Our Aims, Criteria and Method for Selecting Guitars

ACOUSTIC, CLASSICAL, FLAMENCO GUITARS

Art Music aims to provide a range of guitars suitable for serious musicians. The tone has to appeal to us – we are musicians ourselves – and if the guitars say ‘play me’ to us they will almost certainly say it to you too!

Our policy is to select only those guitars which we feel are good instruments – we ‘cherry pick’ from amongst those available from suppliers and other sources. (This is the complete opposite of the ‘stack em high, sell em cheap’ approach adopted by most retailers).

Even with the best makers – and we pride ourselves on stocking high quality instruments – there are some guitars which we do not feel meet our standards, and therefore the standards of our discerning customers.

The advantage for our customers is that we have eliminated inferior instruments from each range. We invite you to come and see for yourself.

Quality of Materials and Construction

All acoustic steel-strung, classical and flamenco guitars will at the very least have solid wood tops (soundboards) and will usually have solid wood back and sides. Whilst we are not guitar builders (luthiers) ourselves we employ guitar builders and technicians to lower the actions and ensure all guitars are correctly set-up before offering them for sale. These craftsmen advise us on the finer points of construction.

Tonal Characteristics

We know that a tone that appeals to one person may not appeal to another (there is a large subjective element), but we aim to select guitars which meet the following criteria:

1) The tone is neither extreme in brightness nor mellowness.

Whether plucking or strumming, therefore, the guitar will sound good. A very bright, clear tone will be good for intricate finger-style playing, but may sound offensively bright for strumming, whereas a guitar with a very mellow tone will sound good for strumming but in extreme cases may sound dull and lifeless when plucking or playing single-note passages (melody, riffs, lead breaks).

2) Balance of tonal projection (power, volume) over bass, middle and treble ranges.

A powerful bass is a very attractive and obvious part of finding a guitar with a desirable tone. But if the treble is very weak (much quieter) in comparison to the bass then the guitar has limitations which the discerning guitarist will spot – he or she will always seek a balanced projection. Smaller guitars are not as powerful in the bass as their larger bodied siblings, but so long as the higher register notes do not dominant then the guitar will be balanced.

3) Clarity or Note Separation

A guitar which sounds very clear, with notes in a chord being defined and separatey identifialbe, will project well and will actually seem more powerful than a louder but ‘muddy’ sounding guitar.

4) Openness of Tone

The highest quality guitars have a very responsive tone, which is obtained through the method of construction, materials used and thickness of wood – especially of the soundboard. Building guitars is both a science and an art, and there are many factors which can determine and alter the tone and the responsiveness of the instrument. The construction used by each maker leads to different charactistics of tone and response – this is particularly true of classical guitars. For those with a particular interest in this area, we recommend ‘Guitar Making, Tradition and Technology’ by Cumpiano and Natelson, Pub. Conical Books, ISBN 0-8811806405

A guitar with an ‘open’ tone can be recognised by playing cluster chords, allowing them to be sustained for as long as possible. What to listen for is the level of inter-action betweeen notes. For a demonstration of this we suggest you visit Art Music.

Intonation

No matter how fine an instrument may be in other respects, it has to be possible to tune it correctly, so intonation must be accurate. The test for this is firstly to play the harmonic of each string on the 12th fret, and then to compare this with the same note when fretted. The fretted note should be at the same pitch as the harmonic (or extremely close to it), since harmonics are always correct and pure.