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GuitarVlog
Posts: 441
Joined: Mar. 19 2009
From: San Francisco Bay Area
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 RE: What efect does scale length hav... (in reply to Guest)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: rumbaking
One thing I would like to also know related to this subject is which scale has more sustain on the basses...
Our foro's luthiers are the best ones to answer that question.
From my basic knowledge of Baroque lutes and 10-string Renaissance lutes, the lowest bass courses are often of a much longer scale (ex: 8.7% longer for the 12th/13th courses of a simple lute design). This, to my understanding, allows the use of thinner strings which presumably would be more responsive and yield more sustain.
But 660mm is a mere 1.5% increase over 650mm. Might it increase sustain? Theoretically, I would guess the answer might be yes. Given the many variables that can be found in actual use (a player's style, expression, nails, strength of attack, overall tonal perception, blah blah blah), would it be perceptible to creatures other than precision sound-measuring devices and musically-inclined dogs and elephants? Maybe not.
I'm of the opinion that the soundboard and overall design carry greater weight in setting the tone and sustain of a guitar than its scale. I'll now leave it to the better-educated members of the foro to correct me.
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Date Dec. 20 2010 3:22:33
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a_arnold
Posts: 558
Joined: Jul. 30 2006
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RE: What efect does scale length hav... (in reply to Guest)
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quote:
I am a little surprised about is that there is slightly more tension on a 660mm VS a 650 mm with the same string type....I would have thought the opposite to be true....I read
Think of it this way, Scott:
Your open 5th string (A) vibrates at a pitch of 110 Hz. (one fourth of the standard A 440 bcz it is 2 octaves below A 440)
When you fret your 5th string you shorten the string (and raise the pitch to more cycles per second) but the tension remains unchanged. If you magically added an extra fret up at the nut (thus lengthening the string by an entire fret instead of just a cm) the open string pitch would be lower by a half step and you would have to crank that string tighter to bring it up to standard 110 open pitch.
By that logic, adding ANY length to the string (all other variables kept the same) will require higher tension to keep it at the same pitch. Longer instruments achieve lower pitches with longer (and thicker) strings because (for the sake of playability) the string tension is kept approximately the same as shorter instruments.
A 660 length guitar HAS to be at higher tension than a 650 if you are playing the same strings. It might feel looser because the strings are longer, but the tension has to be higher at 660. That has the side effect of increasing volume slightly. My experience says that (for the same strings) the higher tension at 660mm also causes the strings to go dead sooner.
Changing the density (and therefore the mass) of the string changes the tension (given the same pitch). Hannabach Goldin strings, for example, are engineered (by adding carbon to make a composite string) to have the same density as gut, the intent being to have the same tension and feel as gut. They are way too expensive, but I like the sound.
The problem with many nylon G strings is that if you use the same material as the 1st and 2nd strings, the thickness has to be increased inordinately in order to achieve a reasonable tension at the correct pitch. That is why you see so much experimentation with composite, carbon fiber, and even wound 3rd strings.
If you were to make a 6th string out of typical treble nylon monofilament, it would have to be extremely (unplayably) thick in order to have enough mass to vibrate slowly enough to achieve the correct pitch. So string makers increase the mass by wrapping dense metal around a smaller string.
I would imagine that the "ideal" set of 6 strings would all be the same diameter and tension, which could only be possible by making 6 different densities of strings. I doubt anybody has ever tried that, and if they did I expect it would sacrifice much of the tonal variety that we expect from the strings we use now.
There is a really interesting story behind the change from gut to nylon during WW2 and the effect it had on guitar design. If anyone is interested, I will paste it into this thread.
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"Flamenco is so emotionally direct that a trained classical musician would require many years of highly disciplined formal study to fail to understand it."
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Date Dec. 20 2010 22:17:46
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a_arnold
Posts: 558
Joined: Jul. 30 2006
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RE: What efect does scale length hav... (in reply to GuitarVlog)
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quote:
I would be interested.
Until World War 2, guitar strings were made of gut. Nylon was introduced as a miracle fabric by DuPont at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 (hence the “Ny” in “Nylon”) and the monofilament was immediately adopted as a low-cost substitute for woven fishing line.
Nylon found other uses as the escalation of World War II interrupted the supply of parachute silk from the Orient and cut off Segovia’s access to his German supplier of guitar strings. By that time, flamencos living in Andalucian fishing villages had already adopted Nylon monofilament fishing line for guitar strings as a cheaper and more durable substitute for gut. Segovia was undoubtedly aware of this use of Nylon, although he did not credit the gypsy community with its first use, perhaps because of his well-known emnity for flamencos (said to stem from a belief that his illegitimacy was first made public through the flamenco community).
Segovia turned to DuPont for help in directly supplying guitar strings from the spectrum of sizes of nylon monofilament they were already producing for fishing line, tennis racquets etc. His early success led him to persuade Augustine to further develop the concept, and the Nylon guitar string was officially born. The innovation was readily accepted by the musical community, thanks to the combination of lower cost, greater durability, increased tonal predictability, and (in no small part) to Segovia’s stature as a musician. However, a nylon string the same diameter as a gut string requires more tension to bring it up to pitch, a factor that greatly influenced subsequent guitar development.
When the new strings were first put on older guitars that had been designed for lower tension gut strings, they tended to be significantly louder, but many older instruments came apart under the tension and many of the survivors eventually became dead-sounding. This phase in guitar history played a major role in the belief that guitars have a limited life span. However, the change to Nylon also led to the development of more robust designs (the Ramirez shop led the field in these innovations) and the resulting increased volume did much to turn the guitar into an instrument suitable for the concert hall. At that time, electrical amplification had not yet yielded acceptable tonal fidelity, and a louder instrument could do much to increase the scope of potential performance venues, which in turn propelled luthiers and performers in their ongoing quest for greater projection and volume. The recognition that greater tension yields more volume and projection has contributed to further experimentation with longer scale lengths (a longer string requires more tension to reach standard pitch) as well as with variable diameters and compositions of strings.
_____________________________
"Flamenco is so emotionally direct that a trained classical musician would require many years of highly disciplined formal study to fail to understand it."
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Date Dec. 20 2010 22:49:39
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