Ear test - which guitar is which?

[SpruceTop]

Originally Posted by TBman

Ok, a few members nailed it.

Larrivee
Avalon
Guild

By Jove, I Got It!

[zmf]

Darn. If we 'd didn't win, do we get "I Participated" t-shirts?

[Treenewt]

Originally Posted by TBman

Ok, a few members nailed it.

Larrivee
Avalon
Guild

Yes!

I gotta admit, I was hoping I was right, because the tone of your Larrivee felt like home to me. That’s real similar to mine in tone (though your playing is light years beyond me!). The extreme clarity and power of #2 made me think Avalon...it felt like it was perfect for Celtic. I had no clue on the guild, but process of elimination made it numero tres.

This was fun Barry!

[TBman]

Originally Posted by Treenewt

Yes!

I gotta admit, I was hoping I was right, because the tone of your Larrivee felt like home to me. That’s real similar to mine in tone (though your playing is light years beyond me!). The extreme clarity and power of #2 made me think Avalon...it felt like it was perfect for Celtic. I had no clue on the guild, but process of elimination made it numero tres.

This was fun Barry!

Thanks Treenewt! I enjoy doing these from time to time. I'll have to try one time putting the same strings on all the guitars and then see what happens. Maybe I'll throw my J-45 in there as a wild card,

[Jaden]

Late to the party but I guessed right. I was surprised at the richness of the Larrivee, thinking it was the Avalon until the second guitar followed, showing even more vibrant colour; the all mahogany was easy to identify at the end following on the first two for its more spartan overtone content.

Thanks Barry!

[Jeff Scott]

Originally Posted by TBman

Ok, a few members nailed it.

Larrivee
Avalon
Guild

That's what I thought they were, but was waiting for confirmation before posting any guesses.

[vindibona1]

Originally Posted by TBman

Thanks Treenewt! I enjoy doing these from time to time. I'll have to try one time putting the same strings on all the guitars and then see what happens. Maybe I'll throw my J-45 in there as a wild card,

It was actually pretty easy. The recordings typified the types of builds each of these guitars had. It's all in the overtones and harmonics. I think I liked the Larrivee the best in this comparison. I thought the Avalon had too much sustain in the harmonics. Which bridge pins do you have in it?

[TBman]

Originally Posted by vindibona1

It was actually pretty easy. The recordings typified the types of builds each of these guitars had. It's all in the overtones and harmonics. I think I liked the Larrivee the best in this comparison. I thought the Avalon had too much sustain in the harmonics. Which bridge pins do you have in it?

The Avalon has the stock pins, which are ebony. String muting is an issue when playing the Avalon with open strings. String muting is also not one of my strong points. As a result this is one of the reasons why most of my compositions on the Avalon are played with a capo.

Playing without a capo on the Guild is more manageable for me than the Avalon due to the quicker decay the Guild has.

The Larrivee has a great feel to it, but it can have a certain "sour" twang to it at times. I haven't quite figured out why and lately it hasn't been an issue.

I'm fortunate to have these three guitars. The Guild I picked up used for just $450 and the Larrivee was also purchased used for about $1,000 when it was only a couple of years old.

Because of the way I play (softly), the Guild sounds like it competes well with the Avalon, but in the hands of a more polished and robust player the Avalon would leave the other two in the dust. Think of the Avalon as a Maserati that I'm driving 40mph in a 100mph speed zone,

Thanks for taking part in this thread. I enjoy these discussions.

[zmf]

Originally Posted by TBman

Because of the way I play (softly), the Guild sounds like it competes well with the Avalon, but in the hands of a more polished and robust player the Avalon would leave the other two in the dust. T

Well, I got the Guild and Larrivee wrong (couldn't believe the Larrivee sounded that tinny), but no mistaking the way you play the Avalon.

[Inyo]

Originally Posted by TBman

Ok, a few members nailed it.

Larrivee
Avalon
Guild

More than "a few members" placed the guitars in their correct order of audio appearance in the clip.

Precisely half--nine out of 18--of the responding individuals identified the right instrument sequence.

Let's dig a little deeper into the statistics.

Since there are six possible combinations one can derive from the three guitars original poster used, one can predict that from a sampling of 18 pure guesses there would be on average three correct answers.

And further--If you guess correctly the first guitar in the sequence (a one in three shot, of course)--in this example the Larrivee, you then have a 50-50 chance to get the remaining two guitars in the right order. Think of it this way: If all 18 participants in original poster's experiment had randomly picked Larrivee as the first instrument used (admittedly as astronomically against the odds as that would have been), then we'd expect to see on average 9 correct answers.

But what we see in the statistics here is that of the ten folks who put Larrivee first, only one person went on to miss the correct order; thus, nine of the ten participants who correctly put Larrivee first got the rest of the order right.

Bottom line: On average, if pure guesswork was on display here, five of those ten folks who put Larrivee first should have missed the correct guitar sequence.

All of which argues in favor of the observation that if we choose to eliminate from the equation the idea that not a few participants decided to "hop on the same bus," so to speak--that is to say, follow suite, agree sans personal calculation of the problem with previous posters who eventually turned out to be correct--a hypothesis given at least a modicum of credence when one considers that seven of the nine incorrect answers all appear on the first page (after that, all but two who respond indeed get it right, quite provocatively indicating a mysterious mass concurrence phenomenon in action), numerous AGF members here are indeed blessed with a sophisticated audio "palate," as it were, a refined sensitivity that helps successfully identify subtle tonal propagation differences from various combinations of woods used to construct guitars.

[Bernieman]

Originally Posted by TBman

Ok, a few members nailed it.

Larrivee
Avalon
Guild

Got it right too : interesting test (I only say that when I get things right ...)