Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

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Embenny
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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by Embenny » Wed Nov 29, 2017 7:52 am

InLimbo wrote: Not to get too far off track, but aside from the pickups, amp, and pedals, am I the only one that really takes into consideration the room that I play in and how it responds? Neck binding and the amount of unplugged resonance seems literally in another dimension of tone obsession, yet is rarely discussed here.
You are absolutely right. It's also the factor that is least-controllable when playing anywhere other than your own home/rehearsal space.

I shake my head when people buy 5-figure hi-fi or home theatre systems for their untreated rooms for the same reason. Beyond the basic "beginner vs decent system" difference, your money is far better spent on some basic room treatment than on super-high-end components.

I also play through a Kemper Profiler to eliminate random mic jobs as a "tone wild card" at gigs. I go direct to the house PA and/or my own Bose L1, which has a roughly 180 degree distribution of sound instead of a highly directional cab. I want as many people to hear my tone as I dialed it in as possible, instead of whatever random mic placement and mic selection was set up that night...
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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by Logrinn » Wed Nov 29, 2017 7:55 am

But you can put nylon strings on a electric guitar and it will make some acoustic sound, but there won't be any sound in your amp.

And if you - theoretically - had out-of-phased sound of your electrical strings (some imaginary strings doing exactly what your normal strings does, but out of phase, and the out-of-phase version is not over the pickups) you wouldn't hear the strings acoustically, but the pickups would still amplify them (the strings over the pickups, that is) since they're making an electrical current in the pickups.

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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by BoringPostcards » Wed Nov 29, 2017 7:56 am

I used to think it didn't mean all that much until I had two Jazzmasters at one time. My Fender purple J Mascis had a far more resonant and alive unplugged sound compared to my JM66B. It translated over to plugged in tone. The J Mascis also had the gold anodized guard, which added to the alive tone unplugged (swapped guards to test. ano guard made the JM66B a bit more alive), but overall the Mascis just sounded better. They had basically the same electronics in them.
That being said, I sold the JM66B and the guy who bought it completely upgraded it with full mastery outfit and novaks. It sounds pretty damn good now, but still not that resonant acoustically. Just a dense piece of alder I'm guessing (it's a later MIJ 2010 or so maybe?)
My SG Standard is the most resonant and acoustic sounding unplugged electric I've ever heard. I've recorded the unplugged sound with a mic and it sounds really fucking good. I'm pretty sure it would take horrific wiring and pickups to make this thing sound bad.
At the end of the day I try to avoid as much of the guitar world neuroticism as I can. If I can make a certain guitar sound the way I like it to, it ends there.
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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:08 am

Logrinn wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2017 7:55 am
But you can put nylon strings on a electric guitar and it will make some acoustic sound, but there won't be any sound in your amp.

And if you - theoretically - had out-of-phased sound of your electrical strings (some imaginary strings doing exactly what your normal strings does, but out of phase, and the out-of-phase version is not over the pickups) you wouldn't hear the strings acoustically, but the pickups would still amplify them (the strings over the pickups, that is) since they're making an electrical current in the pickups.
There's not sound in your amp because the magnets in your pickups depend on there being metal strings in order to work.
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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by kdanie » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:29 am

I don't really think there is a correlation between unplugged sound relating to overall quality but it can definitely affect the amplified tone. Having said that, high quality parts like bridges/nuts/tailpieces can affect unplugged tone and better fit & tightness of the neck to the body can also affect unplugged tone, I like to use steel inserts in the neck and machine screws to attach the neck. I prefer a guitar with a good un-amplified tone because I play unplugged a lot, maybe 90% of the time so I don't annoy anyone...

Years ago I built a alder body w/ ash top chambered JM body for our own member apreswho, he's in a touring band and plays a lot. When he got it built he said it was the most "articulate" guitar he has ever played. I built a chambered alder/alder 'stang with a JM trem for myself a bit ago and it sounds great unplugged and better plugged in.

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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:51 am

I never would make the claim that the acoustic sound of an electric guitar will necessarily translate into a "better sound" through the amp, but it sure does mean a lot to me. For one, it's just much more inspiring to hold and play a vibrating and lively guitar.

But I do think it makes the sound better. Better acoustic resonance should always mean better sound everywhere else. How could it not? What else is there other than a vibrating string, in the end? That's what makes the sound in the first place.

That's also why I like low wind pickups that output the full frequency range of the guitar. I can always EQ frequencies I want out later, but if my pickups compress the string's sound into a more narrow bandwidth than the string is producing, or shaves off some of the high end entirely, I can never get that back.
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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by UlricvonCatalyst » Wed Nov 29, 2017 9:29 am

PorkyPrimeCut wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2017 7:49 am
I've had issue with this but only really with my hollow body Vox. Switching out the old rattly bridge for a bar bridge made a world of difference to the volume, brightness & resonance of the guitar. Unplugged & plugged in it's like a different guitar now.
I had a similar experience with my Hellcat which was home to the Mastery bridge that later ended up on my Jazzmaster; I played the Hellcat unplugged a lot and when I swapped the Mastery for a Mustang bridge it was about six shades deader than I was used to. I can't see how that sonic difference could fail to affect the plugged-in sound of a guitar.

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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by Embenny » Wed Nov 29, 2017 10:07 am

Larry Mal wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:51 am
I never would make the claim that the acoustic sound of an electric guitar will necessarily translate into a "better sound" through the amp, but it sure does mean a lot to me. For one, it's just much more inspiring to hold and play a vibrating and lively guitar.

But I do think it makes the sound better. Better acoustic resonance should always mean better sound everywhere else. How could it not? What else is there other than a vibrating string, in the end? That's what makes the sound in the first place.

That's also why I like low wind pickups that output the full frequency range of the guitar. I can always EQ frequencies I want out later, but if my pickups compress the string's sound into a more narrow bandwidth than the string is producing, or shaves off some of the high end entirely, I can never get that back.
I totally agree that a lively guitar is a hell of a lot more fun to play.

An interesting experiment I remember doing very early in my guitar playing was to gently press the headstock of my strat into a dresser or other hard piece of furniture. You'll hear the acoustic tone of the guitar amplify immediately as it transfers vibrations to the furniture and resonates. Actually, I think the first instrument I did that with was my brother's P-bass, which was even more noticeable.

I do recall there being a change in the fullness of the amplified tone when I did that, as well, which pretty much fits with what others have been saying.
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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by InLimbo » Wed Nov 29, 2017 10:43 am

Larry Mal wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2017 8:51 am
But I do think it makes the sound better. Better acoustic resonance should always mean better sound everywhere else. How could it not? What else is there other than a vibrating string, in the end? That's what makes the sound in the first place.
I know (or, I think I know) that when you say "better", you're not referring to some sort of objective measure of taste. I think you're referring to there just being more frequency response, more sound (articulation, etc) and with that you can do more, as far as adjusting your amp, pedals etc.

With this in mind, and with the other responses that state that they like having a resonant guitar, doesn't this logic necessarily imply that full hollow body electric guitars would be the ideal, "best" guitar (given that it's setup correctly, with a quality nut, bridge, etc.)?

I mean, it's obvious that we're not all playing hollow bodies, and they we love our solid bodies. So there's some weird disconnect in my mind of what value unplugged resonance has.

I don't know, maybe I'm asking the wrong questions.

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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:10 am

Well, I can't say "better" because I don't have the same needs of guitar that other people do. What I think is a "good" sound might not be.

Also, while I keep talking about having as great a frequency response as the instrument provides, that's not always a great thing to have. One, if you are playing out, you might want to dial in a sound as quickly as possible. Like, if you were going for a thick, "bluesy", compressed mid-ranged sound and that's what you were gonna do that night you might as well just do that and not worry about the rest, you know?

But bear in mind, though, that what I'm talking about- maybe not all that clearly- isn't acoustic sound, which isn't picked up by the guitar's pickups, but acoustic resonance, or vibration.

So, you want your guitar to kind of get out of the string's vibration, so that it vibrates as freely as possible. This is why I take out all the shitty bridges on my Gibsons and Jazzmasters. My thinking is that the string's vibration can get lost in an unnecessarily moving bridge, and thus won't vibrate as much that the string can sense (the pickups can't sense a moving bridge).

Imagine if you took a long guitar string, and it was attached at two ends only- no bridge. If you plucked it, then the string would vibrate perfectly and freely, wouldn't it?

But if you took that same string and hung a length of chain from it, and plucked it then, the string would vibrate the chain also, and the string itself would vibrate that much less since some of the energy would transfer to the length of chain.

If you then took the length of string and added a very firmly fixed bridge to it, you would shorten it, of course, but you can imagine that the vibrating ("speaking") length of string would lose less energy into a firmly fixed bridge than it would a length of chain hanging from it.

I know that is a crude example, but it illustrates my line of thinking about it.

But, to make a long story short, what we care about as far as what your pickup senses is not the acoustic sound, but rather the vibration of the strings. The strings vibrating well does tend to result in a louder acoustic sound, but even if it is louder your pickups still don't "hear" that. But again, if there is anything with your guitar that makes your strings vibrate less, then the pickups do output less, since there is less to output. What your ears hear as a pleasing acoustic sound with your electric guitar is representational but not perfect to what the guitar's pickup senses.

You know, take your electric guitar and put a little cloth on top of the strings, which will prevent the strings from vibrating as much, and thus your guitar's pickup will sense less. There's less to sense.

That being said, though, just because you have a guitar that is a hollow-bodied instrument doesn't mean that it's more full range just because it's louder. If your hollow bodied guitar is muffling the strings on it, thus reducing the frequencies that the string is outputting, then it will have less range of output than a solidbodied instrument that is allowing the string to produce the full range of the string's vibration.

I should mention when I say "frequencies" I'm crudely referring to the fundamental note or notes that you are playing but also the harmonic series as well.
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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by InLimbo » Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:43 am

Okay, so a guitar is good and resonant in your case when the string is able to vibrate as freely as possible - this means that the things coming in contact with the strings are not absorbing the energy and vibrations - a solid bridge, a well cut nut, clean frets, pickup magnetic pull not too strong, etc. Fair enough, I think I can buy this. It's evidence of a well put together guitar and quality hardware.

I guess this can translate, when amped, to what, attack and sustain?

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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Nov 29, 2017 12:25 pm

I'm starting to get a little beyond what I actually know here and more into conjecture, just to be clear.

I'd have a hard time seeing even the worst guitar hardware and setup changing anything about the attack, really. A thin pick hitting a taut string is going to have a pretty immediate attack. I looked up "attack" in order to refresh myself to make sure I was using the term properly and decided to paste the definition here:

"In music, the term attack refers to the manner in which a note is performed by the musician, whether decisive and quick, or smooth and slow. More often, however, the word attack is used to refer to the initial part of the envelope of sound. The sound envelope also includes decay and sustain. An attack can be slow, meaning the initiation of the sounding of the note takes place slowly, starting softly at first, then coming to the full volume of the note. Or an attack can be fast, reaching full volume very quickly or at the moment the note is sounded."

https://musicterms.artopium.com/a/Attack.htm

So, like I say, the attack of a guitar pick on a string in terms of the envelope of sound is pretty immediate in all cases that I can think of.

Anyone not familiar with what a sound envelope is can read this little bit:

https://www.britannica.com/science/envelope-sound

Specifically:

"Sustain refers to the steady state of a sound at its maximum intensity, and decay is the rate at which it fades to silence."

So yes, a well constructed acoustic instrument of any kind (of which an electric guitar is one) would have a "better" sound all across the envelope. I say "better" because some instruments are not designed to have a great deal of sustain or decay, and having a lot of it would work to their detriment (let's use the banjo as an example of that, where that instruments percussive qualities would be obscured by a lot of sustain and decay).

And for all guitarist babble about "sustain for days", the guitar isn't designed to actually have a lot of it, either.

But yeah, a good "resonant" sound would have more sustain and longer decay than something in which the note dies away very quickly, which would not be perceived as being very "resonant" even on an electric guitar unplugged. A longer decay will be perceived by the ear as having more volume since the sound will be louder for longer.

And since your pickup is outputting the vibration of the string- all of the vibration, the attack, sustain and decay- having a good "resonant" would be, I'll argue, "better".

But that's not all. The attack of a note is where the fundamental frequency is strongest. As you all know, when you play a note, you aren't just playing a single note (unless you play a sine wave), you are playing a whole bunch of them. From Wikipedia:

"For example, if the fundamental frequency is 50 Hz, a common AC power supply frequency, the frequencies of the first three higher harmonics are 100 Hz (2nd harmonic), 150 Hz (3rd harmonic), 200 Hz (4th harmonic) and any addition of waves with these frequencies is periodic at 50 Hz."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic

And the fundamental frequency is (usually) strongest at the attack. Harmonics can be fragile with musical instruments, and with cheap ones, you'll get the strong note of the attack, but the harmonics will never get a chance to blossom. Think of a crappy plywood guitar, you play a note, you hear something, but it doesn't sound good. Why?

The harmonics don't develop as they should- it's dead and lifeless. Your brain won't think "oh, the third order harmonic is distorted and barely present" but your ears hear it very clearly. That's why acoustic resonance is so important with electric guitars, since it is doing the exact same things that strings do on every instrument.

It's no different than putting a microphone on a cheap, plywood guitar or a well crafted acoustic. If the notes don't develop fully, then the output does not sound good.
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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by spacecadet » Wed Nov 29, 2017 12:41 pm

Larry typed his last reply while I was typing this, and he said some of the same things, but I'm going to post this anyway.

I'd say it largely affects sustain and decay. I've been one of the people here preaching about resonance for a while, and those are a couple of the main things I think about when I think about resonance. Resonance, to me, is the vibration of the strings reflected into the body and then back to the strings - this is the definition of resonance in physics. They will vibrate longer and "harder" in a guitar that's particularly resonant. It's not really about acoustic tone; it's just about the amount and intensity of vibration.

The guitar will not *just* have more sustain, but the sustain will be different. This is just to help visualize it and not a direct analogy, but think about the ending piano note to the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". Think about how loud it remains almost to the end. That was artificially created by raising the levels as the sound decayed. If that hadn't been done, the notes would have lasted *just as long* but they would have died in intensity and volume long before they do on the album.

But if every piano they were playing (and I think there were 9 of them playing on that track) were, say, 5 times more resonant than they were, then nobody would have needed to raise the levels on the recording as the notes decayed - it would have just sounded that way naturally. I'm not saying this was at all possible, just that this is the effect resonance has. So maximizing resonance is a good goal to have, even though there's obviously a limit to how resonant a guitar can be. And I realize that some people do *want* a really plucky sounding guitar, in which case more resonance probably isn't a good thing.

I think this is what was meant when someone said the pickups only pick up what your guitar's doing acoustically. The pickups can only pick up vibrations that the strings are actually making. A resonant guitar helps the strings vibrate more. That's all sound is. So the louder and more resonant a guitar sounds acoustically, the better its sustain and decay characteristics are going to be when amped.

Of course it's just one factor, but it's not a factor I think anyone should just ignore. And I think it's foundational; for me, at least, I don't think I could ever really like a guitar that felt and sounded "dead" acoustically because there's usually nothing you can do about a lack of resonance. So when choosing a guitar, in most cases I would automatically skip any that I felt weren't resonant to start with. A possible exception might be guitars designed like the Strat, since a lot of its resonance or lack thereof comes from its tremolo block. A Strat with a cheap zinc/pot metal trem block sometimes can be made a lot more resonant just by upgrading that, assuming its wood isn't holding it back too.

But Jazzmasters and most other guitars, I mean the bridge, nut and trem can all do a little bit, but overall it's hard to make a non-resonant guitar dramatically better. It's usually the wood that's the problem, especially when some guitars of the same make are resonant and others not. If one JM is resonant and another next to it isn't, well it's probably not the hardware that's the issue.

I have owned both really resonant and really non-resonant guitars, though. Right now I have only one particularly non-resonant guitar, but it's a Squier so I can excuse that. There are reasons Squiers cost less, and the wood is probably one of them.

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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Nov 29, 2017 12:56 pm

Good point about the piano.

One reason why electric guitarists can be less choosy about resonance is that there are a lot of cheats with electric guitar.

For one, like I say, the electric guitar even at it's most resonant does not have a lot of sustain, and a lot of music doesn't really require a lot of sustain. Fast punk? You don't need it. Think of a lot of jazz guitar, it's often quick notes when soloing, not long, sustained notes. Reggae? Nope. Sustain doesn't really, as a whole, have a lot to do with guitar.

Secondly, electric guitarists use artificial reverb, which adds a lot of what nature isn't really providing. Compression happens a lot with electric guitar, a lot of pickups naturally compress, a lot of distortion pedals do also, and of course there is all the deliberate compression added at various stages. That can make it seem like there is a lot more sustain than there would be otherwise.

So maybe you never cared about the sound envelope of your electric guitar before, because what comes out of the amp sounds good. And what comes out of your amp is heavily treated, by the way. The sound of the string is filtered through your pickups, through your capacitors and potentiometers, and that's before it has left your guitar.

Then into your amp, with all the tubes, transistors, gain staging, inherent equalization, explicit EQ in terms of the tone knobs, whatever effects you have- I could go on and probably wouldn't get all of it. But a violin goes from the violin to your ears. The sound of an electric guitar through your amp is filtered through a lot of electronics.

And maybe the end result is great- it probably is, or you would change it. Still, first and foremost, remember that your electric guitar is an acoustic instrument, and at the end of the day, shouldn't your acoustic instrument be the very best acoustic instrument it can be? That's where it all starts, after all, nothing else in the chain can add anything that wasn't there to start with.
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Re: Quality with "Unplugged", "Resonant"?

Post by InLimbo » Wed Nov 29, 2017 1:54 pm

Larry Mal wrote:
Wed Nov 29, 2017 12:56 pm
So maybe you never cared about the sound envelope of your electric guitar before, because what comes out of the amp sounds good. And what comes out of your amp is heavily treated, by the way. The sound of the string is filtered through your pickups, through your capacitors and potentiometers, and that's before it has left your guitar.
This was kind of my point, and I'll go ahead note that you address it later in the above post. It seems like, at least to you and maybe a few others like spacecadet, that the unplugged resonance is more of an indicator of the physical aspects of the guitar, like the components and craftsmanship. While I'll accept the theory and premise (and I appreciate a well-put together guitar as much as the next person), I'm not sure I'm going to put much stock into it directly resulting in the amplified sound that's reaching my ears. I won't, however, dispute it :P

I mean, in reality, you can take the most resonant guitar swap a single component in it like a pickup from single coil to humbucker, and the change will make the guitar unrecognizable to the ear. Even to a non-musician. That change can be for the best or for the worst, but at that point, taste is now the yardstick, which makes it a moot point.

But, you take that same pickup and throw it into a completely different guitar and the sounds will likely be far more similar.

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