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Location: Keller, TX | Anyone else have this problem?
Last week I adjusted the truss rod to tighten up the neck a little. Used feeler guages to make sure I was between 0.05 and 0.15 as instructed in the manual.
While doing this, I also removed the last shim from under the pickup to make the action lower. Put it down to 6/64ths at the 12th fret. However, this killed the sound of the guitar. Same Adamas 1818E strings. Sounded flat, dead, like I'm playing underwater (Plastic comments aside). So I put the shim back in. Sounds back to normal again. |
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Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | Whew, that's weird. Bring it to a tech. Even with a very shallow break angle from the saddle it should sound alive. |
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| Actually, I have heard this same situation from several people about several different brands of guitar. I'm not sure if there's anything wrong with the guitar if by lowering the action it changes the tone to something you don't like. I don't know if there's a ton of truth in this phenomenon, but I have heard claims of this happening multiple times. Perhaps, a tech type can chime in about the posiible impact of lowering action on tone. |
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| If you lower the height of the saddle, you decrease the break angle and lower the transfer of energy to the top. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | lower saddle=less tone. It's a fact. |
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Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | I heard of them losing tone, but dead? |
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Location: Keller, TX | Yep, dead. Noticable flat tone. Sounds like I filled the cavity with a towel. Sounds better with the shim in. |
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Location: NJ | Leave the shim in.
It's an ACOUSTIC guitar.
It's not supposed to have the same action as a LesPaul . . .
Higher action builds "character" :cool: |
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Location: SoCal | Nick called it on this. You've gotta have a decent break angle over the saddle. That provides the needed pressure to drive the top. |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Originally posted by moody, p.i.:
You've gotta have a decent break angle over the saddle. That provides the needed pressure to drive the top. That's why Martin guitars (pinned bridge, with sharper break angle) sound so much better than Ovations.
Dave |
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Location: SoCal | Sarcasm raises it's ugle head.
I was in a GC last night and played as many Martins and Taylors as I could. I was not impressed. They all sounded "thin" to me. Maybe I'm just used to O's, but these guitars did not talk to me. |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Blah, blah, blah ... If you eat out of tupperware long enough you lose all appreciation for fine china.
Sarcasm? Maybe yes, maybe no. The Martins in GC do sound like shit. So do the Taylors, the Ovations, and all the rest. Everything in that hole sounds like shit. Just bad karma.
Fact is that Martins DO have a sharper break angle than Ovations. Maybe it makes no difference, maybe it does. I'm no big fan of pinned bridges, but who knows it COULD make a difference.
Dave |
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Location: SoCal | Now THAT'S an argument I can appreciate..... |
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Location: south east Michigan | Hey everybody.... fight!!! fight!! Moody and StandingO are going to get into it!!!! |
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Location: SoCal | Not hardly..... |
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Location: Canton (Detroit), MI | There are both good and bad Martins and Ovations. I just sold a Martin 000-16RGT....I didn't enjoy playing it over the long haul, but it wasn't due to sound. Playability up the neck was not there.
I've removed shims on three of my guitars and on two of them they got put back due to the sound quality loss(the other is the 2005-ES...it was out-of-spec high on action....as is my new 1771LX....shim removal coming).
Roger |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | I could never fight with moody because I have promised him first choice out of my collection when I die. He may be motivated to kill me. Plus he never knows when I'm serious ir not, and when HE is serious ... well, he still makes no sense. He likes to bash Martins, even though he is a big closet fan. I did a search and found 48 seperate threads where he said "Last night I was in GC and was not impressed with the Martins." Gee, sounds to me like he goes to GC pretty freaking often just to play the Martins. On the other hand, I often make fun (sarcastically) about plastic guitar bodies and tupperware and stuff. But look around my house ... umm you come to a different conclusion.
It would be silly to expect this forum to rave about Martins. Like wearing a Red Sox baseball cap in Da Bronx. That's cool. OAO nailed it - I've heard some pretty shitty Martins and some pretty shitty Ovations. Biggest difference is that I can actually afford many good sounding Ovations, but can only afford 1-2 nice Martins.
Dave |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Keep in mind, with pinned bridges the strings travel all the way trough the top and exert an upward force from underneath on the top of the guitar, thus creating opposition limiting the ability of the top to vibrate. |
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Location: Carle Place, NY | Paul:
Go back to GC and see if they have a Gibson Advanced Jumbo AJ45 model. The GC near my office has sold several of them and now keeps two in stock. It's hands down the best acoustic I've ever played. It has that thump in the bass but also great high end and a perfectly balanced tone. It's a real cannon. The rosewood even smells very fine. It's not cheap at $1899, but there's nothing in the store even the $5k+ vintage Martins that compare. |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Originally posted by Jeff W.:
thus creating opposition limiting the ability of the top to vibrate. Jeff, Jeff, Jeff ... you keep this up and we'll have to send you back to engineering school. Draw a vector diagram of the forces and you'll see that what you said is not quite correct. But what do I know? I'm just an idiot who corrects other people for a living. Dave |
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Location: Tampa, FL | Good call SO,
As I see it you have a tension vector for the strings which will get translated at the saddle into a normal (to the top) component and a component co-linear to the string as it attaches to the Bridge (the magnitude normal vector will be related to the break angle). Top vibration is going to result from a complex interaction of the normal and angled vectors as they cause a variety of interactions with the top, most of them I believe would be in the form of torques. I think if you could view this system in action from the perspective of a bridge cross section you would see a locus of points about which the bridge would appear to rotate as though mounted on an axle of sorts. On the other hand I could be full of sh*t. Both descriptions likely have equal probabilites. |
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Location: SoCal | Say what????? |
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Location: Tampa, FL | You pluck the strings.
The top makes noise.
Repeat. |
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Location: NJ | Up + Down = Good. |
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Location: Tampa, FL | What it boils down to is: pinned vs. pinless makes no instrinsic difference (assuming proper use of the Ovation bridge tube restringing aide) The resultant interaction is not affected by the attachment technique other than a possible restraint of trade issue since Ovation's pinless bridge undermines an entire aftermarket segment dealing in fossilized pteradatctyl toenails. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | Originally posted by Standingovation:
Originally posted by Jeff W.:
thus creating opposition limiting the ability of the top to vibrate. Jeff, Jeff, Jeff ... you keep this up and we'll have to send you back to engineering school. Draw a vector diagram of the forces and you'll see that what you said is not quite correct. But what do I know? I'm just an idiot who corrects other people for a living. Dave
Now, where did I put those string tubes? |
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Location: N.J. | :eek: :eek: :eek: Holy Crap.!!! Doesnt anybody just PLAY anymore ????? :p ;) :) |
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Location: Tampa, FL | Originally posted by Jeff W.:
I use down guys and load transfer rigging everyday, Dave...just trying stimulate a little discussion...you WERE supposed to play along.
Oh...
well, alright then... |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | Jeff, we need some kind of "code word" to signal when we're going into action. How about "Bosco". Dave |
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Location: Upper Left USA | I thought the old phrase was "shut up, Witko!".
It seemed to work before. |
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Location: NJ | No. . . . that's what's uttered when the ball is strapped into his mouth . . . . |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | My fault. |
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Location: closely held secret | Besides, Bosco might be someone's ATM code. |
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Location: Warren,Pa. | If you MUST have Les Paul action send it to the Service Dept. I went through this with my Std. Elite LX. I sent it in a month before the tour. They reset the neck and handed it back to me when I arrived at the factory. It did the trick. If you're that fussy about set-up (and you're allowed...it's YOUR guitar)then get it set up by the best. It'll cost you, but you'll love it when you get it back! John <>{ |
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Location: Canton (Detroit), MI | What I'd be curious about is how they do it on an LX. Both of mine arrived with action significantly higher than the manual calls out. Removing a shim brought it into specification, but, of course, the sound suffered a bit.
(I removed a shim on my 1771LX since the post earlier today)
I reopen this with trepidation, but....I don't think the string really "restricts" the top's movement....it simply transmits the string's vibration to the top, the more perpendicular the angle(less loss of energy), the better. Shouldn't matter if it is a pinned bridge or a through bridge.
Roger |
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Location: Tampa, FL | Here I go again ...
;) just kidding
That's pretty much correct OAO |
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Location: Canton (Detroit), MI | Thanks....guess I should READ the intervening posts THOROUGHLY.....
Roger |
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Location: Huntington Beach, CA | I wish I had this information a while ago. I sold a probably perfectly good CL shallow body just because it sounded muffled and weak. It had been lowered to the max by the local Ovation repair guy. I could have handled higher action but didn't know any better and just blamed the sound on the shallow bowl. Now I finally get what CWK2 was talking about when I blasted shallow bowls a couple of years back.
Now I have another CL and the action is high. I love the sound as is. I guess I can experiment with the shims but if I lose that great sound, what can I do??? A neck reset on a brand new instrument doesn't seem reasonable.
How can the angle of the string from bridge to saddle be increased? Also, does proximity of string to sound hole have any bearing on sound quality? Is there an optimum distance to the sound hole for best sound?
I'd be interested to hear from the engineers on this one. Thanks.
Eman. |
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Location: Tampa, FL | Originally posted by Eman:
How can the angle of the string from bridge to saddle be increased? Also, does proximity of string to sound hole have any bearing on sound quality? Is there an optimum distance to the sound hole for best sound?
I'd be interested to hear from the engineers on this one. Thanks.
Eman. answer to your first question: I don't know of any practical way to accomplish this.
Before answering your second question I'll offer a couple of observations. First, multihole models don't have a 'soundhole' per say (also think about Tacomas'). Second, if you were to prevent the top from vibrating (press down with your palm) you pretty much kill the sound. Based on these two things I would suggest that the soundhole is there for decoration. It size (summ area of the openings) affects the resonant characteristics of the body chamber. It's position is pretty irrelevant.
Answer to your third question will likely fuel the rest of this thread and the onging discussions between the centrhole, multihole camps for the foreseable future. |
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Location: SoCal | Contact the customer service guys at Ovation. They can answer your questions. |
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Location: south east Michigan | At the next tour I am going to personaly ask an engineer about this. |
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Location: Tampa, FL | And if you're not careful, you'll wake up the Temp. Shhhh. |
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Location: south east Michigan | I don't doubt that it makes a difference.
But is it a quantifiable difference?
Would it take Spock's tricorder to measure the change in tone & volume? |
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Location: Canton (Detroit), MI | First, you need to define tone and volume. To truly define tone you need to do a full frequency spectrum analysis of the results of various notes, chords, etc. Several guitars, known "good" guitars for tone, irrespective of brand would be good. Perhaps then, one could define what frequencies are pleasant and desirable and what frequencies are NOT.
Volume is easier, decibel readings at a series of set distances from each guitar should suffice.
I believe a lot of this type of work was done prior to the first Ovations, and again before the first Adamii. Look in "The Book".
I doubt that string distance from the soundhole, in and of itself, makes any difference, only that the distance needs to be fairly short for optimum transmission of vibration through the bridge to the top(plus, the more perpendicular the string to the top, the more efficient the vibration transmission).
Eman, I'd experiment with shims to optimize action to sound....you can make thicknesses in-between the factory shims with styrene strip plastic. Or make ONE shim the correct thickness and not add two or three.
Roger |
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Adjusted the action, now sounds dead