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Read that somewhere else recently and remember thinking that (nowadays) a wound B string isn't necessary a heavy one. Thomastik include one (and ditto G; both silk-and-steel design with stainless steel flat winding) in one of their 2 steel string sets for classical guitar. Those correspond to an average medium tension for classical at most (the 1st string in that particular set is a 0.010").
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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06-15-2024 11:00 AM
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Perhaps not, but Eddie's set was reportedly .015 to .070-something! Originally Posted by RJVB
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"Parlor guitar" is more of a musical-genre than an instrument-category term--a "parlor guitar" is just the instrument on which the music (a division of what's sometimes called "piano-bench music") is played. In the mid-19th century, amateur musicians--often women--took up the guitar, and arranger-composers like Henry Worrall published collections of tunes appropriate for amateur players-- Originally Posted by Vitellozzo
Worrall's guitar school - Kansas Memory
Note that among the compositions in Worrall's books are "Spanish Fandango" and "The Battle of Sebastapol," both of which eventually entered the African-American repertory of tunes and open tunings (e.g., Elizabeth Cotten's "Spanish Flang Dang"). Middle-class music-making was not water-tight, and plenty of tunes leaked into the black and white working-class worlds.
So what a century or more later came to be called "parlor guitars" are merely the range of commonly-available guitars from c. 1850-1920. And manufacturers did respond to player demand by building and designing larger and louder guitars--Gibson's early and then L-series archtops, harp guitars, Martin's 000 size, resophonics, and so on.
As to what was played on these instruments before, say, 1930, the answer is, "Whatever music people wanted to make." Mandolin orchestras (promoted by Gibson) included guitars. Various kinds of jug bands, string bands (The Skillet Lickers, the North Carolina Ramblers), and proto-country hillbillly acts (Jimmy Rodgers, the Carter Family, Sam and Kirk McGee). Small-group jazz (Venuti-Lang, the Mound City Blue Blowers). And, of course, the blues.
Electrical recording might have made more acoustic space for the guitar, or changing tastes in dance-band and vocal arranging might have led to the banjo (and the tuba) being edged out of rhythm sections. In any case, the guitar played a prominent role in popular and folk music right along.
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He was not alone. Alan Carruth has a story about how he visited a fair or something of the sort with I think a teacher, who saw Freddy Green's big Stromberg, "picked it up and struggled to place a chord" strummed it, and had everyone in the hall turn and look at him because of how loud it sounded. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Exactly, the early 19hC romantic guitars by Stauffer, Panormo et al. are a lot more similar to (but still different enough from, as my friend ensures me) the parlour guitars that we see nowadays than to the post-Segovia classical guitar. Originally Posted by RLetson
That said, the fact that women played these probably didn't just have to do with availability but also with what was considered decent for them to play.
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More details re the NL guitar in the link I posted where you can get into the minutiae. Early NL had an arched top, later one were flat. The salient point as far as I’m concerned is we aren’t talking about a post L5 style archtop guitar (like our Loars) but something with more of a flattop style voice in any case. Originally Posted by RJVB
I don’t mean phosphor bronzes. 80/20 bronzes I think they are called now?Brass, not bronze (which was introduced only in '76 or so IIRC).
But I was talking about the trebles (and possible the core wire used in the wound strings).
I have no idea about brass trebles. Stout doesn’t mention them in the article whcih is mostly what I’m going on. Maybe you can discuss with him? He’d probably know more than me.
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Yeah, many makers call them that (even Thomastik) but 80/20 is brass, not bronze. I'm really at a loss why the confusion would have arisen because I think most people know and can tell the difference in daily life. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Idk send them a email (or a telegram if you prefer.) Originally Posted by RJVB
I would tend to refer to something by the name it is sold under.
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Which is fine enough until it leads to unexpected results because bronze strings do actually exist and the 2 winding alloys give a different enough sound that many players will get a hissing fit if you suggest they use the other kind. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
On here the shared property of being invisible for magnetic PUs is probably more important...
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From what I've been able to uncover in my research, Freddie used a more standard .013-.056 set...but his action was insanely high. There's video to prove the latter part! Originally Posted by RJVB
But definitely yes, heavy strings, high action-- VOLUME.
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He also played a huge instrument IIRC (19"?) so it wouldn't be surprising if he used a longer scale length that would have increased the tension-at-pitch of those 12s. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Here’s the thing… oh wait, I don’t care. Originally Posted by RJVB
Phosphor bronze strings look nice and sound great for 5 minutes after which they sound like all other strings.
Everything else non ferrous and round wound is very much or a muchness. I think perceived differences between Monel and Nickel-Bronze strings comes down to psychology. Put me in the mix with a band and I can’t tell any difference. Things like string gauge, action and above all the performance acoustic make much more of a difference.
Trust me, I went through this rabbit hole years ago. It’s more or less a complete waste of time. They all pretty much sound the same.
Get a Krivo, they do pickups that work with bronze/whatever. Balance isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough to gig.
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I really do wish Phosphor bronze strings corroded less quickly and were more consistent because they do look amazing.
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Phosphor Bronze? Yuck. Too bright too long and then suddenly dead.
Give me 80/20s any day. Start off super bright but then mellow out in a way PB never does.
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Gee, I've seen those words before Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
[OT]
The interesting thing here is that the harder the wrap alloy, the less harmonic content the string will have; that's why most classical players prefer pure copper (with silver plating that IMHO is purely for looks and to prevent corrosion). Brass is harder and thus gives a more fundamental tone (once mellowed out). PB is a bit of an outlier in that it keeps an undecent metallic twang for so long but then they indeed get an even more fundamental sound than brass-wounds, which is undoubtedly where their reputation for having a warm sound comes from.
I've come to like their sound for the G and D on steel stringers and for the D on nylon-strings - once they're broken in. For the low E I prefer brass before PB will sound deadish from the 5th fret up even when new (the the player at least) and brass remains livelier higher up and for longer. For the A string it varies; I do like the sound of PB too (it has something cello-like) but the only classical set still in production has a too weak 5th string for my playing. On my archtop the jury is still out.
AFAIK Monel is even harder than PB which might explain why they sound even brasher when new and after that boring as hell. d'Addario nickel-bronze are PB-wounds with a thick nickel coating.
FWIW, according to Mimmo Peruffo the effect wrap wire has on a string's sound depends solely on its metallicity index. He's a string expert so I have no reason to doubt him, nor whether this knowledge from the realm of classical strings might (not) apply to steel strings too.
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Getting back to topic,
my dad played plectrum banjo Dixieland music as a young guy but also learned enough trombone that he could jump on that when needed. When he got in the Air Force they put him in the the traveling band since he could sing too. I think a lot of the folks from that we just did what they needed to stay in music instead of the wars. My dad hated playing the guitar but I still have his plectrum hanging on my wall … which is really hard to play, and the tuning is wierd …
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Plectrum tuning wouldn't be too weird. CGBD. All you have to do is lower the A and the E strings a full tone down on a standard guitar and ignore the top 2 strings and that would be a plectrum tuning. Originally Posted by jchinkley
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Plectrum tuning is great for chord work but tough when trying to work out song lines. My Dads old banjo deserves a good setup, maybe I’ll take it over to Turtle Hill and see what they say…
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Originally Posted by Vitellozzo
I think you might find some answers in Jeffrey J. Noonan's The Guitar in America: Victorian era to jazz age (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008). He describes the middle-class banjo-mandolin-guitar movement that developed in the 1880s and persisted until the 1920s (the era of the bungalow, not coincidentally). The movement was initiated by commercial interests: "Highlighting the similarity of playing techniques, instrument manufacturers and music publishers created a fictional family of plucked instruments, identifying them as the “trio” or “plectral” instruments. By the early years of the twentieth century, these businessmen identified themselves, their customers, and others devoted to the plectral instruments as the banjo, mandolin, and guitar (BMG) movement." Chief among them was S.S. Stewart:
The BMG movement instigated by S. S. Stewart grew out of the two great themes of his life—unstinting devotion to the banjo and an unrelenting desire to make money. Given this dedication to the banjo and to business, later readers should recognize that the guitar’s appearance in S. S. Stewart’s Banjo and Guitar Journal served principally to support the publisher’s goals. Stewart himself implied as much when guitarists requested more articles about their instrument in his magazine. He reminded them that his periodical was “published on the one hand as an advertising medium for our business; and on the other hand from pure love for the instrument we represent—the banjo."
Stewart denigrated the guitar as "vulgar, difficult to play, and less musically expressive than the banjo."
The guitar's vulgarity derived from the spread-legged sitting position advocated by most guitar methods and nearly all American and European guitarists. Stewart claimed that its thick strings, wide fingerboard, and awkward chord shapes made the guitar nearly impossible to play well. And, he asserted, even if one could actually manipulate the instrument, its raised frets prevented expressive playing. Stewart also used the guitar's association with Spain and its use by African Americans to point up its primitive and sensual nature.(42)
Nevertheless, the guitar flourished, in part because Stewart died unexpectedly in 1898, but mostly because women preferred the guitar to the banjo and mandolin.
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Intriguing, especially the notion about the guitar coming from a Black background as opposed to the pure banjo. I always thought that the banjo was supposed to be a Black instrument.
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Yes, Stewart was rewriting history to suit his purposes. During the Spanish-American war of 1898, he emphasised the Spanish origins of the guitar, to create prejudice against our instrument. Originally Posted by docsteve
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I'd have to read up on the exact origins of the guitar as we know it - and I do mean well before Torres.
The instrument as we know it is probably the result of multiple evolutions occurring in different parts of Europe at more or less the same time, but the principle common ancestor indeed came from Spain it will probably have at least some Morish influences in it. (Listen to "authentic" performances of South-European music and you'll hear a lot of those influences.)
That means African influences, but from the northern, not the "black" regions of the continent.
Side-bar: I just read that several "pre-historic" museums in northern Europe have been starting to change their displays recently because new evidence suggests that our ancestors weren't the blonde, fair-skinned "ur-arians" they were believed to be. They were dark-haired and dark-skinned in their hunter-gatherer days and only lightened up when they settled and became farmers. A simple reaction of the body to ensure sufficient vit. D production while being exposted to less sunlight, apparently.
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I used Black with a capital B as shorthand, meaning everyone who does not identify, or is not identified, as white.
Don't enter into a discussion on that, PLEASE.
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I was just pointing out that someone wanting to rewrite history related to this can even find scientific grounds for it.
But yeah, for most people not originally from/raised in a handful of countries (probably including the US) skin colour is just that. Colour.
We can now get back to discussing what's better, a blonde or a sunburst finish. Oh wait, that's also another thread
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I do wonder if the initial brightness of probably any kind of new string has to do at least in large part with absence of fret wear. Once that sets in strings should behave a lot more like flat or "ground" wounds in their interaction with the frets. (And indeed, backing them up to put an unworn bit of winding at the level of the frets does revitalise the sound a bit.) Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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