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Old 03-23-2011, 06:50 PM   #40
RoomDog
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Join Date: Jan 2003
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rockace521 View Post
Wow! Never saw a classical style guitar for steel strings before! But I don't get out much. Bee-yootiful guitar, I'm somewhat jealous. I hear Larrivee's are works of art.
I still like Larrivee, but I don't think their quality is what it was when they were a smaller organization.

A little guitar history... Antonio Torres designed what's now the standard classical guitar proportions. Pretty much every guitarmaker copied his design. Torres was the first guy to really realize that the soundboard was the key to building a guitar.

Martin was actually a contemporary of Torres (they lived roughly the same time). He built Stauffer style guitars. Guitars weren't that big originally, and used only for accompaniment. Most are now considered "parlor" guitars, and there's a big resurgence in smaller guitars.

Martin's biggest innovation is the X-brace, to handle the extra stress that steel strings put on the soundboard. The first widely sold Martins were what we now consider 0 sized (Martin's size designation). 00's came along (a little bit bigger), and then 000's and OM's (OM's had 14 frets to the body instead of 12). Bluegrass needed volume to compete with the other instruments, which is why guitars got larger, and the Dreadnought (and Jumbo) came along. You can see the differences at this link Note the style 5 / terz. That's how big guitars used to be.

The Larrivee and the Martin I posted are both 00's. The Martin is a vintage model, and keeps the Martin's original dimensions (note how small the upper bouts are). The Larrivee is a "modern" 00, and more proportionate. Most fingerpickers use smaller-than-dreadnought sizes, because the volume is more balanced across the strings.
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