Official Luthiers Forum!

Yeah, I know that is a vague title. It is basically just about acoustics. Electrics have a wide range of tone; across one instrument!

I've listened to lutes, and baroque guitars, and vihuelas, and classical guitar music on you tube from time to time. I like hearing just the instrument, and those are the ones that have just the instrument. A wide rage of tones, but all recognized as a plucked string, and more chimey? than a harp.

I play my fairly large arch top, and it has a brighter sound; maybe the strings; than my tiny Staufer with nylgut, and basses wound over rayon or something. The Staufer just sounds deeper all around. Maybe you would call it warmer. They both seem to have a lot of sustain, but maybe that is just up close. The difference is sound is surprising, I would think that the much bigger one would be deeper sounding.

I guess that is what I like about guitars as opposed to bowed strings; the vast difference in sound.

I never really listened to steel string guitars. Maybe James Taylor. But this morning I read an old blog post, and the song of the day was; For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her. I've known that song for over 50 years. It's a good one. The video was by a guy who always uses fine recordings.

I never noticed until today that the background is JUST Paul Simon on a steel string! Nothing else!

It is quite magical. It has dynamics, subtle tempo changes, and mixed attacks. The bass sounds through over the tinkle of the arpeggios.

I'll have to do a steel string sometime; and try to find out how to get that sort of sound. I'm guessing that everyone here is chasing some sort of tone, but what shows up is a tone that is all its own. Hopefully very good tone!

Anyway, here is the song for the day.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sou_8VgLjOY


Look at that! The URL is soul joy!

Anyone have a sample of tone that they really like?

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Why be normal?

I don’t have a clip but am reminded of the day I took one of my early builds to Jim Olson’s shop circa 2005.

I asked him what he thought of the tone.

“Sounds good”. He said followed by “every guitar sounds good - to someone”.

It did take a few years before I really understood what he was talking about.

I think for me anyway, that pretty much says everything you need to know about tone.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Ken, take a listen to Mau Lao for some beautiful steel string guitar playing.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHN4_p ... =mv-google

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Brad Hall
Mystic Dawg Guitars

Well, Brad, now.I have.some steel string to.listen to. I.like fingerstyle. I've tried a pick a couple times on the.archtop,.and.the.fingers.are.already.there, why not.use.them?

Fingers work better than thumbs for.Typing too!

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Why be normal?

Robert Bowlin’s album Six String Soliloquy is one of the best recordings of a solo flattop guitar I’ve heard.

A vibrating string can be magical. Nothing else can even come close to the expressiveness of the human voice.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Guitars are complex beasts, and deliberately so. The more I learn about the sound they make the more complicated it gets.

One of my customers designs satellites, and uses vibration modeling software to see if anything is likely to shake off when they're launched. He e-mailed me once to say he'd tried using it to look at the way a guitar works, but his software couldn't handle it. This is not rocket science; it's more complicated.

All of that complexity is there to make it possible for the player to vary the sound. You get something different when you pluck in a different place, or let the string go in a different direction, or use a sharper or rounder pick, and so on. This actually gets into the realm of non-linear dynamics, where things can become chaotic, which means that the changes you get from small variations in the input can be much larger than you'd expect, although they're not totally unpredictable on the guitar. Usually...

Most of the differences between steel string and nylon/gut strung guitars go back to the nature of the strings. Steel, as a material, has low 'damping'; it only dissipates the energy of vibration very slowly. Nylon and gut have higher damping. This sort of thing usually goes along the lines of compound interest: you lose a certain percentage for each cycle of vibration. Since high frequencies make lots of cycles per second, they tend to die out faster when the damping is high, so nylon strings tend to lose high end power fairly quickly after they're plucked, but steel strings don't. Nylon and gut also lose high end sound in another way. Since they're lower in density than steel they have to be thicker at a given pitch and tension. This means they have to move more air as they vibrate. This doesn't produce sound; it's more like trying to run in knee deep water: it just wastes a lot of energy, and cuts down further on high end sustain. A classical player I know tried some of his repertoire on a wide necked steel string once, and commented that: "..it's like listening to Julie Andrews in 'The Sound of Music'; there's no darkness!"

Because of this steel string and nylon string guitars pose different design issues. With a steel string you're trying to get enough low end to balance out all of that high. This is relatively easy: you make the box bigger. That requires a beefier structure, and more power to drive it, but that's not too hard to get with steel strings. With nylon strings you're trying to make the most of all of the little bit of high-end power you have. This calls for a smaller box, and very careful construction on the top to avoid losses. One result of that is that many top-notch steel string players use production instruments, where very few top Classical players do. The natural variation in wood properties calls for more individual 'tuning' on Classical guitars, particularly on the tops, and that just takes too much time in a production setting. That's not to say handmade steel strings can't benefit from the individual touch as well, they just don't seem tyo need it as much.

So there's a perspective from the 'tech' side of this. Given the range of variation in people's tastes you can see the possibilities are endless, so it's a problem that will never be 'solved'. Just the inherent variability of wood means that it's almost certainly impossible to make two wooden guitars that will sound exactly the same, and I very much doubt you could do better with synthetics. It sure keeps things interesting...

A bowed string for sure. A good horn player can get pretty close too.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Julie Andrews singing the "Sound of Music!" That's how I felt when I watched a half hour of The Spinx Completion a week or so ago on the local PBS station. Two of the violins, and the one cello I heard had basically no low end at all! The last violin I watched, had a wonderful, balanced sound. Her solo part didn't have quite so much ear piercing bling; but it was far more interesting to me. I kept thinking that the other instruments could have had half the strings gone, and no one would notice!

Cellos that only have metallic sounding high notes? That's just wrong. No long, booming notes on the low C that can shake the floor; just a short passing note once in a while. No dynamics. Dynamics are an important tool, and they never showed that they knew how to use it. Even SHREDDERS use all the strings! And they don't scream all the time.

This is coming from an older man who doesn't have the ears he once had. How unbearably bright are they to people with younger ears? Is that REALLY the sound that they are looking for?

I guess I like to hear the bass notes as well as the highs. I always did turn the treble down. I always hum along with the bass line. Now, not even listening to music, I can hear the treble.

I like symphonies. A couple favorites I know well are Prokofiev #5 and Shostakovich # 5. The first has a happy ending; the second doesn't smile. They both convey emotion very well. Even with the sadness, I can't listen to the Shostakovich, and not come away grinning from ear to ear.

I'd have to say that music is very close to the Sprit.

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Why be normal?

Two versions of the same song, same player, one steel string, one nylon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLHQQuiX02o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khVpuXZ01Tk
You can decide which you like better.
Perhaps you might want to build a harp guitar next to have both the highs and lows.

Clay.

20 seconds in, and it is OBVIOUS to ME that the nylon string is better! It isn't even a decision! Even the bass notes ring out like notes! No contest.

Is that your guitar in the photo?

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Why be normal?

Hi Ken,
I preferred the sound of the nylon string harp guitar better also. There are some steel string models that will give it a run for it's money.
The guitar in the picture posted Is a travel "harp" (contra) guitar I built. The neck unbolts and the neck and strings store inside the body for transport. It is a simple way to add harp strings to an otherwise normal guitar body. I used nylon cored sub basses - they do seem to work better for the low notes.