Quote:
Originally Posted by Earl49
Dave, I have both an X20 and an X30. The X30 has a bigger, bolder sound and its tone and volume compares nicely against a Martin D-28. (Not just my opinion -- thoughts shared by a guitar building friend who loves his four Martin guitars, and built a D18 clone for himself at a lutherie school). He bought an X30 because he really liked the sound, and it works well for him at bluegrass jams. The X20 (to me) sounds more like a good 000-28. It is a little more balanced across the spectrum with slightly less horsepower overall. I have been playing my remaining Taylor guitars lately, and going back to the X20 yesterday just felts like "home".
Loudness is a deceptively complex topic, and good data is hard to come by. My day job is acoustics and noise measurements. Repeatable test conditions are challenging if you want to get meaningful results. You can't just randomly strum the guitar in front of a sound meter app on a smart phone and get reliable numbers. There are too many variables like strum stroke and intensity, the pick used, effects of room acoustics, mic position, meter accuracy, etc. With 37 years of experience, I know what I'm doing and have access to $6000+ lab-grade Type 1 sound meters. Yet I've never acquired SPL data for guitars that I would be at all confident publishing. The best anyone could reasonably do is same room / same day/ same player / same pick. Emerald had a video about a year ago (?) where they measured most of their models with an inexpensive sound meter. The results showed essentially the same sound levels. Variations of 1/10th dB cannot be heard.
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Earl49, pardon my naivete but what would be the result of carefully controlled(as much as possible) testing in an anechoic chamber(which is, admittedly, far from real world conditions)?