-
I never sausage a thing!
-
02-25-2018 06:21 PM
-
Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop
For best playability on modern archtop guitars, the radius of the fretboard and the bridge saddle is close, but not the same. Gontershausen gave the bridge 'a shape like Q' , as illustrated. About the fretboard he only tells that it would be arched, similar to the bridge, and that it floats freely (i.e., violin-style) above the top.
Many of Gontershausen's statements in his book from 1855 sound surprisingly modern to me, like in his preface: Therefore, we generally also see concepts about the value, construction, treatment, and preservation of musical instruments that are highly wrong. Even among the most honorable musicians, we often find opinions that have arisen from groundless prejudices, and that must appear to the connoisseur as pure fairy tales. To suppress this as much as possible, and to bring about a correct judgment about value, etc., seems to me only possible from the technical-practical point of view.
In the book by Eduard Fack from 1884, we find some other interesting references, for instance, on page 77f.:
The instrument maker D. Bittner in Vienna had some innovations built in his guit. exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867. The report by Dr. E. Hansleck, K.K. Professor at the University of Vienna, literally reads as follows. "Well-deserved attention attracted two beautiful, carefully crafted guit. by David Bittner in Vienna. The one with ten strings and with a newly improved machine has a steel support rod inside [the body], so that the top sounds freer, and a second back, so that the vibrations of the back are not inhibited by the pressing of the instrument to the body of the player."
The Larson Brothers made some fine guitars, but it seems they were not the first luthiers to use a body metal support rod.
Carlo Greco of the Guild Company made ten (and a half) 'Acousti-Lectric' archtops according to George Barnes specifications, using a wooden support rod, which, IMO, makes more sense - and I know that actually some efforts are made to revive that old technology.Last edited by Ol' Fret; 02-26-2018 at 04:34 PM.
-
Metal supports inside the body have been used in Schrammel guitars for aeons. Not sure if I spelt Schrammel correctly...
-
Josef Schrammel lived from 1852 to 1895, and it's doubtful if he made contraguitars - the neutral name for these instruments - at the tender age of 15.
Johann Gottfried Scherzer, 1834 - 1870, in Vienna was the driving force behind these guitars."The small lean man without assistants and apprentices" worked partly for the workshop of Johann Georg Stauffer, the master of C.F. Martin. Scherzer made all sorts of attempts to improve guitars, was also in connection with physicists and scholars.
Btw., contraguitars are flat-topped. In connection with the function of the steel support rod, it is appropriate to differentiate between archtop and flattop guitars. Just the type and attachment of the bridge (floating - glued, tailpiece - stop tail) makes this necessary.
It's obvious that already the mid 1850s were the bustling period for all sorts of guitar makers, including archtops.
Last edited by Ol' Fret; 02-26-2018 at 09:39 PM.
-
Looks like an ancestor of Paul McCartney you mean? Originally Posted by bananafist
I'm just blown away by the information in this thread. Loar's father was also a musician and inventor. Lloyd Loar later received a masters in music, and was a concert musician who also studied and performed several months in Europe at the end of World War I. Loar also created an electric keyboard style instrument that never went out of tune. Whoa! Loar's father dabbled in real estate in a city named Gibson, no relation to the later guitar company. A further Whoa!
An interesting read:
Lloyd Allayre Loar, 1886-1943 | Siminoff Banjo & Mandolin Parts
-
It's pathetic that Google has nothing on Heinrich Walker von Goetershausen. Originally Posted by Ol' Fret
-
I'd like to thank Ol' Fret for his very interesting contributions to this thread!
-
The libraries here, as long as they did not burn down in the wars, are full of old stuff that nobody cares about.
Here's the cover of v. Gontershausen publication from 1855:
The design and construction of his archtop guitar seems to be similar to the one of the old Cremonese masters Amati and Stradivari, by means of a circle and division into "parts" as a unit of measurement.
Interesting details for a guitar of this period, at least for old-time violin fans, like: "Below the right foot of the bridge, like the violin, there is a sound post; below the left, 35 parts long, a bass (tone) bar."
The most impressing thing of the old all-rounders is both the extent of knowledge of so many different instruments resp. procedures and the ability to put the focus on the smallest details, if necessary.
Yesterday I wrote something about the asymmetrical mandolin bass and treble tone bars that can be tuned separately, so that both halves of the soundboard behave differently. This is exactly what Lloyd Loar did on his archtop guitars. Or, much later, Artur Lang, though not by using asymmetrical tonebars, but asymmetrical soundboard halves; should be more effective because on arched instruments the mass of the plates in relation to the tonebars is much higher than on flattops.
I know that some see viols as instruments quite different from archtop guitars. However, while there are certain differences, particularly concerning the specific violin bridge movement, the construction with a sound post and just one bass bar leads also to different sound properties of the bass and treble half of the top. To me, and some others, the essential difference of viols to archtop guitars are the bow and the frets. Period.
Some day I'll put light, violin-style sound posts in guitars, and record how few players will notice the presence of that so-called anima ... It's somehow weird how similar a viol can sound to a mandolin. Of course, to be fair, we cannot compare them to the much bigger sized archtop guitar - some tremolo playing is necessary on the small plucked instruments:
I fully understand the position that jazz can be played on virtually any archtop guitar we buy in the next store or online: it's the music that matters! But I doubt that it is fully understood how many lives of trial and error it has cost to get to the simply made instrument we are holding in our hands.Last edited by Ol' Fret; 02-27-2018 at 09:27 PM.
-
Thanks for that. I got a little confused over your reference to the viol, which to me is different from the violin - I'm thinking of the Renaissance viols, which had no sound post. But I understand what you are saying. I know of one classical guitar maker, David Rouse, who uses a sound post, and few would ever notice.
-
Great thread!!!
Here’s another example of arch top, guitar/violin, bowed/plucked historical intersection.
Arpeggione - Wikipedia
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
-
Yes, the Arpeggione is lovely instrument. Life's too short.
-
Sorry for the confusion with 'viols' and 'violins' - the first term is really uncommon in germanophone countries! I use it as an abbrev. and forget sometimes to correct that. Meant is always the violin.
In this thread it becomes clear that many different ways led to the development of the archtop guitar. It was not the invention of a single luthier, not even that of a small group, so any hagiography is not appropriate.Interesting also is the explanation of the "Correction-Guitarre" (sorry for my more than unqualified translation efforts - this is translated from old-time German language!):
In the above quoted book by Eduard Fack - that pointed out v. Gontershausen's early archtop guitar work - there are many examples for this.
There are descriptions such as: "The Lauten-Guitarren are either old lutes reworked to guitars, or even remade in the form of old lutes, but both of these have now the advantage of a greater fullness and strength of sound, and a lovely delicacy of the tone; but their [physical] balance is associated with some inconvenience."
These instruments were also rebuilt under the name 'Bandora'.
"In the price lists of music instrument makers from Markneukirchen one finds indicated: German mandolins, playable like guitar, with 6 strings. The instruments are in size and shape similar to the Lauten-Guitarre."
There are "bowed guitars" addressed, which are obviously very closely related (identical?) to the Arpeggione (Stauffer).
"The guitar maker Bringmann in Frankfurt has, to prevent the frequent mistuning of the guit., attached a mechanism to the
bridge by which, when stringing up, the mistuning, caused by disproportionate thickness of the strings, is immediately suppressed, therefore the string corrected; this is why he calls this a 'Corrections-Guitarre'.
Pagannini, who played the guit. very well, gave Mr. Brinkmann estimable information about the construction of the guitar."
Meant is the luthier Franz Georg Brinkmann, 1799 - 1845.
Or "Fürstenberg's Regulator":
"A new invention is that of Rudolph Fürstenberg in Jorndorf made to adjust the tuning of the string. It is an old misery that the gut strings are impure and consequently useless. That trouble is thoroughly relieved by the Regulator of Herr Fürstenberg. By means of a simple device with sliders, each string can abitrarily be lengthened or shortened a bit, thus be purely tuned. The small apparatus can be attached on any instrument. The inventor likes to furnish particulars. E.Schroen (Harmoni No 6 page 92.)"
Or attempts performed by H. Weiß in Leipzig, conductor of the association 'Leipziger Guit.- friends' as the fruit of his 15-year study to improve the guit.:
"The improvement attempts are: 1. The stringing of the guit. with metal strings instead of gut strings.There is no denying that the treble strings made of gut deliver only a short, faint sound, which is why in solo playing we do not earn a lasting recognition. That's why the today's musician appreciates the guit. only as an accompanying instrument, if it is a purely chordal accompanying act. The notion of the quality of the instrument must change because metal strings give a much stronger, longer and purer tone."
Wow - we all know that, at least, master guitarist Andres Segovia didn't listen!
Here is a project work from 2007 about Eduard Fack's book (in German language): Inhaltsverzeichnis. Hurttig, Projektarbeit 06/07 - PDF
The author named Hurttig states on the importance of Fack's widely forgotten manuscript, just to give the gist:
During investigations, in preparation for the exhibition on C.F.Martin and the early guitar making in Saxony in 2005, I found the subject of the said, from the outside not further labeled, work in the library of the Musikinstrumentenmuseum Markneukirchen. It was donated to the museum in 1957. Unfortunately, however, no information is given about the previous owner.
The book, which is largely composed of a collection of articles on the subject of guitar from encyclopaedias, journals and magazines of the time between 1813 (Leipziger allgem. musikal. Zeitung) and 1884 (International Guit.-Zeitung No. 5), is a very early source on the guitar culture in Germany, and, to my knowledge, until then the largest.Last edited by Ol' Fret; 02-28-2018 at 08:56 AM.
-
No time at the present, but I'll have good read of that post later. I do appreciate you taking the time to make it.
-
Later:
As I said, everyone was looking for an angle, something different for marketing, uniqueness. This happens before one model is accepted as the prototype, i.e. the Torres/Manuel Ramirez classical, the Gibson L5, the Fender Stratocaster. I like these crazy periods of experimentation. It happens in musical composition too - the "between eras" music can often be strangely fascinating.
To sum up, Lloyd Loar did not invent the archtop guitar, nor was he first to add f-shaped sound holes. But he did work for Gibson, who eventually emerged as the company most equipped and ready to support the burgeoning Swing boom after Loar left.
Reply With Quote
“Shearing style”
Today, 05:26 PM in Comping, Chords & Chord Progressions