Ed:

I tae that partly back.  Just looked at a bunch of Flamenco guitars and they hav
cypress bodies and spruce tops.  The cypress does make a difference.

J

Joseph Sullivan

 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: OldTools [mailto:oldtools-bounces@s...] On Behalf Of Joseph Sullivan
Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 10:22 AM
To: 'Ed Minch' 
Cc: 'OldTools List' 
Subject: [OldTools] Guitars, music boxes, Osage Orange

SNIP

 

Brazilian Rosewood is the gold standard for guitar back and sides.  Osage Orange
is called "poor man’s Brazilian Rosewood” because of very similar density and
Janka numbers.  Janka is a little known wood characteristic that instrument
makers look at.  It uses a stylus with a 1/4” steel ball at the end and measures
the pressure needed to embed the ball 1/2 way into the wood.

 

The general rule is that darker woods lighten and lighter woods darken

 

Ed Minch

 

END SNIP

 

 

Ed:

 

Very interesting.  Yes, I know about Brazilian Rosewood.  My Ramirez has that,
with a cedar top.  Jose R. III experimented with cedar instead of spruce and got
a tone that was somewhat smokier and less direct – considered ideal by some of
the great Spaniards of a generation or two ago for playing the music of the
Spanish Romantic era.  They called it “mysterious,” although I don’t quite get
that.  It is lovely, though, and clearly different from spruce.

 

I only wish I could play it more.  In May I flamed a tendon in the left CMC
joint – maybe arthritic related – and although better it is still pretty sore.
Anything requiring a bar hurts like hell, as do certain stretches.  That kind of
limits what can be played.

 

As to Janka, I have seen those numbers in the wood data, and know how they are
derived, but never knew why they were important.  I always figured they were a
measure of dent resistance.  What is the important to instrument makers and
which way on the scale is preferable?  I am not going to build guitars, but as a
years-down-the-road project I have in mind to build a higher-end music box with
a 100+ note movement (if I can afford it), and so have been thinking about
various materials and methods of construction.  I have a couple of good Osage
shorts (about 5” x ¼ x 36”) and had thought to use them somehow, maybe for the
floor to which the movement is connected.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Joe





 

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