Thunker GJ Guitar

effhole

Hey gang, I got a nice custom made guitar, locally made, love the feel of it. But its too dark. A luthier buddy of mine did some work to try and brighten it up (a couple different styles of bridges), and it worked somewhat, but its still too dark. A "thunker" as they say.

Anyhoo, I use d'addario GJ string, and I like the sound of them for about a week, but then the brightness dies out. And its time to replace them. I dont have this problem on my other GJ guitars.

I know this is a guitar problem, that I am trying to correct with strings, but are there any GJ strings out there that are bright and hold their tone longer than a week? I tried the DR silver bronze and hated them - the sound just like an elixr to me.

thanks

P.S. if anyone knows about soundboard modification for tone, please chime in!

Steveareno

I actually prefer warmer sounding guitars and don't really like the overly bright, snappy, brittle tone of alot of GJ guitars. Hard to imagine a GJ guitar being a "thunker" (like a thick top Gibson J-50). Fortunately my Dell Arte Hommage Studio model (mahogany body) has a relatively mellow tone. In going the other direction, I found choice of pick makes a big difference to the brightness. Wegens for me were too bright, so you might want to try them. I found the Grisman Dawg picks (which I like) to be the most dark sounding (I think they're celluloid). Experimenting with different strings and action may brighten your tone. I found higher action (shimmed my bridge recently) darkened the tone. Good luck. My two centimes.
Swang on,

Tele295

You might Iike Guadalupe manouche-tone strings. They have a round core, which gives a brighter sound. Djangobooks carries them

HCQ

I have found the Guadalupe manouche-tone strings to be very bright, but didn't last long for me. A bright toned pick that I like best are the (white color) bone picks.