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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2012 9:54:27 GMT -5
I have been having some sustain issues in my partscaster especially 12th fret strings G and high E. Sustain there is 4 seconds (measured on the tuner as the time from the pick till the display of the tuner shows --, i.e. the signal decays - i found that this method is absolutely on par with what the ear hears. ) What I did is that i tried to tape 1 20-22 wrench (weighing about 100+ grams) on the headstock. And the result? on those two notes the sustain INCREASED for about 2 seconds !!! amazing.
I also tried adding the 19-18 wrench, (total weight ~ 200 grams), and the 17-16 wrench. Results were close to the ones of the guitar unmoded.
Then i tried, putting there some sheet of lead. (experimented with 100 gramms, 150 gramms, 200 grams). Results were very poor.
So, i tend to think that the 100 grams solid metal (steel/ or brass??) on the neck is the way to go.
Which leads to fat finger, or smth similar..
Do you have similar experiences?
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Post by long813 on Sept 20, 2012 10:08:29 GMT -5
It's not surprising. I've never done it, but I've seen guitar lutheirs do some crazy things on acoustic guitars. Brass bridge pins, weighing a lot more than any bone ones you'd find would increase sustain by a lot. The material of the nut is a key factor as well. Angle of the headstock is another one I see being brought up quite a bit. Nice to see you experimenting with this, I hope you can find a more visually appealing solution though
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Post by Deleted on Sept 20, 2012 13:41:48 GMT -5
It's not surprising. I've never done it, but I've seen guitar lutheirs do some crazy things on acoustic guitars. Brass bridge pins, weighing a lot more than any bone ones you'd find would increase sustain by a lot. The material of the nut is a key factor as well. Angle of the headstock is another one I see being brought up quite a bit. Nice to see you experimenting with this, I hope you can find a more visually appealing solution though Yes, you are right! I have seen on the internet those : but everybody says they are not on the market anymore.
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Post by cynical1 on Sept 20, 2012 14:30:12 GMT -5
Adding mass anywhere along the string path will show some improvement in "sustain". Hell, I've seen guys drill a headstock and install bolts to the headstock to add mass. While this does have an effect, odds are there is some other flaw in the construction or setup of the instrument. Adding mass to the headstock can also cause your instrument to dive on you unless you counterbalance the additional weight on the body.
If you have two strings at a certain point on the neck my guess would be that if you took a look at your frets you'd find the source of your problem. Worn frets and too little crown can "dull" a vibrating string and the higher frets can have too little clearance. Another place to look is the relief on your neck. Too flat a relief can also interfere with the string vibration. On many "shredder" guitar refrets I've used a smaller profile fret from the 15th fret up to the last fret for this very reason, especially if they requested a "flat" relief.
All in all, if it floats your boat then go for it. While there is a certain amount of physics that backup these aftermarket device makers claims, the odds are just as good that tightening the tuners to install said device had just as much effect on sustain.
Be careful not to focus too strongly on treating the symptoms rather than curing the disease.
Happy Trails
Cynical One
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Post by 4real on Sept 20, 2012 18:33:34 GMT -5
Yes, it does wor and adding a 'clamp' or the like to the head is a god way to 'test' this out. However, watch the balance of the guitar. I've done this in a number of ways...on my kahler LP I aded a 3mm thick aluminium plate as an oversized truss rod cover to hole some 'guide wheel trees' to get a straignt neck pull over the nut...this also strengthens the neck and changes the resonance of the neck, particularly the head and without much added weight. That's more of what is going on so adding led I think is a bad idea.
One good idea that I used many years back, was to find some copper plumbing washers that have a hole big enough for a tuner to fit. On a strat, I added these progressively to affect a staggered tuners and so less reliant on the string trees to give downpressure on the nut and increase tuning stability...this too added to the had mass and so the same effect with little added weight.
There is a lot one can do, the neck is a very resonant part of the chain and it is not 'weight' so much as the changing of the resonance at the head and the whole neck. You don't want to creat a guita that wants to 'head dive' into the floor though, so lead is a no-no. Steinbergers graphite gutiars have a tremendous sustain because the neck is so stiff and renown for having no 'ded spots'...but it is an easy thing to experiment with, good for you for having a go...
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2012 1:55:58 GMT -5
I think this is clear physics. A resonant neck might mean a neck which sounds very loud (by vibrating itself) but then goes to kill sustain by passing canceling frequencies/vibrations back to the strings. The ideal would be to have a neck/body not resonant at all, with minimal acoustic (sound) effect when strummed unplugged. And also a neck which would just not vibrate. This might mean a loss in the "attack" department tho. So what this added mass does (i think) (but lead just didnt work, only 100 grams of steel attached firmly on the back of headstock), is preventing the headstock from vibrating. The same effect we can have by pushing the headstock firmly to the wall.
So, i dont really buy all this resonance literature theory, which says wood to wood is smth like a panacea. We want firm connections and construction, with no dulling effects, but also no vibrations.
A guitar which vibrates might hold some frequencies for ever (by the effect of enhancing harmonics), but fail miserably on many other notes/frequencies.
Cynical, i have the suspicion that if a neck vibrates, then no work regarding frets/relief/action is gonna remedy this. For example in my new Ibanez, i have real low action (a cannot get rid of this psychogical shredding syndrome), and some notes while buzzing at the start, then they go on sustain for 8-10 seconds which is rather good. So it has to do with the vibrations.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2012 2:07:05 GMT -5
Yes, it does wor and adding a 'clamp' or the like to the head is a god way to 'test' this out. However, watch the balance of the guitar. I've done this in a number of ways...on my kahler LP I aded a 3mm thick aluminium plate as an oversized truss rod cover to hole some 'guide wheel trees' to get a straignt neck pull over the nut...this also strengthens the neck and changes the resonance of the neck, particularly the head and without much added weight. That's more of what is going on so adding led I think is a bad idea. cool!! can we have some pics of it? i cannot imagine how you did it. How did you achieve the straight neck? Externally this might help sustain. Internally (my partscaster has a real strong dual-action truss rod) while keeping the neck dead still, i think it vibrates a lot inside... That is why it is so loud when played unplugged. Yes, lead was not a good idea. Because lead is soft, and i think allows some minimal movement, while a one-piece construction with a hard metal (brass/steel) would make a difference.
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Post by 4real on Sept 21, 2012 5:24:13 GMT -5
Khaler LP in th gallery... guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=music&action=display&thread=5313The idea here was to cover the truss rod opening, provide a straight string pull across the nut, support the nut, dampen resonances in the string length behind the nut, strengthen and stiffen the scarf join and notorous LP weak point (most prone o vibration in the head)... Strat heads are prone to many of these problems as they are quite long and flat and other of my guitars do make an effort to address these things. My strat uses substantial roller trees and ocking tuners even though they are staggered. My Tele also has staggered tuners but gets away with no trees as the LSR nut has tiny string dampers built in to kill the resonances in the string length, for this very reason. The vibrations that are generated behind the nut can be transfeered in both directions (try strumming behind the nut and you will hear it at the pickups for instance) and so these vibrations can cause inconsisencies of notes or interfere wiht the strings vibrations reducing sustain. An op[posite effect can be 'observed' in my recent jazz guitar which has a very long string length behind the bridge to the tail btw. One way to make 'improvements' is to add solid sealed tuners by the way. I found this way back (likely 30 years) when I installed sealed tuners on my acoustic guitar which I still play regularly, and noting that there was a tremendous effect from this in the sound and sustain and volume of the guitar compared with it's original open tuners. These things are not a myth I can assure you and all such things can generally be tested or explored fairly easily. I'm not sure of other factors you mention, like nck joins and such, but there is some truth to these things too. Hard to imperically compare thogh. Comparing a strat to an LP is no comparison. That is not to say any o these things are or sound 'superior' though dead spots are rarely a 'feature'. It's not really related to weight, but stiffness as much as anything, but if you think about things, the strings are suspended by a long thin neck and attached generally with a decent sized and comparatively 'light' head. Qualitities in this structure are very likely to make a much bigger contribution to these matters than the body. At the moment I am considering a guitar which is on the top of my list because, though not advertised particularly for these issues, has a carbon reinforced nec with an ebony board on mahogany and is likely to produce and incredibly 'stiff' and strong structure. The head is not so long and capped in ebony with very solid sealed tuners and as such, I think that less vibrations will be lost and transfered to the body increasing volume, making notes more even all over, and give better 'sustain' as well as being more reliable over the longer term against warping and other such things. You definitely should have no vibration nor movement in the truss rod!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2012 5:39:19 GMT -5
^^^^ absolutely insightful. Thank you for your time!
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Post by 4real on Sept 21, 2012 8:21:23 GMT -5
thanks, nice topic and good on you doing those simple tests and try such things out to see if these things actually do make a difference.
There are a lot of cool things like this that can make a guitar work a ittle better, even if this is mainly about wiring mods. I ahd a cheap strat that I did every kind of experiement on for while a long time back, but learned a lot.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2012 14:19:13 GMT -5
thanks, nice topic and good on you doing those simple tests and try such things out to see if these things actually do make a difference. There are a lot of cool things like this that can make a guitar work a ittle better, even if this is mainly about wiring mods. I ahd a cheap strat that I did every kind of experiement on for while a long time back, but learned a lot. this evening i timed the E 12th fret high E, as is, 4 seconds (barely), an then while doing this test : strum the note and then immediately with the right hand push the body, so that the neck meets the wall, and held right there. Result? 6 seconds of clean sound and still ringing/hearing smth.... So these tricks play a role, no doubt. So all those dudes that speak about compressor/sustainers/etc.... really miss the fact that : a) feedback is not a substitute for a healthy natural sustain b) you cant amplify a signal which simply does not exist!
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Post by 4real on Sept 21, 2012 16:50:13 GMT -5
Well yes...though, where do people go on about compressors, etc.
"Sustain" is not necessarily the 'holy grail', I thought we got over much of that in the 70's...
Feedback and sustainers which is the same thing in most respects (with more control and less volume to get it) is a different effect. As is compression or limiting.
You are right of course, you can't (without sample and hold effects) sustain something that's not there.
But sounds and the amporpus 'tone' has a lot to do with the envelope of of the sounds and the way note evolve and tail out. A lot of guitars have a really explosive attack (say a tele) wil others bloom (like an LP). Some will have a huge burst of high frequencies that very quickly will tail to a low level and others will have a sower attack and notes 'evolve' to a smoother sustain.
But it can all be good in context and what one wants to achieve with an instrument. I do feel though that there are some basic attributes one should aspire too and can be achieved. A lack of dead notes and inconsistencies in general are not the greatest thing. Reliability in tuning is a must as well.
A guitar like a steinberger is often reviled as being sterile. This is an example of an extremely 'stiff' neck (carbon) and the removal of the headstock completely as well as other attributes that contribute to a long sustain and even mix of harmonic content that sustains for a long time, zero dead spots and often paired with EMGs that lack the 'character' of many passsives to sense a wider frequency spectrum.
There are no universally great attributes. When I started playing and growing up in music and guitar, the 'sustain' thing was the big 'mojo' issue and desire. Everyone was playing LP's and outfitting things with brass, my LP suffered the same fate from the 'Lore' that was put about (though brass can be a bit of a 'tone sink in reality). Then, punk or the likes of knophler come along and the 'tone' that people aspire to changes and 'sustain' is less of an obsession. Perhaps we just get tired of the fashion, one day we'll get sick of the 'bee in a jar' distortion sound without dynamics that seems to be derigeur these days.
Anyway, it's great to experiement and see what kinds of attributes work for you...it's not all about 'pickups and wiring' or in the amps...though it might seem cliche these days (where mags on guitar playing is largely ads for gear) but the sounds are largely in ones fingers and hours of practice than anything you can just 'buy'. A guitar is a tool for making music, but it is in the playing that the music is made.
Still, hard not to want to continue to make that tool 'sharper'...
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2012 2:15:41 GMT -5
greatly put. Which leads (at least me) to the philosophical problem : why are some guitars so much more expensive than others? I bought this ibanez : www.ibanez.co.jp/products/eg_page12.php?area_id=3&data_id=246&color=CL02&year=2012&cat_id=1&series_id=79 and hoped that it would blow away my partscaster : now i realize how much i like everything in my partscaster : the vintage kind of bridge, the scale... On the ibanez i play with 1.3mm action 12th fret high E, 1.5mm action 12th fret low E, and on the cheapo strat (it cost me about 420 euros to put it together) i play with action 2mm and 2.2 respectively. On the ibanez i play 0.010's, (shorter scale : 25' instead of the 25.5 of the strat) and on the strat 0.11's, so the tension is much higher on the strat, still ...... i feel MUCH faster and comfortable with the strat!!! tone-wise, the ibanez (EMG81/EMG60) can sound really good, has very good clean sound, amazing for a guitar that is supposed to target mainly nu-metal players, it can play jazz, blues, it has a fantastic tone. However, as a player i would go with the strat any time of day.... the balance, the bridge, the scale, the space it gives you for picking (all the space between the bridge and neck pickup, in contrast to the les paul-ish ibanez where this space is essentially limited to one small area) .... everything for me feels superior in the strat.... (even the dimarzio super distortion on the bridge outperforms the EMG81 power-wise).... I don't know, maybe the les-paul humbucking way, is a quick recipe for good sound which simply just can't go wrong.... i dunno... Also the strat feels stronger as well.... can handle misuse better... well that's my perception... i also played before buying the ibanez with several gibsons and real fenders... no one apealed to me.... the gibsons (mainly studios, Greece is in the crisis and difficult to find high end gibsons) felt really cheap... while the strats i tried (american deluxe) were .... smth like deja-vu.... nothing particular.... I also played with an ibanez - satriani model which cost 2000 euros... measured its sustain high E, 12 fret.... oops 5 secs.... 1 sec more than my partscaster!!! i mean.... i got lost, i didn't know how to connect price with quality and sound... finally i got the ibanez ARZ800 cause i thought i blew the speakers on the amp they had in the ibanez shop... and that was it!! Now i will have to maintain +1 guitar!! but i think i like its sound so its ok!
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Post by newey on Sept 22, 2012 7:36:17 GMT -5
Good question! Brand name is part of the reason. Your experience with the Gibsons you played is a not-unfamiliar story. Labor cost is another reason, the Asian models can be priced very aggressively due to lower labor costs. The fact that your partscaster plays as well as the "real deal" just goes to show that you can bolt components together just as well as a guy in a factory in China or Malaysia. And the fact that you pick up the Strat more often than the Ibby means that you're no different than millions of players over the past 60 years. For whatever reasons, ol' Leo pretty well nailed it in 1955. There's a reason why everybody copies the Strat . . . We've discussed this in the past: Are Gibsons really overpriced?where I made the point that, cost wise, things really haven't changed very much. In 1969, I bought my first electric guitar, a single-pickup Japanese-made "Norma", for $21.95, new in the box. That equates to about $137 in 2012 dollars. For $137 today, I could buy a better guitar, like a Squire Bullet. At the absolute low-end today, in the US I can have a "Rogue" for $89.95, which would probably play about as well as my Norma did. At the upper end, a brand-new Strat circa 1968 cost $314.50 with the standard finish; that's about $1965 dollars in 2012 dollars, which is a lot more than a new US-made Strat will cost. The difference between then and now probably comes down to economies of scale- the market today is much larger, so they can crank out greater numbers of these things.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2012 8:37:37 GMT -5
Yes, we all seek innovation when in fact all we do is ask for vintage tone!! we are (guitar)nuts(2) and the guitars makers know that pretty well!
Anyway bottom line, i think stat = better playability/ergonomics (+its bridge... i still do not get it that the low E which buzzes like mad owes to be on the same radius arc like the rest of the strings. Low E (especially detuned) vibrates more, rattles and buzzes a lot. In a strat you can deal with only low E raising it.... with tune-o-matic... you are left in cold waters... same with floyd rose.... Strat's bridge is just genius and simple, lasts, never breaks... i have heard about tune-o-matic bridges that ... collapsed ... what??? (erlewine's book says this)... never been the case with strat...
bottom line : (IMHO) LP is based on the acoustic guitar which is based on the classical guitar. Strat, in reality, is the only *genuine* electric guitar designed from scratch...
LP's usually have fantastic sound, no doubt, but their design lacks in comparison to the strats.
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Post by D2o on Sept 22, 2012 14:11:14 GMT -5
For some reason, I was under the impression that LP's original electric guitar experiments were basically a phone pickup on a 2" x 4", but - because people couldn't get their head around it - LP cut an Epiphone acoustic down the middle and attached a half to each side of the 2" x 4" ... so any use of the acoustic as the basis of an LP was window dressing.
Maybe I dreamed that up, so I'm going back to sleep now ...
D2o
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Post by cynical1 on Sept 22, 2012 22:49:22 GMT -5
...Which leads (at least me) to the philosophical problem : why are some guitars so much more expensive than others? Man, there's a small novel that could be written answering that question. I need dash to see my horses, but let me briefly toss this into the mix. Ibanez builds some very good instruments, and IMHO they're one of the best guitars for the money available today. Rip the OEM electronics out and you've got a lifetime keeper in most of their guitars and basses. But they suffer from a problem endemic to Asian built instruments...they use Asian wood species and import very little in the way of non-Asian hardwoods anymore. Back in the 70's and 80's the Asian builders would import hardwoods from the US and Europe. The business model of this century do not allow for this and it tends to show up in the overall performance of the instrument. Examples? OK, anyone remember DoubleYoi's cypress capped Tele? This is where I first noticed the difference between North American Red Alder and Napalese Alder. Common Name(s): Red Alder, Western Red Alder Scientific Name: Alnus rubra Distribution: Coastal western North America Average Dried Weight: 30 lbs/ft3 (475 kg/m3) Basic Specific Gravity: .37 Hardness: 590 lbf (2,620 N) Shrinkage: Radial: 4.4%, Tangential: 7.3%, Volumetric: 12.6%, T/R Ratio: 1.7 Common Name(s): Nepalese Alder, Utis Scientific Name: Alnus nepalensis Distribution: Southeast Asia Tree Size: 60-100 ft (20-30 m) tall, 2-3 ft (.6-1.0 m) trunk diameter Average Dried Weight: 25 lbs/ft3 (395 kg/m3) Basic Specific Gravity: .32 Hardness: 380 lbf (1,690 N) Shrinkage: Radial: 2.4%, Tangential: 6.0%, Volumetric: 9.3%, T/R Ratio: 2.5 This is just one example, but you'll notice that there's approximately 35% difference in hardness between these two woods. Why is that important? When Gibson first started making Les Pauls they used mahogany and hard rock maple. In the 60's they switched to western maple...again, approximately 35% difference in hardness. Does it make a difference in sustain? If he was alive you could ask Gary Moore: No fancy schmancy compressors or brass plates bolted on that guitar...just a '59 Paul and a good deal of skill. Without belaboring the point, the odds are that your partscaster acts as a better vehicle for the string nodes due to a harder and more stable wood due to it's age and place of origin. It's been along day and I'm typed out...but I hope you catch my drift here. Happy Trails Cynical One
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Post by long813 on Sept 23, 2012 2:26:28 GMT -5
For what it's worth, Mahogany is going the way of Brazilian Rosewood. I HIGHLY doubt that any epiphone, let alone gibson are made with it. They more than likely use sapeale which is a different wood that is tonally similar.
Why do I know this? Well in acoustic guitars, it's more prevalent (not paint to cover up) and the community I visit has many lutheires whom of which are very bright and experienced.
My toonie. Err... 2$ ... I guess.
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Post by newey on Sept 23, 2012 8:18:55 GMT -5
Those not from the Great White North probably won't get the toonie reference. But the price of one's opinion has apparently increased from the previous 2¢ worth . . . But you're right about mahogany. There is a movement afoot to use more sustainably-harvested woods, and that's a trend that is only going to continue. Our group of builders/enthusiasts here can do our part by reusing and recycling those guitar bodies which might otherwise be firewood. In other words, if it's mahogany or some other rainforest wood, maybe we should be willing to do a bit more to save an otherwise questionable piece. Maybe it has a bunch of dings in it, or won't look good in a natural finish- think of painting it rather than pitching it. Maybe the body's a basket case that will need major work- consider that, 40 years from now, the stuff may be so precious our grandchildren will wonder that we ever threw any of it out.
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Post by KIIMH on Sept 23, 2012 14:14:18 GMT -5
i mite haev gonadchildrn soem day? groOvy!
ky4e
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Post by sumgai on Sept 23, 2012 16:36:32 GMT -5
i mite haev gonadchildrn soem day? groOvy!
ky4e No, that requires that first you must have go..... Oh, wait.... I just recalled what you think a plectrum is. Never mind!
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