Les' Wildly Speculative Guitar Thought Of The Day

[rugerpc]

there is an error in your structure of nitrocellulose at the anomeric centers and position linking, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion, see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cellulose_nitrate.svg

Illustration courtesy Sam Houston State University. Maybe you should contact their chemistry department to let them know Wiki thinks they got it wrong.

My bottom line: I like nitro too, but because of it's tactile properties, not because it was once cellulose.

And this:

Not sure how one would be able to tell the difference, unless you played & then refinished it.

 

[László]

Not sure how one would be able to tell the difference, unless you played & then refinished it............................. otherwise, I got nuth'in!

Mark, I think one tells the difference by noticing a family similarity in certain overtones on nitro-finished guitars among various brands. Just as you can usually tell the tone of a humbucker from a single coil due to their being part of different "tone families."

I definitely hear it, but I haven't got command of the right words to describe it correctly.

I wish I did.

Meantime I have no idea whatsoever if my theory is right, but it seems like it'd be worth testing.

 

[ViperDoc]

There is nothing on any instrument of any design that vibrates independently of itself. When music is made, all of the instrument's pieces absorb the musical energy according to their unique physical properties, are forced to negotiate with each other due to their interconnectedness, do so, and you hear what you hear. Finish absolutely affects tone. Unfortunately, it is impossible to compare unfinished and finished guitar tonal variations because the process also changes the guitar. Even finishing, playing a guitar, removing the finish and refinishing with another finish type on the same axe will irreversibly alter the instrument in the process.

If you can hear nitrocellulose, I have no doubt that you can. To echo what's been said, I'm not sure how to articulate what that means. My PS 408 Studio is finished in nitro and is a sensational axe, probably my best PRS. I wouldn't change a thing. If I COULD test for nitro effects, after all the data and graphs and whatever falls out of the sky, I'd still sit back and savor the notes singing out of the guitar itself because it sounds so good.

I'm a nitro fan. Cheers to yours.

 

[dogrocketp]

Les, My elephant size ears lead me to believe that you are correct. Many of us believe that the sum of the parts of a guitar is what gives us what we like. Finish falls into this generalization. The same would hold true for an amplifier. While we may never see empirical research that proves your theory, most of us will agree that every guitar sounds different. So does every amp. If we get the guitar, amp, or combination that we like, we get to contribute our observations to a forum. Play on.

 

[CatStrangler]

Illustration courtesy Sam Houston State University. Maybe you should contact their chemistry department to let them know Wiki thinks they got it wrong.

My bottom line: I like nitro too, but because of it's tactile properties, not because it was once cellulose.

And this:

There is an error in their structure. no big deal. I don't care, I merely pointed it out for the edification of those reading the thread. If you do a google search for "nitrocellulose structure" you will see just about everyone gets it right other than Sam Houston State.

I never stated that anyone should like it for being related to cellulose. I did state the fact that of the available finishes it is the one most closely related to wood in chemical structure, and in my opinion was the most likely to retain the resonant qualities of wood.

 

[László]

Incidentally, I'm not saying that nitro finishes sound better. I think they just sound a little different.

I wouldn't hesitate for a second to get a guitar with a V12 or poly finish. Horses for courses, as always.

 

[HANGAR18]

Your theory seems reasonably valid. But, just to be a smart@ss I was going to post a picture of Billy Gibbon's furry guitar and say something about how great the tone was from the fur.

 

[László]

Your theory seems reasonable valid. But, just to be a smart@ss I was going to post a picture of Billy Gibbon's furry guitar and say something about how great the tone was from the fur.

Ain't show business great?

 

[django49]

^^^
Eliminates the need for a fuzz tone, no?

 

[László]

^^^
Eliminates the need for a fuzz tone, no?

Heheheh. Oh it surely does.

 

[kingsleyd]

Mark, I think one tells the difference by noticing a family similarity in certain overtones on nitro-finished guitars among various brands. Just as you can usually tell the tone of a humbucker from a single coil due to their being part of different "tone families."

I definitely hear it, but I haven't got command of the right words to describe it correctly.

I wish I did.

Meantime I have no idea whatsoever if my theory is right, but it seems like it'd be worth testing.

Les, this is actually a lead in the direction of how you would go about testing a hypothesis such as "Do guitars with a nitrocellulose finish sound noticeably different from guitars with an acrylic/polyester/whatever finish?"

For whatever reason, it seems like the vast majority of people on these threads assume the only way to do that is to compare two identical-but-for-the-finish guitars. Well of course we all know that two guitars are NEVER "identical-but-for-the-finish." It's a nice idea, but it's totally impractical as a scientific method because it simply cannot be done. Even in the case Markie described, (A) you can't assume that the steps involved in scraping off a finish and applying a new finish didn't contribute something that has nothing to do with the finish material, and (B) you couldn't make any judgements based on the sound because the listening windows would be too far apart in time to yield any meaningful analysis.

There is another scientifically and statistically valid way to test for differences, though: with groups of guitars. (and groups of players/listeners) Sure, there are more variables, but as long as some reasonable effort is made to control for obvious ones (different body shapes, different types of pickups, etc, etc) the subtle differences that always exist between guitars with "the same" woods, shape, & pickup type and configuration, will end up coming out in the wash as normally-distributed error terms. As long as yourNs are large enough, you can test for statistically significant differences. Not an easy or inexpensive study to undertake (who's gonna pay for this?!?) but at least it's feasible.

In the absence of such studies, I ask myself, "who plays and hears a large enough number of guitars to have a reliable judgment as to the sound of different finishes?" One answer to that is (or should be) pretty freaking obvious: Paul Reed Smith, hisownself.

 

[kingsleyd]

I don't know anything about that, but alway wondered why PRS touted the V12, but always used Nitro for the highest end guitars. That tells me that PRS thinks there is some (maybe resonance) benefits to Nitro. I, too, am speculating.

Either that or PRS' experience is that that customers for those highest-end guitars are more likely to buy them if they have Nitro finishes.

 

[László]

Either that or PRS' experience is that that customers for those highest-end guitars are more likely to buy them if they have Nitro finishes.

They'll shoot a PS with V12 if you want it, though I'm guessing that you're right on both counts. If I can hear the difference (and I think I can) no doubt Paul hears it.

And no doubt high end guitar buyers prefer nitro just on its reputation and look. So the two things work out pretty well.

 

[kingsleyd]

They'll shoot a PS with V12 if you want it, though I'm guessing that you're right on both counts. If I can hear the difference (and I think I can) no doubt Paul hears it.

I haven't played enough "other things being more-or-less equal" guitars to have a strong opinion based on personal experience. I do have plenty of nitro-finish guitars in my woodpile and I would say that, for the most part, that's my choice when I have the option. Although, funny enough, I opted for V12 on my PS KingsleyDGT, mainly because of the enthusiasm Paul Miles displayed for it. That guitar has a rosewood neck, though, so the effect of the finish is probably somewhat less than it would otherwise be since the neck has such an outsized influence on the overall sound of a guitar. (acoustic OR electric)

A few nights ago I had a few hours of awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night. I passed the time by playing the guitars that were up in my upstairs office. (my basement studio is still out of commission awaiting new flooring) At that hour I played them acoustically for obvious reasons, and I didn't play the acoustics or full hollowbodies (my Ken Parker archtop and my L-5CES) for similarly obvious reasons. I could hear some of the differences much more clearly than usual, I guess because there's noticeably less ambient sound at 3 am around here than there is during any normal waking hour. Or maybe I was just unusually attentive at that hour. Anyway, the interesting result was how clearly I could distinguish group differences between guitars with different types of tailpiece/bridge arrangement. Similar tp/b assemblies tended to have a noticeable similarity even when the guitar bodies and overall construction were quite different.

Hmmm...

 

[László]

I guess because there's noticeably less ambient sound at 3 am around here than there is during any normal waking hour. Or maybe I was just unusually attentive at that hour. Anyway, the interesting result was how clearly I could distinguish group differences between guitars with different types of tailpiece/bridge arrangement. Similar tp/b assemblies tended to have a noticeable similarity even when the guitar bodies and overall construction were quite different.

Hmmm...

I've had similar experiences, some late at night because I have a very hard time sleeping, and some in the studio working on sounds. There are sounds that we might refer to as typical of this or that type of hardware subassembly, I agree. I've long thought that the two piece tailpiece has a sound that's different from a one piece, and of course, most folks can hear clear differences between tremolo tailpieces and hard tails.

I think there's a "family thing" with certain finishes in a similar way. Granted that it's subtle.

When I was a kid 7-13 I played the accordion in addition to piano. There was a characteristic resonance you could hear from the player's perspective, where the sound of the body itself could be heard. Accordions of the era were covered in a very thick celluloid finish. I can hear that sound in my head today. Maybe it sensitized me in some way. All accordions were finished this way at the time, and as I grew, I got new and larger ones, but they were all covered in celluloid.