Nylon strings on a Martin acoustic?

[FletchFW]

Greetings to everybody. Been following this forum at least 10 years and finally joined last month. This is my first time to post. My current guitars are Martins, an HD28 bought new 5 years ago, and a CEO7, also bought new a few months ago. Love them both, interchange between them on a daily basis. I must admit that the CEO 7 is the sweetest sounding guitar I’ve ever been fortunate enough to own. It’s hard to put down.

I want a nylon string guitar to round out my collection. I’ve played many of the Cordobas and like them all, even the insanely inexpensive C-5. But, and here is my question: Which steel string Martin acoustic being manufactured today, if any, do you think would respond well to being fitted with nylon strings? I don’t really expect to hear what I’m hoping to hear, but just in case? Thanks, and I’m so happy to finally be a member of this community.

[ChalkLitIScream]

Welcome aboard!

Now, you shouldnt put nylon strings on a steel string guitar.

But to answer your question, youd look for the guitar thats braced the lightest and takes the lightest possible string gauges. Usually these are smaller guitars (00s and smaller).

Howerver, i dont think you'll get satisfactory results from that experiment:

1) nylon strings are thicker, and wont fit in the nut slots

2) those thicker strings will feel extremely cramped given that steel string acoustics have (relatively) thin nut widths

3) you wont get much sound from a steel string guitar with nylon strings. They are braced to withstand the pull of 170lbs of tension constantly (curious to know how much tension typical nylon guitars have), and so require alot of energy to get some good sound out of it. Nylon strings imply wont give enough

4) how would you secure the strings down at the bridge end?

[cuthbert]

Originally Posted by FletchFW

I want a nylon string guitar to round out my collection. I’ve played many of the Cordobas and like them all, even the insanely inexpensive C-5. But, and here is my question: Which steel string Martin acoustic being manufactured today, if any, do you think would respond well to being fitted with nylon strings? I don’t really expect to hear what I’m hoping to hear, but just in case? Thanks, and I’m so happy to finally be a member of this community.

None, get a classical guitar.

Martins are designed to withstand the pressure of steel strings, they cannot work properly with nylon, that's the reason why they invented the X bracing, normally classical guitars have fan bracing, very light as the tension is about half of steel strings (If I remember correctly).

As you have two Martin I assume you can afford a good classical one, without spending anything insane I might reccommend Alhambra:

http://www.alhambrasl.com/en/guitars/

[Kerbie]

Originally Posted by FletchFW

Which steel string Martin acoustic being manufactured today, if any, do you think would respond well to being fitted with nylon strings?

To me, the answer to that is... none. Wouldn't do it.

Welcome to the AGF... glad to have you.

[FletchFW]

Thanks guys. I’m convinced. Guess I was looking for an excuse to buy another Martin. I’ll save that for when I have a serious GAS attack. I’ll concentrate my search on classical. And I’ll take a look at Alhambra.

[JonWint]

Why not buy a Martin designed for nylon?

https://www.martinguitar.com/guitars...nylon-12-fret/

[taylorgtr]

There are a bunch of crossover nylon strings out there, so it's worth it to take some time playing a bunch to see what works for you.

Full-blown classical guitars have a flat fingerboard with a 2" width neck, so if you're cursed with Trump hands like me, you need a narrower neck.

Taylor offers a bunch of models all the way across their line with necks that are more familiar to steel string players.

Martin has a nylon string with a 1 7/8" neck, and a 000-size body, so that may be right up your alley.

Yamaha, Takamine, Cordoba, Furch all offer good choices - and the Breedlove Pursuit nylon is a well built lower priced option.

[Alan Carruth]

Actually, all of the Martins up to and including the 12-fret 000 were designed for gut strings, back before there was nylon. Martin only started offering steel strings as a factory option in the 1920s, iirc. The early ones were very lightly built, but after steel strings became popular they started to beef up the tops and bracing, and went to the larger 'belly' bridge due to the extra tension. I've made a couple of 12-fret 000s for nylon strings and they work well, but they were lighter overall than modern steel strung Martins.

The tension is actually much less of an issue in the design of the instrument than the nature of the string material itself. You can get steel strings (such as the Thomastic 'S' series) that have the same tension as normal nylon strings, but they sound much different. The main issue it damping.

Damping is a measure of how fast something dissipates vibration energy once you get it moving. Compared with steel, nylon, as a material, has much higher damping: it dissipates the energy faster. If you had a plate of steel and a plate of nylon of the same size and shape, the steel would ring when you tapped it, but the nylon would just go 'thud', because it would not keep vibrating. In addition, because nylon is so much less dense than steel, nylon strings need to be thicker to have reasonably high tension at pitch. Nylon strings have to move a lot more air as they vibrate than steel strings do. This doesn't produce sound, the strings aren't wide enough: that's why we tie them to a soundboard. It's more like trying to run in knee deep water; it just takes a lot of energy out.

Damping tends to reduce the amplitude of the string by a certain proportion per cycle of vibration. If it takes, say, 100 cycles for the string to loose half it's energy, than it's going to loose energy faster at high frequencies. 100 cycles at 100 Hz takes one second, but at 1000 Hz it takes a tenth of a second.

If you put a nylon string and a steel string on a rigid mount and pluck them the nylon string dies out faster. The high frequencies go first. After a second or so the nylon string will have no energy to speak of above 4000 Hz or so, but the steel string will have plenty at 8000 Hz, an octave higher, and some at 12,000.

What this means is that the central problem of designing a steel string guitar is different from that of designing a nylon string one. With a steel string guitar the problem is to get enough bass to balance off all the treble. This is relatively easy: you make a bigger box. The bigger guitar has to be beefed up a bit to retain it's stiffness, so it's heavier, but with the extra tension of the steel strings that's not much of an issue.

With nylon strings the problem is to get as much sound as you can out of the little bit of treble energy you have. For that you need a smaller box with the lighter top and less bracing. you also have to pay a lot of attention to getting the right balance between the top and the bracing.Since wood is so variable Classical makers tend to be even more fussy about picking their wood than steel string luthiers. Factories can't be that fussy; it takes too much time. As a result, lots of topnotch steel string players use factory guitars, but I don't think any top notch Classical players do: they all play luthier made ones.

There are a few other differences: as has been mentioned, nylon strings tend to need a wider neck, for example. If you can find a pre-WWI Martin that's in decent shape and has not been modified you might try it with nylon strings. Anything recent is likely to be 'way over built for them. Sticking to the smaller sizes, is also a good idea; a 'standard' Classical is about a Martin 00.

[cuthbert]

Originally Posted by JonWint

Why not buy a Martin designed for nylon?

https://www.martinguitar.com/guitars...nylon-12-fret/

Because the Spaniards have invented that guitar long ago and I am pretty sure a high end Spanish classical is better than a Martin as I am sure a Martin D18V is better than an Alhambra folk guitar.

[Tony Burns]

It wont sound good and you will have to cut the slots wider for the strings -
Those two factors are a big NO.

[Earl49]

As has been covered already, it won't sound very good because the body will be braced for 165 -185 pounds of steel string tension, versus 90-105 pounds for nylon strings. It would be like driving your car with only 20 psi in the tires instead of the intended 35 psi. Better to just get a guitar intended for nylon strings, either a true classical or a crossover.

There have been times when learning a new finger style piece that I would put nylon strings on my old Silvertone, to avoid wearing through my calluses with repeated play of the same passages. That worked OK, but not great, and I had to make a new nut for the purpose. A Martin will be....disappointing, but it will work technically.

[Caddy]

Originally Posted by cuthbert

None, get a classical guitar.

Martins are designed to withstand the pressure of steel strings, they cannot work properly with nylon, that's the reason why they invented the X bracing, normally classical guitars have fan bracing, very light as the tension is about half of steel strings (If I remember correctly).

As you have two Martin I assume you can afford a good classical one, without spending anything insane I might reccommend Alhambra:

http://www.alhambrasl.com/en/guitars/

My D'Adarrio normal tension nylon strings say 85.85 pounds of tension on the package.

[Wade Hampton]

After making several good points, Chalk wrote:

Originally Posted by ChalkLitIScream

4) how would you secure the strings down at the bridge end?

That’s actually no problem at all: Ernie Ball, LaBella and several other string manufacturers make ball end nylon strings.

Fletch, in the 1960’s Martin made a couple of different “New Yorker” models designed to take either very light steel strings, silk and steel strings, or nylon strings. The first one was the Martin 0-16NY, which came out in 1962, I think, followed a couple of years later by the 00-16NY.

There were a pretty fair number of those built, so they’re not too difficult to find. Since they’re not voraciously sought-after, the prices on them tend to be moderate.

Hope this helps.


Wade Hampton Miller

[Wade Hampton]

Here are a couple of pictures of 0-16NY guitars:

˙˙˙

Both of them appear to have had pickguards added onto them; I don't believe they came with pickguards.

While Martin did make the somewhat larger 00-16NY for a few years, the single O version is far more common and thus easier to find.

If you want to hear one being played, it's a Martin 0-16NY that Ian Anderson played on virtually all of the early and middle period Jethro Tull albums. So when you hear an acoustic guitar on any of those songs, it's a Martin New Yorker being played.

He strung his with steel strings, but as I mentioned, these guitars are braced lightly enough that you can also drive the top with nylon strings.


whm

[cuthbert]

Originally Posted by Caddy

My D'Adarrio normal tension nylon strings say 85.85 pounds of tension on the package.

Consistent with the ratio I had in mind, as D'addario steel lights are about 160 in/lbs.