Classical guitar making

In general one can distinguish three main aspects of guitar making: Fernando Sor has written that an instrument-maker "should be an accurate draughtsman, understand the common principles of mechanics, the composition and resolution of forces, and the laws of vibrating strings and surfaces".

It refers to a comprehensive tuning of the wood and bracing (its density, thickness, tension, sound-influence) to influence the acoustic properties.

The techniques used trace to previous centuries, especially in violin-making (example: attempt at understanding some of the tuning schemes of Italian violins: 1 Archived 9 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine, 2).

Some guitarmakers believe that the actual voicing of the wood, and working with and "shaping" the wood (during and even after construction) is more important than the outer construction itself (such as chosen bracing): "As my skill and experience have grown I have come to believe that what makes a good guitar good is firstly how well fine tuned and balanced it is rather than what type of strutting system it is built with.

[9]" (Per Hallgren) One of the important aspects that good luthiers need to understand, is that a single tone consists of the "fundamental and simultaneous overtones".

Guitar players can actively vary the timbre by the way they pluck the string—by changing the nail or finger angle, the distance from the bridge, etc.

As was mentioned, it is possible to group historic instruments according to the colour and response sound characteristic (present for notes in the various registers).

Torres' fan bracing was influential for modern classical guitars: it consists of wooden strips glued inside the body to provide support and particular deep resonance that is saturated in fundamental.

The designs Torres developed were later adapted by several very influential luthiers; Manuel Ramirez (1864–1916) and his brother José Ramírez (1858–1923), Hermann Hauser, Sr. (1882–1952) and Ignacio Fleta (1897–1977).

More contemporary luthiers such as Robert Bouchet and Victor Bedikian also use the ideas and designs of Torres, Hauser, and Fleta in their own guitars.

Much of the Brazilian rosewood used for guitars is of poor quality, and the inflated price of the wood has caused many luthiers to search for alternative tonewoods.

The Australian guitarmaker Greg Smallman introduced guitars with an extremely thin soundboard, which is supported by bracing in the shape of a lattice.

The terms double-top, sandwich-top, and composite-top all refer to a relatively new way to construct the soundboard of a guitar, developed by Matthias Dammann in Germany in the late 1980s.

Other luthiers such as Robert Ruck, Fritz Mueller, Jim Redgate, Michel Bruck, Boguslaw Teryks and Gernot Wagner have since adopted the method.

Luthiers use the honeycomb sheet (calendered paper) version of the product: the low mass, strength, and ease of shaping make it ideally suited for guitar soundboards.

[42] A number of luthiers are now incorporating a soundport, an additional small soundhole on the guitar's side, usually facing the player.

The only published formal research on the latter subject suggests however that players may not be able to hear any difference in a soundport equipped guitar.

While most classical guitar makers are today mainly concerned with making modern classical guitars with their typical fan-bracing or experimenting to make the instrument louder (e.g., "thin-top lattice-braced", "double-top", with results that are not without criticism[45]); they seem to give little consideration to historical sound ideals, or to tuning and voicing of the parts of the instrument.

[46] On the other hand, there are opinions that those guitar makers who openly refer to using plate tuning, may be using it more as a marketing gimmick, than something that they truly understand; and has a marked influence on the instrument's sound.

In fact, top violinists who traditionally played Stradivari, are now slowly beginning to use modern violins (this was rather uncommon up till recently).

[51] Thus, while some consider that in this respect (and considerations of sound aesthetic), that guitar making today is still lagging behind professional violin-making, the scientific evidence is ambiguous, at best.

In fact, Segovia's Santos Hernandez (Ramirez) guitar from 1912, has a slightly different sound aesthetic, than the earlier Torres design.

[63] Torres and post-Torres style modern guitars with their fan-bracing, have a thick and strong tone: but they are considered too saturated in fundamental for earlier repertoire (Classical/Romantic: Carulli, Sor, Giuliani, Mertz, ...; Baroque: de Visee, ...; etc.).

The sound aesthetic of early romantic guitars (such as Lacôte) on the other hand, has stronger overtones (yet without being starved in fundamental—which would again be undesirable).

who claim that a performer's interpretational style is psychologically related to the instrument's aesthetic; and that this can even be observed in contemporary recordings, e.g., Bach's lute works as performed on lute[65](with convincing expressive phrasing), versus the markedly different interpretations of these works on the modern classical guitar.