The
development of the modern guitar from its ancestral roots
has followed two parallel routes—the classical guitar and
the steel string guitar.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Spanish guitarist
and guitar maker Antonio
Torres (1817-1892) gave birth to what is now known as the modern
classical guitar. At the request of his friend and professional
guitarist Julian Arcas, Torres manipulated bracing patterns and
dimensions of the body and came up with something that pleased both
Arcas and the rest of the guitar community.
Before Torres began his illustrious career, guitars were built
with small bodies and a short scale length that produced very limited
tone or volume. Torres sought to build those complaints out of the
instrument. He made the body larger, expanded the string length,
and made the body deeper. All of these improvements, coupled with
his innovations in fan bracing patterns, made big news and changed
the shape of the guitar world throughout Europe. These innovations
eventually spread to the rest of the world. Torres’s ideas
were adopted by the shops of Manuel Ramirez in Spain and Herman
Hauser in Germany, who, with the help of the young guitarist Andres
Segovia, further developed the classical guitar.
The
development of the steel string guitar began in 1811 when Christian
Fredrich Martin was apprenticed to Johann Stauffer, a Viennese maker
of guitars and other instruments, at the age of 15. Upon completing
his apprenticeship, he returned to his birthplace, Mark Neukirchen,
Germany, but immigrated soon after to the United States, eventually
settling in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, where there was a thriving German
community. Here he established his business, building the gut-strung
European guitar but with the innovation of using x-bracing under
the soundboard. Carrying on the family business, Martin's descendants
saw the demand for a new style of guitar, one which could generate
a larger volume of sound and blend well with much louder banjos,
mandolins, and fiddles when played at barn dances. By 1900 the development
of steel strings, which produce a louder sound than gut strings,
necessitated a stronger x-brace under the soundboard. These two
elements together produce the desired characteristics of the modern
steel string guitar.
Through the years and continuing today, musicians have voiced their
needs and wants to luthiers in order to get exactly what they desire
in an instrument. Over the course of one hundred and fifty years
the guitar has taken many shapes and sizes. Many people—luthiers
and musicians alike—have put forth ideas in hopes of coming
up with the perfect guitar. Those who succeeded did so because their
instruments matched both their customers’ and the builder’s
ideas of the perfect guitar.
While mass producers of instruments may produce a fine instrument,
they are not able to match design and materials for consistent results
and the evolution of their design often comes to a standstill. At
Woodsound Studio we strive to to fulfill the needs of many players
by producing guitars with a variety of balanced tonal schemes. We
achieve this through one-off production, the manipulation of bracing
patterns, and the selection of appropriate woods and finishes, coupled
with subtle blends of trim and appointments.
We offer both steel
string and classical
instruments in varying grades to meet your desires and, with advanced
designs, to improve your ability. Throughout the entire range of
instruments we build, beginning with our conservatory models through
the elite master models, you will see, feel, and hear the difference
in our instruments.
In addition to guitars, Woodsound Studio produces a line of fine
hand-built mandolins.
The
Blodgett Mandolins
John builds a variety of mandolin-family instruments: carved-top
mandolins, mandolas, octave-mandolins, and citterns, all of his
own design—designs that are informed by his broad exposure
to instruments from the past but which also incorporate modern elements
and contemporary understandings of acoustics.
The Mandolin In History
The mandolin traces its history back to some of the earliest musical
instruments built by our ancestors from a gourd, a stick, a string
of stretched sinew, played with a finger, a plectrum, or a bow.
The modern mandolin family was developed from the European lute,
itself a decendent of the Arabic oud,
introduced to Spain during the Moorish conquest of 711 to 1492 and
spread throughout Europe by coastal trade, especially Italy, where
the instrument underwent a great transformation during the Italian
Renaissance. These multi-coursed stringed instruments were of a
flat-topped design, with a curved, many staved, bowl-shaped back.
In Europe they acquired the tied gut fret, easing the learning of
intonation and furthering the chording capabilities. The mandolin
is in reality a short-necked lute with four double courses for a
total eight strings, tuned as the violin, E-A-D-G. Here we see the
diverging path of the flat-topped, plucked instruments and carved,
bowed stringed instruments, only to see the technologies fuse again
with the invention of the modern carved top and back mandolins by
the inventive mind of Orville H. Gibson.
Orville Gibson was granted a patent in 1898 for his new arched
top and back mandolins based on the principles of violin construction.
This break with traditional bowl-back instruments spelled their
doom. The new flat-back mandolin was easier to hold, had better
projection, and the wider neck gave more room for fingering. From
that day to this, the mandolin is still developing, stylistically
varied, but more importantly, its tonal qualities are linked to
different genres of music, such as Bluegrass, Celtic, old timey,
country and popular. There has even been a resurgence of interest
in classical mandolin.
The Pinkham Guitars • The
Blodgett Mandolins
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