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Old 01-12-2017, 08:34 PM
gitarro gitarro is offline
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Somogyi started out as a classical and Flamenco Luthier and as a result when he was asked to build steel string guitars by the windham Hill guitars he would have naturally adopted the techniques in classical guitar building to building his modified steel string guitars. Which would have been fortuitous because better intonation better balance as well as more responsiveness are Hallmarks of the classical guitar. Certainly i find that the somogyi does feel and sound a little like a classical guitar.

However apart from his heel design which seems influenced by the Spanish heel and the double sides which come from classical influence such as by Friedrich, did somogyi also adopt the torres fan bracing? I have not seen any image of his bracing on the net but I recall reading somewhere that his top bracing is a modified version of Martin's X brace. I may be wrong in this of course.

I believe bashkin, Fischer and prs guitars have fan bracing a la Torres but fan bracing does not seem to be widely adopted in steel string luthiers otherwise.

On the Larson guitars, but for a failure of marketing, would Larson guitars be in the market leading position of Martin today? They had radical ideas for their time...in particular I wonder what so few luthiers have adopted the tube running from.necl block to end block. Replace the metal tube with carbon fiber, and it seems to me that neck resets would become far less common? A recent dehradun guitar that was posted on agf had this idea in material form.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Itzkinguitars View Post
Torres' classical guitars seem to have developed independently of the steel string guitar's inception. While Martin has largely defined what a flat top steel string guitar is, I think it's important to note that Martin didn't begin large scale production of "steel string" guitars until 1923 with the introduction of the 2-17. By 1927 all models unless otherwise noted shipped with steel strings. The Larsons of Chicago seem to have been building innovative steel string guitars at the turn of the 20th century thru the 1940s. While Martin built lightly built instruments for gut strings the Larsons were busy experimenting with rigid metal tubes inside their guitars, laminated bracing to handle the additional tension of steel strings, and creating instruments that are rather modern in design.

Also of note is that metal strings are not a recent invention. Instruments made in the baroque and renaissance period (see citern and orpharion) and steel string guitars have existed prior to the 20th century.

It seems that the influence of Torres hasn't been seen in steel string construction until recently with makers like Somogyi and his students. Somogyi's designs seem to borrow a lot from Torres' ideas with everything from the classical-esque shapes, to the very thin soundboards designed for optimal responsiveness playing very much into the late 19th century-20th century classical tradition.

Last edited by gitarro; 01-12-2017 at 08:39 PM.
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