GUITAR TIP: Choosing a guitar (PART I)

hey everyone welcome back so today we're going to cover a very practical subject which is how to choose a classical guitar if you're at all like me when i went to buy my first classical i had no idea what i was looking for you know i saw a room of guitars some were shinier some were different colors and some were very expensive but i really didn't know what made them different so this video is in two parts today part one is going to be all about equipping you with what i think is sort of the need to know before you show up to the guitar store to make a purchase now in part two we're going to talk about what to do when you actually have an instrument in your hands that you might be considering buying how can you actually tell if this instrument is good quality or not by the way this video was made in collaboration with a really cool guitar shop in germany called cecus guitars and part two is actually already out and it's available on their channel so if you go to the link in the description you can watch that right now but for now here is part one of choosing a classical guitar all right now to start let's just make sure we understand how to pick out a classical guitar from you know dozens of other types of guitars we might find in a guitar shop a classical guitar is an acoustic guitar with nylon strings and nylon strings are usually kind of a see-through plasticky looking string material you'll find the top three strings our nylon and the bottom three are wound with metal if you see a guitar that's all steel strings that's not a classical guitar other features include a headstock which is this part here with pegs on the back side so not the front or sticking out the sides but they're in the back you can also tell it's a classical guitar because there are 12 frets and at the 12th fret the body starts and then there are 19 frets total usually lastly you can tell because at the bridge which is this wooden piece here the strings are tied around not held together with a pin all right so now that you know how to recognize a classical guitar when you see one let's talk about price range um it turns out that you can buy a classical guitar for as little as 80 on the internet i'm sure um or as much as a quarter of a million dollars right i have another video where i played a 275 000 torres guitar which is actually this is a replica of a torrez guitar but i played a real one from 1888 and because of its historical value it's priced very high so that's a huge spectrum how how do we know how much to spend well of course first is you know know how much you're able to spend know what you can afford but i would advise you not to buy the cheapest guitar if if that's an option for you um from my experience guitars under a hundred dollars i wouldn't waste my time they will simply hold you back in the learning process you might quit because you think you're no good at the instrument but in reality uh the instrument isn't very playable so i would go over the 200 uh mark mainly because generally that's sort of the the price range where you get into solid top instruments this this top uh face of the instrument here is called the sound board and that is arguably the most important part of the instrument in terms of the sound it produces it's like a vibrating membrane um that resonates and gives us so much of our the character of our instrument and when you buy instruments that are too cheap typically the top is made of a synthetic laminate wood that just doesn't sound so great and what we want is a solid top one solid piece of wood which you tend to get when you get over that price once you get over that hump you get a lot of factory made instruments which are varying quality and at a certain point you enter into the realm of more professional level guitars which tend to be handmade not factory made and that could be you know somewhere around the two thousand dollar range and up uh these these are made by luthier somebody one person who makes the guitar from beginning to end and those tend to be the finest uh most professional level level instruments but of course there's a huge spectrum there and you can you need to buy what you can afford but at the same time generally the more you spend the more playable of an instrument you get and the better bigger of a sound you get as well next you should know that guitars actually come in a variety of sizes so this is about a full-size guitar but if you are buying a guitar for a nine-year-old this tall this is too big they make half size guitars they make three-quarter size guitars so you should get one that's appropriate for the size of the person and also you know if you're an adult who's simply on the shorter side or you have small hands they make 7 8 size guitars so it's very important to get something that's comfortable for you and not to force yourself to hold an instrument which is uncomfortable a term you might hear if you go into a guitar shop is the scale length of a guitar and that means the length from the saddle which is this white piece here all the way to the nut which is the white piece here and the average scale length in centimeters would be 65 centimeters but actually this guitar is 64. so here we have a slightly smaller guitar some guitars you see are 66 centimeters so there's a variety and i don't think one's better or worse necessarily as long as it's right for you now earlier i mentioned the importance of the sound board in that it should be a solid piece of wood usually spruce or cedar and so here we have the two main types of guitars the yellowish brighter color is spruce and it has a brighter sound so easy to remember because the brighter color is the brighter sound it's usually a harder wood and then the darker color makes a darker sound it's not because of the color because the nature of the wood but so the cedar is the darker color it's a softer wood which makes a more mellow darker sound and here's the cool thing there's no objective answer here i mean this isn't better than this or vice versa uh we're into the realm now of of taste uh you get to decide you know which you like but you should definitely play a cedar top and a spruce top guitar at some point and find out what you prefer now both these guitars are made by the same maker sears guitars and so actually if i just strum a chord on both let's see if we can hear a difference so starting with the spruce and now the the cedar guitar i don't know how much of that is coming across on the microphone but in person the difference is night and day um this is such a more mellow dark dark chocolatey sound you know and it feels different like i can feel the resonation of the instrument against my chest so they're very different instruments but i wouldn't say one is better the clarity of the spruce is beautiful and the chocolatey richness of the cedar is also beautiful in different ways all right another thing you need to know about classical guitars is that the wood on the sides and the back of the instrument called the back of the sides it can be many different types of woods here we have flame maple and here we have indian rosewood right however i have to admit that in my experience the back and the sides is sort of a low priority wood of the instrument it doesn't seem to make as big of an impact as uh other components of the instrument especially not the sound board that seems to be the most important piece um the back and the sides sometimes you get also mahogany uh or even exotic woods like brazilian rosewood or koa um but you know like i said i i think it doesn't make a huge impact in fact torres uh the famous maker who codified the shape of these instruments in the first place this is actually a torres replica here by sierra's guitars torres even did an experiment once where he made a fantastic guitar but he used paper mache for the back and the sides just to i think prove a point you know and so um maybe it has a bigger impact than i that i'm aware of but for me i would at least say it's lower priority than the rest of the instrument another important point to consider is whether to buy a new or a used instrument uh unlike cars you know guitars don't really depreciate in value in fact they can even appreciate in value if uh the maker gets famous or if there are none of those guitars left sometimes with older instruments you can get you know scratches and dings on the instrument but those are very superficial i would say that those don't really matter uh what matters is if if the instrument was taken care of uh if there are not you know cracks that were too many cracks that were repaired in the instruments or serious problems like the strings are too high the action's too high as long as the instrument was taken care of there's nothing wrong with an old guitar in fact sometimes it's wonderful because that important sound board can actually improve in sound over time as it's played it can open up and learn to vibrate in new ways and like fine wine improve in character uh with age so it's kind of a cool thing um new guitars however the appeal there is for example if you go to a luthier you can get a custom instrument exactly with the woods you want and the scale length you want and everything specified to your to your liking okay i have just one more point i want to make before you head to the guitar shop be cautious to not fall into the trap of mistaking shiny and decorated guitars for quality guitars i remember when i was 16 or 17 and i was going in to buy my first more expensive classical guitar and i went to a guitar shop and i saw up high there was this super shiny guitar covered in mother of pearl inlays and decorations and things and we took it down and i could literally see my face in the finish of this guitar had so much finish on it and i made the classic mistake of assuming that the decoration meant that this was actually a really good guitar turns out that this guitar was not so great uh the sound was really dead um but i really was taken by the beauty of the instrument so be careful don't make the same mistake i did in short i would say that in fact we want less shiny guitars because we want to let the instrument resonate that is your sound resonation and as ev was saying before about the importance of the sound board being like a membrane if there's too much lacquer if there's too much finish on an instrument it suffocates the wood there's a little experiment you can do to prove how important it is that the soundboard vibrates if i push on the top of the instrument i can really deaden the sound so [Music] see how it mutes the sound that's because the instrument needs to vibrate and i'm suffocating it by pushing on it and that's essentially what too much finish does so if you see another guitar where you can see your face in it it's too much like a mirror actually i would say that's not a good thing the less finish the better in fact and french polish tends to be the best way to finish finish a guitar so i really hope you found these tips useful and now you feel very equipped to head to the music store and ask all the right questions uh please do check out part two below in the description because when you get to the shop and you now have to play an instrument it's useful to know a series of tricks to figure out whether or not a guitar is good quality or not okay guys thanks so much for watching please do subscribe and if you're interested at all in learning the guitar the loot or other plucked instruments please do check out my online music school called arpeggiato you'll find it in the description below at arpeggiato.com and we specialize in all things that go pluck so if that's of interest to you and you'd like to do some online lessons please do check it out okay take care [Music] you

Channel: Brandon Acker

Views: 148,694

Keywords: brandon acker, guitar tip, classical guitar, tutorial, guitar, rob scallon, guitareo, acoustic guitar, fingerstyle, lesson, guitar lesson, buying as guitar, siccas guitars, Siccas, segovia, john williams, julian bream, david russell, spruce or cedar, expensive guitar, price range, jared dines, paul davids, asmr, adam neely, rick beato, andrew huang, early music sources, tango guitar, gymnopedie, relaxing, meditative

Id: 3gXD0C2cc40

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021