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Old 10-08-2010, 01:25 AM
oldane oldane is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 17
Default Halfway OT

Apart from the subject of breaking in (or not), one thing must be considered. The tone the player hears is not the same tone the listeners hear even from only a few meters distance. The player will hear a lot of treble, and attack sounds such as pick noise will stand out very audible, but the projection of those high treble sounds is less than lower frequencies. Choosing a guitar only from what it sounds like to the player himself is fine and the thing to do if one only plays for one self in the living room.

However, a guitar that sounds perfect to the player will likely miss some higher frequencies when heard by an audience - the projection will suffer. To sound good to an audience some distance away, an acoustic guitar will likely have to sound a little harsh to the players ears. That was very noticeable back in the days of the big swing bands where big archtops were used as rhythm guitars. They were often somewhat harsh and metallic sounding to those close to it, but it was necessary to project (=cut through) in the noise of a full big band with brass and sax sections. A guitar that to the player sounds mellow and with plenty "bottom" will never be heard clearly by the audience in such a set up - maybe not even by the other band members (which is worse because in swing bands the role of the rhythm guitar is to be the metronome of the band).

It is the same with wind instruments. An experienced wind player will go for a tone that to himself sounds somewhat brighter than he himself likes to hear, because a good deal of the brightness has disappeared when the tone reaches the listener. Sounds such as wind hiss from a reed or a slight moisture bubbling in a mouthpiece are almost never heard by the audience.

So I would say, that not only should one play a guitar oneself before buying. One should also have somebody else playing it, so one can hear how it sounds from a distance.
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