidence of collapsing interior structure.

Now that you've had a chance to take a closer look at the guitar you were about to buy, doesn't it feel better to know that you've brought a little bit of sensible skepticism into the process? Now you know why the man was trying to sell that guitar with high string action and a low,low saddle. You've also been given a little more ammunition in case you have to bargain with the owner over the price of an instrument which passed the examination but nonetheless needs an expensive fret job. Now, pay the man, take it to a good technician to adjust the action to your particular taste, and enjoy your new guitar!