Lots of neck relief: Why do I like the sound?

[dannyg1]

Why do I like the sound of my guitars when they have lots of neck relief in the working set-up?

The result is a deeper, woody effect that has a kind of reverberant doubling of the picked sound. They're a bear to play like this, intonation can be a problem too, but they sound much better the farther away I get from a flat fingerboard.

Can I imitate the effect on a more playable set-up, without a neck reset?

[Ned Milburn]

I'm guessing it is just from the higher action. Get the neck adjusted properly and action adjusted properly, and I'd expect you'd get a similar tone.

I actually find guitars sound poorer with too much neck relief. Tighter, less sustain, less harmonic content in the notes.

[dannyg1]

I've just adjusted the neck on one of my guitars and re-noticed the effect, hence the OP. I agree that the guitar sounds 'tighter' and with less obvious 'harmonic content', pre-adjustment but that's what I like. I don't like a mushy, indistinct sound between strings where everything gets lost in a jumbled mess of 'pretty' chord sound.

It's a drier sound that has the woody reverb just below it. Sounds like a blues guitar but with lots of harmonic content if you play it harder. A best of both worlds kind of thing.

After the adjustment, the guitar sounds more dull. It has more sustain and it still has plenty of note separation, it's just missing the dynamic difference between plucked notes and has a more string-based sound and a less body-induced one. It also sounds less sure of it's string tuning - it sounds kind of phasey. Does that make sense?

I don't belief the relief directly, rather it's the tension of the truss rod affecting the whole system. The tension of the truss rod affects the tone of some guitars more than others. The first time I noticed I thought I was losing my mind. Turns out a few others had noticed the same thing, but it's not widely discussed. IME it does pretty much what you described - when it's noticable at all. A looser truss rod is a bit rounder, smoother tone. A tighter truss rod is brighter and snappy.

[Ned Milburn]

Originally Posted by dannyg1

I've just adjusted the neck on one of my guitars and re-noticed the effect, hence the OP. I agree that the guitar sounds 'tighter' and with less obvious 'harmonic content', pre-adjustment but that's what I like. I don't like a mushy, indistinct sound between strings where everything gets lost in a jumbled mess of 'pretty' chord sound.

It's a drier sound that has the woody reverb just below it. Sounds like a blues guitar but with lots of harmonic content if you play it harder. A best of both worlds kind of thing.

After the adjustment, the guitar sounds more dull. It has more sustain and it still has plenty of note separation, it's just missing the dynamic difference between plucked notes and has a more string-based sound and a less body-induced one. It also sounds less sure of it's string tuning - it sounds kind of phasey. Does that make sense?

Guessing the action is too low when the truss is straightened. But, unless you give measurements, it is really difficult (impossible??) to judge via internet.

[John Arnold]

IME it does pretty much what you described - whe it's noticable at all. A looser truss rod is a bit rounder, smoother tone. A tighter truss rod is brighter and snappy.

I agree. Norman Blake first pointed it out to me, and I began to notice it myself. Tightening the truss rod stiffens the neck, which results in less bass and more sustain.
It's not the change in relief or action that causes the effect.

[redir]

I never noticed any difference in tone due to the tension in the truss rod but intuitively I can at least make some sense out of it.

Action on the other hand is very obvious in the distinction of tone. When you add more relieve you tend to also raise the action and as such can notice a big difference in tone and also volume.

If your action is low then when you pluck a string it will ever so slightly touch the fret above it right after your hard pluck or strum and it saps the energy out of the string. You may not notice any buzz but the energy depleting contact is there. If your action is high then it won't touch the fret in front of it and you get the strings full potential in volume and tone.

So given that truss rod tension has something to do with tone, and that the desired tone is a tightened truss rod, then you would be better served with having the relief set properly and the action raised at the saddle.

[murrmac123]

Originally Posted by redir

If your action is low then when you pluck a string it will ever so slightly touch the fret above it right after your hard pluck or strum and it saps the energy out of the string. You may not notice any buzz but the energy depleting contact is there.

I have always had my doubts about this.

I once calculated that at Martin's lowest recommended settings, with the base of the nut slot exactly on the same plane as the frets, the distance between the underside of the (open) string and the top of the first fret fret was .007". The distance between the underside of the string and the top of the next fret obviously increases the further up the fretboard you go.

What I am dubious about is whether an open string has an amplitude of greater than .014" at a distance of 1.43" from the nut. If it doesn't, then it isn't going to contact the first fret when it is plucked. If it does, then obviously it will , or at least it could, make contact.

If anybody has any data to prove or disprove it one way or the other, I for one would be interested to know. I can visualize how an experiment could be set up to test this, using a multimeter.

Murray, I can't help you with that, but Bryan Kimsey posted an extensive set of measurements on his website showing that "next fret clearance" is nearly unaffected by relief. People think relief stops buzzing, but that's usually due to the side effect of more relief - higher action. Bryan solved that by resetting the 12th fret action every time he adjusted the relief. When you do that, the guitar is harder to play, but doesn't buzz less. It's a lose lose solution.

[murrmac123]

Originally Posted by Todd Yates

Murray, I can't help you with that, but Bryan Kimsey posted an extensive set of measurements on his website showing that "next fret clearance" is nearly unaffected by relief. People think relief stops buzzing, but that's usually due to the side effect of more relief - higher action. Bryan solved that by resetting the 12th fret action every time he adjusted the relief. When you do that, the guitar is harder to play, but doesn't buzz less. It's a lose lose solution.

Thanks Todd, I will check out Bryan's data.

[Guitars+gems]

Originally Posted by dannyg1

I've just adjusted the neck on one of my guitars and re-noticed the effect, hence the OP. I agree that the guitar sounds 'tighter' and with less obvious 'harmonic content', pre-adjustment but that's what I like. I don't like a mushy, indistinct sound between strings where everything gets lost in a jumbled mess of 'pretty' chord sound.

It's a drier sound that has the woody reverb just below it. Sounds like a blues guitar but with lots of harmonic content if you play it harder. A best of both worlds kind of thing.

After the adjustment, the guitar sounds more dull. It has more sustain and it still has plenty of note separation, it's just missing the dynamic difference between plucked notes and has a more string-based sound and a less body-induced one. It also sounds less sure of it's string tuning - it sounds kind of phase. Does that make sense?

I wonder if you would enjoy an old Stella or Bruno guitar with the famously high actions, and built to be that way. You can get a decent one without a warped neck for about 100 bucks on eBay. Might be fun for you.