DjangoBooks.com
Welcome to our Community!
Categories
- 19.8K All Categories
- 1.1K General
- 446 Welcome
- 57 Archtop Eddy's Corner
- 134 CD, DVD, and Concert Reviews
- 380 FAQ
- 26 Gypsy Jazz Italia
- 22 Photos
- 199 Gypsy Picking
- 21 Unaccompanied Django
- 15 Pearl Django Play-Along Vol.1
- 16 Gypsy Fire
- 40 Gypsy Rhythm
- 1.3K Gypsy Jazz University - Get Educated
- 126 Gypsy Jazz 101
- 208 Repertoire
- 205 History
- 693 Technique
- 46 Licks and Patterns
- 5 Daniel Givone Manouche Guitare Method Users Group
- 20 Eddie Lang Club
- 1.2K Gypsy Jazz Gear
- 735 Guitars, Strings, Picks, Amps, Pickups and Other Accessories
- 420 Classifieds
- 43 Recording
- 62 Other Instruments
- 18 Violin
- 5 Mandolin
- 22 Accordion
- 7 Bass
- 10 Woodwinds
- 312 Gypsy Jazz Events
- 135 North America
- 95 Europe
- 82 International
In this Discussion
Who's Online (0)
Comments
@wim if this is totally your brainchild, you're a genius. So brilliant.
Yeah that's pretty great.
Did Angelo mean there's no one like Selmer because they've only made 10 guitars in the last 70 years?
Tbh I feel like this is probably a good thing for everyone, like Joscho on Rick Beato. There seems to be a bit of wanting interest in the whole thing as far as I can tell.
There are some amazing "factory" instruments in the world, Collings maybe being the best example of a company that turns out insane quality consistently. But it's hard to pull off. Starting from nothing even if you're hiring someone isn't easy. If they just have someone else make the guitars for them...then it's really that person's guitars.
It will be interesting to see. I hope they are stupidly expensive. I just don't get the feeling like the market is super huge right now for a company to blow a huge amount of money tooling up for this. Maybe they are just taking over someone else's thing.
There's a weird luthier's equation though. The more instruments any maker or company makes, the less time whoever the master is has on any particular one. Companies like Bourgeois have one guy on each operation...one guy does binding only, one guy necks, etc. But that's a company that's evolved over 40 years. The quality is high but it's a slow evolution.
Gibson has made high quality reissues of famous models that had been discontinued for decades, like the Nick Lucas, Advanced Jumbo, J-185, Roy Smeck, etc. The originals of these guitar are among the most desirable old flat tops by any maker, and typically they are everything the legends say they are - great guitars in every way. Not unlike Selmers... The reproductions - time will tell but I don't think so. I owned a '56 J-185 for over 30 years and the modern reproductions just don't seem anything like that guitar. I've played pre-war 000-28 Martins that sounded so good and played so easy it was hard to imagine a better guitar. A modern 000-28 Martin is a nice guitar but nothing like those old ones. I don't know if if it was a better grade of wood, better lacquer or what. It's certainly a mystery that luthiers have been trying to decipher for a long time.
A factory doesn't actually seem to be a bad place to build guitars. A lot of exceptional guitars came out of those factories in Nazareth and Kalamazoo.
Also worth noting - Django never played a vintage guitar, always a new or fairly new one. For what that's worth...
What's the general opinion? Who makes the guitar today that sounds most like an old Selmer?
I don't think you can compare Martin and Selmer. In the 1950s when Selmer stopped production, Martin was making 5000 guitars a year, which is probably 5x more Selmers than were made in the entire run. And Martin had been making guitars for 99 years prior to Selmer starting.
Gibson was less dramatic but also similar. Point being that Selmer was just getting started when they stopped. That's sort of why I'm not super interested in making exact copies of old Selmers. I think they are super cool instruments and unique in that sort of space between archtops and flat tops but it seems like there's a lot of space for experimentation.
My understanding is that the Selmers that exist are varied in tone and quality so it's hard to figure out what exactly a copy would sound like.
Just my opinion. People are going to get off on the name, which is cool but ultimately it will be interesting what their goal is.
I was thinking the other day, if I was the boss, I would have a great luthier source all the wood, measure the tops and then send everything to the highest end factory in China they can find to assemble them. Then bring them back to France for final assembly, tuning and setup. The quality of workmanship in China, for factory instruments, can be extremely high and probably is a lot faster than trying to find people to man a factory in France or here. And you could maximize the input of the master luthier in the things that are ultimately the most important, understanding the wood and bracing and the setup.
no one asked me though....
Copy the 503 obviously.
I’d agree with this, they vary so much. I have 823 and T D has 824 and they are quite different though some of that is setup and they have lived different lives. 823 was owned by Challain Ferre and he was a lefty and flipped the guitar so it has 2 worn areas from picking as an example.
www.scoredog.tv
This is basically what Dana Bourgeois is doing with Eastman for his Touchstone guitars.
https://www.elderly.com/products/bourgeois-touchstone-series-om-vintage-dreadnought-guitar
Yeah totally, that's what I was thinking of. Also Northfield Mandolins...very high quality stuff.
Saw this video just come out from Tim Pierce which speaks to that vintage vs. new build discussion in traditional acoustics that we raised earlier in this thread (i.e. old Martins vs new, etc). I'm not that heavy into electric guitars anymore so it may just be marketing, but what Cesar at Gibson is saying about their "new" vintage instruments coming out of the Murphy lab is that they sound almost as good as the older stuff (or about as close as they can get them while still keeping the price "low"). So, you might not be able to even find a vintage '59 burst Les Paul, but you can buy an R9 for a fraction of the price. Some of that might be better scientific study and understanding of what makes the older instruments sound good and how the wood might be treated to replicate that.
Like most innovations, I would expect luthiers like Paul or like Craig B (or like Taylor in this video) will come up with ideas for neck or other adjustments that help improve playability etc. Some will work better than others. When something works well and is easy to build/adopt, the factories can then start taking that technology/design and pump them out in large numbers.
I really feel like these gypsy guitars are such a niche market and sound anyway, that it is hard to justify creating a large factory to put them out in numbers thinking you will get the average joe to buy one just to strum acoustic music. That was Selmer's original market at least, not necessarily setting out to create a new genre and sound. I do agree with the others that getting some strong Asian builder (i.e. a Jeong Woo Choo or similar) to help design and manufacture these new Selmers with lower labor costs and then finish assembly in France could be a viable strategic business choice. It will be interesting to see their price point when they come out.