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Lately, I've begun to notice that some guitars just don't have it. They seem dead, for lack of a better word. More often in factory ones, but what surprises me is seeing it in some luthier-built ones too. It's not that they sound dead, or don't look good, but the ones I'm talking about seem to lack some kind of energy or something. Can't quite put my finger on it. Anybody noticed this?

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Yep... You are officially RUINED on building guitars...
This is exactly what happens....

You will never be able to buy a cheap $200.00 Chinese guitar in a music store again... You play them and think to yourself.... They sound like they are full of modeling clay... the setups are total crap... and the neck shape is all out of whack!

This is exactly the reason I jettisoned my Tak GS 330 and decided to build instead of buying one of those Musicians Friend Silver Creek T-160's last month when you could get it for an absurdly low price after rebate....

Then... you find yourself wanting to build your guitar player friends one on the cheap... just so they can have one that is "Alive" too....

Thanks

John

Funny, I was in Guitar Center last week and picked up a $3200 hog/adi Martin 000 and thought man, this thing sounds dead.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Yeah, and a variation on the theme, I'm amazed at the variability between vintage Martins, for example, of the same model, same back and sides, similar or same year of construction - one is a truly wonderful instrument, the other, ....... dead, or at least average, nowhere near the instrument that it's brother is. Sure does make this luthiery alchemy fun.

I find that even 'alive' guitars can sound a little dead on some days. Not sure if it is a change in humidity, my hearing, my playing style on a given day, my mood, or what. I have even noticed this with my high end audio system. Some days, it just sparkles and other days I wonder why I have invested so much money into it!

Ken

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http://www.casperguitar.com

Pat my friend this inclination to notice that many of the guitars in the stores .... well ... suck happens to all of us I think. When I was working in the city and farther away from my shop than I like to be I used to spend my "diet" lunches in the local Guitar Center sitting in the high-end... acoustic guitar room next to the moldy humidifier that no one had refilled with water in ages. I would take the guitars off the walls and sit and play them.

My goal when I started building was to build great sounding and playing guitars and I used these visits to GC and sometimes Elderly to compare what I was learning to what was available off-the-shelf so-to-speak from the usual suspects. In time the fact*ry guitars, with some exceptions, just didn't cut it anymore.

Last September when Uncle Bob and Bob Connor were in town for the Ann Arbor gathering one of our stops was this very same GC store. I found it interesting to watch these guys too while playing 3-4K fact*ry guitars with a look on their faces as if constipation had set in....

It's funny how something that once was the goal is now something that just no longer excites.

OTOH I love crappy, cheap guitars because they are actually way better today than what was available when we started playing. Folks can learn to play for very little money and the set-ups on a $200 guitar today are much better than they were on the equivalent cheap guitar 40 years ago. Once they learn to play and if they desire something different, I won't go as far as to use subjective terms such as "better", they may become a very valued client to one of the 4,000+ members here...

It's all good!

Sounds like a job for TONE RITE...

Right on. Music is a totally subjective experience after all is it not?

It's time to change the strings my brother! I am here to tell you to ignore the packaging that says "5X the string life".... 1-year is just too long...

The "Dead sounding" days get more and more frequent and the "Alive" days get fewer and farther between... Then it starts sounding Thumpy and Wooshy... Then I change the strings and it sounds Super-Duper-Zingy for a couple days... then settles in and sounds pretty good for another year.

Thanks

Some guitars to me sound like there is a couple pairs of socks stuffed inside. The more guitars I build the more critical I get when test driving guitars. And like Hesh I find the Guitar center type places do not keep their guitars well and there are a lot of expensive guitars in those places that are not too great.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

IMPO on a quality guitar in a music store the culprit is most often dead strings and unseated string ball. The guitars in stores get picked up and handled many times a day by people with grimy hands this grim is left in the windings and deadens and dampens the stings. then sometimes you just get dead stings to begin with. So when judging a guitar in a music store you can’t blame it always on the guitar. A lot of times it the stings or the seating of the sting balls

There are days when no matter what you play it all sounds like crap.
We are humans, we suck every once and a while,
as a player, as a listener, as a guitar builder...
That´s life.

That is true. Attack and tecneque play a large part in tone

All true. I was also referring to the look/feel AND sound, sort of like feng shui. Some cheap guitars, have it, as Hesh mentioned, and it seems to go beyond sound, in some cases. Hear what I'm saying?

I have a Yamaki Deluxe plywood OM from the early 70s. It's really ugly, not that it's so beat up, it sounds terrible, but plays very well. It think it has "it." I've played a few older Gibsons and Martins and a few Guilds. Some had it some didn't. And, like yous mentioned, some new factory guitars have it. But I'm getting the idea that maybe it's not just me.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

So many things affect our perception of the sound of an instrument. The room you're playing it in is a big one. When you play an instrument in a given room, you're playing the air in the room, with all its particular resonances, as much as anything else. Go to a different room and the instrument can sound radically different. One instrument will sound alive in a certain room, while another will sound dull. Go to a different room and the one that sounded dull suddenly sounds great, and the other one sounds dull now. That's just one of a huge range of factors that affect the way we hear an instrument at any given time in any given place (in any given mood, etc etc).

Our ears don't hear the same way every day. We don't play the same way all the time. Etc etc etc.

One thing I've noticed is that it can take me a while to get used to the sound of an unfamiliar instrument, and then I find myself really digging its sound. It seems to sound very different to me than it did before. It's as though new neural pathways in my brain need to develop before I can actually fully hear the complex and subtle qualities of sound an unfamiliar instrument produces. I believe there's really something to that, and I suspect this factor has a lot more to do with our perception of an instrument "opening up" with time than we tend to acknowledge.

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

Re-reading your posts, Pat, I realize you're talking about something more elusive, subtle, mysterious, or almost metaphysical than the sound itself. I think I know what you mean, and I find this very interesting and intriguing. It has to do with the spirit of the thing, if you will. I'm glad you brought this up, because it reminds me to make sure my guitars all have it. How do I do this? There's an interesting question. Mojo, man...

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

Exactly.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Not what I was thinking. I've picked up some real beaters that sounded great.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I repaired at a shop that sold yairi/alvarez ... there was a brw/engleman in there that came back after being owned for a couple years ... it hung in a room that had a dozen of the bottom end alvarez ply body/solid top models .. it couldnt touch any of them. I often wondered what they possibly could have done to make this one sound so dead (and ti wasnt for lack of new strings - I changed them). anyway, it was all pretty with a big vine on it and shell everywhere .. someone bought it.

I have also repaired a couple yamaki rosewood ply dreads .. they certainly would give the average martin a run for their money ... and seeing they can be had for about 100 bucks these days, they are steals for a campfire beater/emergency paddle ....

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Yep....change those strings. I change classical strings every 4 weeks on 3 guitars. I buy bulk! I even take the tension off for 24hrs. and wipe them down to get another week out of them. Don't ask me how that works.
All of my guitars sound different and feel different. They all have there own personality. They all have their own piece that they play and sound for. This is what intrigues me about building these unique boxes of joy!
Kent Bailey

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Wood Creations by Kent A. Bailey
EXCELLENCE IN SCULPTURE, CARVING, LUTHIER, ARCHITECTURAL MILLWORK AND DESIGN

http://www.kabart.com

Yes, Todd and Steve, that's what I'm talking about, though it certainly can include sound. Seems like mojo is as good a term as any that describes it. Sometimes you feel it without even hearing it. Like they're speaking somehow. I do notice more in older guitars. I like to think that my guitars have it. Sometimes I think a player might sense it when they pick one up and they hit that first note. But it can be hard to be objective about my own guitars, sort of like trying to be objective about how great my kids are (or not!).

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Of course now everytime you pick up a "dead" guitar...you'll think of Austin Powers "I've lost my mojo."

Darrin

Ive played a Martin D-35 that was 'Dead', but that was the model that got me dreaming, cept for the plastic white binding. I also notice, that alot of OM Martins, even older ones, are 'muddy' on the base end, compated to alot of the new builders. Everyone has his pick I like Collings, Adi-Hog, a few years old, wouldnt buy one off ebay though, still too much variability.

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Here is what a Parlor Guitar is for!
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