|
Post by theinvisibleman on Oct 10, 2017 21:02:45 GMT
Great, that post, video and clicking a few links from there were a bit of an investment I think. (That fella's action looked about 5mm though. Eek.)
Thanks.
|
|
|
Post by theinvisibleman on Oct 7, 2017 20:26:17 GMT
Thanks for the helpful responses. I think I could hear it in the Renbourn clip, yes, though it's hard to tell when someone's playing an actual tune whether it isn't noise from the other hand and the strings. To me it is definitely a louder noise with the nylon string - I hadn't noticed it or been annoyed by it before. A lot of us seem to like some of the noises an acoustic instrument makes but I certainly wouldn't want to leave bad technique unattended if that's what it transpires to be.
|
|
|
Post by theinvisibleman on Oct 4, 2017 10:19:49 GMT
I haven't often had a classical guitar but my current one feels like a keeper, a Santos Martinez. They are silly money for solid spruce & solid rosewood. I play it quite quietly at present and with lower than usual action for a nylon string guitar, 3mm/2.75mm. I am hearing what I've identified as a sweeping sound as the flesh of the thumb contacts the string just before the nail does. I had thought that fingerpicking with some contact from flesh and nail gave a richer sound than just nail, but maybe things are different for nylon? My nail length has been fine for steel string guitars also but maybe longer nails are necessary to avoid the little sweeping sound? And therefore it should just be played with nails? My fingernails are about 1.5mm and my thumbnail 2mm, though it has just been filed back from 3mm. Too short still? It occurred to me also that louder, firmer playing might drown out the sweeping sound. I'm not after learning classical guitar properly, and this guitar is tuned to open D Flat (Db Ab Db F Bb Db) almost always, but I would like to at least get this issue straight. Thanks.
|
|
|
Post by theinvisibleman on Oct 2, 2017 8:38:26 GMT
That really is a decent sounding guitar isn't it. I had the basic mahogany V300 which I had to turn upside down and make a new nut and saddle for as a left-handed person but there was no cajoling that sort of sound from it. It's neither dull nor too luxuriant. I liked the other 'noodling' video on your YT page also. Five all-mahogany guitars have passed through my hands now, three of them being Sigma 000M15s, and I'm still in half a mind about trying a fourth of those...
I think Open G is improved by tuning the bottom string to C (where 002000 is a knockout chord).
|
|
|
Post by theinvisibleman on Sept 23, 2017 19:54:22 GMT
I began a thread in a popular American-run guitar forum at the end of Spring about my guitar refuge in the next county, a place in Sussex I've been visiting for a year and where all Summer I was playing guitar on the beach at 5 most mornings, sometimes 4.30. I don't get to play at home much, living in cardboard flats and being enduringly bashful so these sessions were a great relief.
I got banned from that forum due to... well, I'm sure you've used that forum too, it's easily done, if you've got a sense of humour, a conscience and a mind. I enjoyed the encouraging response I had got though, beforehand.
I'm back in that town for ten days but the beach isn't quite practical for the moment. I've found somewhere else, a bench on the edge of a cliff. Why not, I thought. A bench on the edge of a cliff... guitar practice... smashing. It's a peaceful spot I've enjoyed for a year. I headed there very late today and couldn't expect much practice time, rambler-wise. After twenty minutes engrossed in setting up this cheap Hudson parlour guitar, sitting on the grass at the cliff's edge, a guitar that will not wake up without medium strings, I heard a voice behind me say, "Why isn't that man playing his guitar daddy?" I turn round and there is an enormous extended family of twenty or so on and around 'my' bench. "Ask him," the dad says, smiling. A female family member suggests I play for them...
I explain my disposition and they have a bit of a laugh about it and say they will soon be out of my hair.
There was only one more interruption as such, and I don't mind really, though I'll see if I'm not too hungover to get down there at 6 tomorrow.
i was on the verge of getting shot of this guitar, finding I couldn't get a 'me' sound out of it. The neck set was dire, just over a milimetre of saddle at the bass end sticking out of the bridge and a folded up piece of plastic under just the treble end, with the action still 3mm/ 2.5 mm. I've replaced the NuBone-like saddle and nut and shaved the bridge a little bit, knowing you can go too far with that, but I don't think I've done harm. Then I thought I'd put a magnetic pickup in and use it with lighter nickel strings, which wasn't bad but not something I'd be using plugged in for some time yet, having found place I'm working towards a very belated open mic debut. I made a pig's ear of the job, drilling one hole too far from the pickup cable, a hole now covered by a pickholder. i'm going to make a more matching pickholder from wood once I've sourced a piece. Some might have paused the job and soldered on longer cable but I didn't fee like waiting.
Today I found being perverse was the key to finding this guitar's optimum sound. At the cliff edge I gave its neck an almost nylon string-like neck relief but tuned it to open B. It's come to life quite nicely I think. Lower tunings have compensated the two hundred quid parlour sound to an extent, and the medium strings and Tommy Emmanuel-unfriendly relief have given the guitar a perversely stiffer but 'right' feel. I've got two better guitars but this one has won an eleventh hour reprieve. For now at least - there is a warning that the cliff edge isn't stable. The bench is the right side of the fence but I had somehow pushed by middle aged frame over it for my session.
Yeah, anyway, hello. I'm going down the pub now for three Whitstable Bays and.a Jamesons and soda. Probably some nuts as well. I won't have a burger, no, not tonight. I'll have a burger and a vegetarian pizza on the last night, at 3 am on the beach, hammered and full of my latest blip in enthusiasm for the guitar.
|
|