Taylor brightness (guitar or player....)

[Bob Womack]

Hmm... There used to be a rule on this forum outlawing brand wars.

Back to the original question, while there are differences in the tones of guitar brands, players who have been in it for a while also discuss various players having darker-sounding or brighter sounding hands. I was just watching a video with Nashville session player Tom Bukovac and a bunch of professionals where they discussed how different players could play the same rig and their particular touch would make it sound brighter or darker.

Bob

[SRL]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

Back to the original question, while there are differences in the tones of guitar brands, players who have been in it for a while also discuss various players having darker-sounding or brighter sounding hands. I was just watching a video with Nashville session player Tom Bukovac and a bunch of professionals where they discussed how different players could play the same rig and their particular touch would make it sound brighter or darker.

Definitely agree.

In addition to just "pick vs. fingers" there's what part of the finger you play with (nail or pad), how big your nails are, what your attack is like. Or for picking, what kind of pick you use, how you hold it.

And then for both, whereabouts on the strings you're plucking -- closer to the bridge is much brighter than over the sound hole.

That said, I have owned several Taylors and played many more, and they do seem to have a brighter voicing. This can be compensated for by using pads of fingers, raising the action (to allow a heavier attack on the bass strings) and using darker-sounding strings/picks.

Personally, I've found the best-sounding Taylors to be the cedar and Engelmann tops, as I think the warmer sound of those woods tends to complement the Taylor voicing the best. I'd also really love to get my hands on one of those rare 12-fret GAs with a 24.75 scale, as I've heard they are really fantastic and warmer-sounding fingerstyle guitars.

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

Hmm... There used to be a rule on this forum outlawing brand wars.

Back to the original question, while there are differences in the tones of guitar brands, players who have been in it for a while also discuss various players having darker-sounding or brighter sounding hands. I was just watching a video with Nashville session player Tom Bukovac and a bunch of professionals where they discussed how different players could play the same rig and their particular touch would make it sound brighter or darker.

Bob

Ah, this for sure. Took some bluegrass classes from Scott Nygaard at a BG festival in San Francisco many years ago, and he spent a lot of time on how to get tone from the guitar. Sure there were points about which pick, but it was mostly (a couple hours) about attack and how to get dynamics with a varied attack. Quite the eye-opener for me at the time.

This goes for one of my closer playing buddies and I. I have much darker hands than he does, whichever guitar we're playing, and we share a lot. Taylor, Gibson, Martin...tonally I'm always darker than he is, probably because of that BG background. I just want to get a thicker sound than he does. He's a better player. We just have different tones, one not better than the other.