Guitar supports

[ken cierp]

A strap not being acceptable makes one wonder about tradition and perception and where it fits in the arts. Brings to mind an article I read years ago, I believe Chet Atkins studied with Andrés Segovia for a short while. Segovia thought Chet had tremendous talent until he found out or realized that he (Atkins) normally played electric guitars.

Also, Andrés Segovia made a statement regarding how marvelous the Michael Kasha guitar he played sounded -- but he could never use one because it had non traditional bracing -- go figure.

[Jay McClellan]

I've used the Barnett support for a few days now, which in my case means less than an hour total (I can't say I practice in a dedicated way!). First impressions are, it works well and is as comfortable as I can imagine for this guitar, which is my OM-size steel string that I'm playing fingerstyle in a classical-ish position. It's not a huge guitar but the body is considerably bigger than a classical in all dimensions, so I had to adjust the Barnett to its lowest positions on both sides to get the guitar low enough to be relatively comfortable. And I'm about 6' tall with long arms so I think it would be outside the envelope for someone shorter with a guitar this big. With a more typical classical guitar body I expect it would work fine for most people, and Barnett offers a short version that might be a better choice for steel-string guitars. I have little experience with this style of playing so take that into account, but I can say I have much less back pain and fatigue with the Barnett support compared to using a foot stool. I plan to make a classical guitar for one of my next builds so in time I'll have a better comparison.

[Dave Bagwill]

Thanks for the report, Jay.