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  #31  
Old 02-12-2013, 01:08 PM
gitnoob gitnoob is offline
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Here we are in the tree capital of the world, and we have people making guitars out of aluminum and carbon fiber (Rainsong is in Woodinville). The irony.

I may have missed it, but what got you interested in using aluminum?

One of the features of spruce that seems to give us the tone we like is the different stiffness characteristics with the grain vs across the grain.

The latest/greatest carbon fiber guitars appear to be using unidirectional carbon fiber to emulate that property....
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  #32  
Old 02-12-2013, 01:52 PM
lobocnc lobocnc is offline
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Actually, it was the trees that got me thinking about alternatives to wood. I prefer my trees standing.

It's definitely the case that axial stiffness variations of wood produce a different tone from the aluminum. Looking at a spectrogram of a wooden guitar v. aluminum, you can see a lot more off-mode frequency content which I believe is what gives wood that nice warm fuzzy sound. The aluminum produces a more pure tone and harmonics.

Carbon fiber is probably a better bet for emulating wood. The comments I've heard about Rainsong guitars, though, is that they sound really nice, but the sound is maybe lacking in character. I suspect there are a lot of other irregularities/non-linearities in wood that give it its particular character.
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  #33  
Old 02-12-2013, 02:21 PM
gitnoob gitnoob is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lobocnc View Post
Carbon fiber is probably a better bet for emulating wood. The comments I've heard about Rainsong guitars, though, is that they sound really nice, but the sound is maybe lacking in character. I suspect there are a lot of other irregularities/non-linearities in wood that give it its particular character.
I agree that CF seems like the most promising path. You could certainly program the cloth weaver to introduce irregularities to more closely emulate wood.

So far, my favorite CF guitars have come from Composite Acoustics. They simply use more resin. It damps those high-frequency overtones you can get from CF. Who would have thought that damping was a good thing?

For me, the downside isn't the lack of tonal complexity, it's the lack of visceral feedback. The backs on the CA guitars are too stiff. The guitar doesn't vibrate against my belly enough.
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