Post by scripsit on Aug 19, 2013 1:17:11 GMT
I finally had a chance to listen to the tracks on a decent system over the weekend. I was most interested in the fingerstyle samples.
www.dropbox.com/s/roub4becdrwss76/samples_screenshot.jpg
As you can see I tried to go all hard science, and spent some time looking at various spectrum meters on the samples, too.
As you might expect, this did not tell me much more than I could tell from listening (and by the way, it's really hard to do a double blind type test when you're by yourself and having to use a mouse to select which track is active while pretending that you don't know which track is which).
Anyway, as an upshot, I stand by my original impression: the Sobell and Dave's two guitars are similar in sound to each other, while the McIlroy is a different beast.
The McIlroy sounds more like what I think of as a 'conventional' guitar sound, with a pleasant middle voice and a gentle top end (I think this is more than the old strings, too, having occasionally allowed some of my own guitars to go far too long without necessary string changes), while the other three are much more in the modern fingerstyle camp with much more pronounced top end. In my original comments I called the McIlroy 'woolly', which is unfair, because I think whether you want the added sparkle or not is a question of taste (ie some would call it 'strident').
Both of Dave's guitars seemed to generate considerably more overtones than the Sobell, the Buchaill Mhor in particular. I wonder if the comment that the Sobell needs to be driven hard is relevant here.
The extra bass mentioned as being present in Dave's dread was not something I could hear. I think the impression was an artifact of a fairly evenly spread grunt at the low end in general. To me the Sobell had more bottom end than any of the other guitars, and this seemed to be borne out by the spectrum analysis which showed a fairly solid lump between 100 and 200 Hz, whereas both of Dave's guitars, while lifting the meter in this area, did so in distinct spikes.
I'd happily own any of these guitars.
Thanks for taking the time to do this recording Dave, it must have been a considerable effort.
Kym
[Edit] I tried to insert the screenshot image linked above (it sits in a dropbox folder) but can't get it to appear when inserted as an image.
EDIT by Keith - done it for you Kym, via photobucket - hope that's OK with you!
www.dropbox.com/s/roub4becdrwss76/samples_screenshot.jpg
As you can see I tried to go all hard science, and spent some time looking at various spectrum meters on the samples, too.
As you might expect, this did not tell me much more than I could tell from listening (and by the way, it's really hard to do a double blind type test when you're by yourself and having to use a mouse to select which track is active while pretending that you don't know which track is which).
Anyway, as an upshot, I stand by my original impression: the Sobell and Dave's two guitars are similar in sound to each other, while the McIlroy is a different beast.
The McIlroy sounds more like what I think of as a 'conventional' guitar sound, with a pleasant middle voice and a gentle top end (I think this is more than the old strings, too, having occasionally allowed some of my own guitars to go far too long without necessary string changes), while the other three are much more in the modern fingerstyle camp with much more pronounced top end. In my original comments I called the McIlroy 'woolly', which is unfair, because I think whether you want the added sparkle or not is a question of taste (ie some would call it 'strident').
Both of Dave's guitars seemed to generate considerably more overtones than the Sobell, the Buchaill Mhor in particular. I wonder if the comment that the Sobell needs to be driven hard is relevant here.
The extra bass mentioned as being present in Dave's dread was not something I could hear. I think the impression was an artifact of a fairly evenly spread grunt at the low end in general. To me the Sobell had more bottom end than any of the other guitars, and this seemed to be borne out by the spectrum analysis which showed a fairly solid lump between 100 and 200 Hz, whereas both of Dave's guitars, while lifting the meter in this area, did so in distinct spikes.
I'd happily own any of these guitars.
Thanks for taking the time to do this recording Dave, it must have been a considerable effort.
Kym
[Edit] I tried to insert the screenshot image linked above (it sits in a dropbox folder) but can't get it to appear when inserted as an image.
EDIT by Keith - done it for you Kym, via photobucket - hope that's OK with you!