Very Old Guy Gets the Bug (the GOOD one!)

Hello

My name is Clay and I'm an 84 year old guy who built a great (if I do say so myself) classical guitar in the Torres style fifty years ago. I used the best materials available then- Brazilian rosewood, Austrian spruce, African mahogany and ebony and (then) legal ivory. Never leaned to play

Now, with the pandemic pushing me into the Endangered Species sector, I certainly have the time to try and learn to play. My guitar sounds just beautiful, but the classical neck is just too thick and wide for my old hands so far, and the scale too long (645 mm).

What I've done is buy an inexpensive folk acoustic (Yamaha FG 800), restrung it with ball-ended nylon and put a capo on the first fret to get a shorter scale and a slightly wider neck and retuned it to standard tuning so I don't get any more confused than I already am!

I'm spending a fair amount of time at my attempt, but making very slow progress- but at least it's SOME progress...

You all stay well and productive!

Good luck and welcome aboard !

Good luck and welcome aboard !

Wait, what's a folk acoustic? That sounds like what I should be playing, but I've not heard of it. ????

PS -- Welcome, Clay!

Awesome Clay! I'm impressed with your craftsmanship and your determination! I love that you're taking up playing now. I hadn't played guitar for 40+ years. I tinkered with the guitar as a teenager but never really got very good at it. Then about 5 years ago ,I bought a used Ibanez on craigslist and never touched it. After COVID hit, I decided to start playing again so I could play and sing with my grandkids around the fire. I joined Guitar tricks a month ago and I'm loving it. I still suck but I'm having fun. I hope you are too. Post some pics of your guitar. Clay. I'd love to see it!!!

Sounds like a beauty Clay, best of luck.

Originally Posted by: jhicks1

...COVID hit, I decided to start playing again...

Best of luck J

Hi, Faith- thanks for the welcome. It's hard to distinguish a folk acoustic from a "regular" acoustic for me; I think it's probably a difference in soundboard bracing to produce better finger picking tone, but here's a link to the Yamaha folk guitar site with LOTS of discussion!

https://themusicresource.com/yamaha-fg800-vs-fg830/#Yamaha_FG800-2

Clay

Hey, JHICKS- thanks for asking for photos of my shop-made guitar; I LOVE to show them!

Very nice. I am curious Clay, what prompted the build?

Originally Posted by: clayfeld

Hi, Faith- thanks for the welcome. It's hard to distinguish a folk acoustic from a "regular" acoustic for me; I think it's probably a difference in soundboard bracing to produce better finger picking tone, but here's a link to the Yamaha folk guitar site with LOTS of discussion!

https://themusicresource.com/yamaha-fg800-vs-fg830/#Yamaha_FG800-2

Clay

Thanks, Clay, will check it out. I assumed folk acoustic meant a 10 or 12 string, but if there's such a thing as a six string folk guitar, that's probably what I should be playing, what with my ongoing musical love affair with JD...

Faith,

A folk Acoustic is an Concert size guitar.

Depends how manufacturers class them.

Inbetween a Dreadnought and a Parlour.

Shoulders not as big and has a waist.

Fender CC60S as opposed the Fender CD60S

My Tanglewood Folk/Orchestra is coming this week

Well, Bill- This will be more of an answer than you wanted! I've been an Obsessive Compulsive home craftsman since I was a kid, always looking for new projects to research and build. After my military service, I got an NIH medical research fellowship in London, where I browsed bookshops for new projects. I found a copy of "Make Your Own Spanish Guitar", by A. P. Sharpe, which described building a Torres pattern classical guitar in the fashion of Britain's then best luthier, Marco Roccia. I was hooked. When I got home I finished up my medical residency at Stanford, joined a group practice in San Jose, set up my workshop and used the book to build a guitar out of local materials; it was awful, and I destroyed it! After a while I got the bug again and went through the whole process again, with the best materials and much care and it turned out well! My attempts at guitar self educationat that time were interrupted when I came across a 1954 MG (any relation?) which was just begging for a restoration...

Very interesing Clay. We had another fellow on here who like yourself had built some beautiful guitars but never played them. I haven't heard from him in awhile but I hope he is doing well and still at it.

I admire your mojo - 84 and still learning new things! I am 57 and can't imagine of a time where I won't want to dive into something new. I hope that day never comes for either of us. Engagement and ambition is life itself in my estimation.

I took up the guitar seriously back in Jan of '19 and am now writing songs and a musical of all things. I should not be as I lack the fundamental knowledge in these areas, but I always like jumping in!

Best of luck with your studies.

Originally Posted by: faith83Wait, what's a folk acoustic? That sounds like what I should be playing, but I've not heard of it. ????

Hi faith83 ..this might help with an answer to whether a "folk" acoustic is what you should be playing.

The classification as assigned [u]today[/u] has nothing to do with distinguishing between a 6 or 12 string, tone or purpose per se. I suspect ambiguity and confusion stems from being any acoustic associated with the [u]folk music genre[/u] moving through the 1960s hippie culture and folk festivals rendered [u]any[/u] acoustic guitar used with that style a "Folk" guitar.

Time moves on, vocalbulary evolves. Today the assignation "Folk" to an acoustic by both manufacturers and observed convention generally but not exclusively appears to be an unofficial synonym for a Concert body sized acoustic. Here's an example. Scroll down to the Features sub-heading at the page that hotlinked loads for an example where the manufacturer mentions that in the text specifically. Prefix for that instrument in particular is AF for Acoustic Folk. Similarly their base Dreadnought follows a similiar nomenclatural convention with ...AD.

Concert bodied acoustics have become increasingly popular today, favoured over the Dreadnought by many for use either in the home/studio or easily amplified in larger venues for reasons which should be self apparent. I'm a Folk/Concert body acoustic fan and user.

They come in full body, cutaway body, slimline body which is usually coincidentially a cutaway, optionally with or without a preinstalled onboard preamplification & pickup system.

In recent years Ed Sheeran's popularity and high profile stage use of 3/4 size guitars has raised both the profile and staus of smaller bodied guitars such as the Parlor and Folk/Concert body leading to their greater popularity and adoption.

I have the same guitar(Yamaha FG800) that I bought 3 months ago. It is a very nice guitar for the money. I am sticking with the steel strings that came with it.

Good luck, just started myself