Saturday, April 22, 2023

Let us turn to the past

Torniamo all'antico e sarà un progresso

--Giuseppe Verdi

That phrase translates as "let us turn to the past and that will be progress." Interesting thought. In my case, today, that means noticing that my guitar is forty years old this year. I bought it in 1983 from Robert Holroyd in Vancouver. I've told this story before, but I'll add some details this time. But first, here is the instrument in question:

Click to enlarge

I just took that photo. As you can see if you look closely, I'm just in the middle of putting new strings on. They are all on, but I haven't cut off the excess at the pegbox. No, you don't need to spend half your life winding all that excess length on.

How did I come to buy the guitar? At the time I was playing a Masaru Kohno guitar that I quite liked. That was my second concert guitar, the first being a José Ramirez I bought in Madrid. One day a good friend of mine called me and said that a builder he knew had just finished a guitar and it was going to be sitting in his shop for a few days before the buyer picked it up. "You have to try it!" he said. So I did. After five minutes I knew I wanted it. It was fantastically in tune everywhere on the fingerboard. Very clear and open sound and the basses were terrific and defined. If you look at the photo you can see that the bridge is very unusual. It is a wide, but slim, piece of ebony with no actual "bridge" (usually a strip of ivory or plastic over which the strings pass). Instead, the strings are fed through narrow holes drilled in the ebony and then pass over six individual tool steel posts. You have to make a knot in the end so they don't slip. This is a "Neil Hiebert" bridge, named after the Montreal guitar builder who came up with it. He and Robert Holroyd spent a lot of time on the phone in the early 80s talking about guitar design and this is one of the things they came up with. The internal strutting is also very different.

As soon as I played it I asked Bob for his next guitar which he finished three months later. He only built about four guitars a year. I didn't have any money so I had to get a loan from my credit union to buy it: $3,000 Canadian dollars which, back then, were pretty much even with US dollars. The collateral to support the loan? A photocopy of my bachelor's degree from McGill University. Mind you, it was hand written in Latin on parchment.

With apologies to my ex-wife, I guess this guitar is the true love of my life. I have been married once, had many girlfriends, lived in three and a half countries and had three important teaching jobs. But always the same guitar which has undergone one major repair and one complete restoration and is due for another.

It's a great guitar. Pepe Romero tried it out when I was in his master-class in Salzburg and later bought one for himself. I have tried out a lot of guitars: Manuel Barrueco's Ruck included, plus a number of Ramirez guitars, a lovely Daniel Friedrich, lots by Canadian builders and lots I can't even remember. I haven't played a Greg Smallman, but that aside, I suspect that this is pretty much as good as guitars get.

Let's hear it. This is a Venezuelan waltz by Antonio Lauro: Carora.



8 comments:

  1. It does sound superb. I envy you: I've never played a guitar that wholly satisfied me. Maybe I'm not the sort of person who's ever satisfied. I've played original 19th century guitars that have a gorgeous upper range but too-weak bass, lattice-braced guitars that have a harsh power and resonance that I can't tame, Michael Gee guitars that so many seem to get a fine sound from but feel wrong to me, and so on. My guitar is more traditional and shallower, Torres-esque, and with an internal design based on Dominique Field (but way more affordable than his guitars!) It's very good, and I was lucky to find it, but still it's not ideal. Generally, in line with the Verdi quotation, I find more inspiration playing older or older-style guitars. Antiquarian modernist and all that...

    I'm curious how that bridge design improves things?

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  2. I was very lucky to get the instrument! He modified the design with each iteration, and this was a really good one. He only built 27 concert guitars as he died fairly young. This is number 24. The top is really fine. It is a piece of high-altitude BC spruce and Bob actually went to a logging camp up in the mountains and picked out the log himself and had it sawn to his specifications. Very tight, even grain.

    Yes, the bridge. I think the idea of the width is to spread the energy more widely over the soundboard. Ebony because it is very hard and the energy from the string will transmit to the soundboard more quickly and efficiently. Slim to reduce the torque on the soundboard. Internally he has a bunch of parallel struts.

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  3. Only 27? Goodness. Curious about parallel bracing -- is it like the ladder bracing of many 19th century guitars?

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  4. I don't know anything about that 19th century ladder bracing. This one has, IIRC, twelve long braces that run longitudinally. There are some wild and wonderful design experiments going on with bracing these days: carbon fiber interior bridges, balsa wood, etc.

    Have you ever tried a Daniel Friedrich guitar? I suspect you might like it.

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  5. Ah very different then. A lot of 19th century guitar and I believe lute bracing as well goes horizontally -- parallel with the bridge, that is.

    Don't think I know his guitars. Listening to a recording of one now, sounds promising. The sale prices are way out of the range I would ever spend (tens of thousand, like so many of these older guitars), so I would almost fear trying one in case I did really like it...

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  6. Hey, I mortgaged my soul to buy mine, why wouldn't you? (Heh!)

    Holroyd guitars don't change hands very often, but the last price I heard a few years ago was $10,000.

    My good friend in Alicante from Finland will only play Friedrich guitars and he has owned a couple. They are probably so expensive now because Friedrich died a few years ago.

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  7. Bryan, happy birthday to your incredible instrument. Having read "Romance on Three Legs", the story of Glenn Gould's relationship with his 88-keyed instrument, I have an appreciation for your long-time association with your music-making soulmate. Perhaps you can tell the full story under the title "Romance on Six Strings".

    Poor Glenn didn't have 40 years with Steinway CD318, it is clear from your post that you cherish your time with your Holroyd.

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  8. David, thanks so much for understanding this somewhat unusual relationship!

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