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Sustain
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Anders Eliasson
Posts: 5780
Joined: Oct. 18 2006
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 RE: Sustain (in reply to krichards)
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Kevin
I find that the most important factor of all sound production (volume, projection, frequency balance, sustain, all) in a guitar is how the top is balanced. The weight/stiffness aspect is soooo important. And even sister tops (cut right next to each other) can be slightly different and from different trees even from the same region and slope can be very different.
Yes, all the other stuff, the back/sides neck, fingerboard, braces etc are important, but they basically serve to make the soundboard produce its sound and thus have to be balanced to the soundboard.
So... consequense, no 2 guitars are the same.
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Date Mar. 8 2016 18:48:40
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Andy Culpepper
Posts: 3023
Joined: Mar. 30 2009
From: NY, USA
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RE: Sustain (in reply to krichards)
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There are different types of sustain. It's not simply a matter of striking a note, and measuring how long it rings.
To me, the more important things on a flamenco guitar are 1) How quick is the attack and 2) How quickly does the initial attack die away. The note can have a long "tail" that continues to sound, as long as the meat of the initial note gets out of the way fast enough.
Some flamenco guitars have a fair amount of raw sustain, but it can be fine or even desirable as long as fast runs and rasgueados have enough separation.
I suspect the extra sustain comes from building the guitar "optimally", as a classical guitar maker would see it. This happens when the various resonances of the top and back are very well meshed together, not on top of each other, and not directly on scale notes (producing short "wolf" notes).
To cut down on sustain, you basically want to suck all the energy out of the strings as quickly as possible, which is actually not so easy. One way you can do it is by building a very light guitar, so that the energy is dispersed to the sides and back which are less efficient at vibrating than the top.
Another way is to loosen up the cross grain dipole, which is the resonance that can be visualized by thinking of the bridge ends flapping side-to-side. That comes from using more parallel braces and/or thinning the top more in that flexible area near the ends of the bridge wings.
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Andy Culpepper, luthier
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Date Mar. 8 2016 23:57:30
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Sustain (in reply to krichards)
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I'm not sure if I agree sustain is such a bad thing. Even in a flamenco guitar. Strident notes that resonate out character with the rest of the notes are not desirable. But sustain, not a problem. Generally we have a formula that is personal for making the shorter sustain guitar and the longer sustain guitar, but if the range is even and no notes stand out in an unpleasing way I don't worry about it. Generally more structure more sustain to a point and less structure faster decay. But at some point the rules reverse and looseness begins to promote long unchecked vibration that has less sound quality.
There are qualities of sustain, controlled supported sustain and loose unsupported sustain. It goes on and on because it lacks structure or it goes on and on because it has too much structure. It is really difficult to give specific rules to this because each person builds differently, a loosening of part X for one maker might not work for another maker.
I worry about unevenness through the range of notes; making it a priority concern over sustain duration. I work for intonation and an instrument that speaks well in every register as a more important concern. I think if these factors are good the guitar is good, players can choose between the ones that have more or less sustain as they like it.
I have yet to hear a guitar player say that there is too much sustain, I think they adapt to each guitar with attack and decay in mind
When speaking of Spanish style building I still don't really see a difference between Classical and Flamenco guitars except that flamenco guitars need to be made so you can do a rasgueado on them without difficulty and not have a saddle set up to high for this. There is a lot of overthinking on this topic.
Some people make flamenco guitars that sing out more in the trebles. Where the rubber meets the road on if a guitar is tripping over itself singing out too much when you are trying to stop and start fast while doing accompaniment; sustain and short decay sometimes help here, but not always. What I think is that some makers have not spent enough time behind the guitar playing with dancers ripping them a new a$$hole.  You earn that sustain or not sustain is not as important as how you can manage to stop and start a particular guitar really fast. The builders' question of to sustain or not to build sustain eventually becomes like a mannerism, it's like does it really matter? Or is worrying about this an autopilot response? If the guitar can do it's job and still has a fair amount of sustain, does that automatically make it less flamenco?
If a flamenco guitar was a car, it would have to be a sports that could corner well and start and stop really fast, as the driver wants. Why do you care how far it can go?
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Date Mar. 9 2016 0:25:45
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krichards
Posts: 597
Joined: Jan. 14 2007
From: York, England
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RE: Sustain (in reply to estebanana)
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Many thanks for these responses. You've all given me much to think about.
I can elaborate by saying that this 'sustain' issue only really concerns me when it occurs in the bass strings, because it reduces the clarity of rasguados.
For myself I always prefer a clean sound in the bass, but curiously, some people are not concerned by this.
I've noticed that when the basses have too much sustain, I can feel the vibrations in the back of the guitar when playing. This is why I suggested the back and sides might be involved.
But, the experienced builders here, are all saying, in different ways, that its the 'balance' in the top that is the most likely cause.
The other curious aspect is that, generally people advise building 'light' with thin tops and light bracing.
But I've measured lots of guitars and its surprising how many are built 'heavy' with thicker tops (a really nice Conde blanca with a 3.3mm top for example)
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Date Mar. 9 2016 8:01:55
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