12 strings - referencing the Muttley/tuning thread...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Armistice
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Armistice

Armistice

Son of Yoda
I noticed in the thread about tunings and temperaments that someone said one of the techniques used in getting a piano to sound good is that unisons are sometimes deliberately tuned to different pitches...

I absolutely hate the sound of unison strings on 12 string guitars because you just can't quite exactly get them the same, and they beat and sound chorusy... ewwwww... makes me wonder if anyone's ever deliberately to tune them at different pitches as a way to make the thing sound "better" and if so, what pitch?

Just a thought..

Cheers
 
Even if they are exactly in unison, they will still beat. They are coupled together by the vibrating bridge, and hand vibrational energy back and forth between them. This causes amplitude beats, which are different from mis-tuning beats, and there's no point in hating it, because that's the way a 12-string is meant to sound!
 
i agree ..what choice do have....they are either in unison or octaves ..but anything else is just out of tune or some open chord affair?? 12 strings sound like chorus...or should i say chorus sounds like twelve string.
 
Paraglider said:
Even if they are exactly in unison, they will still beat. They are coupled together by the vibrating bridge, and hand vibrational energy back and forth between them. This causes amplitude beats, which are different from mis-tuning beats, and there's no point in hating it, because that's the way a 12-string is meant to sound!
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Thats about it..The energy from one string can have a large effect of the partials of the coupled string. This results in audible beats, termed "false beats". A piano tuner will attempt to reduce or eliminate them when they occur by minutely sharpening or flattening the unison notes. Some piano's are worse than others as the effect is cause by the nature of the materials and their anisotropic acoustic behavoir. The process is referred to as "mis-tuning"

As to the 12 string thing. Sure try it. I have never had much experience of 12 string guitars but have on unisons on lutes and theorbo's. The problems on them are greatly reduced due to the use of gut strings but it does happen. Experiment with it. I think to a degree though you are always going to have a distinctive 12 string sound or chorus like sound. Mis-tuning is meant to help where you have very audible false beats.
 
Armi,

I've had a CW80/12 since '69 and believe me, you can get them close enough that it doesn't matter ;). The thing is, that when picked, there's always going to be a fraction of a second between the two strings being struck which raises the potential for them to be doing odd phasey things.

BTW, I played a bit of your first album to a mate today....he was totally impressed :)

ChrisO :cool:
 
ausrock said:
Armi,

I've had a CW80/12 since '69 and believe me, you can get them close enough that it doesn't matter ;). The thing is, that when picked, there's always going to be a fraction of a second between the two strings being struck which raises the potential for them to be doing odd phasey things.
Click to expand...

Those odd phasey things are what a 12 string is all about.
 
ausrock said:
Armi,


BTW, I played a bit of your first album to a mate today....he was totally impressed :)

ChrisO :cool:
Click to expand...

Thanks Chris - nice to hear... I just about can't listen to it myself... I like the music, or most of it, but can't stand the beautiful "straight to desk" sound from my pre-microphone days! Not to mention the overuse of reverb...

Always thought I'd go back and redo some of them someday...

As for the 12 string thing, I think I'm just getting "hyper-sensitive" to sound, if that makes any sense... all sorts of things annoy me sound-wise these days - I'm sure I never really noticed them before...

Mind you it's a 425/12 - so hardly the top model... and it sounds generally average, but for $800 brand new, I figured... why not? I'm sure they list at at least $1400 or so (no cutaway, no pickup) ... figured I could always dump it and break even at worst...

Start doing recording trials in 2 weeks... fingers crossed. :D
 
QUOTE.........."I just about can't listen to it myself... I like the music, or most of it, but can't stand the beautiful "straight to desk" sound from my pre-microphone days! Not to mention the overuse of reverb..."

Mate, you're being too critical :p ....it is what it is.......nice music, nicely played and nicely recorded, sure, you could redo some or all of it but I think you'd risk losing some of the charm and magic that's there.



There's nothing particularly wrong with Maton's 325/425 series, Matt has the slimline version, a 525 and it's a damned nice guitar. When Maton first got serious with 12's in the late 60's, their CW80's neck width was almost the same as the 6 string version but somewhere along the line, they opted to increase the width and while the overall quality (sound and build) has improved, I find the early models to be much nicer to play.

Talking about Matt.........he and the band are likely to be down in Albert's studio around the 25th tracking drums and God love him, he's invited Dad along, so I might get to see what real pros do. I think the idea is to get good drum tracks then work on the rest in the singer's studio or maybe here :eek:. You can currently find them sitting at #56 on TripleJ's Unearthed overall Top 100 chart.....a crappy development demo they did.

Anyways, keep in touch.

Chris :cool:
 
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