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Hi

What weight do your acoustics usually come out at

Talking to someone the other day who was saying how he played a really expensive handbuilt acoustic in a shop and couldn't believe how light it was

Mine feel a bit weighty in hand really .. but box was as thin as I dare go

But is lighter always better anyway?

It's really one of the myths as far as I'm concerned. It really depends on your wood choice. I played a lot of high end guitars yesterday, and the mahogany ones were all light but most didn't do it for me. One of the best guitars of the afternoon was African Blackwood, therefore heavy, but it was also one of the best to my taste.

Also, Trevor Gore adds weight to the sides, which has been shown to increase volume and projection. I recently made a post here, saying that it's my contention that low weight is only important in the vibrating membranes (top and back) and weight in the sides and neck can add to the sound and sustain

In a word, no. I put that myth in the same category as 'wide/tight grain spruce always sounds better'. Some lightweight guitars are good, while others are weak, with no carrying power.
I have offered the example of a certain 1937 Martin D-28, which is one of the heaviest ones I have seen. It also is one of the best sounding.

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John

If by better you mean better sounding, then no. The quest for light overall weight is a separate thing from the quest for tone.

The soundboard does need to be reasonably light to sound good (I consider about 300g including bridge to be a good maximum for light gauge steel strings). The lighter you make it, the more total output power you're likely to get. But that's another separate quest from just making it sound good. Making a loud guitar sound good is more difficult because every dip and peak in the frequency response is more noticeable.

And of course I'm on all 3 quests at once... light overall weight, loud, and full sounding. I'm currently building in the 3 to 3.5 pound range for steel strings. Probably could get a little louder if I added more weight to the sides and neck, but for me lighter is always better feeling, so it's not worth the trade. I suspect about 3lbs is the turning point where it's no longer worth the effect on tone to get lighter weight.

I went for as light as I could on my recently completed OM and ended up with 4.3 lbs. I'm supprised at how loud and clear it rings out. I wasn't expecting that because of the redwood top. Far and away the best sounding guitars I've ever played were a selection of Sexauer's work. All of them were very light. I think the 00 I just started will end up on the heavier side.,

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Brad Hall
Mystic Dawg Guitars

I think some light guitars sound very good, but not just because they're light. They're built to some goal, and for those specific guitars, light was the right way to go. The same can be said for heavier guitars. Building with lightness as a goal seems like the tail wagging the dog.

Whatever works, works. Just my two cents.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Probably the biggest determinant of a guitar's weight is your choice of wood for the back and sides. I'm guessing that cocobolo or Blackwood could weigh almost twice as much as some mahoganies.

Steve

"The thinner you make tops and backs, the more they sound like cardboard."

That is the fundamental principal that I had always built under. I always built from the thicker side of of the "Great Debate", but then again, I never wanted to build instruments that sound like your head was inside the instrument. If there is one thing I've never liked, it is that nasal "thin" sound with lots of resonance", instant gratification, to be short. I always built from the thicker, heavier side. It's what you do with it, not how much it weighs. I never weighed an instrument.
So, you see, there is no "bestist".

My tops are fairly thick until I build my experience so probably a good thing..
The guitar I'm building now feels heavy but I have ebony fretboard/bridge/headstock plate which I guess is the main factor in the weight
Glad to hear other guitars are fairly weighty.. always had in my head that my inexperience was somehow making my guitars heavy
Happy now

My daughter recently had a famous-maker ladder braced 12 in for work. It was one year old and the owner gave the builder instructions that it was to be as light as he dared, and it didn't matter if it needed a new top every couple of years. It had a loose brace at a year and the top was a little distorted. But I have to say that it had a mind-boggling combination of volume and jangliness. There were no other 12's in the shop to compare to, and I don't know if the light weight was the reason, but it was surely remarkable and I liked it.

Ed

"and it didn't matter if it needed a new top every couple of years."

Rotate the tires and change the top please......

I am sincerely curious. If we are only talking about three or four pounds, then why does that matter to you? As long as it is lighter than a Strat, the weight should not make any difference once it's on your lap right? I am really trying to understand this. I

That sums up my sentiments exactly!!!! Can I use that as a quote?

Could I guess the guitar name started with an F and ended with an I?
Ladders are pretty hard to make quiet or not "jangly" They naturally have that sort of sound/tone, and it's pretty fundamental. But, in my experience, they don't sound all reverby and complex AND 12 strings don't need it. I leave that to those X braced Martin and clones with "silk and Steel ultra lights and tuned to E. S'pose you didn't measure the top thickness?
You don't remember the gage of strings and tuning, do you. Might guess the Owner wanted it light gage and E, though, but you wouldn't get the chest pounding bottom end you get with an .072" A...

Much easier to do a Townshend windmill with a light guitar when you get older. Just sayin'.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

Yeah, I mostly feel it when picking it up and putting it away. And it's true, the difference isn't really that much. But 3lbs is still a nice bit of luxury compared to 4, and if I can have it without any significant sacrifice, then why not? I wish I could do 2.5lbs, but I suspect the bass would be significantly weaker at that point. But I'm not entirely sure. Nylon strings work fine even below that.

A few years ago, I made one based on this old Torres with redwood and Honduran rosewood, which came out at 1.8lbs, and is still arguably my best sounding instrument to date. But then I made a second with engelmann and spalted maple which was 1.6lbs, and it was a failure in the tone department. Very dry, quiet, no sustain. So either I hit the tipping point of "too light" for nylons, or it had to do with the damping properties of the woods, or it was because I made the soundboard thinner than intended. Probably a combination of the three. But interestingly, it didn't have the hollow nasal sound that thin top steel strings are prone to.

For harp guitars, even reaching 4lbs is a challenge, and it will pretty much always be neck heavy because of all the tuners up there. I want to build one for nylon strings using wood peg tuners. And perhaps try a design for steels where the harp string tuners are at the tail to counterbalance it.


That only applies to the neck, where the dimensions are fixed. The thickness of the back and sides can be varied to make rosewood and mahogany weigh the same (and in theory should make them sound very similar, with the difference coming down to damping properties of the wood and details of the stiffness distribution, particularly the perimeter stiffness).

Blackwood is is indeed extreme and will almost always be heavier, but not by a lot if you use .055" sides and .065" back, which should be pretty safe with such a strong and stiff wood if you use full height side braces.

Just considering the most traditional back and side woods Rosewood and Mahogany -- I have to say that to my ear the lightly constructed Martin and Gibson styles (I have had the pleasure to play) are more appealing. Generally louder and more sensitive to the touch, more woody and less stringy (metallic) than those of more substantial construction. When doing listening tests whether I am playing or someone else I find it to be very important that the back of the guitar is not pressed against the player's torso as this tends to dampen the out-put of any guitar. The old Gibson's were built incredibly light, perhaps the reason so few have survived? Just saying -- of course this is a very subjective evaluation on my part.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

FWIW I don't really know the answer to this question except for myself. When I decided to take on a lighter building approach I started building better guitars. It works for me. What got me started on this was a guitar that came in for a repair many many years ago. I wish I could remember the Luthiers name but he had a small impact in the Pacific North West in the 1970's. The guitar was about 30 years old, a 12-string, and it was the thinnest top I'd ever seen on a guitar. I can only imagine the back and sides were thin too because the thing was very light. It had no structural problems at all and it sounded fantastic. At the time I was building guitars with 1/8th inch tops as a starting point. So it changed my way of thinking and since then I have been building lighter.

Having said that, the first few guitars I built I used a steel rod for a non adjustable truss rod which added significant weight and I swear that that also has something to do with the tone of those guitars that I have never been able to capture again.

So like anything in Luthiery... more than one way to skin a cat.

Another very subjective topic where "bestest" has to be considered in the context of a specific application or you are just spinning your wheels.

For a blue grass instrument heavier does fine in so much as one of the components of volume is the substrate that is being excited. This is likely why a Gallagher favored they say by Doc Watson may do fine with blue grass music and weigh in at 6 pounds or so for a big arse dr*ead.

Keep in mind that there are examples of pre-war Martins that are on the other side of the spectrum, on the light side, that are also coveted for blue grassers. I've played heavy and light pre-war Martins that all sounded killer.

And that's the rub no matter how much you or I or you since I'm no longer doing it.... try to find constants and never ending truths about Lutherie there will also be some example of something that blows it all away.... There are no absolutes.

The classical guys tend to favor light weight instruments too until Greg Smallman came along.... with seven pound classicals that project like nobodies business. Again.... there are no absolutes....

OTOH for those of us who like to build finger style guitars what Ken said, something that is easily excited with a light touch (my mind is wandering... oh yeah...) is desirable and often we find this in light weight instruments.

To me the physical weight of the instrument in terms of what I have to schlepp was never the goal of a light weight guitar. Instead I wanted substrates that are excited with minimal touch, very low mass, etc. The other side of that is that if what we hear is the substrate vibrating as well as air moving and if there is less substrate there very likely may be less to hear. But again, I've played sub 5 pound instruments, sub 3 pound pre-war instruments that will blow away this theory as well.

Regarding Trevor and adding weight to the sides having an impact as stated earlier Somogyi has been building with very heavy, double sides laminated with ep*xy for decades now and what he intended to do is take the sides out of play and isolate the top and back. This is nothing new (although it may have been new when Ervin started doing it, I don't know) lots of builders have built with very stiff sides as well with various methods of getting there from super stiff, special linings to even side supports intended to stiffen the sides where side tapes are only intended to arrest a traveling crack.

If you want to talk about personal preference because IMO there are no absolutes here I prefer light weight instruments. That's usually what I see in the really old stuff that sounds great and I'm not inclined to attempt to reinvent the successful wheels of the past anymore. Lots of my favorite things benefit from low mass. From tone arms to high-end CF bikes to racing sailboats low mass, very stiff seems to have a following. I'll add that as a life long audiophile... low mass speaker cones are the rage and have been for a very long time. Anyone see any relationships between a guitar top and a speaker cone?

It's funny but likely very understandable that the more I learn, the more guitars I get to see, work on, play, inspect, discuss the more it seems to me that those who came before us really had their stuff together. Hat's off to some of the Martin's (the ancestors) too because after all with everyone and their brother attempting to improve on what they, and others.... accomplished it's not at all clear to me that anyone actually has, yet.

Lastly from me when I was building I wanted light weight guitars as the product of my efforts. I weighed tuners, truss rods, tops, even finish..... and made decisions favoring what was going to keep my mass down. Some of mine are 10 now and no one has needed a new top and in fact the only failure that I experienced was a lifted bridge on a gigging instrument left in a car in Nashville. To be expected I think.

We recently had a customer that walked in the door with a half dozen Somogyi and Traugott guitars for setup, pickup, and saddle work, which prompted an hours-long comparison session with those guitars and the others in the shop. The Somogyis were certainly on the heavy side, while the Traugotts were quite light. To my ears, the Traugotts were more present and certainly louder, but the boss pointed out that the Somogyis were more even (but much quieter) in their near-field presentation. Unsurprisingly, on an impromptu listening session in the large media/sunroom we have available with 4 builders and a half dozen players, everyone had a different favorite.

My own favorites ranked 1 to 5 were: Waterloo WL-14X, Kopp Trail Boss, a 1945 D-18, one of the Traugotts, and bringing up the rear, a 1950's J-45. Most were on the light side, with the Waterloo around 3 pounds! At least one of the players just loved the Somogyis...all of them.

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A constellation only takes shape when one maps the whole.
- Beth Brower