Thread: Interesting comment from Vai.

Originally Posted by GhostGuitarist

Paul Guy's, True Temperament Fretting System....because now we know there's a better way, thats how we'll do it from now on...right..??....Remeber this system is not a theory or thought....there's proof that it is the best way of doing it...but not the easiest or cheapest, there in, I think ,will be the problem.

True temperament is for pussies and compulsive obsessive perfectionists. How many people in an audience at a concert can pick that the lead guitarist's instrument doesnt have perfect temperament???? There are even alot of musicians who cant pick up less than perfect temperament in a stringed instrument. Ive just done some repair work on an Ibanez right hander acoustic that a lefty muso mate has been playing for years without noticing the compensation on the thing was way out of kilter.

If the TT fretting system youre talking about is the one where the guitar neck looks like the person doing the fret job was on drugs I have one comment.....pity the poor sucker who ends up doing a refret on that instrument.

Just my opinion of course

Cheers Martin

Originally Posted by kiwigeo

True temperament is for pussies and compulsive obsessive perfectionists. How many people in an audience at a concert can pick that the lead guitarist's instrument doesnt have perfect temperament???? There are even alot of musicians who cant pick up less than perfect temperament in a stringed instrument. Ive just done some repair work on an Ibanez right hander acoustic that a lefty muso mate has been playing for years without noticing the compensation on the thing was way out of kilter.

If the TT fretting system youre talking about is the one where the guitar neck looks like the person doing the fret job was on drugs I have one comment.....pity the poor sucker who ends up doing a refret on that instrument.

Just my opinion of course

Cheers Martin

The fretting system is a great idea, not intended for an audience member though, it intended for the guitarist playing. Tuning e,a,d,g,b,e open strings, works great, then you fret a chord and it is slightly out, fret another chord and it's slightly out again. After open tuning I think i've seen just about every guitarist including me, play a chord and then adjust tuning....because you can hear that it's slightly out because all the string are not open anymore.......this fretting system fixes that problem....so after tuning each open string....you can fret a chord and it's still perfectly in tune up and down the neck. It's fixed a problem that always been around. Wanting your guitar to be "in tune" is far from being obsessive, I'd say it's paramount.

I’m with Martin… We are talking about guitars not a computerised synthesiser, they will never be perfect because they can never be perfect. Made by people, played by people for other people to hear and people aren’t perfect. We all hear a little differently and all like different things. I can tune a guitar so it seems to be tuned about as good as it can be, ten minutes later a mate will pick it up start playing it then stop to adjust the tuning, ten minutes after he puts it down someone else will pick it up and do the same. Maybe all guitarists have an obsessive compulsive disorder that makes it impossible to just pick up a guitar and play it without messing with the tuning.

I have a mate, great guitarists, but to my ear it always seems like he tunes his guitar a bit sharp, doesn’t mean I’m not happy to just sit for hours listening to him play and marvelling at his skill. I think it is too easy to get pedantic about trying to make a guitar perfectly in tune all the time at every fret. A canary sings and does it beautifully without ever knowing what it means to sing in key. A great guitarist can pick up a guitar and captivates people and it doesn’t seem to matter much if he/she has picked up a $6000 Martin, weirdly fretted custom made guitar or $200 Freedom from China.

But then I like Flamenco and consider a bit of fret buzz to be just part of the music… so maybe I’m not the best judge.

Martin… Just something to stick in the back of your mind for when you get around to using the huon. I’ve just made a couple of huon bodied flamenco’s and I hit a few issues with the hide glue letting go. I put the build on hold and did a bit of experimenting and if you treat it like you have to do with some of the greasy hard timbers (light sand and wipe with metho just before you glue it) it seems to be fine (fingers crossed). The problem I had was with the back braces, they came away from one of the backs without a trace of glue staying on the huon but perfectly bonded to the cedar brace. When I checked the second back which had a centre wedge of blackwood, a couple of the braces let go of the huon when I gave them a good belt but stayed well glued to the blackwood. The problem seems to be that the oil in the timber surfaces within a couple of hours of sanding it smooth. To test the glue joins I glued spruce and cedar to a spare back plate, some I treated and some I sanded and glued the next day. I gave it a month then tried to break the glue joints. I had a 50% failure rate with the ones I waited a day to glue but the ones sanded, wiped with metho and glued gave a bond as strong as the timber. I did this test a few months ago and just tried to break the join on the last set of treated ones, they were fine broke away timber from both the brace wood and the huon. No sign at all of a weak join. I removed and re-glued every kerf and joint and the guitars have been strung up about 7 weeks now with no problem (and there has been a huge humidity swing here in that time).

Cheers
James

Im sure Mr Vai has palyed a lot of instruments and knows his personal preferences well. I dont know if he has made any...

I listen to a lot of "world" music and have learned that "tuning" is a fabulous concept that really only depends on what you are playing. There is now Bach temprament http://www.hpschd.nu/index.html?nav/...mp/lehman.html I can hear why people advocate it. Arabic and African tunings are not part of our normal western repertoire but are equally valid.

My point is that it is impossible for a guitar to always be perfectly in tune given the variety of players, strings, types of music played on any instrument. It just wont happen. What makes music happen is the player getting the sound she wants out of any given instrument. This is musicality. Paddy Moloney (the Cheiftans) plays cheap whistles and always sounds great. He can make music out of an instrument that is not always in tune. Listen to Segovia, Paco Pena etc.

Music is not about the instrument,

.... and that is why Steve Vai is a player and not a builder. I wonder how many of his instruments are Maple neck and all Maple bodies.

Originally Posted by GhostGuitarist

Vibration or sustain runs the length of the guitar, no point if the vibration hits a brick wall at the neck. Just seems to make sense.

Any vibration in the neck is actually robbing the bridge of string energy, volume and sustain.

The MOST sustain would be if you had an immovable, completely rigid neck. Then ALL the string energy would be transferred to the bridge and body. It would probably sound very bright, but sustain like mad.

The other extreme would be if the neck were made of rubber. The movement in the neck would absorb all the string energy and you'd get "flub". The ultimate in dark sound and NO sustain!

A wooden neck is somewhere in between and the substance of which it is made affects the sustain, but also the timbre of the sound, by the frequencies it absorbs. It is just one of many components that contributes to the tonal colour of the final instrument.

The equal tempered scale is nothing but a compromise to make all keys work to what has become an acceptable degree. Some keys are actually closer to "just tuning" than others, and tend to sound sweeter. Tuning a guitar so it sound best in one key will make it worse in others, so it becomes a moot point unless the musician is going to only play within a narrow window of keys that will work.

So there we have it, the answers seem defined. A solid body electric guitar, unless played clean through an amp, could be made of just about anything because after applying several effects, it doesn't matter if it's chip board, ply or paper mache'.

Some of the earlier gibson counterfiets from china were MDF, and apparently with a decent set of pickups didn't sound too bad. How they took the string tension I don't know..

I think a lot of testing would need to be done to either prove or disprove Vai's thoughts. Simply saying it doesn't make sense, just doesn't make sense.

Next problem that needs to be dimissed to keep life (and cost) as is...is

That's exactly the point. As I said previously there are hundreds of people all over the world doing these experiments right now, and luckily for us they choose to share their results online. Like I said there are volumes you can read on this subject. Different people have different opinions on how much different things matter, but it is widely acknowlwedged that the problem is complex. If it weren't we could build guitars by the numbers and know the result ahead of time.

Paul Guy's, True Temperament Fretting System....because now we know there's a better way, thats how we'll do it from now on...right..??....Remeber this system is not a theory or thought....there's proof that it is the best way of doing it...but not the easiest or cheapest, there in, I think ,will be the problem.

Again define "best" ? Everyone knows guitars aren't pitch perfect. If you want that go take up piano, or play a synthesiser. If you listed to many guitar players play, even classical players, they deliberately stretch the strings off pitch, because it adds to the appeal of the sound. A matter of taste, but a popular result.

Torres wasn't testing tap tuning with his famous paper mache guitar. I think youll find he built it to prove that the top is the part of a guitar that contributes most to the instrument's volume.

My understanding of the experiment was he was trying to point out the soundboard was the most important part of the guitar, not just for volume but for sound quality. I am prepared to believe I'm wrong about that. By the accounts I've read the sound quality was quite acceptable which implies if not proves that tap tuning isn't a necessity. I probably didn't make myself clear, because that wasn't the main point I was trying to make. The origional I believe is known in some colection but is now unplayable. It would be really interesting if someone copied it and we got to hear it.

I'm not against tap tuning, I just don't think it's the universal panacea some people make it out to be. If there is one thing I think I know about guitar building it's that unilateral statements are usually wrong

[QUOTE=byacey;1002444]The equal tempered scale is nothing but a compromise QUOTE]

The whole Western music system is a compromise....fortunately 99% of people dont notice the compromises because theyre so used to the system.

Its a fascinating subject though and stimulates some good debate and discussion.

Originally Posted by damian

My understanding of the experiment was he was trying to point out the soundboard was the most important part of the guitar, not just for volume but for sound quality. I am prepared to believe I'm wrong about that. By the accounts I've read the sound quality was quite acceptable which implies if not proves that tap tuning isn't a necessity. I probably didn't make myself clear, because that wasn't the main point I was trying to make. The origional I believe is known in some colection but is now unplayable. It would be really interesting if someone copied it and we got to hear it.

Sound volume is more of a challenge than sound quality when building a classical. Youre dealing with nylon strings which generate far less energy than steel strings. The acounts that Ive seen mention that Torres was listening to volume more than sound quality when he did his paper mache guitar.

I still dont see how you deduce that Torres' paper mache guitar experiment implies that tap tuning is not useful.....or am I missing something in your posts?

FYI someone over on the OLF forum did recently build a copy of Torres' paper mache guitar. Log into the forum and do a search and youll find it.

One thing that would interesting would be to examine the change in vibration characteristics of the same top attached to paper mache sides and aattached to wooden sides. One limitation of tap tuning and Chladni pattern studies is that once you attach the top to the sides of the guitar things change markedly.

Cheers Martin

An interesting quote from Torres which suggests he was using mainly flex tests to evaluate his tops......no clear indication that he was using tap tones extensively but Id say that like any luthier he would have been tapping the top to hear the changes going on during thicknessing and bracing of same.

"my secret is one you have witnessed many times, and one that I can't leave to posterity, because it must with my body go to the grave, for it consists of the tactile senses in my finger pads, in my thumb and index finger that tell the intelligent builder if the top is or is not well made, and how it should be treated to obtain the best tone from the instrument."

For those of you with an interest in Torres then the book on his life and guitars by Romanillos is a must read.

I really have to get round to buying that book. Oddly LMI are the cheapest source I've found to date.

Tap tuning isn't exclusive to the sound board. I've have read of a number of people who apply it to the back and sides, aswell as necks on accoustics.A paper mache back and sides is probably not going to ring when tapped That was my point. Obviously not well made

OLF forum, yeah I must join that someday. I do lurk at the mimf, but so little time....

Originally Posted by Phil Mailloux

.... and that is why Steve Vai is a player and not a builder. I wonder how many of his instruments are Maple neck and all Maple bodies.

indeed

surely, if he actually believed wht he said, the Ibanez geetars he endorses would all be made from same timber (either all maple or all basswood) ...

all i can say is the funky rock moves he does on stage (he has great stage presence) would be tht much harder with an all maple guitar

Originally Posted by damian

I really have to get round to buying that book. Oddly LMI are the cheapest source I've found to date.

Tap tuning isn't exclusive to the sound board. I've have read of a number of people who apply it to the back and sides, aswell as necks on accoustics.A paper mache back and sides is probably not going to ring when tapped That was my point. Obviously not well made

OLF forum, yeah I must join that someday. I do lurk at the mimf, but so little time....

Tap tuning is sort of a offshoot cult in violin making, some advocates say that the chinrest, fingerboard, tailpiece , etc. can all be tap tuned. What they don't tell you specifically is the desirable pitch for these different fittings. usually on a violin plate there are specific tone intervals that the tuning revolves around. As for the rest of it, I haven't seen any convincing demonstrations.