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02010-03-09 | Uncategorized | 1 comment

Victor commented on March 8th, 2010 at 15:04
Love the way you mixed the new song and yes the bass is wonderful the way Jon plays it. I wanted to ask whats your opinion on the sound differences between the Negra and Blanca guitars and do you prefer the cedar tops or spruce. It seems that the Blaca guitars have a brighter sound but is it just in who’s hands are playing? I recently saw a picture of Vicente Amigo playing a blanca with Cedar DeVoe. Hope you don’t mind all the guitar questions, thanks in advance.

No, I don’t mind at all. The Blancas (((cypress sides and back))) are indeed brighter, but there is a wide range of tone for Negras (((rosewood sides and back))) as well. There are three major types of rosewood, the Brazilian, the Indian and the Madagascan. The Brazilian has the richest overtones and is the darkest sounding, the Madagascan is the brightest sounding and the Indian is somewhere in the middle. Lester made my Negra from Madagascan rosewood and I love the combination of rich and still bright.

That said, I find that I can vary the brightness of the guitar-sound greatly by how thick I make the nails of my right hand. If I apply glue and acrylic powder thicker, the sound will be richer, if I apply it thinly (((or apply only a couple of layers of krazyglue without acrylic powder))) the sound will be brighter.

Since 1990 or 1991 I have only played cedar tops on my guitars. I think I had a Negra with a Spruce top by Eric Sahlin for a year or two in the mid-Nineties, but didn’t play it much and sold it.

I tend to take the Blanca on tours with the trio and the Negra on solo-tours. In the studio I select one or the other depending on which sound I am looking for. In electric guitar terms, I think a Blanca is more like a Fender electric guitar, while the Negra is more like a Gibson.

1 Comment

  1. Adam Solomon

    How do you like the blanca for solo playing in general? I’m planning on buying a new flamenco guitar when I’m in Sevilla this summer and my teacher told me (something along the lines of) blancas are generally better for accompanying, and negras for solo, though of course a rollicking alegría or bulería would sound fine on the negra. So yeah, do you agree that negras are in general better for playing solo? More expressive and whatnot? Haven’t had the opportunity to play with the two much myself…

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