Is a heavier acoustic a better thing?

crunchman

stickyfiddle said:

I have 2 acoustics. My HD28 is quite heavy, not necessarily that loud for the model, but sounds really sweet and projects well. 

My Atkin 47 is a smaller, mahogany-er affair, weights next to nothing and is really loud when playing, but I think doesn't fill a room so well. 

I don't think there is a single rule where heavier/lighter = better

There is something about Martin Dreadnoughts that does project well.  I've got an HD28VE that doesn't seem especially loud to me as a player, but it does project very well.  I used to have another guitar that sounded louder to me when playing, but a dB meter a few metres in front of the guitar said otherwise.  The Martin was around 3dB louder.

bertie

I think ( and people like Lewy correct me)  if you're a heavy strummer,  belting out those bollock shaking chords, that dont really change in punch and volume  then a heavy dread is beneficial ?   but if you're more finger / hybrid  you need the nuances and responsive dynamics to volume that a lighter more subtle build gives you

or is that complete bollocksweat  ? 

Kittyfrisk

earwighoney said:

TimmyO said:

There's definitely at least one British luthier whose "thing" is that his acoustic guitars are really heavy by design - it's bugging me that I can't remember his name - but I played one and it was REALLY noticeable and prompted the conversation with wherever I was (I can't remember if it was at a show or a shop - not much help am I really...) but it was his particular, deliberate approach to guitar building 

Was it Sobell or NK Forster?

Don't know about Stephan Sobell, but I don't think it would be a starting point for Nigel Forster as a basic design ethic. He is far too intelligent to adhere to a rigid ethos & some of his builds were beautifully featherweight.

Lewy

bertie said:

I think ( and people like Lewy correct me)  if you're a heavy strummer,  belting out those bollock shaking chords, that dont really change in punch and volume  then a heavy dread is beneficial ?   but if you're more finger / hybrid  you need the nuances and responsive dynamics to volume that a lighter more subtle build gives you

or is that complete bollocksweat  ? 

Well I wouldn't say it was complete bollocksweat...maybe just a hint of scrotal clamminess perhaps?

For me it's about what you need in terms of dynamic range and that comes from a combination of design, materials, bracing etc. My Collings dread has almost limitless dynamic range - you can hit it past the point of reasonable necessity and it will just get louder and louder. That comes at a price, and that price is that at the lower end of the dynamic range, the minimum input effort to pull a nice tone out of it is higher than some other guitars. You can't tickle it and hope for the magic. But it can punch a bass note run through any noisy session. I wouldn't say that's anything to do with weight - more down to the Adirondack top and how it's braced. My Martin dread is different - you can get monster tone from it with a way lighter touch but I suspect it would start topping out in dynamic range before the Collings. I haven't really compared them in that way. It's more lightly braced than the Collings and you feel it vibrating more when you play it, but I think it might be a touch heavier physically overall. Probably because of the neck being massive.

Tannin

Lewy is on the right track here. It comes down to basic physics. Red Spruce (like the top of Lewy's Collings, or my Guild for that matter) is light and very stiff. Although it is light, the stiffness means that it's not so easy to get moving, and light, delicate fingerstyle playing really isn't what it's built for. You have to give it a bit of stick. But it will belt out an astonishing volume if you do. (One reason for that is that the top, being very stiff, is also very efficient - it spends more of its energy budget moving air  and less of it on internal flexing. The tradeoff of that stiffness is harshness. You can't get the same smoothness and tonal richness and delicacy out of a hard top as you can out of something soft like cedar or redwood.

Note that I'm talking about tops here. Tops do most of the work and make most of the sound, but don't contribute very much to the weight of a guitar either way. 

artiebear

A whole lot depends upon whether one is defining a heavy guitar as being built to survive a nuclear attack or heavier due to a particular construction ethos or simply down to the fact that some woods are heavier than others ( heavily braced being a completely different issue ).

I have a few heavier ( not heavy ) guitars that fall into the build ethos and or wood combo part of this discussion. In all cases they are ridiculously good guitars built by individuals at the top of their game. I have some feather light guitars ( thinking particularly of a 3 Brazilian r/w  guitars with differing types of spruce that also sound great, but are more delicate in terms of using as touring instruments ( they have all been well gigged over the years ).

My experience has been that if the builder understands the tolerances they are working towards while understanding the stresses and strains placed upon an instrument as a professional tool, perceived weight matters little. I have owned and played some guitars over the years ( no names ) that  being very lightly built were unable to withstand the slightest changes in temperature and humidity, eventually sounding crap even after a lot of TLC, a few others were and still are getting better all the time. 

It is also a myth that lightly built guitars resonate more ( try the aforementioned Stefan Sobell's guitars, if you want an example of incredible dynamics, sustain and tonal variation while being built to a very distinct set of parameters ). I have had lightly built guitars which could either be described as tonally feathery and delicate  or, if being honest, weak.

I do agree with @icbm regarding one makers guitars. That was heavy for it's own sake without much rationale behind it as far as I could see.