Acoustic Guitars Going Retro

Further Reading: Guitars

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Harp Guitar ... Most readily identified are American harp guitars with either hollow arms, double necks or harp-like frames for supporting extra bass strings, and European bass guitars (or contraguitars)... Other harp guitars feature treble or mid-range floating strings, or various combinations of multiple floating string banks along with a standard guitar neck... Electric harp guitars While most players of harp guitars play on acoustic instruments, a few of them also work with electric instruments...

Archtop Guitar ... His 1898 patent for a mandolin, which was also applicable to guitars according to the specifications, was intended to enhance "power and quality of tone." Among the features of this instrument were a violin-style arched top and back, each carved from a single piece of wood, and thicker in the middle than at the sides; sides carved to shape from a single block of wood; and a lack of internal "braces, splices, blocks or bridges … which, if employed, would rob the instrument of much of its volume of tone." However, Gibson was not the first to apply violin design principles to the guitar... Merrill, for example, patented in 1896 a very modern looking instrument "of the guitar and mandolin type … with egg-shaped hoop or sides and a graduated convex back and top."The instrument featured a metal tailpiece and teardrop shaped "f-holes," and strongly resembled the archtop guitars of the 1930s...

Flamenco Guitar ... Originally, all guitars were made with wooden tuning pegs, that pass straight through the head stock, similar to those found on a lute, a violin or oud, as opposed to the modern classical-style guitars' geared tuning mechanisms...

Steel-string Acoustic Guitar ... Construction There are many different variations on the construction of, and materials used in, steel-string guitars... Many GA-style guitars also have a convex back panel to increase the volume of space in the soundbox without making the soundbox deeper at the edges, which would affect comfort and playability... The dreadnought style was designed by Martin Guitars to produce a deeper sound than "classic"-style guitars, with very present bass fundamentals...

Baroque Guitar ... The instrument was smaller than a modern guitar, of lighter construction, and had gut strings. The frets were also usually made of gut, and tied around the neck...

Chitarra Battente ... Locals refer to the instrument, simply, as the "guitar," using the term “French guitar” for what is general called elsewhere “guitar,” meaning the classical guitar. That designation of “French” is almost certainly wrong, since all reliable sources claim a Spanish origin for the modern six-string six-course classical guitar...

Guitar ... Acoustic guitars (and similar instruments) with hollow bodies have been in use for over a thousand years... Guitars are recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, reggae, rock, soul, and many forms of pop... For this reason guitars are distantly related to modern instruments from these regions, including the tanbur, the setar, and the sitar...

Gittern ... Up until 2002, there were only two known surviving medieval gitterns, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (see external links), the other in the Wartburg Castle Museum. A third was discovered in a medieval outhouse in Elbing, Poland...

Russian Guitar ... The invention of the Russian guitar is attributed to Andrei Sychra, who also wrote a method for the instrument, as well as over one thousand compositions, seventy-five of which were republished in the 1840s by Stellovsky, and then again in the 1880s by Gutheil. Some of these were published yet again in the Soviet Union in 1926...

Resonator Guitar ... Resonator guitars are of two styles: Square necked guitars designed to be played in steel guitar style... There are three main resonator designs: The "tricone" ("tri" in reference to the three metal cones/resonators) design of the first National resonator guitars... In 1927, Dopyera and Beauchamp formed the National String Instrument Corporation to manufacture resonator guitars under the brand name National...

Modern Classical Guitar ... The thumb traditionally plucks the base or root notes whereas the fingers ring the melody and its accompanying parts. Francisco Tárrega, Emilio Pujol, Andrés Segovia Repertoire In the 20th century, many non-guitarist composers wrote for the instrument, which previously only players of the instrument had done...

Selmer Guitar ... The scale, at 640 mm, and fretting of the early guitars was very similar to other contemporary guitars (including the Gibson and Martin guitar designs from which most modern acoustic guitar patterns ultimately derive), but with a wide fretboard more typical of a classical guitar... Many of these guitars, produced during 1932 and 1933, were sold to the UK market via Selmer's London showroom (which also distributed the guitar to regional dealers) and it was during this period that the guitars became known as "Maccaferris" to Britons... Innovations The original Maccaferri-Selmer was one of the earliest guitars with a metal-reinforced neck (or truss rod), a now ubiquitous feature in steel string guitars...

Guitar Tunings ... Like many other stringed instruments, guitar tunings can be easily modified. When speaking of a tuning such as standard tuning, EADGBE refers to the pitches of the strings from lowest pitch (low E) to highest (high E)...

Vibrato Systems For Guitar ... The mechanical vibrato systems began as a device for more easily producing the vibrato effects that blues and jazz guitarists had long produced on arch top guitars by manipulating the tailpiece with their picking hand...

Electric Guitar ... Some of the earliest electric guitars adapted hollow bodied acoustic instruments and used tungsten pickups...

Classical Guitar ... The term modern classical guitar is sometimes used to distinguish the classical guitar from older forms of guitar, which are in their broadest sense also called classical, or more descriptively: early guitars...

Musical Ensemble ... Other common groupings in classical music are the woodwind quintet, usually consisting of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn and the brass quintet, consisting of two trumpets, one french horn, a trombone and a tuba. Six or more instruments Classical chamber ensembles for more than six musicians are occasionally used, such as septets (seven musicians), octets (eight musicians), or nonets (nine musicians)...

Brahms Guitar ... The instrument is an eight string guitar, adding both a high and a low string to the conventional six string guitar. The tuning continues in fourths and the frets are splayed to allow for the different string lengths...

Extended-range Classical Guitar ... Paul Galbraith and Alexander Vynograd are two of the most notable 8 string players who use the extra high and low string tuning. Galbraith generally tunes (B) ADGBEA which puts standard 6 string guitar chord voicings and scale shapes within the neck and allows him to read lute tablature directly (a whole step higher)...

Nut (string Instrument) ... Variations Not all string instruments have nuts as described: Some guitars and mandolins, for example, have nuts that are just string spacers, with deep notches...

Acoustic Bass Guitar ... Ball's aim was to provide bass guitarists with a more acoustic-sounding instrument that would match better with the sound of acoustic guitars... Ball stated that ".if there were electric bass guitars to go with electric guitars then you ought to have acoustic basses to go with acoustic guitars." Ball notes that ".the closest thing to an acoustic bass was the Mexican guitarron.in mariachi bands, so I bought one down in Tijuana and tinkered with it."...

Dobro ... The Dobro brand later also appeared on other instruments, notably electric lap-steel guitars and solid-body electric guitars and on other resonator instruments such as Safari resonator mandolins...

Bridge (instrument) ... Instruments of this type, such as arch-top guitars and mandolins, often have a bridge comprising a base and a separate saddle that can be adjusted for height...

Pickup (music Technology) ... The external load usually consists of resistance (the volume and tone potentiometer in the guitar, and any resistance to ground at the amplifier input) and capacitance between the hot lead and shield in the guitar cable. The electric cable also has a capacitance, which can be a significant portion of the overall system capacitance...