Acoustic playability?

rockmonster

Ok I’m not new to playing the guitar as you probably know and I started on a Spanish guitar 50 years ago. My love of guitar knows no limits but it’s always been electric solid bodied guitars. Probably coz they are easier to play- and we always aspired to the electric as they were way more cool when I was a kid. The problem is I’ve always thought this and in my dotage I’ve gone back to exploring acoustic guitars. This is what I have found so far; if you go too low on the string gauge the sound/tone disappears but they start to be able to be played. Dusty end- forget it!

My questions are these:
How come so many people play acoustic guitars given that they (for me) are f@ckin impossible to play? More like a torture device than an instrument of pleasure!
The bridge height is miles from the top of the guitar and the strings are so far away from the fretboard why? Is it the sound that decides this? Then the strings are the thickness of drain pipes. Impossible for me to play!
Am I missing something?
why don’t the factories angle the necks so you have a chance to play up the dusty end? 

Are even the hand made custom jobbers the same? I know tone is important but Christ on a bike to what cost? I hear people saying that a setup makes all the difference but really are you acoustic players just super human? When I play acoustic guitar it sounds like I’ve just learning to play!
Please enlighten me!

( I do have 3 acoustics of different value and age)

Jez6345789

For a start sounds what you are playing are in need of a decent setup. You can opt to go as low as 10’s then build up to 11 12’s.
yes you are going to lose some tone and volume but you only have to play it everyday for a month with it sounding weedier and you will be back heavier strings. You may fin with a decent setup the sound is a little better even with the lighter strings. The other thing with playing lighter strings is they can sound good enough but you have to adjust your playing to get the sweet spot.

Custom handmade guitars can be built for lighter strings if the luthier knows what they re doing and makes adjustments to the build. That said if you opted for a much lighter build to compensate then it would be more worrisome in my mind to decide I want to now get back 12’s as heavier string do make more demands.

At this point a good setup will pay dividends

sev112

11.5s would be great, Elxir and D’addario  an you hear me?

also, don’t play electric music on an acoustic - try to experiment on what makes an acoustic sound like it does.

Also have a read the front pages of Acoustic Guitar playing books, (you know the ones we skip over to get to the interesting bits) the pages about how to hold your wrist , because it is very different to rock/blues.

and learn to add pressure to your left hand fingers not by increasing left hand wrist pressure but by hugging the body of the guitar into your belly, and then it makes it much easier to finger on those nasty wider higher actioned neck

good luck, hope yo7 make some progress and get the benefit 

oh yeah, stretch and exercise your left wrist in particular before you start playing 

Stratavarious

Most acoustics at any price are usually in need of some decent setup at purchase.

You need to put the time in for fingers to learn how much pressure you actually need to apply.

Tannin

Wizzed for great questions!

* Why do people play acoustic? For lots and lots of different reasons. One is that they have a richness and depth of tone that electric guitars can only dream about. Electric guitars (well OK let's be honest here: electric pedals and pickups and amps) have a far greater range of different tones, but each different tone is relatively shallow. 

* They are not impossible to play! Those damn electric things are impossible to play! (In my experience.) This is not because I "can't play electric", it is because I have decades worth of habits and techniques built up in my muscle memory which work on acoustic and don't work on electric and that is a hell of a lot of unlearning to have to do before I can start learning. I could play electric, but I'd have to unlearn first, then learn. It would almost be easier to take up the banjo from scratch, or the piano. The same applies in reverse. Anyone who says electric guitar and acoustic guitar "are the same instrument" has no clue. Can you play the same things on both in the same way? Sure you can, but only if you avoid doing any of the things acoustics are really good at and electrics are really bad at, and also avoid the many things electrics do much, much better and acoustics badly, or sometimes not at all.

* The ideal acoustic string set is 12-53 (give or take). Some players use lighter than this, some players heavier, but it is the usual standard which almost all new guitars come with for a reason. 12s are the lightest string with really, really good tone and volume (some would say 11s, opinions differ). 10s are very weedy and thin, as a rule.

* Are acoustic strings hard to play? No. If you find them hard to play, one or more of the following applies: (a) your guitar is badly set up, or just a bad guitar. (b) You haven't put in the work - it only takes a few weeks to build up a bit of strength and learn the knack of getting good left hand grip without too much effort. We are not talking Charles Atlas stuff here. (c) You are trying to do the wrong things! This is the big one. If you are trying to do the things electric guitars do best (like big bends and crazy-man vibrato) on acoustic, you will find it very difficult, and it won't sound great either. On acoustic, you are not trying to be the wailing man lead-playing hero. You are trying to be the band. You are the bass player and the drummer and the guitar player as well. Possibly you also sing or blow on the harmonica. Acoustic playing is all about building up layers of sound and rhythm. Concentrate on that. Many great acoustic players don't even bend notes at all, or at least not so as anyone would notice. Different instrument.

* Bridge height. An acoustic guitar works by rocking the saddle back and forward. This imparts a twisting motion to the bridge, which in turn flexes the soundboard. As you reduce the height of the saddle, you reduce the leverage and thus the ability of the strings to make the top move. However the height of the bridge from the top of an acoustic guitar is typically not all that much. Less than 20mm on the two examples I just measured. That is way less than (for example) a Les Paul where (because of the strong curve of the top) if you drop a digit down to finger-rest it feels like a mighty chasm has opened under you! (What is the bridge-fingerboard height on a Tele or a Strat? Can somebody measure that and post it please?)

* Acoustic action is typically somewhere around 2-2.5mm on the bass side, 1.5-2mm on the treble side. That's measured at the 12th fret. It varies from player to player and (a bit) with different sorts of guitar (e.g., baritones tend to be a bit higher, 12-strings are often a bit lower) but that's around about right for most circumstances. Any higher becomes unnecessarily hard to play; any lower leads to loss of volume, buzzing, sitar sounds, and poor tone. As you can see from this, properly set steel string acoustic action is only slightly higher than most people would set an electric - about 0.5mm, give or take. Note that height of the bridge and saddle above the soundboard has no necessary connection with action height. To see this illustrated, look at a cello.

* Yes.

* Why don't factories angle the necks so you get a chance to play up at the dusty end? They do. Any properly set up guitar is perfectly playable at the dusty end. An acoustic will never be the dusty end monster a good electric is - the laws of physics see to that - but a good one is more than playable up there. But why buggerise about with twiddly-widdly stuff on the dusty end of an acoustic? They don't sound good up at that end (more laws-of-physics stuff: short strings don't sound like longer ones, even at the same nominal pitch - not that electric guitars don't care about that as most of your tone is coming out of the electronics) and they are harder to play because the action is slightly higher and the larger body gets in the way. Would you buy a 4WD to take to the racetrack? If you want to play twiddly-widdly stuff, use an electric. That's what electric guitars are for! If you want to play acoustic, use the magic of open strings and interesting combinations of notes sounding together - acoustics are much better at making nice tones by combining notes in all sorts of different ways than an electric can ever be.

* What condition are your acoustics in? Measure the action and post it here (as always, measure with the guitar in playing position, not on a bench). What about the nut slots? Are they correct? (Hint: put a capo on the 1st fret. Paly. Does it feel wildly different? Or about the same. A small difference is normal. If there is a big difference, something is wrong.

* What sort of acoustic are you playing? If you are expecting or wanting a lightly built, highly responsive acoustic but playing a heavier, more stage-and-strum oriented guitar, you'll work very hard trying to make it do stuff it wasn't designed or built to do. And if you are playing a highly responsive (and usually very expensive) fingerstyle guitar in a robust sort of style (i.e., normally), you'll work very hard trying to control the damn thing and stop it doing things you don't want. (It's a bit like playing an electric with the volume set much too high, you end up being afraid to touch it in case you set off an earthquake.)


* What strings are you using? Different makes of string with the same nominal gauge can be wildly different! Some (Dunlop, Elixir) are very stiff and hard on your fingers, others (Martin, Ball) are medium, others again (Galli, Adamas, La Bella) are very soft to play. And round cores offer the weight (=sound quality) of a big string with the softness of a little one. Try DR Sunbeam, Newtone, Pyramid Western Folk.

* Really are you acoustic players just super human? Yes. 

rockmonster

Very interesting thanks

BillDL

On an electric guitar a tiny bit of audible fret buzz when it's not plugged in is usually inaudible when it's amplified, so the action can be set pretty low.  Given that an acoustic guitar is intended to make an acoustic sound, that same fret buzz will be an annoyance.  The strings on an acoustic guitar are generally of a thicker gauge than on an electric, so they oscillate over a wider arc and the action needs to be a bit higher to allow for the greater latitude of movement for those wider oscillations.  It is generally accepted that you won't get the same very low action on an acoustic as you will on an electric and have it sound at its best.

guitarjack66

sev112 said:

11.5s would be great, Elxir and D’addario  an you hear me?

also, don’t play electric music on an acoustic - try to experiment on what makes an acoustic sound like it does.

Also have a read the front pages of Acoustic Guitar playing books, (you know the ones we skip over to get to the interesting bits) the pages about how to hold your wrist , because it is very different to rock/blues.

and learn to add pressure to your left hand fingers not by increasing left hand wrist pressure but by hugging the body of the guitar into your belly, and then it makes it much easier to finger on those nasty wider higher actioned neck

good luck, hope yo7 make some progress and get the benefit 

oh yeah, stretch and exercise your left wrist in particular before you start playing 

I saw a video from a piano teacher yesterday which gave me food for thought and could apply to guitar too. She said something like 'Make sure you are warm yourself before you start doing hand warm up exercises.' I thought this was an interesting tip.

thomasross20

Wow great replies, especially @Tannin (we are superheroes lol)

mo6020

Tannin said:

Wizzed for great questions!

* Why do people play acoustic? For lots and lots of different reasons. One is that they have a richness and depth of tone that electric guitars can only dream about. Electric guitars (well OK let's be honest here: electric pedals and pickups and amps) have a far greater range of different tones, but each different tone is relatively shallow. 

* They are not impossible to play! Those damn electric things are impossible to play! (In my experience.) This is not because I "can't play electric", it is because I have decades worth of habits and techniques built up in my muscle memory which work on acoustic and don't work on electric and that is a hell of a lot of unlearning to have to do before I can start learning. I could play electric, but I'd have to unlearn first, then learn. It would almost be easier to take up the banjo from scratch, or the piano. The same applies in reverse. Anyone who says electric guitar and acoustic guitar "are the same instrument" has no clue. Can you play the same things on both in the same way? Sure you can, but only if you avoid doing any of the things acoustics are really good at and electrics are really bad at, and also avoid the many things electrics do much, much better and acoustics badly, or sometimes not at all.

* The ideal acoustic string set is 12-53 (give or take). Some players use lighter than this, some players heavier, but it is the usual standard which almost all new guitars come with for a reason. 12s are the lightest string with really, really good tone and volume (some would say 11s, opinions differ). 10s are very weedy and thin, as a rule.

* Are acoustic strings hard to play? No. If you find them hard to play, one or more of the following applies: (a) your guitar is badly set up, or just a bad guitar. (b) You haven't put in the work - it only takes a few weeks to build up a bit of strength and learn the knack of getting good left hand grip without too much effort. We are not talking Charles Atlas stuff here. (c) You are trying to do the wrong things! This is the big one. If you are trying to do the things electric guitars do best (like big bends and crazy-man vibrato) on acoustic, you will find it very difficult, and it won't sound great either. On acoustic, you are not trying to be the wailing man lead-playing hero. You are trying to be the band. You are the bass player and the drummer and the guitar player as well. Possibly you also sing or blow on the harmonica. Acoustic playing is all about building up layers of sound and rhythm. Concentrate on that. Many great acoustic players don't even bend notes at all, or at least not so as anyone would notice. Different instrument.

* Bridge height. An acoustic guitar works by rocking the saddle back and forward. This imparts a twisting motion to the bridge, which in turn flexes the soundboard. As you reduce the height of the saddle, you reduce the leverage and thus the ability of the strings to make the top move. However the height of the bridge from the top of an acoustic guitar is typically not all that much. Less than 20mm on the two examples I just measured. That is way less than (for example) a Les Paul where (because of the strong curve of the top) if you drop a digit down to finger-rest it feels like a mighty chasm has opened under you! (What is the bridge-fingerboard height on a Tele or a Strat? Can somebody measure that and post it please?)

* Acoustic action is typically somewhere around 2-2.5mm on the bass side, 1.5-2mm on the treble side. That's measured at the 12th fret. It varies from player to player and (a bit) with different sorts of guitar (e.g., baritones tend to be a bit higher, 12-strings are often a bit lower) but that's around about right for most circumstances. Any higher becomes unnecessarily hard to play; any lower leads to loss of volume, buzzing, sitar sounds, and poor tone. As you can see from this, properly set steel string acoustic action is only slightly higher than most people would set an electric - about 0.5mm, give or take. Note that height of the bridge and saddle above the soundboard has no necessary connection with action height. To see this illustrated, look at a cello.

* Yes.

* Why don't factories angle the necks so you get a chance to play up at the dusty end? They do. Any properly set up guitar is perfectly playable at the dusty end. An acoustic will never be the dusty end monster a good electric is - the laws of physics see to that - but a good one is more than playable up there. But why buggerise about with twiddly-widdly stuff on the dusty end of an acoustic? They don't sound good up at that end (more laws-of-physics stuff: short strings don't sound like longer ones, even at the same nominal pitch - not that electric guitars don't care about that as most of your tone is coming out of the electronics) and they are harder to play because the action is slightly higher and the larger body gets in the way. Would you buy a 4WD to take to the racetrack? If you want to play twiddly-widdly stuff, use an electric. That's what electric guitars are for! If you want to play acoustic, use the magic of open strings and interesting combinations of notes sounding together - acoustics are much better at making nice tones by combining notes in all sorts of different ways than an electric can ever be.

* What condition are your acoustics in? Measure the action and post it here (as always, measure with the guitar in playing position, not on a bench). What about the nut slots? Are they correct? (Hint: put a capo on the 1st fret. Paly. Does it feel wildly different? Or about the same. A small difference is normal. If there is a big difference, something is wrong.

* What sort of acoustic are you playing? If you are expecting or wanting a lightly built, highly responsive acoustic but playing a heavier, more stage-and-strum oriented guitar, you'll work very hard trying to make it do stuff it wasn't designed or built to do. And if you are playing a highly responsive (and usually very expensive) fingerstyle guitar in a robust sort of style (i.e., normally), you'll work very hard trying to control the damn thing and stop it doing things you don't want. (It's a bit like playing an electric with the volume set much too high, you end up being afraid to touch it in case you set off an earthquake.)


* What strings are you using? Different makes of string with the same nominal gauge can be wildly different! Some (Dunlop, Elixir) are very stiff and hard on your fingers, others (Martin, Ball) are medium, others again (Galli, Adamas, La Bella) are very soft to play. And round cores offer the weight (=sound quality) of a big string with the softness of a little one. Try DR Sunbeam, Newtone, Pyramid Western Folk.

* Really are you acoustic players just super human? Yes. 

I've been quietly lurking on this thread waiting for a comment like this, and it was worth the wait. 

Great points, thanks. 

bluecat

I have never found acoustics hard to play although I do tend to play fingerstyle, never really been a strummer. I play electric in a similar manner, a bit Mark Knopfler esqu.
I struggled a bit when I got my first electric in the beginning, two completely different guitars but I probably prefer Acoustic a little more generally.
I think most electric players have at least one Acoustic in their family of guitars.

ditchboy

I have a Larrivee and a Martin and both have been set up by the same person and both are easy to play (in relative terms) but if you have spent your life on electrics I can see why you’d find it harder. I swap between the two types almost daily so don’t notice it as much. I do agree about the dusty end though, you can forget it (especially as both are non-cutaway). Playing both often has led me down the path on being fucking useless on both types rather than semi-proficient at one. Hope this helps. 

bertie

I learnt on acoustic - back in the days when the action was "limbo" height........... and have always owned/played since.

Some acoustics can be "harder" to play than others "off the hanger"  cos they simply havent been set up properly and vice versa,   "expensive" ones tend to be easier, cos usually theyve had the time spent on them, to set them up properly (please note the use of tend and usually - not always )

Yes acoustics are harder to play than most electics down to string guage and required action - especially if you play baby guage  9s or 8s  - nothing to stop you putting them on an acoustic of course...........but........ewwww

End of the day,  its what you're used to

guitarjack66

bluecat said:

I have never found acoustics hard to play although I do tend to play fingerstyle, never really been a strummer. I play electric in a similar manner, a bit Mark Knopfler esqu.
I struggled a bit when I got my first electric in the beginning, two completely different guitars but I probably prefer Acoustic a little more generally.
I think most electric players have at least one Acoustic in their family of guitars.

I think electrics are easier to play and you feel it as soon as you've picked one up after playing on acoustic but I just feel that something is missing from them compared to an acoustic. I feel this is why electric players go down the rabbit hole of spending thousands on accessories and neglecting the part their instrument plays in the whole process. I am guessing this is what retailers want when the average teenager picks up their first electric guitar and compares themselves to the very best in the business who probably have thousands of years and decades of experience behind them and expect to close that gap in minimal time without going through the same process. I think modellers are fantastic for electric guitars and may also have a part in acoustics in years to come but the 'pick up and play' element of acoustics is the thing I like them for. 

stickyfiddle

Tannin said:

Wizzed for great questions!

* Why do people play acoustic? For lots and lots of different reasons. One is that they have a richness and depth of tone that electric guitars can only dream about. Electric guitars (well OK let's be honest here: electric pedals and pickups and amps) have a far greater range of different tones, but each different tone is relatively shallow. 
 

Great post apart from this, which is bollocks and you just feel that way because you play 99% acoustic. 99% Electric players feel the same way the other way around. And god knows we all think basses and drums basically all sounds the same.

bluecat

I give you a LOL for that comment sticky, I can't tell the sound of one drum kit from another and struggle to tell which bass I am listening to. I must be in the 1%, of players. I never really gave it much thought before this thread, I enjoy playing both, I guess it depends on the song.

sev112

stickyfiddle said:

Tannin said:

Wizzed for great questions!

* Why do people play acoustic? For lots and lots of different reasons. One is that they have a richness and depth of tone that electric guitars can only dream about. Electric guitars (well OK let's be honest here: electric pedals and pickups and amps) have a far greater range of different tones, but each different tone is relatively shallow. 
 

Great post apart from this, which is bollocks and you just feel that way because you play 99% acoustic. 99% Electric players feel the same way the other way around. And god knows we all think basses and drums basically all sounds the same.

They might feel it , but it doesn’t make it right  

theatreanchor

I flipping love playing an acoustic. Just gotta find the right size and shape! 

guitarjack66

theatreanchor said:

I flipping love playing an acoustic. Just gotta find the right size and shape! 

This is very true. I am still trying to achieve this, but I have found that the smaller I've gone the closer I've got towards it.

bluecat

I play a folk sized solid wood cutaway as my main acoustic

Cranky

@Tannin covered everything perfectly.

I love acoustics and must have had great luck finding them because they are not hard to play at all.  My strings are definitely not far from the fretboard.  

But acoustics aren’t so easy to set up yourself like electrics can be.

One thing @Tannin touched on that I’ll reiterate is getting yourself an acoustic that suits your style.  If you just want to strum, and especially if you’re a heavy strummer, a bigger bodied guitar that can take a medium-heavy string (dread or jumbo most likely) is your ticket.  I used to swear by the dreadnought, but once I got more serious about things and started working on picking technique and finger picking, bright has the allure grown of smaller bodies, lighter strings and sweeter, less bassy sounds.  I still play my dreads a lot, but the OM stays out in the rotation and I’m constantly on the lookout for a well made concert/concertina.