Publication Date: Friday, January 13, 2006

On downtowns and downturns

By Don Frances

I'VE BEEN on the market for a new guitar for a while -- an acoustic with a pick-up, maybe a built-in tuner. So on a recent lunch hour as I walked down Castro Street, and noticed the "Going out of business sale" sign out front of Sonica Music Co. I stepped inside to look around.

There I found Mike Macgirvin, owner of the store, standing behind the counter and looking unhappy. The place was bustling. Nobody wants you when you're down and out -- unless you're holding a liquidation sale.

I asked Macgirvin when the store was closing. "I don't know," he said. I asked if he had an acoustic with a pick-up.

Alas, there was only one: a beautiful Crafter that was out of my price range, even after the markdown. I bought a couple packs of strings, and tried not to be tempted by the many well-priced amps, or the thousand-dollar drum kit.

Despite the deals, the closing of Sonica isn't cause for bargain hunting but for reflection. Some version of the store has been in Mountain View for half a century, providing instruments and music materials to people from all around. My wife, who grew up in Los Altos, remembers going there as a child to buy sheet music for school auditions. As Molly Tanenbaum reports (see page 1), the fond memories, and regrets at the store's closing, are easy to come by.

But nostalgia doesn't pay the bills. It's no secret that the influx of large chain stores has many mom-and-pops on the ropes. And as they go, they're taking the downtowns with them.

So far, Mountain View's downtown has remained relatively strong thanks to its restaurants (you can't big-box a Thai eatery). But city officials are worried about the lack of economic diversity along Castro, and offer numerous tax breaks to anyone wishing to open a retail store here. Even so, as Longs Drugs, Best Buy and all the others continue to move in, the number of independent stores seems to be decreasing all the time.

Many believe this is a horrible trend, and I'm among them. How can the little guy make a living in a corporate-dominated economy? Where is the personal, human-scale service at Wal-Mart? Of course, the smaller stores always offer better service, and therein lies the challenge for mom-and-pops: How many of their customers will forgo savings in favor of better service, human contact, and a sense of community.

It's a tough spot for them, and I'll bet the pricier the merchandise, the worse it gets. Jewelry, bicycles, computers, guitars -- the savings at larger outlets for these items can be in the hundreds of dollars. But even as we bemoan it, many customers, when faced with a choice between supporting local business, in all its abstractions, or a few hundred bucks, take the latter.

I'm not casting any stones. Last week I went to Guitar Center in San Jose, where I found an Ibanez with a built-in tuner for $150 less than the Crafter.

Since then, the Crafter got marked down again into my price range. Last I checked it was still hanging there, along with several other handsome instruments at huge discounts. If you ever wanted to visit Sonica, you better hurry. ...
SO ARE the days of the porch-front community gone forever? I hope not, but it sure seems like people are using different, grander means to get together. Take the Community and Interfaith Celebration Honoring the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to be held Sunday, Jan. 15 from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at First United Methodist Church in Palo Alto. Last year, organizers say, the event attracted more than 350 participants from all over the lower Peninsula. This year's featured guest: CBS 5 news anchor Dana King. The program also includes other local speakers, a "community and interfaith choir" led by the Rev. Isaiah Jones, and refreshments. MLK Day, by the way, is Jan. 16. ...

Channel 5 seems to be taking an interest in our region of late. In a Wednesday airing of "Eye on the Bay," the show's reporters combed the Peninsula in search of a decent meal for under $10. Naturally, their quest led them to Colonel Lee's Mongolian BBQ on Castro Street. Congrats, Colonel, you deserve the publicity.
Don Frances is editor of the Mountain View Voice. His column will appear on a semi-regular basis. Send any items, tips, nods or feedback to dfrances@mv-voice.com.

For those folks landing here looking for Sonica Music Company or the Mountain View Music Center, I regret to inform you that Sonica closed down earlier this year - yet another victim of the stagnant Silicon Valley economy. 

However, there is still a music store or three in Mountain View.  I'd like to recommend Norm's at 1901 Old Middlefield Road - 650 968-4800. Here you can find quite a variety of quality musical instruments and expert advice.

Tell Norm that Mike sent you. 

You are also encouraged to use this site for anything related to music in Mountain View or Silicon Valley. Musicians classifieds, instrument advice, etc. I'll be glad to help where I am able. There don't seem to be any other places for local musicians to hang out....

If you have an acoustic guitar which does not allow horizontal adjustments, the only (economical) way of correcting the intonation is to use different strings.

You will need: a precise electronic tuner. While it is possible to adjust intonation 'by ear' it is not very precise and therefore not recommended.

First, put new strings on your guitar. Oxidated or dirty strings will often not be consistent along their length. This is also why you should change strings with some regularity. We recommend changing strings at least every six months - more often if you play professionally.

Set the guitar on a flat surface and tune the first 'E' string exactly to 'E'. Now press the string down at the 12th fret (the octave mark). Observe the reading on the tuner. If the reading is sharp (higher than 'E'), you will need to move the bridge backward (toward the base of the guitar). If it is flat (lower than 'E') you will need to move the bridge forward (toward the frets). This is accomplished by turning the adjustment screws with either a small flat screwdriver or allen wrench. Adjust it until both the open note and the fretted 12th fret note read exactly the same.

Repeat this procedure for the remaining strings, except you will be tuning to the appropriate note instead of 'E'.

What to do if your bridge does not adjust enough to make the guitar play in tune at the open position and the twelfth fret? There are only two options: (1) physically move the bridge (usually requiring expensive shop work), or (2) use a different string gauge. If the bridge position is at its extreme back setting (toward the base of the guitar) and the twelfth fret reading is still sharp, you will need to use a lighter gauge string. If it is at the extreme forward setting (toward the fingerboard) and the twelfth fret reading is still flat, you will need to use a heavier string. This is also how you would correct the intonation on an acoustic guitar which does not adjust.

You may find that you are forced to use strings which are not comfortable to play. This is understandable; however you must then make some personal decisions. Would you rather have comfort, or would you rather the guitar sound good? Most people would prefer playing a guitar that sounds great, but it is understandable (especially for students) if you find that ease of playing is the better choice for you.

A guitar will never be precisely in tune along the entire fingerboard and across all the strings. Some frets will always be a couple of cents (hundredths of a note) off. The reason has to do with an effect called temperament, which basically involves the amount a string is bent in the vertical dimension to push it down to the fingerboard. The best that you can ever do is to adjust the intonation so that it is reasonably close. The lower the action (or string height), the closer to perfection it will be. This is also the reason that tuning your guitar using the fifth and seventh fret harmonics is less accurate than fretting the notes at the fifth fret (fourth on 'B') for tuning purposes. These are topics for a future How-To note.

First let's nip this very popular myth in the bud. If the neck of your guitar is indeed warped, there's very little you can do. If it's seriously bad, get rid of the guitar and get another one. If it's an heirloom or collector guitar, be prepared to spend a lot of money to have the fingerboard planed and re-fretted, and you will probably ruin some of the collectable value in doing so. But if it's warped seriously bad, it's not worth much anyway. If you tighten a truss rod too much, you will in fact permanently warp the guitar neck in an often undesirable location.

Now that we've dispensed with the formalities, what's the point of having an adjustable truss rod on a guitar anyway, if not to straighten the neck? Truss rods have evolved over time; and there are many claims that are made about them. But the primary purpose of a truss rod is to have a metal reinforcement piece inside a wooden guitar neck to counteract the strain on the wood caused by the guitar strings. A guitar neck will naturally develop a bit of a concave bow if left on its own for a long enough period of time. A very small amount of concave bow is actually desirable. But the forces exerted by steel strings on the neck usually create an unacceptable amount of bow over time. Some of the first attempts at correcting this bow are still in use today in the form of metal insert strips. That's all they are - metal reinforcement rods - and they work quite well.

Later evolution spawned the adjustable truss rod and recently the two-way adjustable truss rod. These consist of a reinforcement rod anchored at one end and with a tightening screw at the other. By tightening the screw, the tension is increased relative to the wood that it is anchored in. Increasing the tension increases the stiffness. All of this is a long way of saying that the purpose of the truss rod is for reinforcement. It is used to adjust the stiffness of the neck. Somewhere along the line somebody discovered that they could sometimes correct small variations in the neck flatness by tightening the rod - and this led to the myth. The newer two-way rod flexes in both the convex and concave dimensions depending which way you turn the screw. These devices legitimately claim to affect neck flatness, but they do so in a very limited area of the neck.

Will adjustment of the truss rod help you? Only if your guitar neck has a very well-formed natural bow (concave or convex) lying precisely halfway between the neck joint and the nut. If you've got bowing occurring precisely at the neck joint, you have other issues to deal with. If you've got two humps between the nut and neck joint, it's very likely somebody tightened the truss rod way too tight and ruined your guitar. If the neck looks like a roller coaster or is seriously bowed within the first 3-5 frets, it is doubtful that adjustment of the truss rod will have much impact.

Now that you have some background, let's say your neck isn't perfect and you want to do something about it. You open the truss rod cover plate and find the allen wrench with which to turn it. What do you do?

The first thing you should do is loosen the truss rod completely. We will assume for this article that you have a one-way rod. Loosen it until the nut spins freely and all tension is removed. Next turn it back until it is snug, finger tight. If your strings are loose, tune them up at this point. Now using the wrench, turn the nut about one full turn beyond finger tight. The purpose is to apply tension to the neck. That is all that we are doing.

Wood under tension takes time to settle. What you should do now is put your guitar in its case and leave it for about two weeks. That's right, two weeks. You can play it if you want, but don't do any more tweaking until it has had a chance to settle. In fact your guitar is properly adjusted at this point. You can just put the cover back on.

OK, you aren't happy with it and you've come back two weeks later. Put a metal straight edge across the length of the fingerboard. Look at the frets in the middle of the straight edge. If there's a gap, your neck is concave. If there's a 'hump', your neck is convex. Let's say there's a gap. Tighten the truss rod. One half of a turn at most. Leave it for two weeks.

Let's say there's a hump. Loosen the truss rod. One half of a turn at most. Leave it for two weeks.

It's been a month and it still isn't right. What do you do? You can either live with it, or find another guitar. If you're getting noticeable fret buzz when you play, you can raise the string action a bit by adjusting the height of the bridge with shims or adjustment screws. If the last truss adjustment helped a little bit, you can try it one more time. That is absolutely the last time. If you tighten it too tight, you will end up with either a) a double hump in the fingerboard, or b) a broken truss rod. If you are in doubt how tight it is, loosen it completely and start over.