Got sustain? Try this on your guitars and compare

[Shortfinger]

I am learning Leo Kottke's "First to Go," as played and taught by my great go-to YouTube guitarist, "Daddy Stovgepipe."

It is a beautiful, haunting tune, played with dropped D tuning. Fingerstyle.

There's a sequence played, one pluck, slide, use your ring finger on the second (B) string, start at 5 (e), then slide up to 7 (f#), then slide back down, to 5, 3, end on 2 (c#). They are eighth notes, played at maybe 75 bpm, so try for that. A quick 1,2,3,4.

I am interested in how the various guitars sound doing this. What counts in making this work best? Body type? Tonewoods, strings? Saddle, bridge pins? Or is it just all technique.

Report how well the slide, particularly the bottom two notes, sounds on your various guitars, and tell us which one of yours might be best for this.

We aren't home in FL for winter yet, so I only have one of the guitars with me, the Alvarez Yairi PYM70. Can't wait to try it on the rest.

The piece is played in the YouTube lesson, once through, not twice as Kottke plays it. Right at the start of the lesson, so listen to the whole thing, or jump to the part a tiny bit after the 1:35 minute mark.

If you are into recording and want us to hear, by all means go for it.

Here's Daddy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z9m...&t=231s&loop=0

[Robin, Wales]

Lighter gauge strings? A 0.017 is not going to sustain like a 0.015 perhaps.

[rick-slo]

Strings are number from 1 to 6 from high string to low string. B string is number two.

"There's a sequence played, one pluck, slide, use your ring finger on the fifth (B) string, start at 5, then go up to 7, then down, to 5, 3, end on 2. They are eighth notes, played at maybe 75 bpm, so try for that."

Did not see or hear that (certainly not a one pluck sustain) at the area you indicated.

If you pluck a note and it has decent sustain (no slides involved) the results on this piece should be reasonable. Little tweaks on a short sustaining guitar are unlikely to amount to much.

Do a slide to the next fret quickly and with sufficient pressure. For a sequence on a particular string that has an open note you can, if you wish, do a pull-off from the prior note to re-energize the volume.

[mr. beaumont]

Seems like a very illogical way to play that note sequence...is he using a slide?

[Shortfinger]

I corrected my OP to number the string conventionally. The slide is on the b string.

Watch and listen. He does it first at about the 1:45 mark.

Then play it on all your guitars and tell us which one works best.

[jimi junior]

I understand what you mean, OP

I've also noticed that some guitars do a better job of maintaining sustain when sliding without re-plucking the note. Particularly noticeable on sparse, melodic Celtic fingerstyle.

I find my Lakewood j32 does a better job of this than my Huss and Dalton for example (both spruce over rosewood) - the Lakewood seems to maintain fatness in the trebbles while sliding over frets, to the point where a single note melody sliding around over 3 or 4 notes (with a single pluck) sounds beautiful. Whereas many guitars lose something (volume and tone) and sound totally thin and borderline inaudible by that point.

But I'm not sure it's just a matter of the instrument's sustain. I think it's also to do with the frets - something about bumping over them knocks out some of the energy perhaps. Maybe smaller / lower profile frets helps?

[TwangGang]

I can't explain the whys or wherefores of how it works, and I didn't feel like pulling 6 or 7 guitars out of their cases to try it. But I did have my Mahogany Hummingbird out and it handled the slide up and down with no problem. Then I tried it on my Collings D2 (Rosewood) and it also handled it with ease and was louder. But that guitar is just louder than all my others anyway.

You don't mention what guitar you are using, but the fellow in the video looks to be using a fairly small bodied guitar. So maybe not a good comparison since I did it on two dreadnoughts. Also I did not drop tune so my strings had more tension and thus volume.

[Shortfinger]

Kottke plays it tuned a half step down. Daddy S is playing in standard drop D.

I'm learning it on my PYM70, about the same size as Mr S. I'm anxious to feel and hear it on my other guitars, but won't be back home for a month or so.

Running the bass notes under the slide, this particular sequence, is a challenge for me. I've played just the slide a couple hundred reps, and am working in half-speed time on the thumb-brushed bass notes.

The one I want to do this on is the '72 D-18, 50 years old next May.