bodia
Authorities said.....best leave it.....unsolved
I’ll bet you say that to all the guitars.
As a matter of fact.......
I’ll bet you say that to all the guitars.
We started trying to learn something about a solidbody guitar. For instance, the stiffer the material—the harder the wood—the more shrill is the sound, and the longer is the sustain. Hit the string and it would ring for a long sustain period. It could be too long.
One of the things we did was to take a piece of iron rail from the railroad track, put a bridge and a pickup and a tailpiece on it, and test it. You could hit that string, take a walk, come back, and it would still be ringing. Because the thing that causes it to slow down is the fact that it gives a little bit—wood gives, you know? So we started. We made them out of maple—they were too shrill. Leo was using ash wood, always made of ash, and we didn’t think much of that as a wood. We didn’t use it.
We made a guitar out of solid rock maple. Wasn’t good. Too shrill, too much sustain. And we made one out of mahogany. Too soft. Didn’t quite have that thing. So we finally came up with a maple top and a mahogany back, made a sandwich out of it, glued ‘em together.
Curious timing: I just read this interview with Ted McCarty by Tony Bacon (done years ago for The Les Paul Book, but not everything made the book), where Ted describes Gibson's early experiments with materials for electric guitars:
and
Go read the whole interview, very interesting!
https://reverb.com/news/former-gibs...oods-and-the-problems-of-top-heavy-management
Thats great info!Curious timing: I just read this interview with Ted McCarty by Tony Bacon (done years ago for The Les Paul Book, but not everything made the book), where Ted describes Gibson's early experiments with materials for electric guitars:
and
Go read the whole interview, very interesting!
https://reverb.com/news/former-gibs...oods-and-the-problems-of-top-heavy-management
That’s a new dimension indeed! Never thought of that before.But here's my point (finally). This transfer of energy goes both ways: an electric guitar played through an amp and speakers in a soundspace is a dynamic interactive system. Just as string vibration moves the body and eventually the surrounding air, ambient energy vibrates the guitar and that energy is transferred through the hardware, bridge & nut to the strings. IMO this is why guitars that play louder unplugged usually tend to be the ones that come alive at volume, because of freer interaction between the strings and the guitar as a whole.
But here's my point (finally). This transfer of energy goes both ways: an electric guitar played through an amp and speakers in a soundspace is a dynamic interactive system. Just as string vibration moves the body and eventually the surrounding air, ambient energy vibrates the guitar and that energy is transferred through the hardware, bridge & nut to the strings. IMO this is why guitars that play louder unplugged usually tend to be the ones that come alive at volume, because of freer interaction between the strings and the guitar as a whole....
So that's my take on live sustain vs inherent sustain, and the transfer of ambient vibration back to the strings in a lively guitar.
Hahaha!And people think merely theorizing about the origin of the universe is a complicated subject!
That's an interesting observation. As I was playing enthusiastically last night I also realized that your own energy can be transferred into the guitar and alter its sound. How many of you have been jamming for a while and have felt everything get "looser"? As you are playing more energetically you are literally heating the guitar up. The pick gets hotter, the strings get hotter, the neck wood etc. As these elements get hotter their physical properties change. The pick will get softer, the neck will get softer, the strings will get more elastic and most likely lose some of their conductivity, although probably imperceptible. So even the energy level at which you play can affect the tone of the guitar.