Stephen Faulk guitar – Modelo Calle’ Carpenteria – #1

Marten Falk is a professional concert guitarist from Sweden.
He has toured the world presenting guitar concerts on Classical guitar, Baroque guitar, Vihuela and Russian seven string guitar. He’s also a guitar music historian and presents programs on Swedish Radio.

In addition to teaching Falk has a guitar gallery in Stockholm where he deals fine concert and student guitars. His inventory includes the finest names in the modern classical guitar world, student guitars, and a wide range of lutes, romantic era guitars, Russian seven string guitars and other unique preiod instruments of the guitar family.

His shop can be seen here:  https://falksguitars.com

There is also an amusing well written piece on Marten Falk by a journalism student named by Anna Johansen. I would be remiss not to include this short description of his life and how he came to be a guitarist.

Rob Mac Killop is a guitarist in Edinburgh Scotland. A few years ago he embarked on a project to explore the music of late 19th century to early twentieth century Spanish composers associated with flamenco music who published their own out written interpretations of flamenco. Rob plays without nails as many players of the time did, he utilizes the technique for both his modern and period instrument playing with great mastery and beautiful tone. He decided to make this exploration on gut strings as would have been played in that time.

For this project I made a guitar for him in the style of Santos Hernandez/ Manuel Ramirez based on a 1920 guitar by Santos that I have studied in person. It’s made of Japanese Cypress for the back and sides with a Spruce top. The guitar has a peghead with the finial style of the Manuel Ramirez shop around 1910 to 1915.

The video shared is  Mac Killop playing the guitar I made for his project. The guitar is strung with gut strings made by Damien Dlugoleki string company.

Rob Mac Killop also arranges music from Renaissance to today for Guitar, Lute, Banjo and other fretted instruments which is published by Mel Bay.
Website: https://robmackillop.net

Julian Arcas – Solea arrangement 1902

The next Calle-Carpinteria model is going to be with a Tournavoz.
It’s a tapered cylinder of thin copper sheet that was used in many 19th century guitars. The tournavoz does a few things, it changes the main box resonance of the guitar, it becomes lower. Some players say they feel the basses become more integrated into the treble side of the guitar giving a lush even  sound.

I’m going to build it as carefully as I can and we’ll see how it sounds. I’m sure it will sound good, but it’s more a matter of the flavor of the sound.

Check back I’ll be posting up dates. I have several instruments in progress now, I’ll be talking about most of them here.

This is a new website, updated with the new models I’m building and some new photos of the models I’ll continue to make.
The first new model is a classical guitar I designed in Summer of 2018. The guitar is full sized, but has some nuanced outline drawing. I narrowed the lower bout and rounded over the upper bout shoulder a little bit. The result is a full sized classical, although it feels smaller and intimate for people who don’t want a big guitar. The new model is called the Alameda Model and you can see photos of it on the website under the ‘guitars’ tab.

I’ll talk more about how and why I designed it, and what that means for sound production. Now I want to draw your attention to the first photo in the new blog. It’s a work board contraption with big wooden wedges and ropes. It’s a fixture used to join tops, and this week I’ll be joining several tops to get ready for the next guitars I’ll be making on order.

The top in the photo is Western Red Cedar. The joint is planed to meet perfectly, seamlessly, then hot hide glue is quickly brushed onto the joint surfaces and the top is pushed together by hand on the fixture. Then the ropes are woven tight over the top in a criss-cross pattern and the wedges are pushed under the ropes to tension them, thus driving the two halves of the top together and holding it until the glue dries

I’ll be doing five or six tops this week, and then inlaying rosettes in them.

until next time….