Diminishing returns?

ChrisCox1994

thomasross20 said:

I still think Larrivee are the best cost : quality guitars out there (tbh I love their voicing so much I would say best regardless of cost) and am frequently surprised that even after all this time, they're hardly mentioned on here. 

had my d40r for going on 8 years now, couldn't be happier - I agree about the voicing, much prefer it both solo and with a little bass in a band mix

Fishboy7

This might be a dumb comment, but is it possible very high end acoustics are too good for most players?  Especially those of us that play 95% electric.  I mean the clarity, dynamic range, overtones etc won't do you any favours bashing out Neil Young and Bod Dylan songs.  

ditchboy

thomasross20 said:

I still think Larrivee are the best cost : quality guitars out there (tbh I love their voicing so much I would say best regardless of cost) and am frequently surprised that even after all this time, they're hardly mentioned on here. 

Agree with you about Larrivee and cost/quality. The only thing I prefer on my £3k Martin over the last Larrivee I had was the neck. The craftsmanship is certainly comparable. Your OM in the classifieds is absolutely one of the nicest guitars I’ve seen. Criminal it’s not gone yet! If I could afford it I’d be on the phone right now. 

Tannin

Fishboy7 said:

This might be a dumb comment, but is it possible very high end acoustics are too good for most players?  Especially those of us that play 95% electric.  I mean the clarity, dynamic range, overtones etc won't do you any favours bashing out Neil Young and Bod Dylan songs.  

"Dumb" only in the sense that (whether we know it or not) we aren't actually talking about "good" here, we are talking about a certain combination of qualities which happens (a) to be very difficult to achieve, and (b) ideal for certain (not very common) styles of playing.

Responsiveness, sustain, and tonal richness are not "good" things in themselves. They are like salt and sugar and chilli - more of at least one of them is what you need to cure blandness, too much of them is indeed too much - and the "right" amount depends mostly on what you are trying to cook (and a little bit on your personal taste) .  

@Littlejonny steers us towards the point here - 

Littlejonny said:

There’s no pick-up out there that can really do justice to an expensive guitar, and they all sound virtually the same amplified. A Martin D-45 with a pick-up may as well be a Sigma. 

Of course, in the living room, you hear and feel the difference and the difference can be vast.

An expensive hand-made fingerstyle guitar isn't just "virtually the same" in a typical live concert situation, it is not nearly as good a tool for the job as a guitar which is designed for the task in the first place - these can be bought in any good music shop off-the-shelf for  around £1000 to £2000. A good stage guitar, aside from having a high-quality pickup system properly matched to it, resists feedback and unwanted sounds. (Example: I seldom play amplified, but when I do I reach for my Cole Clark, one of my Matons, or my Furch. Any of those is a far more practicable and controllable amplified instrument than my light, responsive, hand-made fingerstyle guitars - Mineur and Brook.)

An exception: one of those Matons I just mentioned is a special case, it was hand-made by Maton's (now retired) head luthier and quite expensive. It performs very well amplified, but is also a wonderfully responsive acoustic instrument. That's Andy Allen's genius at work. BUT it still isn't quite as responsive as a dedicated fingerstyle guitar (e.g., my two, or a Lowden or similar) and cannot be without sacrificing its bash-out-a-rock-song live ability. 

Back more closely to @Fishboy7's point. Responsiveness in a guitar is something you want the right amount of - not too little, not too much - and the "right" amount varies with the player, the venue (from living room to stadium and all the variations in between), the style of music, and (at least in my case) the mood of the moment.  

thomasross20

Heartening to hear from Chris & ditchboy

Littlejonny

Exactly @Tannin … but the thing is, never has an instrument been designed more purely for the player than a high end steel string acoustic. Let me explain my point:

Violins, pianos, clarinets, even classical guitars, are all played acoustically in concert. 

The steel string guitar is almost never played in this context in front of an audience. It is almost always mic’d up or used with a pick-up through amplification. 

In recording - the condenser mic often struggles to capture the majesty of such an instrument in the flesh, again equalising the factory made and the hand made.

there is no question that they are wonderful instruments, but the inherent limitations of steel string design means amplification is necessary for practical use beyond the most niche applications and of course enjoyment at home.

Tannin

Yes and no @Littlejohhnny. My point is that a reasonably inexpensive factory-built made-for-purpose stage guitar is  not as good as, it is BETTER than a fancy high-end hand-made one if we want to play amplified in front of 500 people.  (Or 50, or 50,000.)

The very light, responsive build of even a Lowden, never mind a high-end luthier-made instrument, is a sound technician's nightmare. You get all sorts of resonances and overtones and that's just not what you need. 

MartinB

I feel like this conversation is different for the steel string guitar than for classical stringed instruments, because in most cases the original, exemplary instruments which makers draw from have been factory instruments from the beginning. In the classical guitar world luthiers might take design inspiration from Torres, Hauser, Bouchet etc, all individually hand-built instruments. But Martin and Gibson steel strings were built by factory workers in a production setting from the outset, so a good factory build can usually do a respectable job of doing what's expected, and diminishing returns may apply past a certain point. In the example above of playing Neil Young songs, nothing is going to get you closer to that goal than a nice Martin dreadnought however much you spend.

The modern makers more focused on fingerstyle and "celtic" style guitars are closer to the luthier-driven model of building seen in the classical world, and if that style of instrument is what you desire, more is probably more for most of the way up the price scale.

earwighoney

Tannin said:

Yes and no @Littlejohhnny. My point is that a reasonably inexpensive factory-built made-for-purpose stage guitar is  not as good as, it is BETTER than a fancy high-end hand-made one if we want to play amplified in front of 500 people.  (Or 50, or 50,000.)

The very light, responsive build of even a Lowden, never mind a high-end luthier-made instrument, is a sound technician's nightmare. You get all sorts of resonances and overtones and that's just not what you need. 

I said something along those lines on the first page.  Some instruments can be too resonant/with too many overtones depending on what kind of music one plays.  There's no point having a £50k Somogyi for a player who favours Bill Orcutt style dissonant noise.

steveh

earwighoney said:

Some instruments can be too resonant/with too many overtones depending on what kind of music one plays.  There's no point having a £50k Somogyi for a player who favours Bill Orcutt style dissonant noise. 

I play fancy-pants Celtic tunes etc. Lots of space between the notes, and not too many of them (so that I can play them!), but you're right: When I had a Lowden, strumming it was a cacophony - overtones and sustain for days, all clashing.

steveh

MartinB said:
In the classical guitar world luthiers might take design inspiration from Torres, Hauser, Bouchet etc, all individually hand-built instruments. The modern makers more focused on fingerstyle and "celtic" style guitars are closer to the luthier-driven model of building seen in the classical world, and if that style of instrument is what you desire, more is probably more for most of the way up the price scale.

Very true indeed. It's interesting that the very large majority of "classical" pros play sole-luthier built instruments (and are happy to pay the price) while the opposite is true for steel-string, where we're more likely to see Taylor, Martin, etc on stage. John Mayer has a Traugott, but that's not what's up there with him at the O2.

As it happens, I got into nylon guitars a few years back after a mate introduced me to Andrew York's music: Nylon guitars are a whole can of GAS-inducing worms on their own. Nylon strings dissipate energy so fast that building a responsive classical is many orders of magnitude more difficult.

earwighoney

steveh said:

earwighoney said:

Some instruments can be too resonant/with too many overtones depending on what kind of music one plays.  There's no point having a £50k Somogyi for a player who favours Bill Orcutt style dissonant noise. 

I play fancy-pants Celtic tunes etc. Lots of space between the notes, and not too many of them (so that I can play them!), but you're right: When I had a Lowden, strumming it was a cacophony - overtones and sustain for days, all clashing.

Yes, it's about finding the specific guitar with the character that suits your way of playing.