Official Luthiers Forum!

When talking to Tom Seymor at the Fret House, a guitar store here in Covina, he says, on a new guitar that's the first thing he listens for. He says the bass will come as the guitar settles in but if the highs are not there, they will never be there. Tom's been working on guitars for 60 years. I have a pretty high regard for his experience.

Really depends on the instrument being built. Blanket statements are ... well ... blanket.*

Trebles, especially at upper registers, can separate the men from the boys in the classical guitar world.

Build a dreadnought or build a single 0 12 fretter and you're chasing fundamentally different strengths and weakness of the box (and wood and ...) - It's far easier to get wonderful trebles in a single 0 ... try bringing more bass characteristics to the party ... ouch.

But I am curious about the idea that many builders focus on bass. Is that true?

My experience with bass and treble is generally opposite of what Billy said regarding Tom Seymor. In my experience the bass is more there at the beginning and the trebles take time to develop - again that's more in the classical world, so that might be the difference? Then again I had a single 0 that did exactly what Tom said - trebles were there early on, but took 3-5 years for bass side to come in.

Filippo

* And I made some blanket statements ... pile on!

I've always felt the same way. If the treble is there the rest will follow. Never had a guitar that had too much treble but I've definitely had ones that were too bassy. I won't claim that I know how to do this but it's what I have always preferred. First chord I play on a guitar is an open D and then maybe a B minor. Something that can show case the treble end of the guitar.

Thanks for the info, Billy. Intuitively, what you say seems to make sense since things loosen up over time as the guitar breaks in, and "looser" should favor more bass and less treble, I would think. Hmmm...

I read an article from an engineering document on properties of wood and it stated something curious. The article said that the specific wood mentioned, I don't remember which one, may be doug fir, lost about 40% to 60% of it's strength after about 6 million cycles. If you think about it 6 million cycles ain't much when it comes to the vibrations of a guitar. I'm sure the greater the magnitude of the cycle increases the weakening rate.

This cycle fatigue would explain the "opening up" a guitar seems to go through after it is played for a while. I'm sure that simply being strung for some time also weakens the wood also. Though the article mentioned nothing specific about static stress.

Lower bout belly and neck resets prove that.

So, a guitar would technically be over built to withstand the stresses after wood cycle fatigue.