Tracing An Odd Sound

Jon Light · From: Saugerties, NY

The trouble with woodshedding is how isolated your sound is and how easy it is to latch on to something that might not matter much in the real world (on stage) and get sidetracked.
In this case it was a ringing resonance. I first thought it was a blocking issue. But no. I narrowed it down to when I step on the A pedal. I assumed it was a sympathetic string vibration. But damping the strings had no affect. The sharper I hit the pedal, the more ... something ... rang. A long ring with a slow decay. Pitched close to A but not close enough to make any sense. I moved my hand around underneath while stomping the pedal trying to damp a vibrating object. Nothing.

Cut to the chase: guitar on the cradle, I found it. Raise helper springs. I had them set fairly minimally. Trial and error (still in progress) with adjustments and I think I've got it.
I 100% confirm the springs as the source, both by damping them to eliminate the noise and by plucking them and confirming the exact pitch I was hearing. I've increased the tension and it seems quiet. I may need to tweak them, still. And I can remove them if necessary but I'm thinking that it won't be.

The sustain of the ring was as long as 10 seconds, but as a sonic problem, the signal to noise ratio of the drone was quite minor and only stood out at volume pedal 100%. But it was a lot more than zero.

I am a fan of raise assists. My arthritic feet are fans of raise assists. But I've always known that misadjusted springs can result in inconsistent changer action.
And now, I have found another caveat.

Fred Treece · From: California, USA

The source must have been vibration in the air from the sound coming out of the amplifier speaker. Maybe changing the guitar’s orientation or proximity to the amp would help too.

Was the sound an isolated acoustic thing on the guitar, or was it making its way into the pickup and out the speaker?

Was it one return spring or all of them? Did you adjust all of them? Did it change the feel in the raises?

I wouldn’t underestimate the significance of the issue. These small discoveries from micro-focusing in the woodshed lead to better sound management on the bandstand. Good job, Jon.

Jon Light · From: Saugerties, NY

100% mechanical, Fred. Very slow/gentle pedal squeeze yielded negligible noise. A harder 'stomp' (I'm not especially a stomper but sometimes you want to hit those stops) resulted in correlating increase.

The difference between this and other pull train noise through pickup microphonics is the long sustain of the vibrating spring. Other pedals and other springs don't suffer from this problem (except for the C pedal, pulling the same springs).

After playing this for a while, it is still there but is greatly reduced. I'd love to find a way to damp the spring rather than messing with the tension.

Glenn Demichele · From: (20mi N of) Chicago Illinois, USA

Take a piece of low-density foam, a rag or paper towel and slip it inside the spring?
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Jon Light · From: Saugerties, NY

Jon Light · From: Saugerties, NY

I've been gigging this guitar and it really is not a bandstand issue. Might be iffy, recording.
But it's hard to get this sound out of my ears when I'm playing at home.

Dennis Detweiler · From: Solon, Iowa, US

Bruce Zumsteg might be able to shed some light on this topic. For a few years in early 80's he incorporated a spacer finger instead of a washer between the pulling fingers. He pulled each spacer finger against the body of the guitar with a spring. His theory was for sustain and tone. Some players said it was hard for them to tune because they were hearing over-tones. I had a Zum of this design and had no problem tuning, but other players were hearing it. Bruce ditched the design after a couple of years. Perhaps this post is shedding light on what could have been this problem? The vibrating spring over-tones?
Similarly, I could hear my return springs vibrating after releasing a lowering pull on both of my MSA's. A little "twang", so to speak. I cut short lengths of leather shoe lace and slipped them inside the return springs to solve the problem.
Since helper springs are so small, maybe a piece of sewing thread pushed into the core of the spring will stop it? Or, a dab of of silicone adhesive applied with a toothpick near the end of the spring will dampen it?
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Jon Light · From: Saugerties, NY

Dennis -- every part of your post is well considered. I've got a number of damping tricks I can try. After some playing for a while this afternoon I'd say that I've reduced the audible tone by about 70% and that's quite good. At this point the only issue is that it's gotten inside my head. I think I can successfully put it behind me.

I would conclude that the issue was strongest with the tension of the helper spring backed way off to near-minimum. Increasing the tension seems to have either reduced the vibrations or moved their frequency out of an annoying range.

Geoff Noble · From: Scotland

Don't know if this would be a solution but maybe worth considering. A fairly well used method to dampen the springs on whammy bars/tremolo mechanisms on 6 strings is to use a piece of heatshrink around the springs but not shrunk so much that it stops the spring from functioning. Just lightly touching on the spring. It sometimes takes a few attempts to get this right, a bit of a more delicate job on something so small as a helper spring.

This combined with a piece of surgical rubber tube inserted into the inside of the spring, though it may be hard to get a tube small enough to fit inside a helper spring being so small. Perhaps a piece of rubber thread/string could be used?

I have used this method on several guitars and it works pretty well. On one with a Floyd Rose it has reduced the spring noise considerably, still a bit there but much better than before.
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Jon Light · From: Saugerties, NY

Good stuff, Geoff.
Fortunately I don't think I'm going to need to get inside those little springs. It seems that retensioning them was enough to remove any noise that was distracting. It may have been a very freak combination of both A pedal fingers having the springs 'tuned' just so. Or it may have just been one.

Last time I had adjusted them I had removed a lot of their assist tension but left them in place with just enough tension to hold them in place and lend a tiny bit of pull. I will assume & conclude that their freedom to vibrate at rest was the issue. If tensioning them removed enough noise (and it did) removing them will remove all noise. It does not seem necessary. But it's there as a simple solution.
It was an 'AHA!' moment when I identified the source!

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