Does any guitar have a wolf note?

[Primdmit]

Hi! I’m trying to find out as much as possible about wolf notes on the guitar. There were many topics about wolf notes and it seems that my guitar also has it. It’s interesting to me is that a natural feature of any guitar or just a bad luck? And do the guitar makers check their guitars on that matter? There were many comments from the guys who had rather expensive guitars from the well-known brands with the very distinctive wolf notes and In the majority of the cases it was very uncomfortable to play the guitars and people sold them. As for me I love my Taylor 810 but D# sometimes makes me crazy with it’s dullness and lack of sustain. Then why the guitar makers let them out of their factories?

[GinL]

My understanding is that every guitar has a resonant frequency, and anything at this pitch (or a multiple of it) will result in the wolf tone effect. Most manufacturers try to design/build their guitars so this frequency is between notes rather than right on one to minimise it.

My favourite guitar developed an unbearable wolf tone on G notes, a real dull thud with no sustain, which persisted after changing strings and even string gauges. It disappeared after about a week so perhaps the resonant frequency of a top moves around with absorbed moisture or as part of the break-in process. If this is the case then manufacturers may well be sending out guitars without issues which then develop a problem over time.

[tadol]

Wolf notes are usually not identified as notes that are dead or dull - usually they are notes that are louder, or resonate more, ie, they “howl” like a wolf - comes from bowed instruments, which those notes can be a serious problem because of the continuous input of energy into the instrument from the bow. Usually its a specific frequency, and occurs no matter where on the instrument its played.

I’m not sure what one would call a dead note - but does it occur no matter where on the guitar you play it, or is it string/position specific?

[LakewoodM32Fan]

Originally Posted by GinL

My understanding is that every guitar has a resonant frequency, and anything at this pitch (or a multiple of it) will result in the wolf tone effect. Most manufacturers try to design/build their guitars so this frequency is between notes rather than right on one to minimise it.

My favourite guitar developed an unbearable wolf tone on G notes, a real dull thud with no sustain, which persisted after changing strings and even string gauges. It disappeared after about a week so perhaps the resonant frequency of a top moves around with absorbed moisture or as part of the break-in process. If this is the case then manufacturers may well be sending out guitars without issues which then develop a problem over time.

Crap. I think one of mine has this. I tried everything. Different strings, different gauges, lowered/raised action. Replaced saddle with bone.

Funny thing is it's only the G note on 6th string 3rd fret. And I discovered the wolf note stays consistent...I recently detuned a full step. The wolf note went to 6th string 5th fret (the "new" G). But at that tuning the open 5th string is now also the same G note...but that rings out well unlike the 6th string 5th fret.

I'm thinking of buying a Tonerite to "open up" a fairly tight Adi top I have on one my other guitars. If I do, I may apply it to the one with the dull note to see if it makes a difference. If it does, it will also prove (to me at least) that the Tonerite has an effect. I'm skeptical right now, but given how much I spend on this hobby (passion) $150 is not much of a risk.

[Alan Carruth]

What GinL said.

Every guitar has a set of strong resonances in the low frequency range that produce the characteristic tone of that instrument. I have seen guitar-like objects that lack these, but you would not want to play them: those resonances are necessary. The problem come in when one or more of these match the pitch of a played note or overtone too exactly.

That was probably what happened with GinL's guitar; if it was the G on the low E string, 3d fret, that's the classic guitar wolf note. In that case the Helmholtz-type 'main air' resonance matches that G pitch at around 98 Hz. It sucks all of the energy out of the string and turns it into sound in a hurry, so you get a note that's twice as powerful for half as long. You don't notice the extra power because of the way your ears work, but it's hard to miss the lack of sustain. Often this also affects the pitch of the note, making it 'muddy' and uncertain.

This is actually a complex situation, very much like a 'bass reflex' speaker cabinet, and involves the air and the top at least, with the back, and sometimes even the neck, contributing in many cases. All of these things working together contribute to the pitch, and they can change depending on humidity; 'air' resonances rise in pitch as the humidity goes up, while 'wood' resonances drop in pitch. Things that line up right (or wrong!) at 45% relative humidity might not line up at all at 30%, or 60%, so the 'wolf' can come and go.

There are lots of different 'wolf' notes caused by different resonances lining up in odd ways. Fortunately not every such alignment is a problem; sometimes it just helps make the sound 'interesting'. In fact, it's generally true that the more resonances a guitar has, and the more they 'couple', the better the guitar is. You don't want to get rid of these resonances then; as I've said, you would not like a guitar that lacked them. The trick is to control them; to keep them from becoming strong enough to become problems.

This is a lot easier for a hand maker or small shop than it is for a bigger factory. A small maker can pay attention to things like the 'tap tones' of the guitar as it gets assembled, and can work with each set of wood to get it to work right. Factories have to work to the average properties of the types of wood they use, and there's far more variation in the properties than you might think. They also can't really take the time to fine tune things as they come off the line. It's also true that the resonant pitches can change for a number of reasons, sometimes years after a guitar was assembled, so a guitar that was fine when it left the factory can have a wolf when it gets to the store.

Of course, the variation in wood means that manufacturers also tend to over build a bit: they have to be sure that the weakest set of braces on the weakest top still ends up being stiff enough to hold up, and since they can't test each set going in they have little choice but to make the instruments a bit heavier than they need to be on average. This cuts down a bit on responsiveness, and helps to tame wolf notes.

So there you are. Wolf-type notes go with the turf, so to speak, and are OK so long as they're not a problem. There's not much a manufacturer can do to eliminate them entirely. Sometimes they can be addressed after the fact, but often, as in the case of the 'thuddy G' wolf, the changes you have to make can void the warranty.

[jaymarsch]

I went a lot a years and played a lot of guitars before I ever experienced a guitar with a wolf note that I could discern. Guitars with dead spots, yes, but a true wolf note only once. I went with a friend to demo some guitars and she landed on one she liked. A used red-spruce/EIR OM that was about 5 years old. She was able to take the guitar on a 48 hour tryout period and discovered a wolf tone further up the neck, where she definitely played on a regular basis. Any one who played that guitar on the first 5 frets only would probably never run across it. She sadly returned it since everything else about that guitar fit her and her music to a T. I am glad that I got to experience it as it gave me a better understanding of what it is.

Best,
Jayne

[LakewoodM32Fan]

Holy crow, Alan thank you so much for explaining this! And it matches exactly what I hear. I wonder if you think using a Tonerite would have any effect to mitigate this note on the low G? Otherwise I won't bother.

It's ironic because on almost every other note it's my most resonant (or one of them) guitar. It's just that one note which, as you say, decays quickly and as GinL says, sounds a bit thuddy in comparison to every other low note.

[Alan Carruth]

jaymarsch wrote:
" Guitars with dead spots, yes, but a true wolf note only once."

The classic 'wolf' note is the one that shows up on 'cellos; a note that 'growls', 'howls' or 'warbles' when it's bowed. Many people say that what we see on guitars is not a wolf note because it doesn't behave that badly. In fact, the 'thuddy G' wolf on the guitar is pretty much exactly the same thing, or would be if we were bowing the string. As it is, it's 'just' a dead note. As far as I'm concerned dead spots on guitars are wolf tones.

I'm not sure if a ToneRite would help. Some wolf notes seem to go away with playing, and some emerge from playing too. So far the only reasonably well done study I've seen on the ToneRite (in the in line Savart journal) says that it doesn't do anything useful. If you've got on you could try it, but I wouldn't expect much.

[LakewoodM32Fan]

Thanks Alan, I won't bother with a Tonerite then. I'll just keep playing it in the rotation and see it goes away or diminishes over time.

[DesmondWafers]

I struggled with this a lot when I was first getting into higher end acoustic guitars. Initially I tried to find guitars that didn't have them at all, but after reading many, many posts by alan and trying quite a few guitars I gave up on that idea. Almost all guitars are going to have them, usually on the low E somewhere between the first and 5th fret and to a lesser extent on that same note around the fretboard. Smaller guitars seem to have them higher up, at least in my experience. After I accepted that most guitars are going to have them somewhere, I decided to try and find one where it was not on the low G as it's such a critical note for most guitar music. It turns out that there are a LOT of guitars where it's directly on the low G. After many returns (and a decent amount of money lost) I wound up with two guitars. One is a d-18 that has it somewhere between E and F#, the other is a taylor where it's on the F# pretty squarely. The martin doesn't bother me at all; it's hard to tell and the only note that really sounds like a classic wolf note is the 12th fret low E which is not particularly important (to me anyway). The taylor drove me crazy. It's a 717 and I can't tell you how much it bothered me at the start. I tried strings, I read threads with posts by alan saying to try adhesive putty placed in strategic areas, nothing ever helped.

Except...I started recording it. After recording and showing the issue to other people, I came to the conclusion that wolf tones on acoustic guitars generally are more displeasing to the player rather than the audience. Play a song that uses the culprit note and record it and see if it really makes any difference. I think that a big reason that they're worse for the player is that you can physically feel them, the whole body resonates when you hit one directly, especially on the lower notes. Think about it, how many times have you listened to a recording and said "oh that guy's guitar has a bad wolf tone on X note"? You can definitely find them if you're looking, but my lesson from the whole experience was just that it's pointless to obsess over unless you have a LOT of time and money and the return is not worth it for a great deal of guitar players.

Alan's point that lighter braced, more responsive guitars are more prone is also something to remember. I've played heavily braced cheap guitars where I couldn't really find a wolf note, but I've never played a guitar that I wanted to own that didn't have some form of them. People will tell you that they own guitars where every single note is exactly the same and balanced perfectly, but I take this with a grain of salt unless it's some incredibly expensive tap-tuned luthier masterpiece. The fact of the matter is that no music that I love really utilizes that caliber of instrument and I am almost certain that if you could play something like Tony Rice's d28 or another famous guitar you'd find that they'd have a wolf somewhere.

TL;DR: Don't worry about it, most guitars have them.

[LakewoodM32Fan]

Wise words Desmond. And as you can see by my sig I have quite a few guitars all of which I'm sure have notes that don't ring as true as others.

What shocked me about this one G note is how obvious it was to me as a player. In fact, I can say I'd never heard of this phenomenon, nor suspected any of my guitars had it, *until* this one example. So unless I got lucky and my other six are just fantastic instruments (which I do think they are but that's just my opinion) I can say that none of the other six have anything to this magnitude that's obvious, as you say, to the player. I can definitively say none of them have it at the G (or anywhere on the 6th string 1-5 frets) as, when I discovered this, the first thing I did was go through all of my guitars and confirm. While yes there's a little variance in note strength, decay, etc. which is to be expected, nothing stood out like this one G note on one guitar.

I will be interested to either record it, or play it for someone (or have someone play it for me) to see if as an audience member it is less noticeable. The good news is, if I'm playing a song that just absolutely hangs on that low G prominence, I have other options.

[DesmondWafers]

I can only speak for myself, but I found that once I played a guitar with a very strong example of a wolf tone, it was like a switch was turned on in my brain. I had never sought them out before, but after I discovered the phenomenon I started looking for them in every guitar I played. Frankly, it's switch I wish I could turn off. I returned 3 D18's before I got one where it was somewhere other than the low G which is possibly the most neurotic thing I've done in my guitar career.

I should also clarify that I'm not bashing those high end "luthier masterpieces" when I say that no music I love utilizes them. I would own a santa cruz or collings in a second if I could afford it, but what I was trying to say was that since they're a relatively new development in the guitar world, most of the classic "Acoustic guitar canon" wouldn't have had access to them. And since that music was undoubtedly made with factory instruments where they weren't tap tuned and endlessly labored over, they most likely had wolf notes too. Perhaps some people can hear them on those records (Or any record for that matter), but I can't, and those are the mental gymnastics I used to get over wolf tones.

[LakewoodM32Fan]

Luckily for me Desmond, I'm usually the same (notice something once, then see it everywhere). But I've been non-stop going through my others since discovering the phenomenon and nothing has stood out. I may be relatively desensitized to smaller variations, it just took one to really stand out.

And in fairness to the one guitar, the G dulling/decay probably sounds worse than it is due to the fact that it's one of my most resonant guitars. So every other note is ramped up, making it stick out like a sore thumb.

[Vancebo]

After reading this highly informative thread, I went and tested my Collings dread and Bourgeois OM. No wolf tones. I do remember many times having wolf tones on other instruments I have owned. I have owned a lot of Taylors in the past. The low G was a consistent problem.

I can support the theory that a skilled luthier who takes the time to tap tune the top will produce guitars that don't have wolf tones. There is a video on YouTube where Dana Bourgeois demonstrates tap tuning a guitar top. Its easy to search for. Interesting to watch.

[CuidadoCaliente]

Anyone ever hear of this?

"On a guitar you can add some mass to a specific place on the soundboard to dampen certain modes of its vibration and effectively kill off the wolf note. What you need to do is, whilst playing the wolf note, apply firm pressure to the soundboard with the ball of your thumb, you may need a third hand to help you. Keep playing the note whilst slowly moving your thumb all over the soundboard until you find a position where you notice the note to decrease in volume. Next get a piece of “blue-tack” and a small heavy object (a large nut or maybe a pound coin) and stick it to the soundboard at the location where you had your thumb. N.B. Blue-tack should not damage the finish but don’t leave it on there for days! Play the note again and listen to the effect, and adjust the location slightly until you find the position that has most effect, now remove the nut and attach a lighter weight and listen again. Keep doing this until you find the optimum amount of weight needed to bring the wolf note into a balance with the other notes on the instrument. I should point out that any mass added to the soundboard will also have some effect on the whole instrument so it is important to only use the minimum weight necessary. Now make a note of the exact position before removing the blue-tack and weight (coin, nut, washer etc), weigh this and then get a piece of hard/heavy wood and cut it down till it weighs the same, I have used ebony for this. Now the tricky part is to fix this block to the inside of the soundboard at the exact same location as you found earlier! You will need to loosen the strings to gain access through the sound-hole. I used animal glue for this as it’s easily reversible with warm water but a good quality double sided tape should also work well and has the benefit of being easy to remove and reposition if you get the location wrong."

From here - https://michaelmesser.proboards.com/...ing-wolf-tones