muttley600
Banned
Yes, no and yes.This turned out to be an excellent, informative thread. Thanks to all.
So here's a question for you, Muttley. Since increased string break angle at the bridge increases the downward force on the bridge and causes string energy to be lost faster through the bridge, it follows (to me, anyway) that that energy is increasingly directed throught the bridge into the body - correct? And whatever attenuating properties the body/neck system possess would come increasingly into play and color the sound more than with shallower string angle? (Although this would be minor in any case with an electric.)
Just trying to get my head around all this.
The main problem in all this is that anything you do effects something else. More volume = less sustain is a classic example of this. Basically the part of the sound wave that dictates tone and timbre are the higher harmonics and impurities that all those material properties impart. Does a higher break angle help this? I wouldn't have said no but that in itself is a subjective opinion. There is no right or wrong answer to that. To my ear a quieter instrument with more sustain always seem to have more complex tonal qualities, again purely subjective. We'd have to define some terms more clearly to make an objective judgment.
Once you are past the basic facts that sound waves behave as they do and physics is physics the fun really starts. As I said earlier the whole thing is hugely complex. Musical acoustics is not rocket science it's actually a lot harder than that. We have put a man on the moon and fired any number of satellites into space yet we are light years away from fully understanding what it is exactly that makes a perfect sounding well balanced instrument. Sure we have some very sound basics to start from but no amount of research by minds far more analytical and sharper than mine has managed to provide a fool proof recipe to build consistent sounding instruments. It sure does help to have a good grounding though. You can treat acoustics as an end in itself or as a means to an end, I do the latter. A lot of what all good luthiers do is balance good science with intuition and experience.
There a many reasons for this. Not least that we are dealing mostly with wood. Show me two bits the same and I'll make two guitars the same. Can't be done. I can use what I know to maximise the chance that what I build turns out somewhere like I want it to.
Thats the real joy in all this. Us makers are just musical alchemists really. I love thinking about the physics and acoustics of instruments and having a good grounding in the subject will always provide you with the ability to understand why instruments act as they do. I always start by imagining a sound wave traveling through the instrument and the problems or benefits each factor introduces on it's journey. The sound wave itself is complex, loads of energy all at different harmonic frequencies and each of those behaves differently to the others. In terms of tone or timbre these are what interest the most. A note of just the fundamental and no harmonic is just a sine wave after all.
Any way I'm rambling now the most important thing of all I dealt with early...
