Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

[Tor]

Here.

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

That was an interesting read, and it reminded me a lot of similar theories I have read in high end turntable manufacture. I don't know if I agree with his theories, but it's a stimulating read, nonetheless.

 

[theboatcandream]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

The bridge is in the middle of this. We need the bridge to transmit the vibrations as fast as possible. The bigger and heavier the bridge, the more inertia it has, and the harder it is to change it.

No, you're talking about the speed that energy moves through a medium. Energy moves more quickly through a denser medium. So a denser bridge transmits energy more quickly than a bridge that is less dense but otherwise equal.

All things being equal, a strat with a Floyd Rose has more fret buzz than a strat with a 6-screw bridge, standard nut and Klusons. And the tone of a strat with a Floyd is not as rich without fatter pickups.

A vintage Les Paul with the old lightweight stop and ABR1 bridge with the Kluson-style tuners with plastic buttons has resonance for days.

Not all les pauls have good sustain, and plastic buttons surely aren't an important factor. Tyler also makes some comments about fret buzz that aren't based on physics it seems... fret buzz comes from a bad setup, not bad sustain.

Think about an extreme, if you made a bridge out of a 10 pound block of steel, and put it on your guitar, it would be dead. It wouldn’t resonate. The string vibrations wouldn’t overcome the inertia of the mass of steel.

Someone should try this and get back to him. I think a 10 pound block of steel would have incredible sustain since energy is transmitted so quickly and you don't have energy lost to heat since things aren't moving around as much.


The reason metal sounds brighter is because it's a better conductor of energy than wood is. You don't ~want~ to have a body that is a perfect conductor of energy. You want to use materials that shape the sound, but in a good way.


He's right about mids, but the rest of what he wrote is flawed.

 

[theboatcandream]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

Did anyone else notice this following post? People are weird...

infuse the "Mojo" into a new guitar by sending sound waves (?) into the body and neck is very exciting information.

Did I get that wrong? Maybe I'm hearing what I'd like to hear. The idea that the player influences the instrument at some sub-atomic level is fascinating to me. It reminds me of string theory in that you are suggesting you can manipulate the frequency of vibration with in the woods physical make up.

 

[KeeperOS]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

I think that guy was being sarcastic (although in a jumbled kind of way...)

What Tyler says are all true, however I think this is only half of the story.
There are a lot of other factors at play that actually benefit from the exact opposite things (like you noticed).

As a side note, did anyone found John Suhrs take on this?
He originally posted twice but moved his posts to another thread that I couldn't find.
I'd love to read his opinion

 

[scottish]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

No, you're talking about the speed that energy moves through a medium. Energy moves more quickly through a denser medium. So a denser bridge transmits energy more quickly than a bridge that is less dense but otherwise equal.

He is talking about inertia, the amound of energy needed to start the bridge vibrating. He makes no claims as to what difference things make once its already vibrating. What you are saying is true, but he is claiming lighter bridges are better because its takes less energy to start them vibrating, hence more of the initial string vibration energy is passed into the wood.

Someone should try this and get back to him. I think a 10 pound block of steel would have incredible sustain since energy is transmitted so quickly and you don't have energy lost to heat since things aren't moving around as much.

His claim is that it would have bad sustain because a large amount of the initial string vibration energy would be lost in making the bridge vibrate, hence much less would be passed through to the wood.


Im not saying you are wrong and he is right or vice versa, im just portaying my interpretation of his article.

 

[guitfiddle]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

No, you're talking about the speed that energy moves through a medium. Energy moves more quickly through a denser medium. So a denser bridge transmits energy more quickly than a bridge that is less dense but otherwise equal.

Not all les pauls have good sustain, and plastic buttons surely aren't an important factor. Tyler also makes some comments about fret buzz that aren't based on physics it seems... fret buzz comes from a bad setup, not bad sustain.

Someone should try this and get back to him. I think a 10 pound block of steel would have incredible sustain since energy is transmitted so quickly and you don't have energy lost to heat since things aren't moving around as much.

If the bridges both were the same material then bigger weight means bigger mass and size, so if the bridge weighed too much, the vibrations would get lost in the bridge instead of going into the guitar. With a smaller bridge, the vibes can't go very far into the metal, so they go into the wood. The bigger one would soak up the vibrations like a sponge.

Anything runs into the law of diminishing returns eventually, and the weight of the bridge would determine when that starts and how fast and far it goes.

 

[Tor]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

He is talking about inertia, the amound of energy needed to start the bridge vibrating. He makes no claims as to what difference things make once its already vibrating. What you are saying is true, but he is claiming lighter bridges are better because its takes less energy to start them vibrating, hence more of the initial string vibration energy is passed into the wood.

His claim is that it would have bad sustain because a large amount of the initial string vibration energy would be lost in making the bridge vibrate, hence much less would be passed through to the wood.

Im not saying you are wrong and he is right or vice versa, im just portaying my interpretation of his article.

That was my understanding too.. And good point about the law of diminishing returns.. It's not all about having the lightest bridge (or the heaviest), but finding the perfect balance. James Tyler's guitars are pretty sought after (although expensive), so he must be doing something right, at the very least..

 

[baritone]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

Guitarist physics again. I try to ignore this stuff. In the post by James Tyler, he is totally misapplying conecpts of physics. Post #4 by theboatcandream makes a lot more sense.

A huge heave bridge will improve sustain much better than a plastic one. "Inertia" refers to the fact that an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by something else. A flick of your finger or a pick on a string is enough to get the heaviest bridge assmeblies out there vibrating. The vibration of a bigger, heavier bridge is less likely to be slowed down by the resistance created by string tension and air resistance.

 

[guitfiddle]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

Guitarist physics again. I try to ignore this stuff. In the post by James Tyler, he is totally misapplying conecpts of physics. Post #4 by theboatcandream makes a lot more sense.

A huge heave bridge will improve sustain much better than a plastic one. "Inertia" refers to the fact that an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by something else. A flick of your finger or a pick on a string is enough to get the heaviest bridge assmeblies out there vibrating. The vibration of a bigger, heavier bridge is less likely to be slowed down by the resistance created by string tension and air resistance.

All I can say is that guitars made today don't have huge, heavy bridges for a reason, and it ain't all economic.

Sustain is a bit overrated anyway; resonance is where it's at.

 

[That90'sGuy]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

I don't know, I've found that you can only control the tone of an instrument by just so many factors. Guitars are always a crapshoot. I've owned ones with lightweight this and that and they sucked (weak sounding with poor resonance or sustain) and I've owned ones that have thicker, heavier bridges and they've played like a dream, so I can't find any reason other than "it just works". On the production line, every once in a while some guitars have the hardware and that specific set of woods to compliment each other well. The worst thing you can do as a musician is pick an instrument blindly. Pick 'em off the shelf and compare and don't be surprised at just how much variance you can have even on identical models.

 

[Uk Ant]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

I think his theories are a tad flawed, physics wise.
An interesting read mind.
I can kinda see where he's coming from on the 'heavy bridge is bad' thing.
Metal is a great tranducer of acoustic energy so the more of it there is, the more energy can be lost into the body of the guitar.
I get the feeling that the main reason bridges are lighter these days is more down to improvements on manufacturing processes and material technology allowing the same strength properties from less metal.

 

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

Whatever the string is anchored to must also be lightweight so the vibrations of the string can pass through it to the wood and from the wood back into the string.

Yes and no. Depends on construction. You may want lightweight (fixed bridge), or you may want heavy (tremolo blocks: they should try to resist eating up the strings energy).

Then you play an A. You have instantaneously changed the pitch by fretting it or choosing a different string, but the wood is still vibrating at E (things in motion). The wood must now stop vibrating at E and change to A. The inertia of the guitar is that it is vibrating at E, and this must stop and become A....

No. Vibrating objects can vibrate more than one frequency. Even with a single string, if what he says is true, there'd be no harmonic richness in the tone, for harmonics are frequencies other than what you just played (i.e. other than the fundamental). The top of an acoustic is different anyways: it's designed to move and vibrate a lot so that the air inside is vibrated. A solid-body electric guitar itself vibrates, but does not need to vibrate any air around it to make sound: that's what the pickups are for.

The more the vibration stays in the string, the more tendencies for fret buzz.

I don't like that explanation. Fret buzz is caused by the string slapping the fretboard. I'd ask the author to check his string height: my Strat don't fret buzz.

As for bridge discussion, sure, more inertia in the bridge due to weight and/or mass can cause the tone to be more "metallic" or "bright". However, not all objects, due to their composition, resonate the same. This comes from me interviewing an aircraft engineer. Resonance does not directly follow weight or mass: it also depends a lot on the object's composition.

It’s the midranges that make a solo cut through a track and sit well in the mix of a recording. It’s the midrange that makes your guitar heard in a live situation and not get lost in the mix.

I don't like that explanation either. Guitars share midrange with vocals. When you want to solo, you need more volume, not necessarily more mids (although more volume may sound like more mids, it's not, if you're referring to a clean boost: it's more everything). If they author is referring to playing at 50% volume then rolling volume up for solos, again his ears may be causing a misconception, since pickups are more pronounced on their resonant frequency, not necessarily in mids. Vintage humbuckers like the Jazz for example will be brighter when the volume is increased, because that's where their resonant frequency is. Cutting through the mix depends on what instruments you play with as well. You may be heard over the keyboards, for example, but if you both are occupying a lot of the same frequencies, it will make the band sound muddy in those areas. It all depends. Most recording-type websites I've read deal with the "make sure everyone's not occupying the same frequencies" ordeal.

When you look at the most popular guitar woods, you find alder for a strat and mahogany for a Paul. These are woods that produce a great midrange. An all-maple Les Paul (L5S) or maple-bodied strat generally won’t sound as good or play as well.

Incorrect. They will sound different, not "not as good". See George Lynch. Woods are ironically a good example of why the author is a little off base with his explanation. All woods have frequencies they like and dislike due to composition: an example of resonance not always aligning with the mids. A solid rock maple guitar will be bright, but will still have mids (especially when you put alnico ii pickups on it). Basswood and swamp ash will still have mids. Mahogany compresses the mids, etc.

Now, we can build a beautiful fancy maple-bodied super strat with an ebony fingerboard and stainless steel frets and a Floyd Rose with a big brass block, and hang Schaller tuners on it, and we can plug it into a million-dollar rack....“Too bad it’s all going to get lost in the mix."

Yeah that's some bull too. In fact, I think such a guitar would be less likely to get lost in the mix due to how bright it is. I've listened to recordings with strats and teles and I can tell you brightness does not get lost in the mix. Maybe it can if it's competing with a Hammond B3, I guess, since those are also bright, but again it depends. If no other instruments are bright but your guitar is bright, you're going to be heard.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

Theory vs. reality.

I'm a big believer in getting out of my head and having an actual experience. When I was younger I had all kinds of theories. Now that I'm almost 59, many of those theories have been replaced by actual hands on experience and when I post here or give my opinion I try to base it on actual experience.

Just curious if any of you guys have actually owned or played a Tyler Strat.

I haven't owned one, but a buddy of mine has two and I had a chance to keep one of them for a few days.

My impression was that I had never played a better playing or better sounding Strat.

So Tyler clearly knows what it takes to build a spectacular sounding Strat type guitar.

And THAT isn't theory - that's reality.

 

[Robert Delahunt]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

Theory vs. reality.
My impression was that I had never played a better playing or better sounding Strat.

So Tyler clearly knows what it takes to build a spectacular sounding Strat type guitar.

And THAT isn't theory - that's reality.

True. Still, I can't believe he can say something that, in effect, claims that all guitars not made of mahogany or alder automatically don't have enough mids, therefore they automatically sound bad (or "don't cut through the mix" or whatnot). Two questions that come to mind:

1) Why does Tyler mention alder as a wood with more mids when nearly all websites describing its sound (i.e. other people's ears) say that it's so balanced that it sometimes comes across as having less mids?

2) If basswood be a good example of a guitar that's mids-heavy (since every website seems to say that basswood has lots of mids, but at the expense of highs and lows), why doesn't he offer any guitars in that wood if he loves mids?

I'm at his website and he offers ash and korina also, and a wood known as mamywo. I'm surprised he'd offer ash since the consensus seems to be that ash is brighter than alder, with a little less mids (but swamp ash also varies alot between samples, or so I hear).

Still, if you say he makes a good guitar, that's good enough for me. So far your ears haven't been wrong. It just sort of bothers me that he would say stuff like that. I mean, he could be wrong in explanation (he's not an engineer, but neither am I lol) but that wouldn't affect his ability to make a good guitar (since that's based on wood sample selection (not necessarily species since you can go with the "safe defaults" of alder and mahogany), construction, and pickups), would it?

 

[Curly]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

I started to read that article, but it was fairly long so I didn't read the whole thing. I'm always interested to hear what builders' thoughts are about tone though.
I favor the more intuitive comments than the physics arguments. Why? Because artist/ builders base their comments on what they hear, usually after years of listening to countless instruments.
The physics arguments are based on what people can measure and/ or analyze, but that doesn't always take into account those things that can't be measured, as well as the interaction of all the elements of tone.

I'd also note that density and resonance are two different things.

Lew said it better though: "Theory vs. reality."

My impression was that I had never played a better playing or better sounding Strat.

So Tyler clearly knows what it takes to build a spectacular sounding Strat type guitar.

a friend of mine owned two, and I had the same opinion

 

[theboatcandream]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

I think very few of us are qualified to talk about this intelligently.

Let's try to avoid metaphysical mysticism, aka saying stuff we think sounds good and should be true because we like the idea of it.

 

[j9fd3s]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

I think very few of us are qualified to talk about this intelligently.

Let's try to avoid metaphysical mysticism, aka saying stuff we think sounds good and should be true because we like the idea of it.

true. with the race car (wwwk2rd.com) we've gone from butt dyno to claude roulles bible. its faster to set the car up, and the car is more consistently faster too. its physics, kinematics, and a study of what the tire contace patch does.

who has done this with the guitar?

i also thought of an explanation for the "string buzz" although i'm not sure i'm really buying it.

ok so imagine you have 2 guitar strings, and you attach one to something giant and unmoving, like ron jeremy. you attach the other string to something really light. both string heights are the same.

ron jermey's string buzzes, because in this model, he's too big and heavy so he doesnt absorb the energy from the string, so the string vibrates more than the other string, which gets some of its energy taken away in vibrating the thing its attached too.

mike

 

[ganzosrevenge]

Re: Interesting article about mass, resonance and tone (written by James Tyler)

true. with the race car (wwwk2rd.com) we've gone from butt dyno to claude roulles bible. its faster to set the car up, and the car is more consistently faster too. its physics, kinematics, and a study of what the tire contace patch does.

who has done this with the guitar?

i also thought of an explanation for the "string buzz" although i'm not sure i'm really buying it.

ok so imagine you have 2 guitar strings, and you attach one to something giant and unmoving, like ron jeremy. you attach the other string to something really light. both string heights are the same.

ron jermey's string buzzes, because in this model, he's too big and heavy so he doesnt absorb the energy from the string, so the string vibrates more than the other string, which gets some of its energy taken away in vibrating the thing its attached too.

mike

and how would you know ron jeremy's string buzzes?