26" scale length guitar
Jonny Durango
this guitar to have tons of sustain while still maintaining a very low
action. Wood and pickups have already been considered for this, but I've
heard that a 26" scale is very cool. Would it be too hard to play? bend?
even w/ low action Any experience/ideas? Thanx!
btw: btw, this is a solid body, PRS/McNaught style guitar....korina body,
hond.
mahog/pau ferro neck
--
J. Durango
"Self-restraint enhances one's energy. Self-restraint is said to be sacred.
The man of self-restraint becomes sinless and fearless and wins great
results. One that is self-restrained sleeps happily and wakes happily. He
sojourns happily in the world and his mind always remains cheerful. Every
kind of excitement is quietly controlled by self-restraint. One that is not
self-restrained fails in a similar endeavour." - The Mahabharata, Santi
Parva
Chris Johnson
light weight woods to NOT contribute to long sustain. The reason a Les Paul
sustains so well is because of the mass and density of the maple and mahogany
body. If you want sustain, use denser woods and more of them.
As for the string length...why go for a longer scale? Some people don't
like Fenders because the scale length is too long for them. The tonal
differences between a 24 and a 26 inch scale length would be negligible
given identical electronics anyway, but it would change the feel of the
strings. (Longer strings will feel a bit softer, and a little more bend would
be required to bend to the same pitch.) It will not substantially affect the
sustain of the guitar, though.
You want sustain, make it with a thick mahogany body and a thick
maple cap, and whether you choose a maple neck or a mahogany one,
put an ebony fingerboard on it. Use quartersawn neck stock.
Neck-thru-body construction will be a plus. And don't put a trem of
any kind on it because they're all sustain drains.
You'll have sustain by the barrel.
CJ
Hmemerson
Johnson said,"> (Longer strings will feel a bit softer,......"
Hi Chris,
The longer the scale length, the more tension it takes to bring a string to
pitch.
How could that make a longer scale guitar feel softer than a short scale guitar
(Fender VS Gibson for instance)?
Ever notice that the Strat you try in the store with .010-048 is harder to bend
strings on than when you pick up a Les Paul with similar strings?
Howard Emerson
Jonathan R. Larsson
"Chris Johnson" <cmjo...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3CC88D6E...@cfl.rr.com...
Longer strings will feel a bit softer, and a little more bend would
> be required to bend to the same pitch.
I thought the longer the speaking length of the string, the more tension
required to tune to a certain pitch. Isn't this why a longer scale length
can be preferable on a 5-string bass? More tension for the low "E".
Jon Larsson
Chris Johnson
"Jonathan R. Larsson" wrote:
Oh, the longitudinal tension is higher, but it requires a larger lateral
displacement (bend) to bend up a given interval. Or so it is on my
guitars.
CJ
Jonathan R. Larsson
fretting=harder bending. If, as you say, it takes more lateral
displacement, then that would only make bending harder still.
I'd vote for 25", if you're comfortable with that, unless you intend to tune
down a step or so.
Jon Larsson
"Chris Johnson" <cmjo...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3CC8BA07...@cfl.rr.com...
Chris Johnson
Jonny Durango wrote:
> I'm designing a guitar and considering making the scale length 26". I want
> this guitar to have tons of sustain while still maintaining a very low
> action. Wood and pickups have already been considered for this, but I've
> heard that a 26" scale is very cool. Would it be too hard to play? bend?
> even w/ low action Any experience/ideas? Thanx!
>
> btw: btw, this is a solid body, PRS/McNaught style guitar....korina body,
> hond.
> mahog/pau ferro neck
>
I think you're going the wrong route if you want sustain. Korina and other
Michael Nelson
> Longer strings will feel a bit softer
No they won't, they'll feel firmer, assuming they are tuned to the same pitch.
Michael
--
Michael Nelson San Francisco, CA
Nebuchadnezzar
"Jonny Durango" <jonnydura...@PLEASEattbi.com> wrote in message
news:TG_x8.52815$CH....@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net...
> I'm designing a guitar and considering making the scale length 26". I want
> this guitar to have tons of sustain while still maintaining a very low
> action. Wood and pickups have already been considered for this, but I've
> heard that a 26" scale is very cool. Would it be too hard to play? bend?
> even w/ low action Any experience/ideas? Thanx!
>
> btw: btw, this is a solid body, PRS/McNaught style guitar....korina body,
> hond.
> mahog/pau ferro neck
The long scale length works against long sustain in a solid body electric.
The difference in tension and string gauge more or less cancel each other
out, but the extra air resistance isn't cancelled out by anything. It's not
a huge effect, but if you play a lot of short and long scale guitars you
might notice that the sustain tends to be in the shorter scale.
As to what is it like to play 26" why not go play a bunch of baritones to
get a rough idea?
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Nebuchadnezzar
other
> light weight woods to NOT contribute to long sustain. The reason a Les
Paul
> sustains so well is because of the mass and density of the maple and
mahogany
> body. If you want sustain, use denser woods and more of them.
This doesn't seem to pan out, for a couple of reasons. The first is that the
density=sustain idea (which to my knowledge was popular at least as far back
as the early '70s) just doesn't hold up to testing. Les Paul players often
want heavy guitars, but Tele players often want light guitars. But just as
there are relatively light Les Pauls that sound good, there are also pretty
heavy Teles that sound really good.
The heaviest Tele I have feels like it must be about 12 pounds. I don't have
off the top of my head the actual weight, but I assure you it is very heavy
compared to a Les Paul I have that weighs only 8.5 pounds. Now that Tele is
made of korina - it's a John Jorgenson model. It is the heaviest Tele I
have, except possibly for another brick-in-Tele form from 1974 - a
suprisingly good Tele for 1974 by the way. Both the superheavy Teles sound
really good. But neither has a huge amount of sustain, and the 8.5 pound Les
Paul has more sustain than either of these Teles. Note that people tend to
think of korina as a light wood. Not if they've tried to lift this Jorgenson
Tele. Or maybe Fender put lead ballast in there and didn't tell anyone.
But then again you can't presume that Les Pauls have a monopoly on sustain.
One of the longest sustaining guitars we have is a Schecter PT style (ash
body/maple neck) and that is a little bit lighter than the Les Paul. The
longer scale length of the PT works against it, but the combination of
pickups and wood give that PT the edge. I have a couple other Schecter PT
style guitars and this long sustain is not always the case. I tend to find
they sound fine but they don't really have huge sustain.
So I would downplay the idea that a really heavy and dense guitar is needed
for sustain. Short scale probably helps - that one follows from the
physics - but there is enough individual variation from one guitar to the
next that you can't predict which of two guitars will have the longer
sustain. (Unless you built a sustainer device into one like a Fernandes).
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Chris Johnson
Nebuchadnezzar wrote:
It's always not just a matter of sustain, but the specific resonant characteristics
of the guitar as a system and the individual materials that comprise it. Materials
that have poor resonant characteristics (such as lead) absorb rather than transmit
vibration, which kills sustain. A lead guitar would not sustain well no matter
how much it weighed. On the other hand, a guitar made of solid aluminum
(which is an efficient resonating material with a long ring time) would sustain
very well, even if it was of minimal mass.
However, for a given material, a more massive design should provide longer
sustain. This was pretty well proved with experiments in which scientists
mounted strings and a bridge on a piece of steel railroad track. It sustained
for a remarkably long time, since the steel has excellent resonant characteristics
and there was a lot of mass to it.
Sustain is the enemy of acoustic output for a guitar body. A guitar that is
optimized to play loudly (acoustically) is designed to draw energy from the
string with great efficiency to set the body in motion, so the string loses
energy rapidly though the body generates a loud tone.
A perfect example of this is a good violin or other instrument in the violin
family. When the strings are plucked (pizzicato), the note is loud but of
VERY short duration. Yet a bowed violin can be surprisingly loud for an
instrument of its size, since it is an efficient mechanism for converting string
energy to acoustic output.
Even a brief study of the subject of resonance control and resonant characteristics
of materials will suggest that optimum sustain conditions will be met when
the guitar is constructed of a single piece of highly resonant material and it
is as massive as is feasible, and its shape does not induce any energy-sapping
standing waves or interference patterns. Mutiple materials induce variables
that are essentially problems in constrained layer dampening. The maple
top on a Les Paul is NOT a sustain plus. A solid mahogany guitar should
sustain better.
CJ
Jonny Durango
and whatnot, but when I picked out my 14 BF of korina I gave it many good
hard knocks....despite the board being 3" thick and about 8 feet tall it had
a great tone to it. Deep and round like some type of big african instrument,
the sound seemed to travel through the entire board and right out either
end, slowing decaying. Of course it's hard if not impossible to get a good
gauge of actual tone and sustain with this method, but the wood seemed to
reverbrate a lot like mahogany, much better than maple or walnut of similar
size, which sounded punchy and sharp, but decayed rather quickly (more like
a "knock knock" as opposed to a "boooooom boooooooom")
ps: please forgive me for my outright disregard of technical terminology
--
J. Durango
"Self-restraint enhances one's energy. Self-restraint is said to be sacred.
The man of self-restraint becomes sinless and fearless and wins great
results. One that is self-restrained sleeps happily and wakes happily. He
sojourns happily in the world and his mind always remains cheerful. Every
kind of excitement is quietly controlled by self-restraint. One that is not
self-restrained fails in a similar endeavour." - The Mahabharata, Santi
Parva
"Chris Johnson" <cmjo...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3CCA2F59...@cfl.rr.com...
Jonny Durango
string is longer and therfor takes longer to decay, whereas a shorter string
decays more quickly....are you suggesting that you could simply simulate the
sustain of a large scale guitar by using heavier strings on a short scale?
--
J. Durango
"Self-restraint enhances one's energy. Self-restraint is said to be sacred.
The man of self-restraint becomes sinless and fearless and wins great
results. One that is self-restrained sleeps happily and wakes happily. He
sojourns happily in the world and his mind always remains cheerful. Every
kind of excitement is quietly controlled by self-restraint. One that is not
self-restrained fails in a similar endeavour." - The Mahabharata, Santi
Parva
"Nebuchadnezzar" <d...@zen-pharaohs.com> wrote in message
news:sFoy8.606447$%L1.54...@news.easynews.com...
Chris Johnson
Jonny Durango wrote:
> I don't claim to know tons about sound properties, modes, plates and modulii
> and whatnot, but when I picked out my 14 BF of korina I gave it many good
> hard knocks....despite the board being 3" thick and about 8 feet tall it had
> a great tone to it. Deep and round like some type of big african instrument,
> the sound seemed to travel through the entire board and right out either
> end, slowing decaying. Of course it's hard if not impossible to get a good
> gauge of actual tone and sustain with this method, but the wood seemed to
> reverbrate a lot like mahogany, much better than maple or walnut of similar
> size, which sounded punchy and sharp, but decayed rather quickly (more like
> a "knock knock" as opposed to a "boooooom boooooooom")
>
> ps: please forgive me for my outright disregard of technical terminology
>
Please tell me where you got that Korina! I've been asked to build a V out
of Korina and the only thing holding me back is...getting the Korina!
Email me or post it on the board, either's fine.
And, yes, a resonant piece of wood is ALWAYS what you want. I rap on
each prospective piece for a guitar a few times and if its's dead, no amount of
figure can save it.
Chris
Nebuchadnezzar
"Jonny Durango" <jonnydura...@PLEASEattbi.com> wrote in message
> I've always heard that longer scale guitars have better sustain because
the
> string is longer and therfor takes longer to decay, whereas a shorter
string
> decays more quickly....
There's a bunch of things you always here that aren't necessarily true.
> are you suggesting that you could simply simulate the
> sustain of a large scale guitar by using heavier strings on a short scale?
I'm suggesting that there is a small effect on sustain of scale length, and
that the shorter scale guitars have the longer sustain. You can actually
work out the physics (a good amount of it is worked out in Fletcher and
Rossing's book _The Physics of Musical Instruments_) and it turns out that
for long sustain, shorter is better. But not so much better that it
overcomes all the other things that come into play.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Stan Gosnell
news:k4py8.607438$%L1.54...@news.easynews.com:
> This doesn't seem to pan out, for a couple of reasons. The first is
> that the density=sustain idea (which to my knowledge was popular at
> least as far back as the early '70s) just doesn't hold up to testing.
> Les Paul players often want heavy guitars, but Tele players often want
> light guitars. But just as there are relatively light Les Pauls that
> sound good, there are also pretty heavy Teles that sound really good.
I think stiffness, not mass per se, is what gives sustain. Massive amounts
of wood give stiffness, but you can get the same sustain with less mass by
using stiffer materials. Spruce should result in a lighter, stiffer
instrument with lots of sustain, but not many people build solid-body
electrics from spruce. Aluminum has been used commercially, but it never
caught on very well. Sustain may be over-rated, & isn't necessarily the
most important property in guitars.
--
Regards,
Stan
Jonny Durango
Hardwoods. To say they have an incredible selection of fine and exotic woods
is an understatement. They have australian lacewood, bubinga, walnut, koa
and a few thousand BF of honduran mahogany along with anything else you'd
like in sizes from 2/4 up to 12/4 and sometimes more. I'm buying the 12/4
korina so I can bookmatch it...and get this, it's only $8 per BF!! If yer
really lucky, sometimes they get quartersawn korina at the same price, but
all the stuff they have ATM is pretty flatsawn. Their number is (206)
623-0334, ask for Tino.
--
J. Durango
"Self-restraint enhances one's energy. Self-restraint is said to be sacred.
The man of self-restraint becomes sinless and fearless and wins great
results. One that is self-restrained sleeps happily and wakes happily. He
sojourns happily in the world and his mind always remains cheerful. Every
kind of excitement is quietly controlled by self-restraint. One that is not
self-restrained fails in a similar endeavour." - The Mahabharata, Santi
Parva
"Chris Johnson" <cmjo...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3CCA9630...@cfl.rr.com...
Jonny Durango
I'm quite sure I remembered reading Dan Erlewine say that longer scale =
longer sustain....I did some quick research just to make sure, here's what I
found:
http://www.guitar.com/columns/viewcolumn.asp?columnID=27 - "Given equal
string gauge, a longer scale length gives you more tension, which means a
stiffer feel, more sustain, and brighter tone."
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/WarrenAllen/scale.htm - "A longer
scale will, to a point, give more sustain. The reason for this is that the
tighter a string is stretched, the longer it will sustain, and for a string
of any given thickness, the string at the longer scale will have to be
tensioned higher than the string at the shorter scale to reach the same
pitch."
http://www.bobgill.demon.co.uk/scalelength.html - "Longer Scale Lengths: The
natural string vibration will be longer and therefore sustain is increased."
You can also reference Erlewine's "Guitar Repair...." book for essentially
the same information.
--
J. Durango
"Self-restraint enhances one's energy. Self-restraint is said to be sacred.
The man of self-restraint becomes sinless and fearless and wins great
results. One that is self-restrained sleeps happily and wakes happily. He
sojourns happily in the world and his mind always remains cheerful. Every
kind of excitement is quietly controlled by self-restraint. One that is not
self-restrained fails in a similar endeavour." - The Mahabharata, Santi
Parva
"Nebuchadnezzar" <d...@zen-pharaohs.com> wrote in message
news:gFyy8.71681$S65....@news.easynews.com...
Chris Johnson
Stan Gosnell wrote:
If sustain is optimized, there will be less "body tone" from the instrument
and more of the sound will simply be the string vibrating in air. So, a
balance has to be struck between sustain and tone. Go too far toward
the tone side, and you have made an instrument that needs a bow unless
you LIKE playing pizzicato.
I mentioned in an earlier post that sustain is a function of the resonant
characteristics of the materials. Not necessarily stiffness. What is
important to sustain is that the material can 'ring' well.
An IDEAL example is various types of xylophones, marimbas,
etc in comparison with each other. The ones with fine wood
resonators (Blocks? Keys?) will have a rich tone and moderate
to good sustain, while one with, say, aluminum resonators will
ring like a bell but the tone is metallic rather than woody and rich.
Make the resonators out of bell brass and you'll have something
that rings for a long time, and make them out of a wood that has
lousy resonant characteristics and it'll be pretty dead.
CJ
Jonny Durango
just means it will decay slower....tone will be generated by the wood
regardless of string tension and the ratio of "wood tone" to "string tone"
will always be more or less equal regardless of scale length.
The way to control wether your sound will come predominately from the
wood or the strings is by your choice of wood and pickups and more
importantly, how you mount the pickups. In a strat, the pickups are mounted
to the pickguard and do not come in contact with the body, therefor they get
most of their "tone" from the strings. This attributes to their glassy,
sharp, bright/metallic tone. Likewise, it doesn't much matter what kind of
wood you use to build a strat (at least as compared to a PRS or LP) because
most of your tone is coming from the strings and the pickguard (there was a
big debate a while back about "pickguard" tone and MOTO vs. plastic).
In a les paul equipped with humbuckers mounted directly to the wood, the
tone is much warmer and earthy, in part due to the nature of the pickups
themselves, but also because they are mounted directly to the wood, which is
usually high quality resonant wood like mahogany (you'll notice a lot of
good-sounding strats are made of press-board, while any LP made of the same
sounds like utter shit since most of it's sound comes only from the
vibrating strings who's frequency do not compliment humbuckers well). You'll
also notice that in strat style guitars such as the anderson drop top where
the single coil pickups are mounted to the wood body w/o a pickguard, the
wood will play a much bigger role in generating tone. There is a big
difference between basswood and maple, whereas in a regular strat you
probably couldn't tell the difference when plugged in. </end rant>
--
J. Durango
"Self-restraint enhances one's energy. Self-restraint is said to be sacred.
The man of self-restraint becomes sinless and fearless and wins great
results. One that is self-restrained sleeps happily and wakes happily. He
sojourns happily in the world and his mind always remains cheerful. Every
kind of excitement is quietly controlled by self-restraint. One that is not
self-restrained fails in a similar endeavour." - The Mahabharata, Santi
Parva
"Chris Johnson" <cmjo...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3CCB1B51...@cfl.rr.com...
Chris Johnson
Jonny Durango wrote:
> Sustain doesn't necessarily mean the vibrating string will be louder, it
> just means it will decay slower....tone will be generated by the wood
> regardless of string tension and the ratio of "wood tone" to "string tone"
> will always be more or less equal regardless of scale length.
It's more of a string mass to body mass ratio. Construction methods are
certainly a factor, but lightly built instruments can be demonstrated to be
acoustically louder than more heavily built instruments made to the same
general design and with the same materials. Case in point: Violins.
The finest ones are generally built as light as is possible without collapsing
under their own stresses. They vibrate strongly as a result, and they are
quick to respond to changes in playing. In the case of a bowed instrument,
though, a more heavily built instrument can attain fairly high volume levels,
too, given that bowing can input energy to the instrument continuously for
as long as you bow. However, a more heavily built instrument is slower
to respond. In actual practice, a guitar, being a plucked instrument, will
be louder if it is more lightly built, since you can't pick continuously.
>
> The way to control wether your sound will come predominately from the
> wood or the strings is by your choice of wood and pickups and more
> importantly, how you mount the pickups. In a strat, the pickups are mounted
> to the pickguard and do not come in contact with the body, therefor they get
> most of their "tone" from the strings. This attributes to their glassy,
> sharp, bright/metallic tone. Likewise, it doesn't much matter what kind of
> wood you use to build a strat (at least as compared to a PRS or LP) because
> most of your tone is coming from the strings and the pickguard (there was a
> big debate a while back about "pickguard" tone and MOTO vs. plastic).
> In a les paul equipped with humbuckers mounted directly to the wood, the
> tone is much warmer and earthy, in part due to the nature of the pickups
> themselves, but also because they are mounted directly to the wood,
Uh, no, they're not. The standard humbucker mounting configuration has
the pickup fully suspended from a plastic mounting ring which is in turn
secured to the body with four wood screws. On both Fender style
standard mounting (Strat, etc) with the pickups suspended from the pickguard
and standard humbucker mounting, in both cases the pickups are suspended
from a plastic support structure which is in turn screwed to the wooden body.
It is easy enough to secure either pickup type directly to the body. The tone
will change significantly when you do so. The bass notes will clean up,
particularly on a humbucking pickup, for one thing.
> which is
> usually high quality resonant wood like mahogany (you'll notice a lot of
> good-sounding strats are made of press-board, while any LP made of the same
> sounds like utter shit since most of it's sound comes only from the
> vibrating strings who's frequency do not compliment humbuckers well). You'll
> also notice that in strat style guitars such as the anderson drop top where
> the single coil pickups are mounted to the wood body w/o a pickguard, the
> wood will play a much bigger role in generating tone. There is a big
> difference between basswood and maple, whereas in a regular strat you
> probably couldn't tell the difference when plugged in. </end rant>
I'd agree with most of that.
I've considered building a Les Paul type guitar, using standard construction
techniques and materials, but installing true Strat electronics in it, just as
an experiment. I've certainly seen two humbuckers in Strats enough times,
but I've never seen a true Strat setup in a Les Paul. It would be interesting
to see how it sounded when plugged in.
CJ
Nebuchadnezzar
"Jonny Durango" <jonnydura...@PLEASEattbi.com> wrote in message
> Hmmm, I'm afraid you are mistaken about scale length in relation to
sustain.
No, I really don't think so. The physics is pretty clear. Like I said, some
things that a lot of people believe are not necessarily so.
> I'm quite sure I remembered reading Dan Erlewine say that longer scale =
> longer sustain....
Interesting question as to what is the basis for his claim?
> http://www.guitar.com/columns/viewcolumn.asp?columnID=27 - "Given equal
> string gauge, a longer scale length gives you more tension, which means a
> stiffer feel, more sustain, and brighter tone."
Same question.
> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/WarrenAllen/scale.htm - "A longer
> scale will, to a point, give more sustain.
Now at least this guy gives a reason for the claim:
> The reason for this is that the
> tighter a string is stretched, the longer it will sustain,
But the problem with this is that it's not obvious what conditions they
expect this to be true under. It's _not_ true without qualification, in
particular, if you consider the most obvious situation for testing whether
this is true or false, it's false.
For example in the situation where a string is stretched between two fixed
points on an entirely rigid support, then the string doesn't lose energy
except through internal dissipation and moving air. Both of these effects
get rid of about the same amount of energy through each cycle of the motion,
so increasing the frequency of the motion just gets rid of that much more
energy in the same time.
> and for a string
> of any given thickness, the string at the longer scale will have to be
> tensioned higher than the string at the shorter scale to reach the same
> pitch."
This part is true. This is also a question that you can work out the physics
in detail. And Fletcher and Rossing have done just this in their book
_Physics of Musical Instruments_ for a relatively realistic equation of
motion for a plucked string.
If you want I can dredge up the details from the last time I worked this out
myself - I may have them on file somewhere. The point is that if you look
into the decay rates of the motion, scale length gets cancelled out except
for air resistance. And the same frequency the air resistance is less for
the shorter string.
> http://www.bobgill.demon.co.uk/scalelength.html - "Longer Scale Lengths:
The
> natural string vibration will be longer and therefore sustain is
increased."
This ain't right either. If you change the scale length but not the pitch,
then the natural vibration is neither longer nor shorter.
> You can also reference Erlewine's "Guitar Repair...." book for essentially
> the same information.
Trouble is that you can actually get a bunch of guitars and see for
yourself. A lot of people have. Now the effect of scale length is real, but
it's also small. You can get guitars all the way from 22.5" to 25.5" with
all different amounts of sustain. A lot of it depends on setup, so you have
to be careful that the guitars are all well set-up. In my personal
experience, one particular PRS Santana (24.5" scale) has about as long a
sustain as any other guitar here (and that's several dozen guitars), but
there is also one particular Schecter PT (25.5" scale) that is not far
behind it. My favorite 22.5" scale guitar
(http://www.zen-pharaohs.com/guitars/Fender/Duo_Sonic/duo-soni.htm) isn't as
long as that one, but it has no shortage of sustain. So it's not hard for me
to see why there are a bunch of conflicting views on this. For example, a
PRS representative once told me that the reason the Santanas had such long
sustain was that they had short scale and thick necks. That was the first
time I looked into this question. The thick neck I'm not really convinced
one way or another - I understand the physics, but the physics could support
more sustain or less sustain depending on the rest of the guitar's
vibrational characteristics. But the short scale idea actually is supported
by the physics.
And one final note is to consider that for the scale length change that you
are considering - 26" as opposed to 25.5" or 24.75", etc., it's not that big
of a change. It amounts to about 2% - 5%. It should be easy to believe that
a more or less resonant piece of wood will contribute more to the overall
result than the scale length since the elastic properties of wood can vary
by a lot more than this.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Nebuchadnezzar
> Sustain is the enemy of acoustic output for a guitar body.
You have a reason to expect the thread to be about acoustic, but the
original guy is talking about a solid body electric.
Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Kim Strickland
26 " scales are not rare with classical guitars. I have one with a 660
mm scale (works out really close to 26 "), along with another at 655 mm.
Muriel Anderson's Paul McGill is actually 665 mm. She is a bit below
average height, with small hands, and she gets around pretty well on
that instrument. One reason a luthier will do this with a classical is
to get more string mass to drive the top to increase volume. There is
always a constant struggle to increase volume with nylon string guitars.
Longer scale instruments do tend to be a bit brighter (more higher
harmonics) and seem to have a bit better lower bass (probably due to a
bit bigger soundboard, and overall greater loudness), but the difference
is ussually pretty subtle, since the proportional difference is not that
great. Shorter scale instruments tend to have a "sweeter" tone, with
more emphasis on the lower order harmonics that your ear is more
sensitive to.
For any acoustic, if you have a light top to get efficient transfer of
energy from string to top to air, then your sustain will be basically
determined by the efficiency of the top. A very efficient top will give
less sustain and sound more "punchy" or dynamic. For an extreme example
of this, listen to a banjo sometime. A thicker, stiffer top may not be
as loud, but it may give better sustain. There are times when that is
what you want.
The original poster was really concerned with a solid body electric.
Here, wind resistance by the string may have a measurable effect.
Still, the difference between a 24 3/4 " scale and a 26 " scale is not
really a lot. You are looking at less than a 10 % difference. More of
your string energy losses are from sound being absorbed by the neck and
body of the guitar. Stiff, massive structures will minimize energy loss
from the strings, since these structures' resonant frequencies will be
higher than the strings' resonant frequencies, and reduce resonant
interactions between the strings and the neck and body of the guitar. I
don't know that I would like the sound of a guitar built from an old
railroad rail though. One reason for making wood selections is to
selectively absorb string harmonics for a more pleasing tone,
essentially using your materials choice as a lossy, complex, multi-pole
bandpass filter. This is where the art of luthiery comes in.
There is another issue that comes into play with all guitars, but
especially with lighter instruments. Any place your body contacts the
guitar enables some energy to be dissipated. Any vibrational energy
that you feel from the guitar is energy that is not going to be heard by
your listener. This is one reason classical guitarists sit down and
hold the guitar that way, part of the posture is to minimize contact
with the back of the insturment with the body, and to only touch the top
at the rim, where the guitar is pretty rigid. This is also the concept
behind the "tone guard" that some mandolinists install on the backs of
their mandolins.
Kim Strickland
Chris Johnson
Nebuchadnezzar wrote:
>
>
> The long scale length works against long sustain in a solid body electric.
> The difference in tension and string gauge more or less cancel each other
> out, but the extra air resistance isn't cancelled out by anything. It's not
> a huge effect, but if you play a lot of short and long scale guitars you
> might notice that the sustain tends to be in the shorter scale.
>
I'm not so sure that's the reason. Anyone who's ever played a guitar
has noticed that there's progressively less and less sustain to be had on
the higher frets. If what you suggest is true, sustain would be longer
as you went up the neck, yet it's the open position that has the most
sustain.
I think there are more factors involved.
CJ