Helmut Gragger
From:
Austria
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Posted 25 Jan 2013 1:02 pm |
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In an earlier discussion here, people were complaining that their guitar seemed to lack sustain or had dead sonic spots along the neck for no apparent reason.
Just recently a few new aspects appeared that may shed a different light on the subject.
I lately spotted that the J.B. C6/A7 tuning is not far away from the J.B. E13th tuning. I quickly retuned my stringmaster to E13 and low and behold - it sounded lousy compared to the Ricky. This was interesting because the stringmaster subjectively sounds great for other tunings.
On my self-made 6 string lapsteel I play several compatible tunings. Although mostly not terribly "far" from each other, within halftone reach, those changes in string tension, or maybe the voicing itself, seemed to change the tone of the instrument, so that an adjustment of the tone control seemed in order. This was surprising.
A C#m9th tuning for example has much smaller intervals inbetween and much higher tension than a E7th if you use the same strings. (Note: this is the biggest span I have to cover. While not really good, it allows me to change to a tuning for a few songs without the need for a different neck or instrument.)
However, what appears to me is that it may not solely be the scale length that makes a difference in sustain, it may also be the voicing and/or the string gauge that is a factor.
Most the tests musicians have made are conducted under "non-scientific" circumstances, meaning that they do not usually try to change one variable at the time with repeatable and comparable outer circumstances, as it would be done in a laboratory, so they ultimately have to remain subjective. It may therefore be unfair to claim that a certain scale length of an instrument is unfavourable.
It is comparably cheap and maybe rewarding to try a different tuning or even string tension before condemning the instrument.
Hope this helps somebody.
-helmut
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