Josh Greenberg Interview

paulmcevoy75

Hello All

I did an interview with Josh Greenberg while I was in Montreal, you might dig it. If you go to my youtube page and you can subscribe I would appreciate it...I'm trying to build a channel there.

Josh was a big inspiration to me early on (and still) and introduced me to Sergei Dejonge who I studied with and all the Miles End guys so I was happy to do this interview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyp8xBbJGW8&t=24s

Buco

A friend has his guitar built by Josh. The sound it puts out is incredible. It's as if there's some sort of mechanical device that's pushing the sound out, there's a woof that comes out with each note. Never heard anything quite like it. It has a collar around the soundhole, inside the box.

pdg

The "collar" would lower the "breathing mode" ("Helmholtz frequency") of the guitar -- which is typically low G on petite-bouches and maybe low A on D-holes. It's the low "humm" you hear when you thump the top bluntly, like with your wrist. That mode supports the lowest notes of the guitar (i.e., puts more fundamental in those notes).

paulmcevoy75

It's called a Turnavoz and it was somewhat common in Spanish classical guitars from Torres and others. As PDG says it drops the air resonance of the guitar. I don't use them on my gypsy guitars but I did a small bodied steel string (on a classical body size) and I used a Turnavoz and it's a notably huge sounding guitar despite being small.

Jeremy Clark who Josh mentions in the video sort of reintroduced them, Mike Kennedy in the shop also uses them and most of the other guys there do too.

pdg

John Le Voi made a "baritone" gypsy jazz oval hole with an 18" wide lower bout. He used a collapsible "collar" to help increase the bass response (the 6th string was a very low A).

Of course, by strengthening the lowest notes of a guitar you are weakening the notes slightly above those notes. There is no free lunch!

paulmcevoy75

maybe not weakening as much as focusing where you want things. If I use it on a small body guitar and bring the air resonance down to something more like an OM or dreadnaught, I am hopefully bringing everything into alignment for the sound I want. In theory at least.

Buco

I'll note that this particular guitar, and others I tried at Django in June didn't sound overly dark or boomy. I'd actually prefer a darker tone, that's what I figured I really like. They're just powerful instruments, open sounding yet very direct. Sort of not colored or influenced by the body, the body is just there to acoustically amplify, if that makes sense. I did hear the same qualities in your guitars as well, Paul. Suppose that's not surprising.

paulmcevoy75

I think way more than the Turnavoz is that me and Josh both use structured sides which were probably invented by our mutual teacher Sergei Dejonge and then refined by Jeremy Clark and Michael Kennedy who work in the co-op with Josh. All my gypsy guitars but one (the one that Travis has) have structured sides and all of Josh's do.

It has all kinds of advantages but basically makes the guitar into a more efficient resonator...the sides don't really make noise so isolating them by making them heavy actually drives the sound back into the soundboard.

Turnavoz mostly tunes what you've created otherwise I think. I don't really think in and of itself it changes the volume but it does change the color.

Josh's guitars and mine are pretty different in a lot of ways but I think that common element of structured sides is what drives any similarities in sound. We ended up coming up with different approaches to the same problems. Josh's instruments are super cool. I owe him a lot.

This is my only Turnavoz guitar. I think it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCFRc52Kuzk