Tone complexity, "sweetness", vocabulary

[dshaker]

I have finished my Gore-Gillet falcate-braced steel string. I'm not much of a player, but as I have carted it around to folks looking for feedback, the responses have been VERY encouraging. The issues have been:

- Fit and finish: I have not yet perfected my woodworking skills to the point needed for salable guitars. I am learning, but I am not quite there yet. Not an issue with the book or its methods at all.

- Neck: I like a flat D-shape neck. Most people seem to like a C-shape neck, so they don't like the neck on my guitar. Easy to fix: ten minutes with a spokeshave, another ten with sand paper, a few hours with acetone-diluted shellac and I'm there, pretty much.

-Sound: Universally applauded for loudness, clarity, evenness of response from treble to bass. Usually described as a "finger-style" guitar. One person said he wanted more of a "piano-like" tone. But the sound is very good, but not quite what I want.

I can deal with the fit and finish and the neck in my next build. I'm not so sure about the sound.

I am not sure what is meant by "piano-like" tone. However, when I listen to some of Kathy Wingert's guitars played fingerstyle, there is a richness there that makes me feel like there are worlds contained in the guitar. I also feel the same way when I hear one of Tony Yamamoto's guitars being played. I am not sure just what I am hearing, but I think it is a complex overtone structure that a master player can manipulate. I would like to build guitars with that kind of sound.

The frustrating thing is that I don't really understand what I am looking for, much less how to obtain it.

Any thoughts?

[Gsanbrook]

Few guitars sound bad. Most guitars sound good. Some guitars sound better than most. A few....select few.. break the mold and are leaps and bounds better than all the rest. When you hear and play one of these freaks, you know it. What goes into it to make it this way is hard to define and even harder to replicate. You will hear every word of jargon used on the internet to describe "the secret" to these guitars construction and how to describe their tone. "Piano-like", "Rich", "Responsive" - yes.

But, really, I am in the William Cumpiano camp when it comes to these that claim the secret. He is a skeptic, as am I. I believe the guitar... its acoustics, its construction, its composition... all are too complex to define and reduce to a formula for success.

I say - keep building, keep listening, and eventually, one of these freaks will pop out from your handy-work... and you'll spend the rest of your building days trying to replicate it. And new builders will spend years trying to describe it.

[Nick]

Don't get too hung up about the 'correct' vocabulary, there are as many terms given to "a" sound as there are insect species on this planet, most of them being fairly vague and don't forget, we as humans all perceive and like sound slightly differently anyway so one person's idea of "very bassy" could be another's concept/description of a rounded full bodied sound, which one is wrong?. I'm guessing the person that wanted a "piano-like" tone didn't know, themselves, how to explain the tone so came up with that one. A piano is a piano and obviously has a different tonal character than a guitar, even the strings are excited into vibration via a different mechanism. Maybe the person was looking for more separation between notes, maybe they were after a specific tone? Next time you should ask that person what they mean by Piano like tone, never be frightened to ask if you don't know what people mean, after all you are looking for feedback/criticism so understanding that feedback is important to enable you to improve.
Don't compare your guitar's tone to recordings either, who knows what sort of processing the recording has undergone? Most times they all undergo some form of basic EQ'ing so it's easy to accentuate or cut specific frequencies, also subtle reverb is quite often added to give the sound some width (recording studios are traditionally 'dry', nothing is added to the sound while recording including any naturally occurring echo that may normally be in a room, so that the sound can be tailored and tweaked in the mixing desk) so like the glossy photo's in magazines, what you are seeing/hearing may not necessarily be what it started out as.
Trevor can tell you what a Falcate braced guitar can or should normally sound like so I'll leave him to answer that but I would say that if it's "Universally applauded for loudness, clarity, evenness of response from treble to bass. Usually described as a "finger-style" guitar." Then you've started on a fairly good note!

[Trevor Gore]

Trevor can tell you what a Falcate braced guitar can or should normally sound like so I'll leave him to answer...

I don't know that I'd say there is a definitive falcate sound. As in all build schemes, there is a heap of flexibility/versatility. What I find is that X braced guitars are often "short" in the mid range, which is fine if that's what you're after. The falcates I build are much more even across the range, but that's something I usually want.

John Parchem, who has been regaling us with his "straight from the book" build thread PM'd me this morning and gave me permission to use some of his words:

"I took the guitar to my classical guitar lesson, turned out to be a total waste as a guitar lesson because the instructor played the guitar the whole lesson and actually took it back as I was putting in its case after the lesson. He seemed somewhat shocked with the clarity of the notes on each of the strings, with the very long sustain and the balance across the strings maintained through the broad dynamic range the guitar has. As he was playing some passages he said it is like a choir; the voices just keep singing. It was really fun listening as he worked through a classical repertoire on this steel string. He was surprised how responsive the guitar was to vibrato even at the first fret.

Listening was an experience as well, the gorgeous sounding accompaniment notes of a piece seem to be outside of the guitar in 3D with a clear melody singing through. The guitar had a good voice at its quietest and maintained that voice through long continuous crescendos. If I had my eyes closed except for the occasional times where I heard the steel string against the frets I might of thought it was a classical guitar."

That "choir-like" sound is something I describe in the book as "like a small orchestra".

I am not sure just what I am hearing, but I think it is a complex overtone structure that a master player can manipulate. I would like to build guitars with that kind of sound.

The frustrating thing is that I don't really understand what I am looking for, much less how to obtain it.

Any thoughts?

Doug, I'd refer you to Design, Section 3.2 and particularly Section 3.2.2 which provides a vocabulary for sound descriptions, relates them to modes of vibration and then to construction details. A lot of listening and a lot of thought and you should be able to determine more specifically what is you're after and then relate it to material properties and construction.

Don't compare your guitar's tone to recordings either, who knows what sort of processing the recording has undergone?

Whilst it is often said that in blind testing it can be very difficult picking one guitar from another, one thing I've never seen anyone having a problem with is picking a live guitar from a recorded guitar, no matter what level of equipment the recording/playback involved. So there is no doubt that fidelity is compromised in some audible way(s), whether the sound was processed in some way (mostly it is) or not. The most natural recordings are usually done with no reverb and little EQ, relying on the playback environment to provide these, with varying degrees of success, depending on the playback space.

The recordings on my website: http://www.goreguitars.com.au/main/page ... sound.html are all done with no added reverb and no EQ, so are in some ways unflattering, but you are listening to as natural a sound as we could reproduce on relatively inexpensive recording gear and post MP3 processing.

The Shed guitar is interesting in that it sounded pretty much like that live, when we recorded it. Since then it has developed more sparkly highs and so to me sounds rather better than it did when we recorded it.

Have fun!

[Nick]

Whilst it is often said that in blind testing it can be very difficult picking one guitar from another, one thing I've never seen anyone having a problem with is picking a live guitar from a recorded guitar, no matter what level of equipment the recording/playback involved. So there is no doubt that fidelity is compromised in some audible way(s), whether the sound was processed in some way (mostly it is) or not. The most natural recordings are usually done with no reverb and little EQ, relying on the playback environment to provide these, with varying degrees of success, depending on the playback space.

The recordings on my website: http://www.goreguitars.com.au/main/page ... sound.html are all done with no added reverb and no EQ, so are in some ways unflattering, but you are listening to as natural a sound as we could reproduce on relatively inexpensive recording gear and post MP3 processing.

The Shed guitar is interesting in that it sounded pretty much like that live, when we recorded it. Since then it has developed more sparkly highs and so to me sounds rather better than it did when we recorded it.

Have fun!

Sorry, should have clarified, I meant professionally produced recordings (Not that home recordings can't be 'professional' sounding Trevor ), I'm was thinking about studio recorded, then undergo a loooooong & expensive stage of mastering then packaged with a glossy liner book type of recording.