Acoustic playability?

Tannin

stickyfiddle said:

Tannin said:

* ..... 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.

Oh no, that observation doesn't come from playing, it comes from listening.

When I say "shallow" in this context I don't mean "thin" or "lacking in depth and roundness", I mean lacking in subtlety and variety. 

Electric guitars (well, actually pickups and pedals and amps, mostly) have a huge variety of tones available, they can do so many, many different things. Acoustics are far narrower in their range of abilities. Against this, no electric can match the extraordinary breadth and subtlety of tone an acoustic can deliver.  I would not for one moment claim that either instrument is "superior" to the other, they are just different.

bluecat

I agree, a good acoustic can create so many different sounds.

bluecat

It is not just banging away, any guitar should be played with feeling.
Otherwise why bother. We are talking about making music here, or I thought we where.

bertie

Cranky said:

 

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

they're  easier  - only three things to worry about

Nut     -  which very rarely needs "adjustment" unless its poorly cut on a new one.

Saddle - only needs sorting if its too high,  if its too low get a new one dont shim, you can get custom bone ones for £20

Relief  - small truss tweek,  wait, check  repeat if necessary

simples

rockmonster

It wasn’t my intention to open a debate about the subtle nuances of the acoustic against the lack of subtlety and variety of tone of the electric- (Really? Lol) I was more interested in why after all the years of acoustic manufacture - let’s face it significantly longer than the electric- they still seem to be way more difficult to play than necessary IMHO. ( I’ve been playing them- granted not seriously- for 50 years. It seems to me that manufacturers do not bother to set acoustics up to make them play as easy as they could- electric playability is exceptional nowadays compared to how they used to play when I was a lad. Acoustics don’t seem to have progressed in that way IMHO. I know expensive acoustics play better but cheaper electrics do too! and a pro setup will make a big difference to any musical instrument.
I love playing the guitar. Any guitar. Some I like playing more than others. They are all built to bring pleasure but some are way more pleasurable to play than others. I just hoped someone would actually have some wisdom to pass down rather than the usual you need to build up your strength in your fingers bollocks in order to play a proper guitar. I did that over 30 years ago. This thread merely confirms to me what I already knew!

sev112

The answer to me is that acoustic manufacturers don't know if you an aspiring Bet Jansch or Ed Sheeran.  If you make a guitar payable for Bert then Ed will get lots of buzzing. If you make it for Ed then Bert's fingers hurt.

A manufacturer might try and put a tunamatic Bridge on an acoustic (some have) but my guess is that neither Bert or Ed want one for their style of playing

guitarjack66

All acoustic players require different tweaks and preferences for how they play and you need to play a bit before you find that out for yourself. It's impossible to set up an acoustic guitar for everybody from the manufacturer. You have to work that out through playing.

bertie

rockmonster said:

  they still seem to be way more difficult to play than necessary IMHO. ( I’ve been playing them- granted not seriously- for 50 years. It seems to me that manufacturers do not bother to set acoustics up to make them play as easy as they could- 

no they're not, me too, and yes they do................(some of them - depends what you buy) 

for someone who's been playing that long you cant really expect an acoustic to play like an electic can you ?  really ?

oh and like it or not,   you're wrong about finger strength  - it helps, significantly - you don't have to do stupid exercises with stupid devices,  just play more on less forgiving string guages.  Your fingers get used to what they need to do, how hard to do it and when.   There's no magic bullet

or buy a Taylor

rockmonster

A manufacturer might try and put a tunamatic Bridge on an acoustic (some have) but my guess is that neither Bert or Ed want one for their style of playing

A manufacturer could also put a shit action on an acoustic and my guess is neither Statler nor Waldorf would be able to play it. Doesn’t stop either of the two muppets buying them and suggesting you change your technique coz they are really shit play either!

BillDL

rockmonster said:

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?

You can't sink the wooden bridge down into the soundboard any more realistically than you could surface mount a saddle to reduce this space.  The wooden bridge needs to be of a certain thickness for the pins and for it to be strong enough to do its job without flexing or cracking.  I suppose you could make a much thinner metal bridge and have a much thicker bridge plate inside the guitar, and devise a way to incorporate a saddle, but how would the fingerboard extension be reworked?  Part of the rigidity of the soundboard in front of the soundhole in an acoustic guitar is provided by the fingerboard extension that is glued to it.  If you reduced the height of the neck heel and fingerboard and made the fingerboard extension a 3rd of the thickness to bring it down in height to match the thinner metal bridge better, the fingerboard extension would be too thin to offer support, especially since the fret slots will be sawn almost all the way through it.

rockmonster said:

why don’t the factories angle the necks so you have a chance to play up the dusty end?

What way would you propose that the neck should be angled?  Away from the body like a Les Paul neck needs to be to accommodate the height of the bridge and keep the strings aligned for a low action?  Given that the vast majority of acoustic playing is done from the nut to around the 7th fret (evidenced by the fret wear on acoustics), your greatest string oscillation will then be somewhere between the 12th fret or close to the body and somewhere over the fingerboard extension.  If the neck of an acoustic was angled back there would have to be a wedge under the fingerboard extension to keep it in line with the rest of the fingerboard and glued to the soundboard, but you would then most likely have to create a fallaway on the upper frets by tapering the fingerboard extension down towards the soundhole or dressing the frets down so they taper and the greatest arc of the string vibration doesn't buzz on the high frets.  On most electric guitars the neck joins the body around the 16th/17th fret rather than the 14th fret on most acoustics.  This has a strong bearing on where the truss rod acts on the neck to introduce relief and also means that there is far less of the fingerboard protruding over the body to act as a fingerboard extension and be potentially problematic.  The different geometries of an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar with respect to string angle and oscillation arc mean that you will never really be able to get an "electric" feel on an acoustic.

There are exceptions.  Ovation guitars have always had much more of an electric feel than acoustic, and usually you can set the action lower than on most other acoustic guitars.  In my experience Ovation guitars sound pretty lame unplugged, and I would say that most people buy them with the intention of using them amplified.  String buzz is usually less evident through an amplifier than on an acoustic being played unamplified, so you can usually get away with a lower action on a guitar like an Ovation.

Tannin

rockmonster said:

It wasn’t my intention to open a debate about the subtle nuances of the acoustic against the lack of subtlety and variety of tone of the electric- (Really? Lol)

That is not what I said! Not even close. 

Electrics have a far greater variety of tonal possibilities. (Largely because of pedals, but amps also help with this.) Acoustics have greater depth of tonal colour within a narrower palette. Both statements are straightforward and I should not have thought they were difficult to understand, or indeed verify.

Tannin

rockmonster said:

 I was more interested in why after all the years of acoustic manufacture - let’s face it significantly longer than the electric- they still seem to be way more difficult to play than necessary IMHO. ( I’ve been playing them- granted not seriously- for 50 years. It seems to me that manufacturers do not bother to set acoustics up to make them play as easy as they could- electric playability is exceptional nowadays compared to how they used to play when I was a lad. Acoustics don’t seem to have progressed in that way IMHO. I know expensive acoustics play better but cheaper electrics do too! and a pro setup will make a big difference to any musical instrument. .....

 I just hoped someone would actually have some wisdom to pass down rather than the usual you need to build up your strength in your fingers bollocks in order to play a proper guitar. I did that over 30 years ago. This thread merely confirms to me what I already knew!

There has in fast been a great deal of wisdom passed on in this thread. Let's add a bit more - or rather, explain in more detail and from a different angle things that posters like BillDL have already said. 

1: You need to put more physical energy into an acoustic guitar to get it to make a decent amount of noise. This isn't design or manufacture or even setup, it's physics. The energy to make sound from an electric guitar comes out of a 240 volt plug. That energy, passed through some electronics, makes a speaker cone vibrate, which is what we hear. The energy to make an acoustic guitar top vibrate, in contrast, is entirely provided by your fingers (passed through the strings, the saddle, and the bridge). To make the instrument work at all well, you need heavier strings and a higher action. It doesn't have to be a lot harder to play, but it does require more muscle and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about that without turning it into an electric instead. To get the energy out you have to put the energy in. 

2: Acoustic guitars are vastly easier to play than they were in (say) 1975. Even a dirt cheap one today will usually be more-or-less playable at a pinch. That was certainly not true 50 years ago. 

3: Acoustic guitars don't have two-way adjustable action like most electrics because it is generally believed that a mechanism designed to provide that would kill the tone. Now and again companies have fitted acoustic guitars with adjustable bridges similar to those on electric guitars. These models have never become popular and the majority of instruments so equipped end up getting retrofitted with a conventional acoustic saddle. So far as I know, no-one even makes them anymore. (I've never played one so I can't comment on what it does to tone from first-hand knowledge. But a basic understanding of the physics of the flat-top acoustic guitar suggests that it would be very difficult indeed to make the idea work. I see no reason, however, why it shouldn't be worth a try on an arch top, which has different physics.)

4: For these reasons, acoustic guitars almost always use a traditional saddle made from bone or a similar material. It is a simple matter to adjust a saddle downwards by sanding a little off the bottom of it. It is non-trivial to adjust it upwards. You have to either shim it (not always a great idea) or else replace it with a taller one. Now you can see why acoustic guitars usually ship with a saddle adjusted to be a little on the high side of what most people would consider perfect. Manufacturers know that every player has different requirements, uses different strings, plays with a different technique. So they ship guitars with the action slightly higher than ideal, knowing that the user will adjust it to suit him or herself. It costs very little to have that done. Many shops will do it on a new guitar free of charge.

rockmonster

Lol

rockmonster

Violins, archtop guitars even 335’s and lesters have angled  necks? Granted the latter is mostly solid bodied. So why don’t acoustics? Cost?

Tannin

What are you talking about? "Angled necks"? Huh?

rockmonster

Exactly! I rest my case

Tannin

Sorry mate, you haven't made a case yet. For that matter, at no point have you even bothered listening to the expert knowledge several people here have taken the trouble to help you out with. Pretty poor effort.

wrinkleygit

Happy New Year Rod, I know exactly where you’re coming from, I had never owned an acoustic until I turned 60, about 10 years ago, I won’t bore you with my acoustic journey, but I will say it was well worth the effort, it changed my playing style completely, the biggest revelation was a visit to the Brook workshop down here in Devon, when I picked up the Torridge that I still own, straight off the wall it played like your old PRS Brazilian.
  Another life changer was discovering Newtone Heritage strings, for the past couple of years the Torridge has worn 11’s, I’ve just restrung it this afternoon with 12’s, same as my Martin and old Tak, if you’re ever down this way, look me up and come and have a play, good luck in your quest, Mike.

Kurtis

Tannin said:

rockmonster said:

It wasn’t my intention to open a debate about the subtle nuances of the acoustic against the lack of subtlety and variety of tone of the electric- (Really? Lol)

That is not what I said! Not even close. 

Electrics have a far greater variety of tonal possibilities. (Largely because of pedals, but amps also help with this.) Acoustics have greater depth of tonal colour within a narrower palette. Both statements are straightforward and I should not have thought they were difficult to understand, or indeed verify.

You do seem to be mixing up a lot of stuff tbf. 

rockmonster

wrinkleygit said:

Happy New Year Rod, I know exactly where you’re coming from, I had never owned an acoustic until I turned 60, about 10 years ago, I won’t bore you with my acoustic journey, but I will say it was well worth the effort, it changed my playing style completely, the biggest revelation was a visit to the Brook workshop down here in Devon, when I picked up the Torridge that I still own, straight off the wall it played like your old PRS Brazilian.
  Another life changer was discovering Newtone Heritage strings, for the past couple of years the Torridge has worn 11’s, I’ve just restrung it this afternoon with 12’s, same as my Martin and old Tak, if you’re ever down this way, look me up and come and have a play, good luck in your quest, Mike.

Nice one Mike, if I am I will!