'A resonant body gives good sustain'. Another myth?

impmann

guitars4you said:

Nobody needs that 'Parisienne Walkways note/sustain' -

FTFY ;-)

TBH, that was feedback anyway - much like the stuff Santana does (the stuff he does other than noodle inanely over the vocalist). You can push any guitar into harmonic feedback given enough gain/volume and pointing the guitar in the right place.

Three-ColourSunburst

guitars4you said:

Hard to know what sustain levels you are talking about and require

I'm not looking for any particular level of sustain, just questioning the common belief that a 'resonant' guitar will also be one that has good sustain.

HAL9000

Surely it's about how all the different bits work together. Not just the resonance of, say, the body. I don't know the physics but would guess that resonance is a two-way thing - i.e. a resonant guitar is not only taking energy from the strings but is also putting some of that energy back as pleasing harmonic overtones. 

Three-ColourSunburst

HAL9000 said:

Surely it's about how all the different bits work together. Not just the resonance of, say, the body. I don't know the physics but would guess that resonance is a two-way thing - i.e. a resonant guitar is not only taking energy from the strings but is also putting some of that energy back as pleasing harmonic overtones. 

Nope. That Smith bloke is right about one thing, 'Instruments are subtractive'.

richardhomer

When Les Paul experimented with 'The Log' his aim was to get 'pure' string tone - with maximum sustain. The Les Paul guitar certainly is 'more' in tune with this aim than say, a Telecaster.

My experience is that heavy/inert guitars (e.g. 70s LPs, Yamaha SGs, etc) give strong sustain - but aren't particularly dynamic. Lighter, more resonant guitars seem to have greater dynamics - and can be 'coaxed' into sustain with vibrato. As ever, these are generalisations - there are exceptions.

Exorcist

Corvus said:

One Firebird I had resonated a lot and had disappointing sustain, my current one vibes less and has more sustain. Which made me think resonating might well be lost energy, lost sustain.

But it doesn't always matter, I want natural sustain from some guitars and others just not to be like banjos. When assessing a guitar for me it's about the sound, feel, response etc, resonance is one of the last things I'd think about.

Interesting about another firebird!

I never really worried about sustain, but after having a particular firebird - which sounded very resonant unplugged, but was lacking sustain once plugged in, it changed my mind. It was very noticeable and I ended up sitting there playing each of my guitars and counting the sustaining note ( like a madman) for hours, particular riffs just died when I held the note with a few bends (it was NOT frets etc) - I probably would have agreed with most of the comments about 'not needing all that sustain' but as soon as I played that guitar with crap sustain I realized I definitely do NEED a reasonable amount of sustain for the style I play. Interestingly, My LP Jr, is very resonant acoustically, sustains for an age, and is quite heavy - so breaks a whole bunch of myths... so I reckon its just down to the guitar, some do sustain, some do resonance, some do both (regardless of weight) etc

WezV

forget sustain, focus on string vibration and where that energy goes - the whole lifecycle of the note and the whole system.

With heavy guitars, only a little string energy is lost to the body so the string keeps vibrating longer.   You get a fast attack and a consistent note.

Take a lighter and more resonant guitar, more string energy is given to the body right from the start... but that energy isn't lost, some of it is fed back into the string, almost filtered by the body.  this note may last just as long as the one on the heavy 80's Yamaha, but it will be a very different lifecycle

That is obviously massively simplified, but if you just measured the length of note you miss the complexity of the whole system.   "Sustain" matters for short notes just as much as the long ones as its directly related to the rest of the notes lifecycle

mudslide73

Johan Segbourn made some YT videos of Epiphone LP necks bolted onto fenceposts then strung up with Epi H/W with guitar sounding results. 

crunchman

mudslide73 said:

Johan Segbourn made some YT videos of Epiphone LP necks bolted onto fenceposts then strung up with Epi H/W with guitar sounding results. 

Is that the video at the start of the other thread about body woods?

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/112703/body-wood-affects-tone/p1

guitars4you

Three-ColourSunburst said:

guitars4you said:

Hard to know what sustain levels you are talking about and require

I'm not looking for any particular level of sustain, just questioning the common belief that a 'resonant' guitar will also be one that has good sustain.

I'm not sure there is a common belief as such - maybe there is, but I've personally not endorsed it or denied it - I think each guitar has to be judged on its own basis and its own qualities and different players will find a guitar does something different for them, be it the same guitar or a different guitar - I've played heavy quitars with good qualities and bad and likewise with lighter guitars - Again I've heard heavy guitars with good acoustic and/or vibrant properties and bad and likewise the same goes for lighter guitars - I'm often perplexed at the 'new trend' for wanting to know the weight of the guitar' - Granted if you have a bad back then it is good to know - Whilst I think say a Strat is generally accepted to but around 7-8lbs, the weight on its own does not tell me one-iota how it will feel, play and sound, or indeed any other subtle variations or indeed the finer nuances that we look for when playing a guitar

some guitars just have a mojo we like and others don't - how to define that mojo I don't know

Funkfingers

People like myths. It saves them bothering to think or make proper investigations.

Cirrus

A real life example I experienced last month; looking at Gretsch hollow body guitars. I played a few "5420" shape guitars, which have a single cutaway and a deeper body, and a few "5422" shapes, which have double cutaway and shallower body.

Otherwise, they're the same - scale length, hardware, pickups, wood types, construction methods, frets, etc etc.

All the 5420s had a particular pillowy, soft low end, and all the 5422s were punchier and meaner sounding through an amp. I tried both kinds through two different AC30s, two different AC15s and a fender something or other over a few weeks in different guitar shops.

So the resonances in the body, in this case in the air inside the guitar I guess, definitely impacted the amplifier tone.

Specifically re; sustain, I've no idea. I've got a Gibson Explorer which is quite resonant - you feel it through your belly when you strum a chord - and has fine sustain. But then, "sustain" as a property is never something I've been that focused on - I think it only matters really if you're playing loud high gain and want single notes to feed back musically, rather than dying and being replaced by screaming feedback. To a certain extent, the longer and louder the sustain, the less the note attack is going to reach out and grab you - and I like attacky guitars.

Sassafras

Much better to try a load of guitars than try and apply sweeping generalisations to different types. They all have their own sound.

WezV

Sassafras said:

Much better to try a load of guitars than try and apply sweeping generalisations to different types. They all have their own sound.

That's great for a player, doesn't work so much for a builder

Wolfetone

Anyone that's owned an SG2000/3000 will know that this is true.

WezV

Wolfetone said:

Anyone that's owned an SG2000/3000 will know that this is true.

They certainly took that approach to the extreme and it works.  They are very direct sounding guitars.  

There are different approaches to achieving sustain that also work, erm, differently.

edit:  you get someone with a 6lb strat that sustains just as long.  They exist. The audible note may last as long, but the attack, bloom, decay etc will be very different 

Evilmags

The answer is really simple physics. The louder the amp the more difference in sustain in a resonant guitar. (Accoustic/335/Tele). Assuming the same hardware a light resonant bit of wood will suck more energy from the strings than heavy non resonant stuff. As you increase volume the more resonant wood will transmit more vibrations to the string and resonate more.  Things that dissipate energy, like springs, shit bridges, poor joins, glue, thick finishes ect also contribute to resonance. 

WezV

Evilmags said:

The answer is really simple physics. The louder the amp the more difference in sustain in a resonant guitar. (Accoustic/335/Tele). Assuming the same hardware a light resonant bit of wood will suck more energy from the strings than heavy non resonant stuff. As you increase volume the more resonant wood will transmit more vibrations to the string and resonate more.  Things that dissipate energy, like springs, shit bridges, poor joins, glue, thick finishes ect also contribute to resonance. 

I think you get some of that feedback even without volume.  Things like thin & large flappy headstocks almost seem to drive it.  But a small and stiff headstock helps direct sustain by not wasting string energy in the first place.  

I believe really light and resonant wood will feed vibration back into the string as the strings natural and direct sustain dies down.


 volume always helps though

Three-ColourSunburst

Evilmags said:

The answer is really simple physics. The louder the amp the more difference in sustain in a resonant guitar.

Good point.

That does seem to make sense as, in this case, something other than the small amount of energy in the strings is driving the resonant body. I guess that this turns the whole argument around, as whilst it might be true that a resonant body will suck energy from the vibrating strings and so reduce sustain, if you play loudly enough to make the body resonate you can add far more energy to the system, especially at those resonant frequencies.

I guess the only issue is just how consistent that resonance might be and whether it will tend to produce 'wolf tones', as can happen with a bowed acoustic instrument - where once again one can continue to add energy to the system, this time via the bow.

Cirrus

Evilmags said:

The answer is really simple physics. The louder the amp the more difference in sustain in a resonant guitar. (Accoustic/335/Tele). Assuming the same hardware a light resonant bit of wood will suck more energy from the strings than heavy non resonant stuff. As you increase volume the more resonant wood will transmit more vibrations to the string and resonate more.  Things that dissipate energy, like springs, shit bridges, poor joins, glue, thick finishes ect also contribute to resonance. 

Yeah, this is it. I was thinking about it in the shower earlier  It's the symbiosis between the guitar and amp together that make a loud electric guitar feel alive in your hands - It's a feedback loop (sometimes literally)