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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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Posts: 396
| 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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Posts: 6202
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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Adjusted the action, now sounds dead
