New Guitar Day! First Classical ever
 

So, my new guitar arrived today thanks to an awesome fellow forum member. 2006 Cordoba Custom Artist. This thing is beautiful. The side and back wood is just so nice. Its my first classical ever and definitely going to take some getting used to. The wide neck is so different, and its so easy to pluck. You can be so much more elegant with your picking hand. Also fretting chords takes such little effort even with the high action.

Time to finally continue my method book with the correct instrument :) I am expecting to be a bit worse for a while before getting better though.

Hopefully will be uploading some tunes soon

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Is that a cedar top? Cordoba makes some fine instruments. I think you just got one of them. Enjoy. You’ll get used to the wide neck pretty quickly.

Yep, cedar top. Madagascar rosewood body. It's really very beautiful.

One thing I did not expect is how long these strings take to stretch. I put a new set on this morning and I have been re-tuning them all day.. with no end in sight

A trick to use with nylon strings to get them to stay in tune is to hold the string around the 15th fret and pull the string away from the fretboard about 2 inches or so and give it a 'wiggle' up and down, then tune back up and repeat until the string stays in tune.
Lovely guitar btw!

Yes extra stretching has helped. They are still slightly losing tension today but very little. I suspect this will be good to go by tomorrow.

That is a beautiful guitar! I am sure you will quickly adapt to the neck. When you are learning the method book, which do you use?

Thanks!

I have been using Bradford Werners first book over at thisisclassicalguitar.com

My first classical arrived yesterday too! It’s going to be an adventure for sure, and like you I put new strings on today and boy, do they need some stretching!

Awesome congrats! It's quite different. First noticeable thing is the wide fretboard and the ease of fretting/plucking. Very easy on the hands.

And yes the strings will stretch a mile.

Thank you for the information. I had lessons when I was 16 to 18 and that was over 40 years ago. I can read music but would like to get back into classical again. I got a used (new to me) Hohner HG-25 and I love the sound. I have been playing what I recall but I want to learn versus fiddling about. I will check it out. Trying to find what will be challenging and help me cover all the basics. Nice to get back to guitar after so many years. I love it and wonder why I was so dumb to get side tracked.

His site is filled with more info than you could likely ever hope to absorb. Method books, graded repertoire, score collections in various genres, it's all there. Plus he has video lessons free on youtube to pair with almost every written lesson. Many of the books are free and others have very fair prices for PDF download. Well worth it for me. The accompanying videos are a huge bonus. He even does videos to play along with for duets. Highly recommend. If all of it was free I would feel obligated to send him a donation for sure. But I have purchased a few PDFs so far.

Great looking guitar, I hope it brings you many years of pleasing play! The headstock and tuners are remarkably similar to my 2008 Alhambra, the headstock is exactly identical, makes me wonder if the Muro de Alcoy workshop was making some of the Cordobas in 2006.

Nice guitar! A tuning tip: Be sure to pull the string end as tight as you can before rolling up the tuning rollers. The entire string needs to stretch to become stable, so the less string that's wound around the roller, the faster they will settle in.

I have no proof, but I have read that stretching the string at one point in the method mentioned above may affect intonation. I've also read that it's better to put your finger under the string at the bridge, give it a bit of a tug then run your finger up the fingerboard, gently stretching the entire length of the string along the way. Again, I have no actual proof that either of these statements are absolutely correct. So FWIW.

I have no proof either, but this is the method I use as well, and it has proven to be the most effective. :)

JP: That is a very fine looking classical guitar. And it looks brand new. Not bad for a 15 year old guitar! I think you scored well.