page_title: Classical guitar making
section_title: The state of classical guitar making
hierarchical_section_title: Classical guitar making / The state of classical guitar making
caption_attribution_description: "Der Lautenmacher" aus Eigentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auf Erden (1568)
context_page_description: A person who is specialized in the making of stringed instruments such as guitars, lutes and violins is called a luthier.
context_section_description: While most classical guitar makers are today mainly concerned with making modern classical guitars with their typical fan-bracing or experimenting to make the instrument louder (e.g., "thin-top lattice-braced", "double-top", with results that are not without criticism); they seem to give little consideration to historical sound ideals, or to tuning and voicing of the parts of the instrument.
  On the other hand, there are opinions that those guitar makers who openly refer to using plate tuning, may be using it more as a marketing gimmick, than something that they truly understand; and has a marked influence on the instrument's sound.
  "[...] my building technique doesn't include "component tuning." My experience of thirty five years has led me to the conclusion that "tuning" the sound of a guitar is an illusion and a chimera, and those who publicly advocate that they can accurately control the response of a guitar by responding to noises derived from tapping parts of it, are simply seducing the innocent, or at best, self-deluded." (William R. Cumpiano on "Tap Tuning")
  And yet: plate tuning (voicing the instrument) is a significant part of violin-making culture—recently considerable advances have been made in the voicing of violins, so that modern violins by some makers are finally beginning to compete tonally with the best violins of the past (Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati, etc.). In fact, top violinists who traditionally played Stradivari, are now slowly beginning to use modern violins (this was rather uncommon up till recently). Making an exact copy does not guarantee an instrument with sound qualities identical to the original.  There is, however, some evidence that violinists may be under some similar self-delusion as regards the end result of these efforts on the finished violin.
  Thus, while some consider that in this respect (and considerations of sound aesthetic), that guitar making today is still lagging behind professional violin-making, the scientific evidence is ambiguous, at best.
  In violin culture many good old master-violins have been analyzed for their sound qualities (e.g. Stradivari, or Guarneri are favoured by many people; though some consider these instruments as too "outwardly" loud, yet lacking the "inner" tonal qualities of say Amati).
  In guitar making, it is in many cases more difficult to find similarly idealized instruments for a number of reasons:
  There are multiple guitar traditions still currently active, each with its own ideals of tone, voicing, projection, etc.  The flamenco tradition, for example, favors a very different kind of instrument construction from that of the concert classical guitar.  And the ideal concert instrument for concerto performance with orchestra may not be the best choice for solo or salon-ensemble playing.
  There are not many guitars still in existence, from the period that some people consider the "Golden Age of Acoustics or instrument making" (17th and 18th centuries); e.g. there are only five guitars from Stradivari still known to exist and luthiers and players are unlikely to have even heard them to judge their tonal quality.
  As can be seen from violin making, there was a decrease in luthiers' tonal quality in the 19th century, when compared to the "Golden Age" (some people attribute this to luthiers' greater focus on the visible aspects, as opposed to the sound itself). Also, in this time, the guitar went through many different outer shapes, and luthiers also had to cater for guitar demands from many amateurs at the time; so ultimately, for any given instrument from about 1800 to 1900, it could be one of high tonal quality, but might just as well be a mediocre instrument; or one with a design and tonal characteristic, that was later abandoned by the maker (though there are 19th-century guitar-makers such as Lacôte and Scherzer, who are generally considered as having built guitars with high tonal quality).
  Most guitars today are still built using Spanish Torres or post-Torres fan-bracing. This has become the de facto classical guitar instrument today, but while being s
caption: Der Lautenmacher (The lute maker)[44] by Jost Amman (1539–1591)
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