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Surely the point the guy was making was his mate is so sold on the tone of a Gypsy guitar that, to his ears, everything else pales in comparison. It’s no reflection on Maton guitars.
I'm new to the whole GJ thing and don't mean to hijack this thread but I've only recently discovered the music and playing of Wim's mate Jon (I'm guessing you meant Jon Delaney Wim-forgive me if you didn't)....this guy was amazing!! I live in Australia and was shattered to learn that he passed away only recently. Since first hearing Jon play I checked out as much as I could of him on Youtube et. and to me his playing and musicianship is just next level. He was only 43 when he passed and I think had only been playing GJ guitar for maybe 10 years before a lot of that material was posted- he covered a lot of ground quick! He's the kind of player I would've travelled to Melbourne for lessons with- great chops but also emotionality- the song always seemed to come first. I wasn't surprised to read somewhere that Jon had travelled to Europe and had some lessons with Fapy Lafertin- again I hear the same thing in Fapy's playing.
Anyway- sorry to hijack your thread Lango-Django....
and great playing on those clips with Jon Wim....I wished I got to GJ earlier and found Jon while he was still with us..
Thanks, Brett.
I still live in hopes of having some of our luthier members respond to my original question.
But it seems likely that the reason for that is because there is no really good easy answer…?
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
For fear of stating the obvious, isn't the difference purely down to the basic designs and construction? I mean why is a Les Paul different to a Tele' or piano to a harp? Aprt from the playing techniques used, a flat top dreadnought with a fixed bridge and x-bracing is a totally different machine to a ladder braced guitar with a floating bridge. A harder question might be to define why a Selmac differs from an acoustic archtop, a much closer cousin?
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
Love Feynman.
Okay, I’m gonna make a wildly ignorant hypothesis, and you guys can tell me how I am wrong.
What if the gypsy guitar’s raspy/snarly sound is caused by bracing that causes the top to vibrate in two separate sections or plates… in such a way that each plate’s sound waves just slightly distorts the other’s…
…?
Edgar Degas: "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.... To draw, you must close your eyes and sing."
Georges Braque: "In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that can’t be explained."
To run a variation on ChrisMartin's post, "Nearly everything between the neck and tail blocks." And that applies to the Selmer/archtop distinction as well. Though I suppose the sides remain pretty much the same across the whole guitar family. But the other design elements--materials, top/back production, bracing, bridge/saddle, and string anchoring--are mixed and matched in ways that make for very distinct characters. For the archtop, the crucial element is the carved top/back--or a pressed laminate that mimics carving but ain't. Whether X or parallel braced, fiddle-carved guitars always sound like archtops, even if some approach the sweetness of a flat-top, as some of Ken Parker's do. But then, Parker's designs change so many design elements that the "archtop" label seems to apply more to the shape than to the build formula.
Sidenote about Parker's guitars. To my ear, they can't produce the characteristic big-band bark and growl that I think is the center of the "archtop" voice. Nice for fingerstyle or single-string soloing, but not for rhythm playing. Here's a video of Martin Taylor and Tommy Emmanuel test-playing a pair of Parkers. When Tommy plays rhythm, it seems to me that he's handling the Parker the way I would a flat-top, damping a lot to cut down on sustain. (As I learned to do when learning how to play swing rhythm on a flat-top.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_LyWpq85cE&t=202s
That sounds pretty good to me, Will. I've been following this but I got nothin'... sorry. But your thinking makes perfect sense. What does bracing do to the top? It makes sense to think it's deciding how the top will vibrate and these vibrations will bring cause different frequencies and different ways how they intersect.
But, couple of times while searching for some GJ related stuff, I found myself in various guitar forums where people discussed these guitars. Discussed (disgust could be more like it) is the wrong word, they pissed all over them.
would the most obvious factor be the “forced“ top? Or Pliage or or however we want to refer to the arch.