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Post by majorminor on Jul 4, 2015 13:28:10 GMT -5
Someday all you'll need as a luthier is a 3D printer, strings and a few tuning machines. I keep telling everyone at the door shop here that day is coming for doors and millwork - they all laugh.
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Post by millring on Jul 4, 2015 14:32:35 GMT -5
Someday all you'll need as a luthier is a 3D printer, strings and a few tuning machines. I keep telling everyone at the door shop here that day is coming for doors and millwork - they all laugh. And you'll pick your sons, pick your daughters too from the bottom of a long glass tube.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jul 4, 2015 15:19:09 GMT -5
Let's put it this way. Think of the arrangements you could do if you did not have to finger/thumb a bass note. Like the lute the harp guitar has a arpeggio of bass notes available as open strings. The CF guitar may be butt ugly but it will handle the tension from all those strings much better than a wood guitar. Besides, I know most of you guys are really closet Theorbo wannabes.
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Post by drlj on Jul 4, 2015 16:03:51 GMT -5
I refuse to play something if its tuning gears are in a different room than I am.
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Post by RickW on Jul 4, 2015 16:15:30 GMT -5
Anything other than CANDIED APPLE RED is unfashionable and totally unacceptable! Bill is a RED! But, I could go for that colour. Maybe a cherry red, like an ES-335.
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Post by RickW on Jul 4, 2015 16:18:00 GMT -5
Let's put it this way. Think of the arrangements you could do if you did not have to finger/thumb a bass note. Like the lute the harp guitar has a arpeggio of bass notes available as open strings. The CF guitar may be butt ugly but it will handle the tension from all those strings much better than a wood guitar. That is another consideration, for sure. Strong like ox. You also get a lot of overtones from those strings, just like a sitar does. Very much a different instrument.
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Post by Kramster on Jul 5, 2015 7:08:25 GMT -5
That is made by my friend Alistair Hay who ones Emerald Guitars over in Ireland...he can make a blue and amber and wood laminate one as well and add and take away strings...I had one of his harp guitars here to play with....didn't have the lil strings on the lower part though. A few years ago at NAMM he was was chucking out harp guitars and we hung out with a builder and we were checking them out...I shoulda known he'd build one...
I made a video of Bill Dutcher at my house would could actually play it...
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Post by drlj on Jul 5, 2015 8:32:23 GMT -5
I think it is pretty cool, truth be told. I have no problem with guitars made from things other than wood. I have actually owned and liked Ovations even though I am not going to say that here.
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Post by coachdoc on Jul 5, 2015 8:45:25 GMT -5
I think it is pretty cool, truth be told. I have no problem with guitars made from things other than wood. I have actually owned and liked Ovations even though I am not going to say that here. Oh no. Heretic!
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Post by drlj on Jul 5, 2015 8:55:59 GMT -5
I have to say, one guitar that I truly miss is a 1980's Ovation Balladeer cutaway that I sold about 10 years ago to the crazy guy with whom I used to play guitar. I bought it in Bardstown, KY in about 1985. I played it a lot and I sold it in a moment of weakness. I loved that guitar. I had a great neck on it. If I could find one just like it, I would probably buy the thing. In those days, if you wanted to plug in, they were the only game in town. But, as I said, I am not going to admit that here and listen to all the anti carbon fiber feelings and/or synthetic bias from these wood purists. What they don't know won't hurt me. My lips are sealed.
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Post by Doug on Jul 5, 2015 9:42:59 GMT -5
When Ovations came out they were the best $100 beach guitar going.
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Post by Cosmic Wonder on Jul 5, 2015 10:34:29 GMT -5
At a song circle I used to frequent some gal had a fancy ovation that sounded fabulous.
Mike
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Post by Marshall on Jul 5, 2015 11:22:00 GMT -5
I have to say, one guitar that I truly miss is a 1980's Ovation Balladeer cutaway that I sold about 10 years ago to the crazy guy with whom I used to play guitar. I bought it in Bardstown, KY in about 1985. I played it a lot and I sold it in a moment of weakness. I loved that guitar. I had a great neck on it. If I could find one just like it, I would probably buy the thing. In those days, if you wanted to plug in, they were the only game in town. But, as I said, I am not going to admit that here and listen to all the anti carbon fiber feelings and/or synthetic bias from these wood purists. What they don't know won't hurt me. My lips are sealed. Yeah. I have always liked their necks. And they were the only game in town for amplification way back when. I'm sorry they let that sense of innovation slip away. My biggest issue with them has always been the round back. There's no way to sit down and play the thing without it sliding off your lap; especially the thin body models. That'd be an easy thing to correct, if they kept at the innovation front. But the round back is their signature, and I think that's a mistake. With modern materials and forming capabilities, it'd be easy to come up with another more ergonomic shape. It's silly to let that define who you are. That being said, a lot of Ovations I see/hear are weak acoustic instruments. And their electronics haven;t kept up the pace of innovation that others have. So, the line is less desireable than just about anything. But I agree some of the early models, like a good Ballader, were/are very good instruments. They sound nice and warm and woody; have a balanced tone, and a great playable neck. . . . , even though they still want to slide off you lap.
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Post by Marshall on Jul 5, 2015 11:27:09 GMT -5
Let's put it this way. Think of the arrangements you could do if you did not have to finger/thumb a bass note. Like the lute the harp guitar has a arpeggio of bass notes available as open strings. The CF guitar may be butt ugly but it will handle the tension from all those strings much better than a wood guitar. Besides, I know most of you guys are really closet Theorbo wannabes. "Fire when ready."
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Post by Marshall on Jul 5, 2015 11:32:21 GMT -5
Here's my real problem with harp guitars. . . . , a guitar is really just another phallic symbol. And who wants to play their wimpy six string neck when there's a HUGE behemoth dominating the scene.
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Post by RickW on Jul 5, 2015 12:36:14 GMT -5
The guitar I'll always regret selling is my Balladeer classical. Sold it for a bit less than I paid for it. It needed a neck reset, and my wife was on the warpath about new in, old out. She now goes, "why did you sell it?" Arg.
They were great guitars. Definitely the only game in town for amplified acoustic sound without a pickup. And that was a nice instrument, with the fatter body. The top was gorgeous. They have definitely lost that innovative edge, but then, what is there left to really innovative about any more? Lots of great sounding pickup systems, lots of different materials, all kinds of different sizes.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,852
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Post by Dub on Jul 5, 2015 17:35:49 GMT -5
I know Don Clark loves his harp guitar and I've watched Muriel Anderson play one. Truth be told, I still can't see much point in them. If you put that same energy into working out new arrangements and techniques on a REAL guitar you and your audience will be way ahead, IMHO. In another context, that's like saying if Jerry Douglas finally put down that bar and started using frets and a flatpick he'd finally get somewhere. Or if Sam Bush got rid of that toy mini-archtop and got the right number of strings we'd all be better off. A harp guitar is a different instrument than its 6-string relative, and those who dedicate themselves to it (usually) aren't doing it for novelty's sake. Surprisingly tone-deaf response, IMHO. I don't think it's like that at all. A Dobro (square-necked) is intended to be played with a slide. The strings are too far above the neck to be used in any other way. In terms of construction, tuning, sound, and technique, it isn't really a guitar. A harp guitar is still a standard guitar with a standard neck and responds to familiar guitar technique. It also has several extra strings which may be struck or left to sound in sympathy. I'm not suggesting that harp guitars shouldn't exist, just that the extra stings make the instrument less interesting, to me, than a standard guitar. Less interesting in performance and less interesting as a guitar. I'm not asking everyone to share my opinion, I just think if a guitarist wants to express his music in a new way, he'll be better off as a musician if he develops a new approach to his instrument than to depend on an altered form of the instrument.
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Post by Doug on Jul 5, 2015 18:35:34 GMT -5
You mean like an electric guitar. <ducking>
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Post by John B on Jul 5, 2015 23:01:22 GMT -5
I don't think it's like that at all. A Dobro (square-necked) is intended to be played with a slide. The strings are too far above the neck to be used in any other way. In terms of construction, tuning, sound, and technique, it isn't really a guitar. [/quote] But they didn't start out that way, did they? When Joseph Kekuku apocryphally picked up the rusty bolt and held it to his guitar strings, thereby "inventing" the Hawaiian steel guitar, it was a regular old 6-string. At some point, someone thought to raise the nut a little so the bar didn't hit the frets. The first guitars built specifically for playing on the lap, rather than being a converted "Spanish" guitar, was the same guy who built the first American harp guitars, Chris Knutsen. Chris licensed his harp guitar design to the Larson Brothers, and either taught or licensed his Hawaiian guitar design to Herman Weissenborn. At some point, Chris stopped building harp guitars designed to be played in the traditional style, and built exclusively Hawaiian harp guitars. The Doperya brothers built both Spanish and Hawaiian versions of their resonator guitars (both Nationals and Dobros). While a harp guitar may (or may not) have a standard neck, and most guitarists can pick one up and make some decent noise, it is not simply a 6-string guitar with add-ons. It is a different instrument, with different techniques. It even has its own entry in the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. And while harp guitars have only been built in the US since the late 1890's or so, their history goes back much farther in Europe Now for fun, here's Bob Brozman playing a Knutsen Hawaiian harp guitar, built somewhere around 1920, although perhaps as early as 1914 or so: And Dr. Brian Torosian, no slouch on 6-strings, playing a harp guitar piece written in 1890 on an R.E. Brune reproduction of a 10 string harp guitar built in the 1850's. I was at this performance, and it was a truly incredible experience to see him play. And by the way, I'm probably just being too argumentative for my own good. I suppose the comment "REAL guitar" is what poked my sensitivities.
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Post by coachdoc on Jul 6, 2015 5:50:17 GMT -5
Well, Hawaiian guitars don't really pretend to be real guitars, but the gall of Ovation... Sheesh.
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