Tailpiece and ringing overtones

kevingcox

Hey folks (especially you luthiers out there),

I was trying to lay down some tracks today and the sound engineer noticed what I've always known: my guitar has some serious ringing overtones and harmonics when I play rhythm. On Ben's suggestion we took to shoving things under the tailpiece until we reined the noise into acceptable recording levels.

I was wondering if anyone has experience with this and can help me be a bit more scientific than shoving the cloth from my sunglasses under the tailpiece. What materials are best? Perhaps a strip of leather? What am I actually trying to do, just fill up that space with some absorbing material? or do I want to actually touch both the tailpiece and the top of the guitar?

I don't have great ears for prolonged trial and error with this kind of thing, I just want to have some idea of what I need to do to make a kind of semi-permanent go-to fix that I can toss (or keep) in there to prevent the issue.

Thanks for any suggestions,

-K

Bones

You can put sound deadening stick on material like they use on the inside of car doors to the underside of the sheet metal part of the tailpiece to dampen it.

Also, if the ringing is coming from the strings between the bridge and tailpiece you can wrap them with a strip of velcro or wind yard or thin rope thru them.

Experiment and see what stops it.