I was just pondering on building my first harp guitar, and I'd really like the sub-bass strings to be more "smooth" sounding, like an electric bass guitar, rather than harsh and metallic like acoustic bass guitars tend to be. But are there any specific ways to push it toward that direction, or is it one of those "too many factors" questions?
Here are some examples of what I mean...
http://deku.rydia.net/guitar/MetallicBass.mp3
http://deku.rydia.net/guitar/SmoothBass.mp3
The metallic one is a spruce top, mahogany back, 24.75" scale, 14 fret, OM sized dread-style shape.
The smooth one is an Indian rosewood top, bubinga back, 25.5" scale, 14 fret GA.
But I can't find any single factor in either of them that I don't have a counter-example to. Both of those have very thin tops, but are braced pretty differently. The rosewood topper (my experimental guitar) originally had a spruce top that was thicker, and sounded more smooth. so apparently it's not the species or the thickness of the plate. Both have rosewood bridges with bone saddles (although Madagascar with 1/8" saddle on the metallic, and Indian with 3/16" saddle on the smooth), so I don't think it's that. I have a full size spruce dread that sounds much like the metallic one on the low strings, so I don't think it's body size.
Perhaps it's the mass? I don't have good records on some of my soundboard weights, but the metallic one should be quite a bit lighter than either the spruce or rosewood tops I've done on the retopper. But the full size spruce dread should be relatively heavy too, and is more metallic... but it's stiffer too, so maybe it's high mass plus low stiffness = less treble = less metallic?
Does anyone even attempt to control such things, or just shoot for a balanced middle ground in all aspects of the build, and take what you get?
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Guess that says something about how often I get around to changing them. I thought I remembered the rosewood one sounding like that from the get go, and its string actually looks cleaner (I think it's coated), but it turns out it has divots all along the underside of it from the frets. II just tried swapping the low strings on the two guitars, and here's the result: