Another question?

[Marc Vincent]

 

I love wood and I love guitars!

And I know this is a below the belt question for the ardent traditionalists in guitar construction but>

But after seeing the Carbon Fiber guitars I am tempted to make one of these , whats your thought on the sound production of these?

There is a few good demos on you tube to hear some of these as well.

I was wanting one of these more for travelling ( Water proof) and knock proof to a degree, but would need to know from some of you more experienced gents if using exotic resins on the fret board and bridge will give good results, thinking of maybe a hybrid, say wood for the fretboard and bridge and bone for the nut, the rest would be CF?

 

Would incorporate perfect temperament compensated fret boards as well, as I can CNC these!

Any thoughts on this subject?

Regards

Marc

[Tim Mace]

 I have no experience w/CF but have just talked to someone over the weekend who is designing a fiddle & feels that a wooden top sounds better than CF top.I would assume the same would carry over to guitar if it's to be acoustic.Ovation may have known this too! I think I'd have to have some wood but don't like the idea of epoxy as an adhesive for the wood stuff.

Tone is bound to be a bit nasal along the lines of a lute timbre IMO.

 

[Donald A. Fortune]

If god ment man to make CF guitars then he would have grown CF trees-- just my 2 cents-- peace, Donald

[Tim Mace]

Don,Surely you've heard of CF Martin?? blahahahahah

[Donald A. Fortune]

Good one Tim - I'm smiling with that one :)

[Rob Mercure]

Donald, I can't help myself (unless you've already made the joke and I missed it):  Lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose are primarily carbon and grow in the the shape of fibers!  But you were probably already pulling our legs and I've not had enough caffiene this morning to catch it easily.

 

Rob

[FRANK]

Tupperware party

[Howard Klepper]

Let us in on which temperament is the perfect one.  Do you mean you will have 44 tones to the octave?  Or that your neck will play perfectly in tune with equal temperament?  Either one would be an achievement!

 

So far, every CF guitar I've heard sounded like it was made of plastic.  I think it takes more than being made of hydrocarbons to do the trick.

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

If it's a first time, and for a traveling guitar, don't take too much time thinking about the tone. First succeed in making a good playing one!

If you can access CNC and understand CF making, you could try this for a first order approach : remove the strings of a standard guitar, test the stiffness of the top with a load and a measuring device of your choice, then make a CF top that has the same bending stiffness.

For the bridge and fretboard, I would use my exotic preferred hardwood glued with epoxy.

[Barbara Millikan]

I have heard that some CF guitars have plates of wood glued [epoxied?] to the interior top to warm the tone and give it a more mellow sound. You might want to check into that.

Barbara

 

[Marc Vincent]

I like wood too, but with the advent of technological advances, thought that giving a CF a chance and taking some of the ideas on board here it could be possible to make such a brilliant guitar?

I might not be the guy to do it, it might not have been done, but I am going to give it ago!

 

I will take on board some of the ideas here, like incorporating wood possibly into it somehow, its just an experiment for now, just hope I don't create a Frankenstein lol

As for True Temperament, I have thought about this for years, then low and behold, a friend of mine said remember when you said blah blah, take a look at this, here is a link

http://www.truetemperament.com

Not pretty, but its all about the sound production at the end of the day .  ..

Its probably difficult to replicate how wood moves, and what would be the natural tone of guitar, but I have some ideas on this too. .

i will keep you posted.  .

Regards

Marc

 

[Mark Dobbins]

what happens when that fretboard needs a refret or fret level?

Mark

[Alexander López]

The problem with a pure-graphite instrument is their tone is so 'perfect' that it sounds unnatural to our ears. In fact, the reason early Steinberger basses & guitars are not that appreciated because of their radical tone; which most people found to be 'synthetic' or 'cold'. The same has happened with steel or aluminum instruments.

 

Centuries of wooden luthiery has made us to find timber's 'imperfections' pleasant; so what most builders are trying to do is to replicate the sound properties of wood. Basslab uses a CF+ceramic compound, in their day Catalyst Instruments used another composite called SoundCompound, and Rainsong Graphite Guitars does it with different ratios of materials and epoxies.

 

Another approach is to use a CF neck coupled to a wooden body, such as Modulus or Zon basses. This way the neck can be very rigid and stable, no matter how the climate is.I don't know if there are any graphite-neck + wooden body acoustic guitars.

 

Nowadays, Steinberger has ditched their all-graphite approach in favor of graphite-reinforced necks. This way you can have a more rigid neck that can withstand climate changes with less flexing, while preserving the tone qualities of wood. Do not use those rods paralell to the truss rod but paralell to the sides instead; builders like Carvin and Rick Turner have found this geometry gives more structural benefits.

 

Hope this helps!