The body is the beating heart of the guitar, it is the fulcrum of every vibration that then spreads to the rest of the instrument. Depending on its shape and the wood chosen for its construction, the body can give a very different sound. How can we tell if a leotard is well built or not?
To answer this and other questions, we interviewed the dear Vincenzo Romano, owner of Sciuscia Guitars, who invited us to his laboratory for a chat over an excellent coffee.
What is the process of building a leotard?
Obviously, the first thing to do is to study the type of wood according to the tonal response to be obtained and the weight characteristics. This choice must be made taking into consideration also the remaining parts of the instrument: the body is a part of it and it takes a global vision to make the right choice.
How do you choose the wood for the crate?
There are many woods suitable for building a body, each one has a different tonal response; for example, mahogany gives a full-bodied, deep and warm response while the ash tree andalder they have a more balanced response between the high and low frequencies, the ash is a bit lighter and brighter than the alder. The specific weight of the wood must also be taken into consideration: the mogano, for example, it is a very heavy wood compared to lighter woods such as ash, alder or lime (recently used a lot given the increase in the costs of the most valuable traditional woods). The specific weight is a decisive element in the choice, since it has a decisive influence on the overall weight of the instrument.
Based on these parameters, the table is chosen with which the machining will begin.
How do you make the choice to buy a wooden board rather than another?
The choice of the table is very difficult to explain: basically it takes a good intuition and a lot of experience to evaluate its goodness. It is true that over the years you acquire eye and experience, but the aspect and feeling that the board transmits at the moment, the compactness, the weight, the resonance, the smell remain very important. It may seem like an exotic language, but there is a strong alchemy in this, and the aesthetic aspect and the tactile sensation are very important.
Then we move on to making the case, right?
Sure. Once the appropriate tables have been chosen, we move on to roughing and sizing them. I always make the body in two pieces to ensure stability and longevity: two pieces do not undergo movement over time and are therefore more stable. This technique allows to have the geometric center of the tool always well defined, which helps a lot when using the templates to center all the cutouts well. After having dimensioned the thickness of the boards, we move on to the planing of the surfaces for the gluing of the two parts: this phase is fundamental for the good tonal and mechanical performance of the case, the two parts must be perfectly matched, no light must pass between the surfaces. Once this goal has been achieved, we proceed with gluing with stringers and then shaping.
The shaping is carried out using scale templates 1:1. The template is a template that is made to reproduce the instrument using a woodworking cutter: there are templates for the part of the external profile, for the accommodation of the handle, for the internal grooves, in which the electronics pass through the body, and for the carved top type Les Paul (in which case a template is made for each step of the carved top, steps which will then be worked with scrapers eliminating the edges and creating the camber).
Fix the template to the table and work with the cutter to make the instrument case; then we move on to the realization of the contours with rasps and sanders, and finally to the finishing with sandpaper and then to the painting.
How can I check how many pieces a leotard consists of?
Industries often use leotards made in more than two pieces: I happened to see guitars composed of even five pieces; this usually happens to recover material using driftwood. To verify this, in cases of guitars with painting translucent, that is, with colored paints that reveal the underlying wood, just look for the perfectly straight lines between the grain of the wood: a grain will never be perfectly straight, so when you see a nice straight one that crosses the whole case, you can be sure that it is a bonding. If the grain were to hide the line, which can happen if the veins are carefully coupled, you can look for the lines of the gluing against the light: in fact, once the paint has dried, it penetrates very slightly into the gluing, highlighting them when looking at the instrument. against the light. On the other hand, the thing becomes more complicated when we have an instrument with opaque varnish, that is with the grain of the wood not visible: the industries to mask this thing often veneer the case, that is, glued a layer of wood of half a millimeter on the front and on the back, to prevent the glue lines from being visible against the light once the paint has dried. In this case you can "unmask" the thing by looking for gluing in the non-veneered areas of the case, that is, on the edge of the back of the case, where the shoulder strap button is located: the gluing will be visible against the light and you can determine the number of pieces from which the body of our guitar is made, as long as it is not covered with a ton of paint or extremely opaque paints, such as polyester paint, have been used.
How can I test the resonance of a guitar body?
There are studies and tools that allow this operation, it is a high-level technicality not within everyone's reach obviously. The end user, to test the resonance of a body in a simple way, can do this test: with the guitar disassembled, hold it in one point and tap the body with a bakelite hammer or the knuckle of your finger, as if you knock on the door of the house, and pay attention to the sound emitted; depending on the response obtained, ringing or dark, we will be able to get an idea of what the tonal response of the instrument will be. I recommend hitting the body on its entire surface, so as to understand if the density of the wood is homogeneous. A further empirical test can also be made, by comparing different cases of different woods to understand their different timbral responses.
Does the aesthetics of the woods in a case have a relationship with quality?
Aesthetics is very important: a board that is beautiful to look at also sounds good in most cases, we identify beauty in the absence of imperfections, such as knots in the wood, stains, unnatural colors or veins with an anomalous design, and these are the parameters that often also determine the tonal quality.
How do I recognize a cheap bodysuit from a higher quality one?
First of all you understand it from the type of wood, the best woods are those we have already talked about previously, mahogany, alder, ash, maple for the top and so on; a cheap leotard will never have these woods.
Knowing what woods the case is made of is already a good start, but often, even with the same woods used, an instrument can sound better or worse than another of the same make. Even playing the instrument when it is switched off can be a further test, if the instrument has a good sustain and a nice timbre paste it means that the woods used are of good quality. Today, however, the quality standards are good even for cheaper productions and it is difficult to find tables that do not sound: the woods are treated and selected already at the base of the production chain.
Contact us:
Luthier: Vincent Romano
Facebook page: Sciuscià guitars & ideas
Facebook Profile: www.facebook.com/vincenzo.romano
Email: sciuscialab@tin.it
