Unclear Harmonics

[Dave M]

Interesting experience this weekend. A friend has a steel string which I made a while back, which is pretty responsive ie loud. He is learning a piece which uses a lot of harmonics and said that he prefers to play the piece on his other Martin copy which is less responsive.

Listening to him playing showed that the harmonics played on my box were sounding a little muddied. Investigating I reckoned that energy was being 'stolen' by the other open strings quite rapidly. On the less loud guitar this didn't seem to happen so fast, though of course they were less loud to start with. This happened particularly on the harmonic on the 7 fret of the D string with the open A quite rapidly beginning to sound, but I suspect it was happening on others.

Wondered if others had come across this phenomenum?

I should point out that neither he nor I would have enough skill to start thinking about damping other strings - it's hard enough to get to the notes we're trying play!