H.E. Brown’s “improved” Torres classical guitar

[JW Joyce]

Hello MIMF’s

I’m considering building H.E. Brown’s “improved” Torres classical guitar (Int’l Luthier Supply plan AGP-040). Has anyone here built from this plan?

Comparing against other Torres plans I’ve found online, it looks like he went to a dovetail neck, shortened the scale to 25.5”, and compensated the saddle. This will be my first classical guitar, and I’m torn between building this guitar and a traditional Torres or Hauser design.

I’d appreciate any thoughts.

[Barry Daniels]

I have only built one classical guitar so am not really qualified to give you advise about that. But I used to work for Mr. Brown in his luthier supply business, and was impressed with his knowledge of classical guitars. He built over 30 of them and they all went to paying clients. Harold also made plans for many other instruments as part of his business. He normally looked for ways to modernize guitars which is where the dovetail and compensated saddle came from. If he was alive today he would probably advise a bolt-on neck. The traditional classic guitar neck joint is difficult, if not impossible to reset so in my mind there is little reason to go that route unless you're tied to tradition. And a compensated saddle is really a no-brainer in my book.

By the way, welcome to the MIMF, JW!

[JW Joyce]

Thanks, Barry! It’s nice to be back on the forum. I built a couple steel strings back in the late 90’s and got lots of help with my questions from Deb and the forum members. I’m retired now and getting back into building.

Classicals are new to me, so I don’t know what is tradition and what is required for the best sounding guitar. I’m building for myself so not too tied to tradition if it makes building better/easier. I used bolt-on necks rather than tackle dovetails on my steel string guitars. My woodworking skills have since improved, so I think I’d be up for the challenge of the Spanish heel, but I share the concern about future adjustments and resets.

[Barry Daniels]

I see no structural or tonal benefits to the Spanish heel.

However, there is the consideration of how the guitar is to be constructed. The Spanish heel basically requires building the guitar face down in a solera work board. Whereas, dovetail or bolt-on necks are normally built in an exterior form. The whole process of putting the guitar together is different for each approach.

[Alan Carruth]

Aside from the shorter scale I would consider both the plug-in neck and compensated saddle to be distinct improvements. Building on a solera in the usual Spanish style makes adjusting the neck angle to compensate for later body distortion very difficult. Spanish makers have often used a thick fingerboard to allow for some later adjustment by planing it down at the nut end. The main advantage of the solera accrues to the maker, since it facilitates getting the neck angle right (if you made the solera properly!), saving some time. Compensating the saddle (and nut) is becoming fairly common on Classical guitars these days: different brands of strings can require quite different adjustments to play in tune, and making the guitar in a way that allows these to be done gracefully is a benefit.

I have been using bolt on necks for several years now. On my most recent pair of Classical guitars I ran some tests during assembly to see if the added mass of the hardware I have been using (cross dowel nuts and furniture bolts) could affect things. It turns out that it can change both the sound and 'feel' of the guitar, so I'm going back to gluing necks on my Classicals. It''s not so much of a factor on steel strings, so I'll probably stick with the hardware there. I may check out some lighter hardware, too: a 1/4"-20 bolt is really overkill for the sorts of loads we see.

[Pat Foster]

Alan, care to elaborate on the changes in tone and feel with a bolted classical neck?

[JW Joyce]

Alan, can you think of any reason the shorter scale is an improvement?

Since 25.5” is only ~2.2mm shorter than a standard 650mm scale, could I make the neck 1.1mm longer, move the bridge down by 1.1mm, and go with the longer scale?

[Alan Carruth]

There is a whole-body vibration mode, analogous to the fundamental mode of a xylophone bar, than can couple usefully with the lowest 'air' resonance if the two are close enough in pitch. This dubbed the 'C-1', or 'first corpus' mode, or, sometimes, the 'neck' mode, since the neck bends a lot. When this happens the feel of the guitar is changed in that pitch range; it becomes more 'live'. Also, in at least some cases, the lower end sound can become more 'full' or 'dark'. The neck block area of the guitar is moving a lot in this vibration, and added mass at the neck block drops the pitch. On steel string guitars, particularly ones with 14-fret necks, this 'neck' mode is generally much too low in pitch to bring into tune with the 'air' mode, but Classicals, with shorter and wider necks, can be high enough in pitch, particularly with Flamencos using pegs instead of machines. I have seen some evidence thar some of the 'master' Classical makers may have 'tuned' this deliberately.

Making the scale length a couple of mm shorter could raise the pitch of the 'zip' tone a bit. On Classical D strings this often comes in at seven times the fundamental pitch of the string, and the odd-number couple can sometimes cause phantom buzz: the seventh partial splits into two pitches a few Hz apart, and the difference tone between them can sound like a fret buzz. because of the way this works it can show up on evert fret on that string. I've gotten this buzz under control through altering the 'zip' pitch by twisting the string to tighten the winding, but changing the scale length could work just as well.

[Pat Foster]

Thanks again, Alan.

There is a whole-body vibration mode, analogous to the fundamental mode of a xylophone bar, than can couple usefully with the lowest 'air' resonance if the two are close enough in pitch. This dubbed the 'C-1', or 'first corpus' mode, or, sometimes, the 'neck' mode, since the neck bends a lot. When this happens the feel of the guitar is changed in that pitch range; it becomes more 'live'. Also, in at least some cases, the lower end sound can become more 'full' or 'dark'. The neck block area of the guitar is moving a lot in this vibration, and added mass at the neck block drops the pitch. On steel string guitars, particularly ones with 14-fret necks, this 'neck' mode is generally much too low in pitch to bring into tune with the 'air' mode, but Classicals, with shorter and wider necks, can be high enough in pitch, particularly with Flamencos using pegs instead of machines. I have seen some evidence thar some of the 'master' Classical makers may have 'tuned' this deliberately.

Making the scale length a couple of mm shorter could raise the pitch of the 'zip' tone a bit. On Classical D strings this often comes in at seven times the fundamental pitch of the string, and the odd-number couple can sometimes cause phantom buzz: the seventh partial splits into two pitches a few Hz apart, and the difference tone between them can sound like a fret buzz. because of the way this works it can show up on evert fret on that string. I've gotten this buzz under control through altering the 'zip' pitch by twisting the string to tighten the winding, but changing the scale length could work just as well.

[Matthew Lau]

I wish there was a "like" button.

Alan and Barry are founts of knowledge.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Hi Alan,
I use a single 10-24 socket head cap screw low down in the heel to hold the neck on steel string guitars so it should work fine for classicals and weigh much less than a couple of 1/4 -20 bolts many people use.

[Pat Foster]

I wish there was a "like" button.

Alan and Barry are founts of knowledge.

Gernerous, too.