An unedited response to marketeers regarding A.

Davis Guitars design concepts by Art Davis The classical is basically my take on the Spanish guitar that has been floating around for about ..oh..150 or 160 years or so. There are 6 string guitars that are as much as 200 years old and 4 and five course[a group of strings-a twelve string guitar is a six course instrument] instruments shaped like a guitar dating back to the 14 or 1500's. The guitars that Antonio de Torres built in Seville and his native Almeria in the last half of the 19th century are universally regarded as the tap root of the modern classical guitar "family tree". Torres defined the breed and you can see an instrument that looks almost exactly like it in any music store today. They truly exemplify the "Classic Style"; Balanced proportions, Purity of expression, Restraint in ornamentation, Emotion tempered by reason. Unlike the modern guitar store versions which are usually intonationally and acoustically challenged, Torres' instruments are simply beautiful and can hold their own with almost any guitar being built today. An early Antonio de Torres guitar is my inspiration for the M1 and I used measurements from the book "Guitars" by Tom and Mary Anne Evans to design the M1 body type. While the Paniolo is built in the same way as all other A.Davis guitars, I believe the only way to build a classical guitar is by using the Spanish method. The way I usually build a guitar body is to bend, block[glue sides in mold to heel and tail blocks] and kerf the sides-one piece-brace the top and back-two more piecesand assemble them in a mold to make the body. In the Spanish method, The neck and heel block are one piece; the neck is glued to the top in a mold; the sides slip into slots at the base of the neck and are glued to the top, kerfing or little bitty blocks and brace gussets are added, kerfed or bent lining is added to the sides where they meet the back, and the back is glued on. It is a tedious and time consuming process and it takes 4 or 5 times as long to build one of these than one of our other models. Adding difficulty to this trip down memory lane is the work of the great Andres Segovia. Before him there was no such thing as a "classical guitar". There were classical pieces written for the guitar and played in formal recitals but the guitar was-and remains today-mostly a folk instrument. Segovia was the first to popularize the great sport of adapting classical works by the great composersBeethoven, Bach, Mozart, etc.-for the guitar and playing them in concert. He was a great player and a stern teacher. The moment you step onto the trail he broke you will be expected to learn all the skills necessary to become a good symphony performer. There is a lot of nuanced inflection written into classical music and you will be expected to add some style and inspiration. Add to that the seven or eight specific levels of volume to be heard at the back of the room and you better be holding a spectacular instrument in your hands when the guy with the baton points at you. A classical guitar is a delicate instrument, capable of extreme power or the most subtle behavior, always well mannered. Carefully crafted, with the finest materials, it should last a series of lifetimes when properly cared for. Sounds impossible, doesn't it? In fact, it almost is. A little luck-at least a lack of bad luck- is required to get one of these guitars right and some good design and materials and, yes, a good bit of work which I need to get back to. thanks for reading this far. The SD12 and J12 are mostly the same construction as their six string counterparts. The back and sides are interchangeable. The necks, though wider to accommodate the extra strings, have the same maple and carbon fiber spars, the same wood for veneers and fingerboards and use the same building techniques for assembly. The top has bracing specially chosen for strength. It may be a little thicker or tighter grain. The top bracing is carved for more strength in between the bridge and neck where the reaction to increased tension is most notable. There is an extra fan brace to keep the top from washing out when you start banging on the thing and the bracing is kept pretty light behind and to the sides of the bridge in order to let the pee-pee little treble strings have their say in things. A few words on how the guitar produces sound-insert the dictionary definitions for "sound" and "music" here. The definitions for music and sound can be clearly defined. Although there have been many experiments and scientific measurements regarding guitars that you can research on the internet or in other published works. I don't believe that a guitar can be properly defined or described with words. Only a guitar can define a guitar. What I would like to do here is describe, in my own words, how a guitar produces sound. It is one of the basic building blocks and should be well considered when designing the greatest of musical instruments.

Firstly, sound starts in your brain..or in that piece of music that came from someone else's brain-OK most people believe that music comes from the heart! All I'm trying to do is explain, in the most simplistic way, the extremely complex movements that are going on in your guitar when you are merrily and blissfully playing along without getting too technical and overbearing..alright? Now where was I? Right...your brain chooses a note and it's character, you press the string onto a fret while your thumb presses the back of the neck and reach down with finger, thumb or pick and lay into the string-wait! Before you let go or pull the pick past the string, take note of what has happened. Before a sound was made the whole guitar has changed shape. Try this at home; Pluck the A string and pull on the big E string. It works like a tremolo bar; pull on the E string and the A string lowers in pitch. Any acoustic guitar works like this. As you pull the string, the top of the saddle moves forward a little, the top behind the bridge rises, pulling the top of the tail block towards the neck, the top in front of the bridge lowers and depending on whether the top here is concave, flat or convex the sides may be pulled inwards or pushed outwards. The neck also moves. The entire guitar is storing the energy created by increasing the tension of the string. Now let go.... The guitar quickly returns to it's at rest shape and overshoots as the string tries to return to it's at rest shape, overshoots that and starts vibrating in an elliptical pattern because even if you plucked that note perfectly, all the wiggling the guitar is doing will throw it around until does the same thing orbiting planets do for all the same reasons. The point of time between when the centering force (string tension vs. guitars resilience) is upset and the string starts vibrating smoothly can be described as the attack portion of the note. Now the string is vibrating - I know, it looks flat and it's close but trust me, it's an ellipse. You need to understand this in order for me to explain what happens next. Pluck sideways on a string and then down. Hear the difference? No? You need a better guitar. So the string is vibrating and the bridge is rocking back and forth like a see saw. It is also rocking side to side like a see saw all the while setting up alternating vibrations all over the guitar. A multitude of ripples traveling across the top, up and down and across braces, to the sides, the back, the neck-oh I forgot something.. the vibrating mass of the string is driving the bridge in a direction perpendicular to the string thus adding further complexity to an already complex event. The point where the string meets the saddle is vibrating in an egg shape;it could be a cigar shape or a perfect ellipsoid or even a sphere but it is definitely a three dimensional shape. As the guitar starts vibrating something else happens. Up until this point I have only been referring to the reaction as the guitar is driven by the motion of the string. The materials the guitar is made from have their own resonances. This is determined by mass, density, stiffness and shape. The shape is determined by the luthier and the other qualities can be affected by curing or age but only slightly. These qualities and the resulting combined resonances of all the parts of a guitar work to either help or hinder the sound. What usually happens is different parts of the guitar resonate at different frequencies and, hopefully everything dovetails to make a nice even sounding guitar. This is the part of guitar design that has been highly emphasized and most often scientifically measured. Choosing and shaping the parts of a guitar to arrange the resonant qualities is important. The need for a guitar to be driven easily by the movement of the strings is just as important and maybe, more so. Which brings me to the big fat monkey in the middle of the room. Air. All the vibrations I mentioned before could go on and on and you wouldn't hear them without air. The air moving around inside the guitar can also cause problems or be used in your favor. The primary resonance of any acoustic guitar is usually the "Heimholz resonance". It can be demonstrated by blowing across the top of a pop bottle, drinking a little, and doing it again. The tone it makes is determined by the volume of air inside the container and the width and length of the opening. When the guitar vibrates at this frequency, all the above mentioned resonances are effectively canceled as the whole guitar tries to breath in and out through it's sound hole and the note is killed by the resistance from moving all that air. On a guitar you can change this resonance by changing the size of the soundhole but you have to change it by about 50% to get a one note difference. A guitar would look pretty stupid with a 2" or 6" soundhole. On the first M1's which had really light bracing, I reduced the soundhole by a tenth of an inch in diameter to keep the top from washing out when playing really hard. Kind of like a little compressor and in it's most drastic form it is one of those rubber plugs used for amplified guitars on stage. This is the only good reason for changing the size of the sound hole.

Changing the position of the soundhole can make a difference. This is one of the reasons that violins and some guitars have f-holes or sound holes in different positions. With a traditional guitar you are pretty much stuck with the soundhole in the middle and have to make the best of it. The Reynolds number is another factor. This is a measurement of how far air will travel over a surface before it separates from the surface and becomes turbulent. How the sound bounces off some parts and sticks to others inside a guitar makes a difference in how it sounds. This is all just about one note. What happens when you play a couple notes over the top of each other? A chord picked or strummed? Harmonics where the string vibrates in different directions at the nut and bridge? A good builder is faced with all these elements of guitar behavior when choosing materials for a new guitar. The desired character of sound and specific wood requests must also be considered. As I believe the intuitive method -as opposed to scientific or anecdotal-is best used to design guitars. Instead of choosing flavors and colors like you are in an ice cream parlor, just open your mind completely and see what pops in there. You will probably be much closer to having something that looks, plays, and sounds as if it dropped out of the sky from God.