Re: Taylor guitars

On Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:20:15 -0700, "Lumpy"
<lumpy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Lump:
... induced vibration to the top and
back with my orbital sander (padded of course).

After about an hour on each side of the artificial
"playing in" from the vibrations, the tight little
bass node on the top grew from a fist sized spot to
a spot that now occupied just about the entire lower
half of the top. The back had a similar opening up
along the bass side of the backstrap/seam.

jimmony:
How do you measure this difference Lumpy? Just by ear or some
electronic device? I've never heard of this before.

A strobe tuner (or virtual strobe, Peterson) will tell
you the frequency exactly. But you can see it visually
when you watch the strings vibrating.

As far as the area affected, as you move the vibrator
around the top (or the back) you can tell that certain
areas cause the strings to vibrate a lot more violently
than other areas. Those areas are the same nodes that
the recording gurus look for to point their small diam
condensor mic's at. As you vibrate, those nodes get
larger.

One pretty good way to know you're making progress is
to clip an intellitouch or similar tuner on to the headstock.
See if you can find a spot that has trouble picking up
the low E string. Then after vibrating for a while,
clip the tuner onto the same spot and you'll typically
find that it picks up all the strings really easily.

It's pretty aggressive and I'd never recommend anyone
doing it without some serious study and contemplation,
safety goggles, hearing protection and insurance!

When I do it to my cedar/walnut Lowden, it causes the
strings to vibrate so violently that they break and
go flying. That guitar has been vibrated a LOT, plus
it's been played a lot for many years. It's pretty
well broken in. This new Taylor I worked on was brand
new, still smelled like urethane etc. It was really
tight. It's string vibration reaction was not nearly
so violent.

Here's a larger scale operation -
http://www.acousticguitar.com/Gear/advice/vibration.shtml


Lumpy

You were on Leave it to Beaver?
No, I was on on CHiPs. That Beaver Lumpy
was Frank Bank.
www.LumpyMusic.com


I'm guessing this is less effective on laminated tops and bottoms. I
have a clip on tuner and a couple inexpensive geetars that i'd like to
try this out on.

tony
.

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