Post by deathbyoatcake on Feb 22, 2015 13:35:20 GMT
No, this is not a drugs question...
Often people prefer their guitars' action to be 'as low as it'll go without a buzz'. It seems like both the consensus for preferred action and the capabilities for low action has changed in the last twenty years, going by magazines and books. One forum user a few years ago described how he'd decide the action was right if it would just start to buzz if you played harder, he wasn't trying to banish buzz altogether. I'm starting to find, I think, that whether it's objective or to do with my relatively light touch a guitar seems to even sound best with low action, low enough that you need to control the buzzing quite actively. Apart from the buzz the strings seem to give better tone, livelier, more overtones. My Sigma, in standard Eb tuning, is sounding nearer the D18 its modelled on with action of 2mm to 1.8 (bass to treble). As it arrived and with a couple of previous saddles there was nothing to its tone, new strings sounded uninspiring. Is this about the relation between playing style and headroom I wonder - if you have a light/diffident touch, is the tonal range accommodated better by lower action. In my Stonebridge in open C I'm not going to be able to go as low but am still trying different setups and strings out, eighteen months on from purchase, but the fidgeting may be near an end, the calibrating of the trade-off between tone and buzz. During one day's fidgeting I kept sanding more height off the saddle and retuning with the same strings, which would be getting more dead with the loosening and tightening, but at the end the tone was warm and bright, marvellous. I'd overshot a little bit by the end though - there was too much buzz even for me, and a bad imbalanced feel from the tighter trebles and the detuned basses. The plan is to use handmade non-compensated saddles to find the optimum for me and then have a compensated saddle made by Chris Alsopp based on my simpler one. It's a weird thing to hear a guitar suddenly come to life then though, with its almost dead strings on, as if the guitar had been waiting for me to suss it out.
I was playing my demos to a bloke who does electronic music once, and he alighted on the squeaks and the odd buzz as if these were issues. I had to stifle an outburst a bit there, with the words 'MDMA-addled', 'goon' and a few four-letters in, because his choice of instrumentation both sidesteps these signs of life, as I'd think of them, and also simulates signs of life with some of the processing. If I hear a buzz or a squeak on a record I love it. And not because it flatters me...
Sorry if this is too detailed or obsessive-seeming. Input is welcome on this though, from anyone who's been pulled into the same vortex of faffing.
Often people prefer their guitars' action to be 'as low as it'll go without a buzz'. It seems like both the consensus for preferred action and the capabilities for low action has changed in the last twenty years, going by magazines and books. One forum user a few years ago described how he'd decide the action was right if it would just start to buzz if you played harder, he wasn't trying to banish buzz altogether. I'm starting to find, I think, that whether it's objective or to do with my relatively light touch a guitar seems to even sound best with low action, low enough that you need to control the buzzing quite actively. Apart from the buzz the strings seem to give better tone, livelier, more overtones. My Sigma, in standard Eb tuning, is sounding nearer the D18 its modelled on with action of 2mm to 1.8 (bass to treble). As it arrived and with a couple of previous saddles there was nothing to its tone, new strings sounded uninspiring. Is this about the relation between playing style and headroom I wonder - if you have a light/diffident touch, is the tonal range accommodated better by lower action. In my Stonebridge in open C I'm not going to be able to go as low but am still trying different setups and strings out, eighteen months on from purchase, but the fidgeting may be near an end, the calibrating of the trade-off between tone and buzz. During one day's fidgeting I kept sanding more height off the saddle and retuning with the same strings, which would be getting more dead with the loosening and tightening, but at the end the tone was warm and bright, marvellous. I'd overshot a little bit by the end though - there was too much buzz even for me, and a bad imbalanced feel from the tighter trebles and the detuned basses. The plan is to use handmade non-compensated saddles to find the optimum for me and then have a compensated saddle made by Chris Alsopp based on my simpler one. It's a weird thing to hear a guitar suddenly come to life then though, with its almost dead strings on, as if the guitar had been waiting for me to suss it out.
I was playing my demos to a bloke who does electronic music once, and he alighted on the squeaks and the odd buzz as if these were issues. I had to stifle an outburst a bit there, with the words 'MDMA-addled', 'goon' and a few four-letters in, because his choice of instrumentation both sidesteps these signs of life, as I'd think of them, and also simulates signs of life with some of the processing. If I hear a buzz or a squeak on a record I love it. And not because it flatters me...
Sorry if this is too detailed or obsessive-seeming. Input is welcome on this though, from anyone who's been pulled into the same vortex of faffing.