A while back, a friend and I had a discussion about buying handmade classical guitars. We were discussing luthiers and building concepts when he asked me the inevitable question, “What do you look for in a handmade guitar?”
My reply was simple and immediate. I did not need to think about the question at all.
I said:
1. Does the instrument meet my immediate musical needs, and my foreseeable future musical needs?
2. Can I afford it?
I don’t care about the brand and I don’t care about the materials.
If it doesn’t sound good in your hands, there’s no point in buying it, regardless of it’s brand or materials. Marketing hype won’t help you in a performance environment.
Taste
The only tricky part about buying a handmade guitar, is the evolving tastes of the player. It’s like eating ice-cream. You may have a craving for chocolate now, but next month, you may crave for vanilla. It’s not a matter of better or worse. It’s just different.
As a player, my tastes have evolved over the years. The same is true for almost all musicians. It is exceptionally rare to see a musician go through his entire adult life having only played 1 instrument. This is part and parcel of being an musician.
Art is organic and constantly growing, changing, evolving and maturing.
It is quite common to see a musician go from one $10,000 instrument to another $10,000 instrument.
What do I look for?
I am reluctant to specify my own personal tastes because I have a feeling that it would change some time down the road.
Personally I look for an instrument that can project well in at least a medium-sized concert hall. It should possess good clarity, separation and balance with great evenness from note to note.
Response is also very important to me.
When I studied with Ernest Kwok nearly 10 years ago, I asked him about playability.
“I don’t care so much about left hand playability,” he said, “I look at the right hand playability more”.
I did not understand what he meant then. But as I became a more proficient guitarist I began to understand.
All music has two layers of difficulty; a visible ‘surface’ difficulty and a hidden musical difficulty.
The visible difficulty is simply the minimum effort required to play the piece. You play the piece but in its barest form, sans any dynamics or changes in tone. Essentially, it is the reproduction of the piece without any musical shape.
Underlying this is the musical difficulty of the piece. The moment you inject interpretation to the piece to make it sound more like music, and less an exercise of ‘going through the motion’, the piece becomes more difficult.
This is evident from an early stage.
Beginners who study under me remark how a piece become more difficult once I start giving them musical directions. This is because the right hand now has a much more difficult job. It’s attack becomes more varied and complex. The amount of force required for each note becomes uneven. Some notes require more strength, some less.
Essentially we add layers of difficulty to the piece the more we add to it musically.
A guitar with good response makes things easier.
Left-hand playability is a subjective thing.
When I received my Menkevich I was quite unaccustomed to the slightly thicker neck. But after some time, I discovered that it made prolonged barring easier because you have more to grab on to.
Sustain, is also a subjective criteria. Currently, I prefer a longer, ‘endless’ sustain. Some guitarists prefer a shorter, more controlled sustain.
When an Australian radio station held a series of interviews about Greg Smallman and his guitars, one professional guitarist actually commented that the sustain of his Smallman made it difficult to control.
Longevity/Build Quality
A few years ago I had a student who bought a Spanish guitar from a well-known store in Singapore. After about a month, the neck warped and it developed a buzz.
He went back to try to exchange the guitar, but all other guitars from that stock had the same problem. This was verified by another guitarist friend of mine.
Knowing how long a guitar has been in Singapore helps to determine how stable it will be in our temperature and climate. Most well-made instruments should have no problem surviving our climate but there are exceptions.
Do keep in mind that Singapore’s temperature and humidity is vastly different from Europe, North America and even Japan (though Japanese guitars are quite stable in Singapore).
If I were purchasing a foreign guitar, I’d want to know how long the instrument has been in Singapore.
If I were buying a lattice of double-top guitar, I’d also be concerned with the strength of the top. Some lattice guitars are made with very thin tops. Some are only 0.7mm thick at its thinnest point. This makes them considerably more fragile and more susceptible to repair.
I have had limited experience with double topped guitars so I cannot comment on their durability. The only double topped guitar I played was in Japan. It was a Wataru Tsuji guitar with a double-top prepared by Matthias Dammann.
I do not foresee these guitars being fragile, but I have heard that the double-tops are virtually impossible to repair if they become cracked.
Conclusion
Making music is an art. An instrument is simply a tool that helps you do the job. When purchasing a high-end instrument, that’s all I think about; the instrument’s ability to fulfil a musical task.
Brand, materials and marketing hype mean nothing to me.
When purchasing a new guitar, approach every guitar with an open-mind and the clear goal of music-making.
