Quote:
Originally Posted by jdinaz
Interesting, warmth is my thing too, and I've owned a lot of Rainsongs, No disrespect to what you hear at all, but i would never consider any of my Rainsongs a "warm" sounding guitar. I did like the sound of the Bi-WS1000 though and I hear the new Rainsongs with the veneer are warmer sounding.
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First off - as a fingerstyle player, I didn’t listen to any of the strumming - I can strum some rudimentary things, but I admit I’m pretty crude, and with my ham handed technique, there is very little difference between different guitars.
For bare flesh fingerstyle, the Trebles on the unwound strings of most 14 fret wood guitars tend to sound thinner and metallic to my ear compared to the wound strings (though the G-string can be an issue on some guitars for me). Over the years, I’ve learned some techniques that can nearly neutralize it if I apply them perfectly - which on a good day, I’m maybe 85%. Since January I’ve played 5 RainSongs and owned two, and all of them had this incredible full rich treble fingerstyle tone. The first RainSong I had was a concert-WS body size. After the honeymoon was over I began to notice that the mids of this guitar, while full sounding, lacked warmth that I typically see in wood guitars. This was the very first time I ever had trouble achieving warmth on the wound strings. The Nashville jumbo with its larger body and spruce veneer nicely warmed up the mids while keeping the full sound on the unwound strings.
A huge caveat - I’m fairly certain that the tonal ideal in my head is well outside the mainstream of 98% of steel string guitar players. And for me, RainSongs eliminated the distinction between the wound strings and the unwounds and have afforded me an evenness in response across all the strings that I didn’t think was possible. Here is an example of some of the stuff I’m working on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aMJ21HwlT0
If you try playing something like this on many 14 fret wood instruments (steel strings) and are not really careful, the zing of the unwound strings can give you a harpsichord effect. Not a bad thing, but certainly not what I want.