Official Luthiers Forum!

The vast majority of the times they get through unscathed.
I asked my local music shop for some sturdy cardboard boxes, large enough for a Guitar case + room for padding. All they had were boxes that cheap Guitars had been shipped in - no hard case, no bubble wrap just the cheap Guitar inside a cardboard box. I asked how many arrived damaged. To my amazement he said just one in five years!

What do you guys recommend for using inside the case? newspaper balls perhaps? I heard these are good for inside the cardboard box.

No, they leave the Guitar behind because the Presto sounds better than the Sm.........

Guitarists generally have, in my experience, quite a limited understanding of dynamics and expression outside the limitations of the guitar, which are that it's a very quiet instrument. We don't sustain like the violin or a wind instrument. The top notes don't sustain melodically. But it's got all the benefits of being a harmonic instrument and a melodic instrument and a rhythmic instrument, and this presents enormous challenges to a maker, and I don't think all makers are quite geared to come up to that challenge, not because they're limited but because most classical guitarists are in their own world and their expectations are quite limited.

It's more like a...you know you peak more at the beginning of the sound instead of spreading the total amount of sound over a longer period, and I don't want to get too technical about it, but I would say that most of the 20th century makers followed in that tradition and made some wonderful guitars, including Fleta. Early makers in the 20s and 30s, the most well known, famous because Segovia played them, were probably Ramirez, another Spaniard, and a great German maker, Hermann Hauser. I mean I have to be honest here, and I'll probably get brickbats for it, but I never understood Ramirez guitars at all because they had no basic sound at all. I don't understand why people liked them. They had no dynamics and no tone colour, and I found them a little bit like orange boxes. They made an easy, all round sort of sound.

All the instrument makers after the Second World War in the middle 20th century have sort of followed their own different strands of developing that basic Torres pattern of the mid-19th century. And individual guitars, and makers sometimes, have been very, very nice indeed, and I have tried a lot of them, but I don't think any of them have, I would say, got away from that slight percussive, and the limitations that come from that percussive quality, although it has, let me say, its charm, it has absolute musical limitations. When you have that kind of sound you can't get the range of colour or the range of dynamic, and it's actually physics.

Every recording engineer that I've ever worked with, and others too - I know that Craig Ogden, who I know well here in England and does a lot of playing and recording - every engineer, whether you're playing on a film, you're playing with an orchestra, and other musicians, they notice immediately. They always say, 'What's that guitar? Why is it easier to record? Why does it sound better? Why is it less temperamental for the equipment?'

And it's to do with that. Until you play the instrument you don't realise that the traditional Torres design does not respond in the way that I'm enunciating words now and colouring my speech to make a point. They don't do that as responsively as Smallman does, and what he has done with the design to enable that.

Many people know Smallman guitars for their big sound.
For many people playing at home, this may not be
so important, but when playing in a 2000 seat hall,
or performing regularly with an orchestra, it is
important to consider this.
However more important than volume, is the colour
and tone of the instrument. The Smallman is my
favoured instrument for the concert hall due to
the wide palette of colours, tones, and dynamics
it provides - I can shape the sound I want, and know
that it will be heard clearly throughout the hall.
It is my favoured concert instrument as it is so
satifsying to play it on the concert platform.

Kim, I have quite a solid collection of CG recordings, a good number on Smallmans. Jest aside, I'm one that really can't stand their tone, none of them. And the couple I heard live didn't do it for me either. Matter of taste, maybe mine is flawed, but I'm not the only hater. I don't need to sell my guitars for 30k or even build or play guitars to have an opinion on how music sounds nice or not. I'm not saying GS guitars suck, just that not everyone likes them, and the fact that they sell for big bucks or Williams or Xuefei and even the ghost of Segovia might like them is not going to fix my distaste. Maybe I would appreciate GS (and Williams' playing) more if I was from Oz I hope you won't love me less now In any case we have gone way OT here.

Jest. Ever heard of it?

I guess the way a guitar 'sounds' and whether or not an individual will find that sound to their liking is subjective and to each his own.

Jest aside, I'm one that really can't stand their tone, none of them. And the couple I heard live didn't do it for me either. Matter of taste, maybe mine is flawed, but I'm not the only hater. In any case we have gone way OT here.