Poor, Mostly Deaf, Over 50 & Optimistic

Editor

Editor

New member
Along with 2 hearing aids, I have an old piece of cheap wood I modestly describe as a 'guitar' that a couple of pals of mine want me to start playing in public (again). They are even tempting me with Joe Bonamassa recordings ... telling me I used to sound like him. Fat chance! He can HEAR what he sounds like ;-)

The piece of lumber in question has been carpentered, machined & electrified by yours truly & 'loosely' resembles a Strat but running thru my rig can sometimes sound like Kent, a $13 Stella, a 80 pound 'lectric razor (I love that phrase -- given to me by a guy from 'Bama :) or a wombat.

Anyway, its the best I can do at the moment. I've tinkered around to a point where it don't sound half bad but I can't seem to fix 1 main problem -- the G string has an awful, unharmonic overtone on just about every note I fret. To me; & I can't always trust me; it sounds like a combination of the fretted note plus the note produced by the length of the string in front of the fretted note. I think the problem lies with intonation or damping but there is not much to work with. The bridge has a bit of up/down ... forward/back adjustment left but not much ... not enough to match a 12th fretted note & a 12th fret harmonic.

All the other strings are OK. I tend to run 'light' sets (unwound G. .008/.009 on the 1st & dropped D tuning on the 6th) so I'm wondering if heavying up on the G might help?

Any & all comments welcome. (even you Light ... I know, I know ... take it to a registered, official guitar tech or throw the wood in the fireplace but up where I live; 400 miles from professional guitar techs; we have to make do with what we have ... or throw the guitar on the fire to keep warm ;-)
 
Sounds like you have an intonation problem. A new set of saddles might help. Very light guage strings often have some unexplainable noises so a little heavier strings might help too. If your pickups have individual adjustable posts you might try lowering the one under your G string. These are just suggestions, it's hard to be more specific without hearing the sound.
 
Try experimenting with shims.

Place a small folded scrap of paper over the saddle under the G string and see if the problem lessens. Forget about tone for a minute and focus on the buzzing or overtone noise. The try doubling the shim height and see if that makes a difference, and so on.

What you're doing with this is changing the angle of the string relative to the fretboard. If you can make the problem go away, or if it is significantly better, then it is telling you there is either a neck warp problem or something amiss with the frets.

If that's the case, try and figure out which one it is. You can sight down the fretboard from the headstock to the bridge and watch for any frets that appear out of place; they should all crown consistently. If one is high - and it might be up where the neck meets the body - it may be interfering with the G string wherever it's fretted. The idea is to isolate what the issue is to an area, like a differential diagnosis.

You can also experiment with the nut to see how the neck responds there with the same idea in mind.

Another possibility is that the shim could act as a damper on a bridge or saddle rattle; we don't have any information about your bridge setup, but I assume it is not a floating bridge. If you have rollers, something could be a little loose in the G-string path.


Another thing to check is whether the truss rod is really loose; if so it may buzz and rattle and it can be quirky in how it does that.
 
Actually, it plays pretty good. The main sound problems are shielding related -- I run a single coil in the neck position on a 5-way selector with 2 double coils. Unfortunately, I don't have the option of putting in a stacked humbucker ... wish I could afford it. The bridge does have rollers and now that you mention it, it does at times sound like there is something rattling.

Great ideas both Dani & Tree. Thanks, I'll try them all :)
 
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"Optimistic" is a good thing... and will pay you back well

As an aside, when I was a kid my older brother got a guitar and played a few chords on it. I remember him playing "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Pipeline." He also got the first line or two of "Melaguena." That was about it. I was seven or so and the bug bit me from hearing him.

He was frustrated by his inability to keep track of where he was in the song and had no way to develop his skills at the time, so he dropped it. I fooled around with the guitar for a few years until I was a freshman in high school (1970) when my other brother gave me a '59 Gibson LG2. I still have that guitar. I took off like a rocket and that instrument was my constant companion through high school and college. I'm certain it is responsible for keeping me out of jail on occasion.

I tell the story here because your post reminded me of my brother who first got me interested in the instrument. As we learned later, both he and my other brother suffer from a profound hearing loss in all but the very low registers. They have had this condition from birth.

They were natural lipreaders and both are extremely smart, perceptive and driven; nobody knew of their hearing loss until one started studying foreign languages - from a guy with a big beard. No lipreading = no information. That's when the hearing tests began and the results were frightening.

Both learned to cope / overcome the impairment in many ways, but I have come to understand as time goes by how much work it takes for each of them to get through a single day.

The circle closes in a sense in that now, nearly forty years later, both brothers are increasingly involved in music, dance, drumming, percussion and similar musical and martial art forms. The one who got me started finally sprung for a Martin guitar a year ago and now I'm the one who gives him lessons. He also gets help and encouragement from his son, who he got started with the instrument ("Don't get the Squier - you should have the real thing...I'll help you buy it"), and who subsequently studied guitar with a local blues artist, and who I taught about slide guitar.

It may be a small world, but sometimes it sure is a beautiful one.
 
Interesting Tree.

Yup, the hearing problem is a dog but I guess I shouldn't complain. I didn't know I had trouble until one time I was talking during a meeting with a couple of other producers (I work in TV) and the alarm went off on my watch ('alarm watches' ... the 80's SHEEESH!). The other 2 guys started to giggle (TV people are goofy anyway ;-) because I was the only one that didn't hear it (my loss is in the upper registers).

As I think I mentioned earlier, it is heriditary for the most part with some attributable to where I work and, of course, the Marshall stacks from an earlier incarnation of my musical self. My little brother is a classical pianist and apparently he's OK. My next younger brother plays drums; we thought he had a hearing problem too but it turns out he is just stupid ... drummers :)

Luckily for me, the loss is not too drastic so hearing aids work well for everything except playing in a live situation. Hearing aid design is still pretty primitive -- mine use somewhat primitive, heavy compression circuits so they shut off incoming transient sound (snare drums, thumpy bass notes, etc.) to protect what's left of my hearing. I actually gave up on playing anything for a few years until I saw Leo Kotke play on PBS one night, then I got the bug again. Went out & bought a cheap 12 string thinking I could make it sound like his B'ozo (told you I was optimistic ;-)

Soon I started remembering my Fostex 4-track days so I started messing with Cubase, n-track & home recording. This worked well because the sound levels were controllable. I still think playing live with other people is the way to go -- if all else fails, I hope to release an album/CD/mp3 ... whatever is done these days ... entitled "Musical Masturbation: Playing With Myself" :)

It was just recently that a buddy of mine started pushing me to come out & jam ... thought it was going to be fun but the aids interfered. Maybe that's not the right word -- I hear better now than I ever did but it sounds 'different'. My buddy (bass player) kept asking if there was anything he could do to improve the situation. I said, "Yeah. Tune yur guitar!" ;-)

Editor's note: What do you call 2 bass players playing in unison?

A minor third.

Anyway, I'm still working on how to make it work. I think all this is the reason for my noticing intonation problems on my cheap piece 'o wood -- probably all my guitars were that bad but now I'm just recognising it.

Hey! I snooped around your site. JAMFEST sounds great! You guys must have a load of fun. Are Vermont & Connecticut really blue? ... like on the Monopoly board? yuk yuk yuk

There Is No Bad Music (...well ... RAP is bad ... & show tunes ... & ... nevermind),

Chris
 
You should link up with Chris Tondreau from Hamilton - he's planning to be there, I believe. You guys could carpool down and back, and there will be plenty of tenting space - and tents. It's worth every bit of effort it takes to get there. People are heading up from Texas, California, the Deep South, all over.

And, of course, you do know how to tell when the stage is level, right?



















The bass player is drooling out of both sides of his mouth.... :cool:
 
Hello,

I just joined this site because, after reading some of the posts, it seems like some really knowledgeable people use the site, and there's a lot of useful info.

I hope it's OK for me to post this here, but it was the "over 50" part of this one that caught my eye. I'm not quite at 50 yet, but getting real close. I've sort of fooled around with an acoustic guitar since I was about 20, but never bought an electric until about 18 months ago. I bought a Fender Strat, and have totally fallen in love with it. I've now bought a G-deck so I can have something to play along with, since I'm not in a band and don't know any musicians in my home city.

I've got a lot of questions, but I don't want to get off to a bad start by asking them here, since this is already for a specific topic. Sorry - I'm new to doing this. (Geez, the way I'm writing this makes me sound like some kind of weird hermit or something - not quite that bad, just don't know many musicians locally or in my age group).

Some of my questions are about how to find people to play with so I can measure whether I'm getting any better, stuff like that. Do I start a post somewhere, or find a topic that's related? Would someone mind steering me to the right place? Thank you.
 
Hiya Pavlov

Don't worry about 'hijacking' my thread ... s'OK :)

I've been hanging around here for a couple of years now. This is a great place to ask questions about anything & everything. Don't worry about your experience level or skills. The great thing about forums like this is that when in doubt, just lie about it ;)

Did I mention I was Jimi Hendrix's guitar tech? ;)

Yeah, just look for the 'New Thread' button in a forum that suits you & ask away.
 
Thanks, Editor. See how dumb I am, I didn't realize I was hijacking a thread. This will take me awhile to get used to. But thanks for replying!

And, wow! Jimi Hendrix's guitar tech! Then you must know my late aunt, Janis Joplin. Her and Jimi were tight.

I may have to work on my lying, too. Thanks again!
 
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