bass with tons of sustain?
- Thread starter JTC111
- Start date
The scientific reason why increased mass helps is because with the increase in mass, you are limiting the amount of vibrational energy escaping from the string into the instrument itself (it's all physics). The slower that energy bleeds off, the longer the string vibrates and thus more sustain. The thing is that you have to make sure that the bridge is well constructed as well, it needs to be smooth so that it doesn't kill your strings, etc. If you don't want to buy a new bass, bridges are available from a lot of places. ste-mac might even have something that would work.
That works in the sense of a "hand waving" approach to physics, but do you know of any empirical data that proves the concept? I'm not saying you are wrong (or right) but can you show me the numbers? No offense intended, but a lot of folks throw the term "physics" around pretty freely.
I don't have any numbers, but my degrees are in physics and I have taken several advanced courses in vibrations and vibrating structures (acoustics was my emphasis). I haven't done any measurements on it, but the increased mass helping is clearly suggested by solving the coupled equations of motion for the string and the bass (really strictly speaking the extra mass will move your coupled natural frequency down, so if you get enough mass, your natural frequency where most energy is lost is so low that by the time you get to the frequencies you care about the coupling between the string and body is weak, keeping more of the energy in the string than with a lighter bridge).
No offense taken, hope the above was helpful. Of course, one needs to realize that results in real life may not always be as dramatic as the equations for an ideal situation seem, but between the equations and intuition, I am sure that extra mass will help some, though to what extent depends on the strings, bridge, bass, tuning, etc. It's not going to hurt the sustain, that's for sure.
No offense taken, hope the above was helpful. Of course, one needs to realize that results in real life may not always be as dramatic as the equations for an ideal situation seem, but between the equations and intuition, I am sure that extra mass will help some, though to what extent depends on the strings, bridge, bass, tuning, etc. It's not going to hurt the sustain, that's for sure.
Then I'm sure you'll agree that just saying "mass increases sustain" is not necessarily true, though I will agree that increasing bridge mass won't likely decrease sustain, all other things being equal. In a complex vibrating system there are nonlinear relationships all over the place, and calculating whether tweaking one variable will affect another dependent variable to a measurable degree is not necessarily straightforward. Adding to that the vast amount of snake oil for sale out there to musicians and the dearth of actual data to back up the claims made makes me skeptical of "magic bullet" solutions.
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I wasn't calling added mass the ideal solution. I was just saying that it could help. My first suggestion all along was to use a compressor/sustainer because I don't think you can get sufficient added sustain from a more massive bridge. I was merely stating that more mass can help and I tried to back that up somewhat. But yeah, any instrument (even a "simple" one) is quite complex with relationships we don't fully understand. It's good to know that there are people here that like to question stuff, makes for a better overall experience, in my mind, thanks ggun.