FS Bireli's Selmer No. 665

Bob Holo

Craig - I just saw your note. Fun stuff.. I just sent this to Stephane & Roy so they could see where the inspiration for the voicing came from.. I'll share it here because Bireli's guitar was from roughly that era. and to my ears (though the youtube vids of his guitar somehow have really bad compressed audio) it is in the same ballpark for balance. I love that Era of Selmer and if I had the cash, I'd probably get 665, but buying wood is probably more timely for me, all things considered. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyRribGGK8U&hd=1

Michael Bauer wrote:

I don't see a huge difference between the recordings of 863 and the live sound of 862 these days.

That's probably true. It'll be interesting to see how consistent two were that probably sat on the same bench together and were topped and braced from the same flitch.

Michael Bauer wrote:

about 103... eyeballs suggest that the oval hole is about the same area as the opening of the resonator in the d-hole.

Yep... though oddly the internal volume is smaller and split into two cavities of different tuning too. It seems from his writings he knew what he was achieving, but he misunderstood why it was happening - which is not surprising because although instruments had been using tuned chambers for centuries, people only began to understand how they really worked about 30 years before he invented his guitar. But the knowledge he would have needed to predict the behavior of the relatively complex thing he did (multiple chambers and multiple nested and interconnected ports) wasn't really understood at the time. So there was no way for the Selmer people to understand how much they changed things when they removed the resonator. You might be happy to know that I used some of the things I learned from 103 when tuning Antoine Boyer's guitar. It's mostly Busato/Nouveau/Castellucia inspired, but a lot of the "controlling the interaction between the soundboard and the chamber" stuff was inspired by 103. Different method but similar outcome.

frater

Joli Gadjo wrote:

Same here. It's definitely not the same back.

It looks a different one, actually (I'm not 100% sure because all the pics are very bad but it seems the solid brazilian back has gone). If so, one wonders why it has been substituted and, particularly, who did it (hopefully Barault!)

Passacaglia

Old posts, but as I am sniffing around, and heaven would be finding "warm, dry, dark," and "honey" as Michael H. has described, and having a conversation or two with Michael B. (thank you, Michael, as always), this piques me:

A lot of the top players get a fairly warm dry sound from a lively guitar and you look at what they're doing - holding their picks backward and using the blunt end - those amazingly well controlled hands which dampen unplayed strings... and you see how they drive hard into the strings and then immediately chop them off... they are driving a lot of thick midrange energy and then killing the note and driving into the next note. What they're doing is a totally different sport than what most of us are doing. Give a big bright active guitar to a guy like that and he sounds great because he can control it and get whatever tone he wants from it but he can also use those more vibrant aspects of its sound at will... i

It's quite simple. I've been playing a DG-300 since I started this, which hasn't been that long. I picked up a Dell Arte Macias Favino copy, and was thunderstruck by the tone, and the pleasure of playing the instrument - all of a sudden, my poor, trusted 300 felt like an abandoned child. As I'm doing nothing but trying to perfect rhythm, and of that, "leger, sec et carré", I can't speak to tone and dryness on lead (I know Adrian H. told me, during a webcam thing, he's working on the timing of left hand muting, even when playing really uptempo lead phrases) - but aspire to lead, in a few years, when I can sincerely say, I'm confident in being a good rhythm player.

Dark, dry crunch, honey.

Busato? Favino? Selmer?

Or anything - with good hands?

Michael Bauer

Anything, with good hands. A great chef can produce a fabulous meal with high end cooking equipment, but he/she could also make a better meal with a blowtorch than I could make with that same high-end equipment.

Paulus played on a Gitane at Django in June. Robin Nolan used one last year in Madison. Did anyone think they sounded bad? I could have been up there on Selmer 503, and people would have walked out.

Passacaglia

Thanks, Michael. You keep making this fundamental sense, and I keep needing to listen to it. (Denis as well).

The only part I can't conceive is walking out of the room, when you're playing, whether it's a Selmer or not.

Thanks, man.

Paul

Michael Bauer

Thanks because you haven't heard me play. I am to guitar playing what a woodpecker is to carpentry.

Passacaglia

No, I haven't - but people I respect a good deal have heard you play, and speak very highly of you. Next year, I won't be so gutless, and will spend some time in Room 1 (101?), at DIJ 2013.

Jazzaferri

Michael Bauer wrote:

Thanks because you haven't heard me play. I am to guitar playing what a woodpecker is to carpentry.

ROFL. As a woodworker I love the analogy. For those that dont know MB ...he is being just a tad modest :twisted:

Jeff Moore

I'm not playing or hearing (live) guitars of the rarity as MB and MH are hearing, but I have enough experience with them to agree heartily with them that every factor of setup - humidity - etc matters on these guitars, and seems to matter a lot more the better (more responsive) the guitar is. A great guitar is like having several guitars cuz it'll sound very different given little changes in how you play. Today's weather has also just changed your guitar.

Like others have said: a great player can dominate a cheap guitar and make art with it. It's just easier and more rewarding with the great guitar.
Django recorded with the best guitars in the world and also with junk, with negligible impact on the result. His ideas and abilities are still transmitted through a poor guitar and mediocre recording because the ideas are fantastic and stand on their own and can be received by the listener even with downright poor tone.
In fact those scratchy unbalanced recordings of him on mediocre guitars seem to add character and a nice ancient ambiance to his ideas. Like hearing the future being born out of the dusty past right now.

Practice and good ideas; on any guitar you got will trump what money can buy (from the average listeners point of view).