Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on June 28, 2017 at 3:09pm

Re the Sustain issue.

Hi all, I thought that I would add what I know and do regarding sustain and then thought wow that’s a big subject, so I thought  I’ll refer to my notes from building acoustic guitars over the years. I was right it is a bit of an in depth subject and as I’m not too good with explaining myself, I will contribute but keep it short and sweet.

 With the full sized guitars that I build I go to a lot of effort/time to tune the top, back and braces to get the best of tone, volume, balance and sustain that I can.

 What contributes to sustain is the characteristics of the top, back, strings and the strings anchor points and of course the player.

A dense or overbuilt top, will give a different sustain to a more flexible responsive top.

 Take the example above of the large nuts being used to dampen [stiffen] the top and in doing so created more sustain, I suspect you may find that this was at the expense of the roundness/fullness of the notes/tone.

 As one lightens a top it becomes more musical more responsive, but sustain will diminish proportionately.

 *Stiff/heavy top = brightness of response = longer sustain, but the sound is constrained and lacking dynamic range.

*Flexible/lighter top = more responsive, more bass more acoustic sounding = less sustaining. It takes more energy to drive this kind of top; the energy comes from the vibrating strings.

 Some soundboxes receive the strings energies and release them pretty much right away, while others will release the energy over a longer time. So how one builds the soundbox has a bearing on sustain also.

 Does this apply to simple Cigar box Guitars? I think it can. A recent CBG I built was an experiment where I used acoustic guitar principals and techniques with a thin responsive top, active back and bracing considerations. I must say it has a “wow” factor sound compared to my other CBG’s......... Probably sounds more like a bad acoustic guitar, ha ha.

 This was not a short post after all, and it’s only a fraction of the story

Cheers Taff

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on June 29, 2017 at 1:49am

Taffy,

Keep going! Add more to this thread. Good shtuff, mate.

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next ›
• Page