What makes a guitar a strummer or picker, vs. a finger style guitar? 🎸

Originally Posted by jdinco

I think you can finger pick any guitar that is a good strummer, but you can't always strum a guitar that excels at finger style.

Originally Posted by paulzoom

There are certain parlors with little headroom that would not be be good for, for example, hard strumming.

Good points, and a very good example, paul.

Originally Posted by Txmiller

What's considered the back and sides of choice for "strumming"? Is it mahogany for strumming and rosewood for finger style?

While I instinctively agree with this, I've heard WAY too many exceptions for that to be the rule!

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

It was a long search for me, but I discovered the ideal guitar specs for me in 1999. 12 fret dread.

The 12-fret Martin D-15SM that I briefly owned absolutely confirms this. Extremely capable at fingerstyle, and a very powerful strummer. You may be on to something!

[rogthefrog]

Originally Posted by teleamp

The player, I'm serious...

Yes. The guitar is just a box with strings on it until the player does something.

I wrote many of my fingerstyle pieces on dreads with 1 11/16" nuts. And pick style pieces too. And I wrote some aggressive material on a small ladder braced all mahogany blues box.

[Rosewood99]

Originally Posted by rogthefrog

Yes. The guitar is just a box with strings on it until the player does something.

I wrote many of my fingerstyle pieces on dreads with 1 11/16" nuts. And pick style pieces too. And I wrote some aggressive material on a small ladder braced all mahogany blues box.

The question wasn't whether your can play both styles on any guitar. The question was why are some guitars considered better for one style or the other and for what reason.

[songman2]

Well yes the player obviously. Nevertheless there is a difference in guitars too. I can dig into my dreadnoughts (especially HD28V and D10) in a way that I could not do with the OM21. And the sound and neck of the OM21 are definitely better for fingerstyle. All this IMHO and as always YMMV.

[rogthefrog]

Originally Posted by paulzoom

The question wasn't whether your can play both styles on any guitar. The question was why are some guitars considered better for one style or the other and for what reason.

And the answer is that I disagree with the premise.

[RRuskin]

Originally Posted by Purfle Haze

Is it scale length? Nut width? String spread at the saddle? Frets to the body?..............



Thank you!

None of the above. A good guitar works for all techniques. Find something you like to play and be done with it.

[Rosewood99]

Originally Posted by rogthefrog

And the answer is that I disagree with the premise.

So you disagree that some guitars excel at one style or another? I know there are plenty of exceptions but there are also as many examples that prove the point.

I don't care how good a player you are but if you try to aggressively strum a parlor that does not have headroom it will sound bad.

Deleted. Redundant.

[Paraclete]

Well, getting back to the idea that some guitars are better suited to a particular style (rather than the part about it being a matter of the player), my Larrivee LSV-11 was specifically designed to be a fingerstyle guitar, meaning that it is more suited to that style of playing.... 1 13/16 nut, compound radius (although all Larrivees are compound), shorter scale, cutaway, smaller L body (approx same body dimensions as a classical guitar) no pickguard, etc.

Yes, I play both fingerstyle and strumming on it (but that's not the point). Certain aspects are more comfortable for fingerstyle.

[TBman]

I would think a guitar set up for strumming would have a slightly higher setup and be a larger bodied guitar - generally, anyway.

[B-Nads]

I've heard guys play finger-style on D28's and it sounded stunning.

I attribute 90% of it to the person playing. That said, some guitars respond better to different styles. The two acoustics I currently own are a Larrivee D-03fm and a Taylor 514c. The string spacing and touch response make it a much better sounding guitar for finger-style. The Larrivee has much more headroom and volume, and can handle unplugged percussive strumming much better.

[roylor4]

It looks like we are all more interested in the thread the the OP??

I think most of us know that there are certain qualities that can make a guitar excel at finger style and a totally different set of parameters apply to a good "strummer" or rhythm guitar.

Yes, you can play anything on any guitar but as Willie V has pointed out - there are certain tradeoffs and sacrifices that have to be made if you want one that does both.

Want a great strummer? Closer spacing at the bridge helps but diminishes room for clean playing for fingerstyle.

Want a ton of headroom? Your gonna lose responsiveness to a lighter touch.

Want super responsive? Lose headroom for strumming.

That's just the way it is. The trick is to find the tradeoffs that work for each of us as individuals when looking for a Swiss-army guitar. 14 fret OM's fit this bill for me. YMMV

[jojobean39]

Most guitars are easily used for both. But that doesn't mean they are IDEAL. You can usually get a good strumming sound out of a parlor or a good fingerstyle sound out of a dread.

However, smaller guitars usually have good voicings for fingerstyle. The bass won't likely overwhelm the highs. You can usually strum them, but if you do so aggressively, the sound breaks up and lacks clarity.

A larger bodied guitar doesn't have such focused voicing for fingerstyle. The bassier strings may outweigh the other strings when you are doing fingerstyle. They are not necessarily balanced as well. But conversely, they are often better than smaller guitars for strumming hard. You can get more volume without breakup (headroom).

And certainly this doesn't mean large bodied guitars aren't good fingerstyle guitars. It's just sort of a rule of thumb.

Hopefully that helps.

[Rosewood99]

+1 on the last two posts.

[Hotspur]

Originally Posted by Txmiller

What's considered the back and sides of choice for "strumming"? Is it mahogany for strumming and rosewood for finger style?

Not really, no. It's not really a question of woods.

Of course a rosewood guitar will sound different from a mahogany guitar, but the things that differentiate a flat picker from a finger styler from a strummer aren't the tonal spectrum (which is what B&S wood really impacts), it's much more about the dynamics.

How does the guitar respond to a light touch compared to how it responds to a finger pick or strum?

So you're really talking about guitar size and top thickness/bracing as the dominant factors.

This is an oversimplification, of course, but it probably helps to think about it like this:

A bigger guitar needs heavier bracing and/or a thicker top to support it. There's just a whole lot more wood involved. This means that a light touch isn't going to really get everything moving properly, and you won't hear the full sonic range of the guitar unless you drive it. Furthermore, all that extra wood is going to deaden some of the (usually higher) frequencies, while the large size of the guitar will make it stronger with lower frequencies - usually what you want out of a strummer.

There's more wood to get moving, so it takes more energy to get it going. But as a result, when you get all that wood moving, it gives you more - it's pushing more air around. This helps guitars like Dreads stand up to more of a band than an OM will.

A smaller guitar has less wood and requires less bracing. This makes it more sensitive at lighter strumming pressure, and also more dynamic - if you strum 10% harder the guitar will "notice" the difference more, where a heavier guitar will minimize it. The downside is that a larger guitar is going to be a little less bassy, since the top doesn't support the lower frequencies as well, and also that it may start to "distort" slightly when strummed hard - the energy of a hard strum doesn't really have anywhere to go, and so it may have unpleasant effects on the guitar's tone.

Again, this is an oversimplification, but in broad strokes it can probably help you think about what you're hearing. You'll be able to hear it, pretty easily, if you go to a guitar store that has guitars from the same manufacturers and the same woods in different sizes. (e.g., a Martin D18 vs a OM-18; Breedlove Premier Auditorium vs Concert, Taylor 814 vs 812, etc).