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  #61  
Old 03-21-2016, 08:08 AM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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Originally Posted by S_Spruce View Post
Does anybody else find that strange?
Not at all.

To my preference, neither sounded "good". Neither sounded like a "concert-level" instrument. When you reveal that they are both under $500, there is no surprise at all. It is then a question of which you least liked the sound.

A concert-level classical guitar is a very specific instrument: it isn't just any guitar with nylon strings on it. When one speaks of a "high-end classical guitar", that is what comes to mind - my mind, anyway. And that is what I'm expecting to hear. I was expecting you to tell us that one was a Ramirez and the other a hand-made luthier's guitar - not very good instances of either.

A more appropriate title for the test might be, "Two inexpensive guitars: which sounds better to you?". "Which one of these his higher-end" suggests that they at least one is "high-end", not the case in this test.

All that said, one can purchase a pleasant sounding guitar with nylon strings for $500. But, to a skilled classical guitarist, its sound will be a world apart from a "high-end" classical guitar. In fairness, you didn't say they were "classical" guitars, just "nylon string". Perhaps, I should have read/interpreted more carefully.
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  #62  
Old 03-21-2016, 08:57 AM
ZippyChip ZippyChip is offline
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I think the choice was between a guitar that had no ability to give up the higher frequencies and one that did. Those that chose the lesser one either made an error or thought about it too hard.
This is how I decide...If a guitar cannot give up clean clear treble frequencies, then it is muting them--indicating poor construction, design, etc. and it has no chance of being a "good" guitar. After that, it is the the quality of the bass notes and how they resonate and balance out the trebles.
My 2 cents worth.
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  #63  
Old 03-21-2016, 09:32 AM
riffmeister riffmeister is offline
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Originally Posted by dosland View Post
Doesn't seem strange to me at all, sound is subjective, and preferences vary in all sorts of ways.
I agree. Objectively, guitar B is louder and has more midrange and upper-midgrange emphasis. "Best" is subjective and situation-dependent. If I were recording and wanted a warmer, sweeter sound I'd go with guitar A.....if I wanted more clarity (for example if the guitar was competing in a mix with other instruments) I'd probably go with guitar B.
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  #64  
Old 03-21-2016, 11:39 AM
S_Spruce S_Spruce is offline
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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
Not at all.

To my preference, neither sounded "good". Neither sounded like a "concert-level" instrument. When you reveal that they are both under $500, there is no surprise at all. It is then a question of which you least liked the sound.

A concert-level classical guitar is a very specific instrument: it isn't just any guitar with nylon strings on it. When one speaks of a "high-end classical guitar", that is what comes to mind - my mind, anyway. And that is what I'm expecting to hear. I was expecting you to tell us that one was a Ramirez and the other a hand-made luthier's guitar - not very good instances of either.

A more appropriate title for the test might be, "Two inexpensive guitars: which sounds better to you?". "Which one of these his higher-end" suggests that they at least one is "high-end", not the case in this test.

All that said, one can purchase a pleasant sounding guitar with nylon strings for $500. But, to a skilled classical guitarist, its sound will be a world apart from a "high-end" classical guitar. In fairness, you didn't say they were "classical" guitars, just "nylon string". Perhaps, I should have read/interpreted more carefully.
I'm a little confused following the logic here...

So, if you didn't see an improvement going from an all-laminate practice guitar to a five times more expensive well-made (according to the luthier I showed it to) all-solid-wood guitar, I am afraid it might be downright superstitious of me to believe that I (or you for that matter) can tell much of a quality difference between this Cremona and another guitar you'd think worthy of the "high-end" title. After all, the improvement in sound here should be a lot more dramatic than the improvement you might get with an instrument better than Cremona. That's the way the principle of diminishing returns works. Am I being unreasonable?
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  #65  
Old 03-21-2016, 12:29 PM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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Originally Posted by S_Spruce View Post
Am I being unreasonable?
No, but it seems you don't know what you don't know about a concert-quality classical guitar. I don't mean that in any put-down sort of way.

There generally is a HUGE difference between a truly well-made, high quality, concert-level classical guitar and a $500 nylon string guitar.

Comparing two inexpensive nylon string guitars doesn't really allow one to conclude very much about guitars or quality vs. pricing - particularly in a price range ten times that of the guitars tested.

Let's re-jig your test ad absurdum. Let's take a shoe box with a rubber band stretched across it. Total cost $2 - shoes are extra. Let's record it. Let's record the same thing played on your $40 nylon string guitar. Most will agree that the recording of the $40 nylon string sounds "better". We can then (incorrectly) conclude that the $40 guitar is "higher-end" and sounds "good". ("Better" does not necessarily equate to "good".)

Spending $500 on the Cremona guitar would then be ludicrous since, according to the law of diminishing returns, one wouldn't get much additional "bang" for all the extra bucks - $460 extra bucks. Spending $5000 on a guitar would be an absolute waste of money, an act sufficient to be institutionalized.

Both Martin and Gibson - well respected names in guitar making - each make all-solid-wood nylon string guitars that sell in the several thousand dollar range. No trained classical guitarist I know would ever mistake one of those for a concert-level classical guitar. They just don't have "it", regardless of their price. Although they have nylon strings, their manufacturers did not intend them to be concert-level classical guitars. Those that own these, like them for what they are, with no pretence that these are fine classical guitars: their musical requirements for the instrument - including tonal quality - are different than that of classical guitarists and their instruments.

Last edited by charles Tauber; 03-21-2016 at 12:40 PM.
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  #66  
Old 03-21-2016, 01:09 PM
S_Spruce S_Spruce is offline
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Thank you. Even though the points I've raised are still left unaddressed, I have learned quite a bit from your posts, and I'm glad I joined this forum.
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  #67  
Old 03-21-2016, 01:24 PM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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Originally Posted by S_Spruce View Post
Thank you. Even though the points I've raised are still left unaddressed, I have learned quite a bit from your posts, and I'm glad I joined this forum.
Which points remain unaddressed? I don't have all the answers, but I can try to address them.
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  #68  
Old 03-21-2016, 02:31 PM
S_Spruce S_Spruce is offline
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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
Which points remain unaddressed? I don't have all the answers, but I can try to address them.
Let's put my lack of knowledge about concert-level classical guitars aside for a moment...

The improvements in tone quality from that Yamaha beater guitar to the Cremona should be dramatic (which it is, according to this blind test and my luthier) and quite more significant than the improvement some high-end guitar might have over Cremona.

Here's a good analogy. If you go from low-quality department store headphones (Yamaha C45) to Sennheiser HD 600 (Cremona), the improvement in audio quality would be hair-raisingly obvious. But if you go from HD 600 to the "high-end" HD 800, the improvement would be a much smaller step up. Often questionable at that.

This isn't a sentiment. This is the law of diminishing returns in essence.

But here you are, pretty much saying the Cremona is hardly any better than the Yamaha, but implying that somehow a truly high-end guitar will whoop Cremona's behind with a belt. This just doesn't fit in my logic.
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  #69  
Old 03-21-2016, 03:44 PM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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Originally Posted by S_Spruce View Post
Let's put my lack of knowledge about concert-level classical guitars aside for a moment...
We can't: it is central to the issue. You are comparing sound, but are unfamiliar with what a concert-level classical guitar sounds like, what characterizes a "good" classical guitar sound.

Quote:
The improvements in tone quality from that Yamaha beater guitar to the Cremona should be dramatic (which it is, according to this blind test and my luthier)...
The blind test didn't prove or conclude that the difference is "dramatic" only that more people preferred the sound of the Cremona over the Yamaha for the tests that were recorded. Specifically, of the 15 responses you received, 4 like "A" better than "B", 11, the converse. Perhaps the results can be qualified as "dramatic", though the term is "fuzzy". "Significant" may be a more appropriate qualifier.

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... and quite more significant than the improvement some high-end guitar might have over Cremona.
And, that's the crux of the issue, where your logic fails. You are testing the lower tail of the Bell curve and attempting to extrapolate from that the rest of the population/distribution.

If you don't know a lot about the sound that characterizes a concert-level classical guitar, you have no foundation for this statement.

If you are not a high-performance driver and have never driven a high-performance sports car - say, a Ferrari - saying that the difference between a Hyundai and a Cadillac is quite more significant than the "improvement" between a Ferrari and a Cadillac is without foundation. If you ask a Cadillac driver, who has never been in a Ferrari, he might agree: he doesn't know what a Ferrari is about or high-performance driving. If you ask a high-performance Ferrari driver about a Cadillac, likely he won't agree.

What do you want your car to do? The Hyundai, the Cadillac and the Ferrari will all take you from point A to point B. If the Hyundai will do it for 1/20th the cost of the Ferrari, the law of diminishing returns suggests that Ferrari owners are idiots. Obviously, something else enters into it, or, they are idiots.

Taste test three bottles of wine: one $2, one $8 and one $1000. To someone experienced in wine tasting, there will likely be a world of difference between the three. To someone with little experience in wine tasting, they likely will taste pretty similar. All of them will quench your thirst. The law of diminishing returns, as you are applying it, suggests that spending more than $8 on a bottle of wine to quench one's thirst is a waste of money because there isn't much difference between it and the $1000 bottle. Sometimes, there isn't. Sometimes there is.

Quote:
Here's a good analogy. If you go from low-quality department store headphones (Yamaha C45) to Sennheiser HD 600 (Cremona), the improvement in audio quality would be hair-raisingly obvious. But if you go from HD 600 to the "high-end" HD 800, the improvement would be a much smaller step up. Often questionable at that.

This isn't a sentiment. This is the law of diminishing returns in essence.
Sure, but that isn't what we are discussing here. The "price points" we are discussing are $40, $500 and $5000+-ish. In short, if you can't hear, feel or distinguish the "improved performance" of the $5k level instrument, don't waste your money on it - or the Ferrari. The differences, generally between a $500 and $5k classical guitar are huge, to a trained, discerning player. There may be little perceived difference to "an average" guitar player, much like a Ferrari to an average in-traffic commuter.

Quote:
But here you are, pretty much saying the Cremona is hardly any better than the Yamaha, but implying that somehow a truly high-end guitar will whoop Cremona's behind with a belt. This just doesn't fit in my logic.
That is exactly what I'm saying, with the caveat that there are "dogs" at every price range.

Cognitive dissonance. You have an understanding. You are being presented with a premise that is contrary to your understanding. How to resolve the contradiction? One possibility is that your logic is faulty in this application of it. Another possibility is that my logic is faulty.

I'm a classically trained musician with 35+ years of playing. I've been making classical guitars for 30+ years. I've made classical guitars that have won awards for design and craftsmanship in juried shows. Some of those have sounded like absolute dogs, despite looking beautiful and being made from top-notch, all-solid materials that cost me $1k. I have no doubt that they did not sound better than your $500 Cremona. My point is that materials + quality woodworking are necessary but not sufficient to make a top-notch classical guitar and that a top-notch guitar is easily distinguished from a "dog" by those experienced in this pursuit.

Is the luthier who assessed your Cremona a classical guitar player? Does he (or she) make classical guitars? If not, how qualified is he to assess the sound quality of a classical guitar? If you asked Segovia - when he was still alive - to assess the sound quality of a Martin D-18, what would Segovia say? Would his assessment likely matter to a country music singer who plays one? Would his assessment even be relevant?

In many areas of human endeavour, there are those who pursue subtleties in a specific endeavour that don't matter or aren't discernible to others less "into" that endeavour. That is true of music, art, food, wine, cigar smoking, cars... Where one draws the line to define the point at which returns are diminished depends upon the individual. The law of diminished returns is a sliding scale, where the point of diminishing return is different for different individuals.

Finally, my suggestion is to try playing a few concert-level classical guitars. You may find that they are very different from your Cremona.

Last edited by charles Tauber; 03-21-2016 at 03:50 PM.
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  #70  
Old 03-21-2016, 04:59 PM
cobalt60 cobalt60 is offline
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I tried to avoid being too negative earlier, but this thread has gone from a "fun little listening test" to a wild set of generalities and fallacious thinking.

First and foremost, classical guitars are purpose-built to be played a certain way. You are not using that technique, so you may as well be playing two archtops with a hammer to compare sustain vs. glue used.


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Originally Posted by S_Spruce View Post
Thanks. I'll look them up.
To me, this test showed that people overwhelmingly thought B was a superior guitar, and it's pretty cheap for a European all-solid wood instrument. One of the reasons why I thought I needed to put up a test like this was to find out if wood vs laminate was really such a big deal when it comes to actual sound. Turns out it is. Materials do matter.

Do you see how this un-edited quote goes from the microcosm of your poorly-executed test to the absolute MOST broad application of the results? Even if your test was immaculate, we should avoid drawing larger global conclusions about materials vs. sound. Even if the correlation is clear and well-supported, we should never apply this single comparison to form a "rule" or "law" that applies to all similar possible comparisons.


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Originally Posted by S_Spruce View Post
I'm a little confused following the logic here...

So, if you didn't see an improvement going from an all-laminate practice guitar to a five times more expensive well-made (according to the luthier I showed it to) all-solid-wood guitar, I am afraid it might be downright superstitious of me to believe that I (or you for that matter) can tell much of a quality difference between this Cremona and another guitar you'd think worthy of the "high-end" title. After all, the improvement in sound here should be a lot more dramatic than the improvement you might get with an instrument better than Cremona. That's the way the principle of diminishing returns works. Am I being unreasonable?

YES!

Dramatically so. You have now elevated your inconclusive and misappropriated test results and FURTHER EXTRAPOLATED their non-existing trend to apply to instrument types not even included in the test. Charles's shoe box analogy is actually a perfect example of why this quote is problematic.



Quote:
Originally Posted by S_Spruce View Post
This isn't a sentiment. This is the law of diminishing returns in essence.

But here you are, pretty much saying the Cremona is hardly any better than the Yamaha, but implying that somehow a truly high-end guitar will whoop Cremona's behind with a belt. This just doesn't fit in my logic.

This should be fine, since the logic you've put forth is flawed. It may help that your terminology defaults to terms like "high-end" when others who likely play classical guitar use terms like "concert grade." This difference says a lot - you are concerned with cheap vs. less-cheap, with laminate vs. solid wood, brand x vs. brand y. When I play an unfamiliar guitar, I'm concerned with left hand feel, right hand feel, playability, sound quality for the player, sound quality for the listener, volume, range, etc. I can make these comparisons because I have a reasonably solid foundation of technique.



So... why bother replying? Your test was a fun test and it should stay fun. If it's also useful for your decision process, all the better! My concern is that, like all bad science, this will seep into the general discourse, at worst laying foundation for further misconceptions to build. This result appears all to often on this forum.



EDIT: wow, whoops, I guess I could have just deferred to Charles's post entirely!
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  #71  
Old 03-21-2016, 05:36 PM
dosland dosland is offline
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The bit about extrapolating the bottom tail of a bell curve (from Charles, above) is what I would repeat here - the $500 Cremona may be pretty nice, for what it is, but to think about it another way, a 30-year-old "real" classical guitar by a known luthier or a known workshop would sell for thousands or even 10s of thousands. This Cremona is in the class of "cheapest affordable all-solid wood guitars" - and all-solid at this price point is only a "good" thing in some people's estimation, and on a case-by-case basis. Most factory settings probably do a better job with laminate back and sides, at least, in this price class, because you can be meaner to the wood without hurting it (some of this is, admittedly, my opinion. But hey, it's an internet forum!). I have no doubt that the luthier you went to was impressed with the Cremona, but take that for what it is - a 30-year-old guitar by a largely unknown factory/workshop in the $500 category. Some of us would be thoroughly impressed if you could barre an F chord on it and not hear buzzing all up and down the neck, given those specifics. I'm glad you found a guitar you like to listen to and to play, for me that's the whole point of this business. But there's no reason to be surprised if other people have different perspectives on the same thing. None of this can be boiled down to a hard science with objective truths to be parsed out in simple analyses - if it could, we'd probably (mostly) be bored and move on to something else.

I've found that my own personal point of diminishing returns is above the 1500-2000 mark - proper concert classicals are a bit over my head, no doubt in part because I was raised on second-hand tennis shoes and canned beans, and therefore prefer to spend my free cash in other ways. But for some people the PODR (?!) is in the thousands, easily, and for others mine is absurdly, unimaginably high. I really do think you'd have a fun time playing a wide range of classical guitars, to be able to see (?) just how different they are from one maker to the next, and from one price point to the next as well. The main variable in this experience would probably end up being the strings, unless you've got a local shop that stocks a full range of classical guitars and actually has time to keep the strings new and clean on all of them. But it's still a fun exercise, and you'll feel a whole range of different necks, body sizes/shapes (more subtle, there), and levels of responsiveness. Playing guitars is always a good time!
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  #72  
Old 03-21-2016, 07:19 PM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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I had a customer bring to me for a setup a brand new, all-solid-wood, $1200 steel string guitar by a well-known manufacturer. It sounded horrible, about on par with a plywood guitar in the $400 range, by my estimate.

To confirm what my ears were telling me about the sound, I hooked the guitar up to my computer and recorded three notes: the 12th fret 6 string, the 7th fret 5th string and the 2nd fret 4th string. All three notes are the same pitch "E".

What I didn't like about the sound of this guitar is that the lower the string, the less fundamental there was and the less sustain/duration the note had: it sounded progressively more "thuddy" the lower the string. By performing a frequency analysis on these three notes, the graphical results were exactly what I heard: The 6th string had very little fundamental that died almost immediately; the 5th string had a little more fundamental and a little more duration; the 4th string had a lot more fundamental and a lot more duration.

One of the things that I listen for in evaluating a guitar - classical, nylon, steel string, arch top - is a relatively equal response across the range of the instrument. Equal in volume and sustain. With some exceptions, I also look for similarity in timbre. I don't expect three notes of the same pitch played in different locations to have an entirely different sound.

The owner of this guitar thought is sounded great. I expressed no opinion and was happy that he was happy.

My point is that evaluating sound "quality" isn't entirely subjective. There are specific characteristics that experienced listeners listen for. This is one such example.
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  #73  
Old 03-21-2016, 10:51 PM
Paraclete Paraclete is offline
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Originally Posted by S_Spruce View Post
Let's put my lack of knowledge about concert-level classical guitars aside for a moment...

The improvements in tone quality from that Yamaha beater guitar to the Cremona should be dramatic (which it is, according to this blind test and my luthier) and quite more significant than the improvement some high-end guitar might have over Cremona.

Here's a good analogy. If you go from low-quality department store headphones (Yamaha C45) to Sennheiser HD 600 (Cremona), the improvement in audio quality would be hair-raisingly obvious. But if you go from HD 600 to the "high-end" HD 800, the improvement would be a much smaller step up. Often questionable at that.

This isn't a sentiment. This is the law of diminishing returns in essence.

But here you are, pretty much saying the Cremona is hardly any better than the Yamaha, but implying that somehow a truly high-end guitar will whoop Cremona's behind with a belt. This just doesn't fit in my logic.
Erm... Right. I refrained from negativity earlier on, but honestly both guitars sound cheap and low quality. Maybe the Cremona is an improvement on the Yamaha, but the difference between a Ramirez, for example since that is the most familiar to me, and that Cremona is much greater than the difference between your samples. Now, there is a diminishing return once you get up into the high range of well-made concert instruments. As Charles said, if you actually sat down and played a good concert-level classical, you might begin to understand. There is an even quality in tone,volume, clarity, and response that is lacking in cheap guitars.

And if you like the Yamaha over the Cremona, by all means choose it and save the money. In the end,it doesn't matter what other people think. You are the one who is going to play it. If you aren't doing performance classical guitar, you don't need to spend $3000 on an instrument. But it is kind of ignorant and insulting to suggest that high-end classicals are really not any better than a cheap Cremona.
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  #74  
Old 03-23-2016, 01:30 AM
S_Spruce S_Spruce is offline
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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
The blind test didn't prove or conclude that the difference is "dramatic" only that more people preferred the sound of the Cremona over the Yamaha for the tests that were recorded. Specifically, of the 15 responses you received, 4 like "A" better than "B", 11, the converse. Perhaps the results can be qualified as "dramatic", though the term is "fuzzy". "Significant" may be a more appropriate qualifier.
This is a fair point. "Dramatic" was clearly the wrong word to describe the test results. But I had the test elsewhere online just to be sure, and even though the outcome was the same, some of the people preferring B, accurately identified A as a "typical low-level dull classical." One just doesn't get the impression, on this forum, elsewhere, or from any other people I play these guitars to, that these two are close in quality, as you'd have me believe.


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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
And, that's the crux of the issue, where your logic fails. You are testing the lower tail of the Bell curve and attempting to extrapolate from that the rest of the population/distribution.

If you don't know a lot about the sound that characterizes a concert-level classical guitar, you have no foundation for this statement.
Another fair point. I am simply not knowledgeable enough to understand where the diminishing returns curve may hit on classical guitars. Might be at about $500, or $100, or $4000. I do understand price is a poor indicator here, but I'm using it as a rough guide, considering that the instruments have no flaws and don't happen to be "dogs" as you say.
Other blind tests comparing this Cremona (or an instrument of similar price and quality/materials) to concert-grade instruments is what I need to be able to determine this curve more accurately. If quality of sound/tone is what I am after, I hardly need to be a fine classical guitarist or a luthier like you, to be able to deal with this.

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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
Taste test three bottles of wine: one $2, one $8 and one $1000. To someone experienced in wine tasting, there will likely be a world of difference between the three. To someone with little experience in wine tasting, they likely will taste pretty similar. All of them will quench your thirst. The law of diminishing returns, as you are applying it, suggests that spending more than $8 on a bottle of wine to quench one's thirst is a waste of money because there isn't much difference between it and the $1000 bottle. Sometimes, there isn't. Sometimes there is.
I'm glad you brought that as an example. Time and again blind tests have shown that the finest wine connoisseurs and experts who've spent their lives tasting wines haven't been able to distinguish between wine costing about $50 and those worth many thousands a bottle. Most will accurately tell the difference between very cheap wine and the $50 wine, in judging price or quality. Look it up if you're curious. It's been a while since I read about it. I could try and get the sources, if you need me to.

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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
If you asked Segovia - when he was still alive - to assess the sound quality of a Martin D-18, what would Segovia say?
I couldn't have asked for a better example... Here's what happened a couple of years ago when I briefly considered getting serious about acoustic guitar.
So, I found a lightly-used D-18 for $1400 and bought it thinking I had a great deal. Then I bought Fender DG 14S (a $400 solid-top copy of D-18) for my sister, so she didn't borrow my expensive guitar and drag it to her university events to play around with. But then, just like now, I came up with a blind test to see how these guitars sound without the brand influencing judgement. Holding them in my hands, the D-18 felt nicer (not by much) and I thought I clearly preferred its sound to the Fender copy, with the same type of strings. I showed the blind test recording (files long gone unfortunately; hope someone who owns both guitars can repeat it for fun) to every musician I knew and even had one play both instruments behind a sheet to some others over and over again. To be honest, the D-18 won by a hair. By a hair! Nothing significant to show a clear preference. This was a perfectly good reason for me to sell the D-18, which I did at a higher price than I got it for and stick to using the Fender in the recordings. No one has ever complained about the quality of the guitar sounds made at my studio. And I bought a really nice set of monitors for the money saved.


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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
Cognitive dissonance. You have an understanding. You are being presented with a premise that is contrary to your understanding. How to resolve the contradiction? One possibility is that your logic is faulty in this application of it. Another possibility is that my logic is faulty.
I've heard your performances on YouTube. You're one of the finest classical guitarists I have had the pleasure to talk to. Your authority and knowledge all-things-classical-guitar is well established. I am not questioning it. Rather, I am honoring it by singling out your vote and trying to understand why it went the way it did, especially after all that close inspection and elaborate level-matching.

Now, assuming (safe assumption) that most quality guitars have decent playablility (which, as I understand, also varies from player to player... neck size, action, type of frets, etc.), we are then left with the tones they produce. To be able to judge that, I believe, it doesn't take someone to acquire the body of experience that you have acquired. Do I think I need to hear a few concert-grade guitars to be able to have more references? Absolutely. But if the ultimate purpose of the instrument is the tone that comes out of it (especially for me, who wants to use it in recordings - often in combination with other instruments), the blind test should be the gold standard in determining value.

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Originally Posted by charles Tauber View Post
Cognitive dissonance. You have an understanding. You are being presented with a premise that is contrary to your understanding. How to resolve the contradiction? One possibility is that your logic is faulty in this application of it. Another possibility is that my logic is faulty.
I've been lecturing on logic and critical thinking at university level for a number of years now. The logic here is fine, if you believe me. We're having a productive conversation and you're admirably following the Socratic Method as you argue. That is why this debate has been interesting and informative to me. Again, thanks a lot for your time. Greatly appreciated.
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  #75  
Old 03-23-2016, 05:42 AM
riffmeister riffmeister is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by S_Spruce View Post
if the ultimate purpose of the instrument is the tone that comes out of it (especially for me, who wants to use it in recordings - often in combination with other instruments), the blind test should be the gold standard in determining value
If you are using these two guitars for recording purposes only I would think they both have value precisely because they sound different from one another. Different tools kind of thing.

The "value" of these two guitars may be very different if one were to be using them unamplified in a solo classical guitar concert setting. It is possible that neither guitar would be up to snuff compared to a more expensive, single luthier built classical guitar. But that conclusion would require a different kind of test....

Thanks for posting, it has been an interesting discussion.
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  The Acoustic Guitar Forum > General Acoustic Guitar and Amplification Discussion > Classical

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