New guitars and unbalanced tones

Al Watsky · December 2013

[-O< the little guy is praying to the g-d of "wolf" tones and parasitic oscillations . New guitars are fun and fascinating . All new guitars have notes that are more or less in tune with the cavity resonance/top tone. They tend to be loud and die quickly. If you play the guitar enough you will learn where they are and you will nuance them. Or not. I have several instruments that have a peak at A 440 or there a bouts. Sometimes I tune to 441. It confuses the resonance and feels somewhat smoother. But nothing will change this "problem" apart from weight modifications of one sort or another. When I was obsessing about this stuff way back when my instructor noted that if he was having that sort of trouble he would make a game of using that note "a lot" , sometimes in the case of a new instrument in the first year or two after build things will change for the better. I've experimented with adding weights on braces , that sort of thing, it works, but is time consuming.
If its a well played guitar it will function despite the resonant peaks. Its really a "practice room problem". Sure you can notice these things, but unless they prevent you from practicing or playing a gig its really no big deal.
I finished up a guitar for a kid yesterday. He was having trouble of this sort. In this guitars case it was an E frequency. Low E. He has gigs to play, he'll find a way around it.
Don't let stuff like this stop you from practicing . If the instrument was made to a good model using normal design and method it will function.
Lately there is a fad for very lightly constructed JG guitars. Thats a dead end. If you have one of those ? Get the guy to put on a heavier top. That will solve several problems . But I digress. L-)

Jazzaferri · December 2013

Doesn 't changing the area of the soundhole very slightly drop the resonant pitch a bit too?

Al Watsky · December 2013

Yep, it does.
Its a crap shoot though, you might just move the problem else where. In fact thats the usual outcome.
I'm not sure there are clear roads to the outcome of these kinds of modifications. I've done plenty of things over the years, as have many others, but I would not suggest any course of action of any sort that you can't reverse. So any removal of any wood fiber is a no no.
If someone is OK with tinkering with their own cheap mass produced instrument thats fine, I suppose, but as a professional I would not want to be involved with that.
There are so many good instruments if a person has big problems with one, its better for them to sell and get another. So many good instruments have been ruined by tinkering. Many really beautiful and rare things have been lost to Mr. Mechanic tinkerers. [-X

bluetrain · December 2013

Lately there is a fad for very lightly constructed JG guitars. Thats a dead end.

I don't see it as a lately trend. Didn't Django's famous Selmer #503 weighted 1650g? Not so many new guitars come close to that expect Holo, Dupont VR and Barault as far as I know.