But the fact is that on the left end the vibrating strings are in direct contact with the body through the nut. In that regard, solid nuts without rollers sound noticeably better, and that accounts for some of the difference between the sound of pedal steels and lap steels. But on a pedal steel you will hear some squeaking as the wound strings are pulled or lowered with a solid nut. So they put rollers on pedal steel nuts. However, having had a solid nut on my old Maverick, it seemed to me that squeaking is mostly behind the nut and hardly gets amplified by the pickup. It would never be heard in a live performance, but might be a problem in the studio.

Also, I am a little skeptical of the whole "body contact" connection to tone. On my Emmons push/pull the fingers are only in direct contact with the body on raises (and only on the longest raise for double raises). On lowers they contact the tuning screw, not the body. And when the string is open with no raises or lowers, there is no direct body contact. When no raises are in use, there is no direct body contact on any finger. Also, if the guitar is out of adjustment and a raise doesn't contact the body, I don't notice any difference in tone.

The biggest mechanical difference (at the changer) I notice between a push/pull and an all-pull is that the fingers on a p/p are thicker and much more solid. Also they are not jointed, therefore both the raise finger and lower finger make solid contact with the changer axle, which is anchored solidly to the body. Thus, the fingers make a more solid contact with the body, but it is through the changer, not necessarily through direct body contact. On lowers, the finger contacts the tuning screw, which is anchored in the metal endplate, which is connected solidly to the body. That probably helps. And the raise pull rods under the guitar are connected to the finger with a thin wire that does not absorb much vibration or pass it along to the pull-rod-bell-crank-pedal-rod linkage. In contrast, All-pulls are connected through flimsy, jointed fingers to the long flexible pull-rods under the guitar that undoubtedly absorb some vibration that is lost in the mechanical undercarriage. The entire all-pull changer is flimsier and more complicated. Just my own personal observations.

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Student of the Steel, Fessy S12U, Emmons S12 E9 P/P, Carter D12, Nashville 400, Fender Squire, Peavey Transtube Supreme into JBL 15", 1968 Gibson J50, '60s Kay arch-top, 7-string Raybro, customized Korean Regal square-neck, roundneck Dobro 90C, 1938 Conn Chu Berry tenor sax, '50s Berg mouthpiece, Hamilton upright piano, Casio keyboard. You make it, I'll play it (sort of).

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 08 August 2003 at 08:13 AM.]

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Also, I am a little skeptical of the whole "body contact" connection to tone.

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Me too!

[This message was edited by Donny Hinson on 09 August 2003 at 05:04 AM.]

With much respect, I must take exception that BCT is not what it is said to be. Believe me gentleman, this be a fact. Let me digress and give you just one revelation about it on another guitar.

On prewar bakelite Ricks, the strings came up through the body of the guitar. Since bakelite is sooooo brittle, they decided to mount the strings on a metal tail piece instead of drilling all the way thru the body.

Just about everyone, (BUT Rickenbacher) will tell you that this diminished the sound measurably. The MOST noted critic was and IS Jerry Byrd. In fact, vintage instrument dealers KNOW this; and the price goes down on all models that have the metal tail piece. In fact it goes down by almost half in some cases JUST because of it. The guitars are almost identical except for that.

My point is, sound vibrations through the body of a guitar make notable differences. In the case of a P/P, there is little question by those that are in the 'know' that those lower fingers held hard against the body MAKE the difference.

That being said, it is not clear to me if having the changer in solid contact with the body helps tone and sustain because the body vibrates and resonates, or because the body is heavy and rigid and therefore doesn't drain off any vibration or sustain from the strings. It's not an acoustic instrument. Vibrations of the wood body cannot cause a signal in the magnetic pickups.

On the other hand, the resonant body proponents think the resonating body amplifies and sustains the vibrations of the strings, which the pickups do detect. Maybe that's true. I'm not a sonic engineer. But I do know that in acoustic instruments the amplification one hears is not the strings themselves, but the top, sound board, resonator, whatever. And that acoustic amplification is bought by loosing sustain. A banjo is loudest, with no sustain. An acoustic guitar is somewhere in between, with some loudness and some sustain. A solid body guitar has the most sustain, but no loudness without juice.

It's conceivable that a theoretically possible steel -- which was perfect (or nearly so) from the standpoint of keeping vibrations in the string -- would give the same results as a bad steel, which allowed most of the vibrations to escape through the changer. The only difference is that the perfect steel wouldn't allow any vibrations to escape the strings, even through the body down into the legs. The bad steel, on the other hand, doesn't allow the legs to vibrate because most of the energy has escaped into the air from the changer, or dissipated through the body.

However, since this perfected steel does not yet exist, the "leg test" is useful because it tells us if a steel is good enough to at least keep the vibrations in the body, and not allow them to dissipate into the air.

In fact, if the whole instrument is vibrating, that drains off some energy too. By this line of thinking heavier instruments would vibrate less and possibly have better tone and sustain. There are plenty of people who say that big double-necks sound better than small single-necks. As long as everything is rigid, a bigger heavier body should take less vibration away from the strings, and so let them ring with better tone and sustain.

So to sum up my idea, less solidly built instruments can alter the tone and sustain by taking it away, but better built instruments don't add any tone or sustain, they just take away less.

But this is all just what Einstein called a "thought experiment". You'd have to go into a sound lab and do some real experiments to prove any of it, and probably somebody has. But it's pretty clear that very soon after they invented the electro-magnetic pickup, they discovered that what sounded good for acoustic instruments, didn't for electric ones, and they invented the solid body electric guitar.

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I have noticed that solidbody manufacturers have gotten totally away from the "big brass sustain block" school of design lately.

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just tightening all of the screws that hold the instrument together will improve the "tone".

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Not according to Buddy Emmons (the quotes were taken from two posts in the "Ask Buddy" section of www.buddyemmons.com :

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B.E: "(…) I decided one day to tighten all the screws on my Emmons guitar. As I firmed the end plates, etc., I would play a while to test for the guitar for stability. It wasn't until I finished with the necks that I heard a difference in the sound and not until I loosened them that I got it back. So, tightening and loosening screws in certain areas does affect the cabinet resonance but I don't necessarily recommend doing it as a means of improving upon the sound you have. What I discovered was purely by mistake and I'm thankful I had the ears and presence of mind to correct it.
(…)
Resonance or lack of it is a major factor when it comes to the timbre of an instrument. When I loosened some of the screws I tightened, it brought back the warmth I had lost."

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Buddy mentions "sound", "timbre" and "warmth". There is no specific reference to "sustain". There are obviously many factors that contribute to the tonal characteristics of an electric instrument. Some of these factors work in conjunction, some in opposite directions.

Since electric guitars were mentioned: consider the differences between a Tele or Strat and a Les Paul or SG. If a solid connection between the strings, bridge and body would give more sustain, then the strings-through-body design of the Fenders with their very sharp bend of the strings over the bridge would give a lot more sustain than the rather loose bridge and tailpiece construction with a very shallow bend of the strings on the Gibsons. We all know that the opposite is true. The other distinguishing features – body wood, set neck/bolt on neck, string angle at the headstock, scale length – all contribute to sustain/tone by absorbing more or less vibration.

It is a mixture of factors that produce a certain sound/tone/timbre and a given amount of sustain. To narrow it down to one single or predominant feature is impossible IMHO.

Rainer

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Remington D-10 8+7, Sierra Crown D-10 gearless 8+8, Sierra Session S-14 gearless 8+5, '76 Emmons D-10 8+4, Peavey Session 400 LTD

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...it seems to me as though proper volume pedal technique makes sustain almost a moot point...

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It depends on where you're playing. On most all steels, the sustain and tone is great between the 3rd fret and the 7th. Up around the 10th fret, though, things start to change. Up in "Hughey-land" (fret 15 and above), the sustain of some steels just plain dies, and no amount of volume pedal can compensate. I notice similar tendencies on a piano. Most of them sound fine from two octaves below middle "C" to two octaves above. In the "middle ground", they're very lively and full. It's in those bottom two octaves, and the top two octaves, that a Steinway really shines over a Yamaha or a Young-Chang.

I suppose there have been few really scientific studies on the design of pedal steels. Most of what we know, or what the builders think they know, has come from trial-and-error experimentation. Trouble is, we can't agree on anything! Bobbe says, in effect, if the legs vibrate, it's not good. Charleton says, on the other hand, that it's a good sign when you can feel vibration in the legs. Ron Lashley used to say the "wrap" neck didn't really help the sound. And Buddy thought the "wrap" created some of his finest-sounding guitars. The old MSA guitars were thought to have a bad sound because of their weight, yet the old Stringmasters and Rick's had great tone and sustain, and weighed a ton! Some experts say the neck adds nothing to the sound, others simply refuse to use (cheaper) wood necks.

Do you see what I'm getting at? When even the "experts" can't agree on hardly anything...where does that leave the rest of us? Well, I really don't care what anybody likes, or what anybody else plays. It's their choice, plain and simple. By the same token, don't try to tell me which guitar sounds or plays the best. Thirty-five years ago, there might have been a "leader" in this race. But right now?

I don't think so.

[This message was edited by Donny Hinson on 10 August 2003 at 06:23 AM.]

The business about what happens to the strings behind the bridge or nut is more related to Bengt's original question. There is a pretty strong belief by some that the extra string length going back to the tuning keys or to a tailpiece at the bridge end improves sustain (as opposed to keyless tuners, or running the strings immediately through the body behind the bridge). This makes sense to me, because it allows some vibration on the far side of the bridge or nut. It's like a seesaw. If the string wants to flex in one direction, it is more free to do that (with less bending at the bridge or nut) if it can flex in the opposite direction on the other side of the bridge or nut. So key heads and tail pieces would seem to let the string between the bridge and nut vibrate more freely, than if it is tightly pegged behind the bridge or nut.

I just did a search in Pedal Steel with "changer" as keyword, and "Sage" as user name. That brought up some interesting stuff, some of which also deals with issues involving resonance and sustain.

This is one of the earliest threads; check out page two:

http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/001799-2.html

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It's not an acoustic instrument. Vibrations of the wood body cannot cause a signal in the magnetic pickups.

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Then how do you explain this?

• Dampen the strings with your hand so they cannot vibrate.
• Tap the pickup (or for that matter, somewhere on the body close to the pickup.

This is the total concept of timbre in a steel guitar.

Look at the thickness of the Emmons wood, The hole in every body, The mounting of the mechanisum, The length of the keyhead in relation to the string length. The Emmons secret? It's a total concept, a mass of things that work together.

Just adding a quick fix to any bad sounding guitar won't do it guys.

However, I have to admit I'm now wondering how much of an influence you think things like body and neck material have. Not too long ago there was a thread where you seemed to be minimizing -- for example -- the difference between mica and lacquer, and wood and metal necks. As I recall, you then were emphasizing the role the changer has.

Would you agree with the idea that better-built guitars don't actually add any sustain to the string, they just take away less? (Note I'm not talking about tone in this question, just sustain. This seems to be the idea that had gained acceptance on this thread before your arrival.)

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The pickup can only sense the magnetic impulses of the wire, so the string/wire needs to have the backfeeding to be able to sense the timbre.

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Bobbe (and others), any opinion on this?

(Edited to say thanks, Bobbe, I posted at the same time you were answering my previous questions. There are some new ideas in your post.)

[This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 14 August 2003 at 08:30 PM.]

Remember, timbre is made by incedental , secondary vibrations, reintroduced into the primary vibrating string. Period. This applies to every string instrument made.

[This message was edited by BobbeSeymour on 14 August 2003 at 08:45 PM.]

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This is why I live. I like fast cars, aircraft, good food, great friends, but this quest for understanding tone/timbre is what I'm always consumed with.

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This "putting together" of different materials to construct a great sounding instrument, seems almost as elusive as designing an auditorium with great acoustical properties.

With computers as sophisticated as they are today, it would seem that all the data on the materials and methods of construction of an instrument (or an auditorium), could be put into a data base, and a computer model could be constructed which would give the most probable, "best" result.

Rick

The opposing view (the "subtraction only" theory) is that nothing can be added (where would the additional energy come from?). Instead, the timbre is affected by having the shrill or harsh overtones drained off and de-emphasized, thereby creating a more mellow and pleasing timbre (depending on body materials and changer designs), with possibly some loss of sustain. It doesn't matter whether we talk about timbre or sustain, because what we perceive as timbre is merely the mix of overtones that are sustained or not (according to the subtraction only theory), or whose sustain is reinforced or not (according to the resonant body theory).

I don't at all doubt that experimenting with different body materials, changer designs, and construction details as Bobbe and others have done will show that all of these things affect timbre. I am only questioning the common explanation of why and how that happens. Let's do some more thought experiments.

Okay, first for a real experiment. As Jeff suggested, I went home and tapped on my pedal steel with the strings damped and heard the tap through my amp. Well, that perplexed me for a moment, until I realized that to hear the tap through the amp, I had to have my volume pedal all the way on. My NV400 200 watt amp was about half-way up. If I had hit a string with my normal picking strength it would have blown out every window in the house. If I backed up to my playing volume on the pedal, I didn't hear diddly through the amp no matter how hard I tapped, even directly on the pickup. So maybe if you play at stadium volume body vibrations can be heard through the magnetic pickup, but I couldn't see how any body vibrations could be amplified at my playing level - yet I can clearly hear timbre differences between instruments at that level. Someone knowledgeable in electronics may be able to explain how a magnetic pickup amplifies non-magnetic vibrations, but regardless of that explanation, it doesn't seem relevant to what we are talking about, unless, as Bobbe says, the body imparts additional vibrations back to the metal strings.

Now for some thought experiments - well these aren't really thought experiments, because they are things any guitarist knows from experience. If body resonance improves timbre and sustain, why do they even bother to make solid body guitars? We all know that thin, strong-but-flexible, guitar tops are what make the timbre and volume of an acoustic guitar. But when you put a magnetic pickup on an acoustic guitar, all that resonance and acoustic volume is of no use. The Magnetic pickup will give a poor tone from the strings, with little sustain. That's why they invented acoustic pickups, which actually amplify the vibrations of the guitar top, not the strings. And as Bobbe says, if you put an acoustic pickup on a solid body instrument to really get all the body vibrations, it doesn't work well.

So after the invention of the magnetic pickup, there gradually came to be a whole assortment of electric guitar bodies for different kinds of tone. You've got the big box hollow-bodies, the thin box hollow-bodies, the semi-hollow-bodies, the hollow-solid bodies, and the solid bodies. With magnetic pickups, the more resonant the body is, the punchier and more mellow the tone is, with less sustain. The Jazz guys love that. They are also good for banging out punchy clean chords on rhythm guitar. The more solid the body is, the brassier the tone is, with more sustain. Thus, you have the twang of a tele for country, and the searing sustain of a strat for rock lead guitar.

Naturally, before the volume pedal started being used for sustain, electric lap steels were all made with solid bodies, for the maximum sustain. Pedal steels grew out of that. Great lenghts have been taken to get all the sustain-robbing and tone-dulling resonance out of these guitars, and to leave only that great solid-body sustain and timbre. So now you want me to believe that building in just the right amount of resonance will improve sustain and timbre?

I guess the true test of all this would be to build several lap steels (take the changer and roller nut problems out of the equation) exactly the same, with the same magnetic pickups, but with bodies of different thicknesses. According to the body resonance theory, the thicker bodies should sound duller and have less sustain. We already know that the ones with really thin bodies (approaching the thickness of hollow-body tops) would also sound duller with less sustain. But according to this theory, there will be some intermediate thickness body that will have just the right resonance to maximize both timbre and sustain.

I would have to hear this to believe it. It's not that strange an experiment, and it seems likely someone has already done it - maybe even Bobbe.

My prediction, according to the "subtraction only" theory, would be that as the body gets thicker and more rigid, the sustain will improve and the timbre will get brighter (not necessarily more pleasant), up to some point where additional thickness has no further effect. I bet that point will be about the thickness of present bodies, which builders have arrived at through trial and error.

As for the affect of different neck materials, Bobbe said in a post not long ago that experiments in the building of the Sho-Bud SuperPro III showed that the neck material had no effect on tone. If the nut, changer and pickup are attached directly to the body (as in most pedal steels) rather than the neck, why should the neck have any effect on tone? It just sits passively on top of the body.

David, there is no "additional energy", it's a "reflective,sympathetic energy that is put into the guitar body by the string itself. Key word here is reflective,re- shaking the string with reflective energy from the original energized motion of the string, feeding it back into the string via the changer end, and very little from the keyhead end. However, vibrating strings in the keyhead do add a quality to the timbre, ever notice that the Emmons keyhead stringlength is exactly 1/4th the stringlegnth of the guitar, just so it will vibrate sympatheticaly?????? Strike strings 5 and 6 in a Emmons keyhead, then pick 5 & 6 open on the neck, The same Notes!!! Why? now you can tell me. Backfeeding the strings sympatheticaly is why. There is a great tone message from the master himself here, Ron Lashley, did he know or was he lucky? I'm not sure, but he taught several of us well.

Ever notice what happens when you hold the bar in the center (12th fret) of the stringlegnth? Pick the strings on one side of the bar and the strings on the back side of the bar ring sympathetically? Yes, this is the same thing the body itself is doing to a much lessor extent, but VERY importantly, it is doing it. This is your good or bad timbre, depending on the quality of sonic design in your steel guitar from the factory. What determines good or bad sonic design? Expermenting with all the factors I have mentioned and having someone that knows what he's listening to make intelligent choices. No manufacturer that I personally know of is doing this today, and hasen't during the design of what they are building today. If they had, we'd be hearing better sounding guitars in this day and time.
I recently offered to help one company that needs help very badly, the response I recieved was: "There's nothing wrong with our tone! Ours sounds as good as anybodys!" . This particular guitar is horrifying too. Unfortunatly, it seems that just machine shops are building steel guitars now, not musicians and sonic engineers.

Not to put ALL companies down,some guitars sound fine, luckily, AND as I have said before, "If a player can't hear the difference,it makes no difference anyway".

You guys are doing some good thinking. This post seems to have the most informitive, intelligent thoughts I've ever seen on a forum.

[This message was edited by BobbeSeymour on 15 August 2003 at 12:37 PM.]

Maybe it is not "extra energy" that "backfeeds" the strings. Maybe it is just string energy that resonates thru the body and then comes back to effect the strings by slightly altering the resonance of string (timbre change).

This is starting to hurt my brain!

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Terry Edwards
Fessy D-10; Nash 1000
Martin D-21; Flatiron F-5

The bridge was designed to take the force of its own weight or the wind distributed evenly over the whole bridge. The waves in the bridge set in motion (by a strong wind?) redistributed the forces to come to bear unevenly, with unanticipated force at the wave maximums. Snap!

When you push on a spring, you transfer energy into it. When you let go, that energy pushes the spring back out. If the spring is attached to something else it can transfer that kinetic energy into whatever that is.

Now, suppose the guitar body acts like such a spring. Some of the string vibration is transferred through the changer into the body. If the body is soft and mushy, it dies there (you used the wrong kind of wood). But if the body is springy, it can return a portion of the energy back through the changer to the strings. That could be good or bad. It could cancel out the string vibrations and deaden the sustain of the overtones, or even the fundamentals. Or it could be good and reinforce the desired overtones and/or the fundamentals.

That's how a bass reflex speaker works. The natural resonance frequency of the cabinet is designed to be just below the frequencies where the speaker response begins to drop off at the low end. So the sympathetic resonance boosts the sound vibrations around that point and pushes the drop off frequency down a little lower. It works really good on bass because a small change in frequency means a big change in perceived pitch. Whereas, up at the treble end, each perceived change in pitch requires a big change in frequency.

Now here's where things get subtle. On a pedal steel you've got 10 or 12 strings of different guages, whose effective lengths are constantly changed by the bar. How likely is it that the body resonance will be precisely right to have a good effect on even one string at one frequency, much less all strings at all frequencies? And how likely is it that the effect will be good for both the fundamentals and overtones? Isn't there a Murphy's law that unintended bad consequences greatly outnumber unintended (or intended) good consequencies?

In the bass reflex speaker cabinet analogy, apart from that magic bass region where the reflex idea works, any resonances in a speaker cabinet will selectively enhance one or a few frequencies and will cause the speaker to depart from flat response and have a boxy sound. Consequently, the more rigid and thick the the body walls, the less resonance, and the flatter the response.

On the other hand, if (according to the subtraction theory) the only thing the body resonance does is drain away the low energy highest overtones in general, over a fairly broad high frequency range, this could mellow or darken the tone and cut sustain. Conversely, less of this very general dampening of high frequencies would brighten (and possibly harshen) the timbre, and add a little sustain.

Being a firm believer in Murphy's laws (from many hard experiences), it just seems more likely to me that any body absorption of vibrational energy would have this very imprecise and general subtraction effect, rather than that it would be reflected back at precisely the right multiple frequencies to reinforce all fundamentals and overtones in a good way.

Call me a cynic. But this is actually an application of Occam's razor. This is a very useful informal strategy in science that says that, given two possible explanations, one simple and direct that requires few fortunate coincidences, and the other contrived and complicated and requiring amazing coincidences, the simpler explanation is the one to place your money on.

Of course in reality, things are rarely simple. The subtraction theory and the body resonance theory are not mutually exclusive. They could both be going on at once, and what we hear is some kind of combination.

Maybe we could write up some kind of gu'mint grant and get funded for me to go down and do some experiments in Bobbe's back shop to sort all this out. The gu'mint has soitonly funded plenty of stranger and less important stuff. All we need is some Southern congressman who likes steel guitar to tack this onto his usual pork barrel funding requests.

Well, this has been loads of fun, but it's not making my pitiful steel guitar playing any better. And I've got two steels sittin' at home in my basement that need complete setup conversions. And I never got around to spring cleaning this year. Ain't life a bitch?

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David, there is no "additional energy", it's a "reflective,sympathetic energy that is put into the guitar body by the string itself. Key word here is reflective,re- shaking the string with reflective energy from the original energized motion of the string,

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It seems to me that when some energy is allowed to leave the string, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that it can re-enter it, while not increasing the original amount.

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It doesn't matter whether we talk about timbre or sustain, because what we perceive as timbre is merely the mix of overtones that are sustained or not (according to the subtraction only theory), or whose sustain is reinforced or not (according to the resonant body theory).

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But then, maybe I'm missing part of your idea. Are you saying that no backfeeding happens, and that all alterations on timbre are already present, as the string initially vibrates against the fingers and nut?

Another way of approaching this is to simply ask if you think that when energy leaves the string, it in no way re-enters it.

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If the nut, changer and pickup are attached directly to the body (as in most pedal steels) rather than the neck, why should the neck have any effect on tone?

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I've tried to read the latest posts in a detailed way, but forgive me if I've overlooked something.

[This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 15 August 2003 at 08:18 PM.]

In this proposed backfeeding to the string, it would be interesting to distinguish between energy that actually reenters the string, and that which merely exerts an influence by encountering the vibrations which are newly created by the string. The second type of influence, which is of an inhibitive nature, might be considerable; the fingers and nut are caused reflexively to vibrate, thus cancelling out or influencing new vibrations from the string.

[This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 15 August 2003 at 08:22 PM.]

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I guess the true test of all this would be to build several lap steels (take the changer and roller nut problems out of the equation) exactly the same, with the same magnetic pickups, but with bodies of different thicknesses. According to the body resonance theory, the thicker bodies should sound duller and have less sustain. We already know that the ones with really thin bodies (approaching the thickness of hollow-body tops) would also sound duller with less sustain.

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Wouldn't it be better to keep the vibration energy in the string, rather than relying on this feedback mechanism to re-excite the string?

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Think of the difference in character between a Sho-Bud and an instrument where you can't hear the distinctive sound of wood. Maybe someone prefers that, but others will not.

Or think of the difference between something like a Steinberger guitar and a Les Paul. Maybe one isn't better than the other, but they sure suggest diferent things. Wood imparts a very organic character to the tone, I think.

This may be heresy to say, but other than length of sustain and the full-bodied sound, I'm personally not all that crazy about how a Bakelite Rick sounds. I've only heard others play them. Maybe I'd feel differently if I experienced one in the first-person.

[This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 15 August 2003 at 09:44 PM.]

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Sympathic vibrations in the total body construction backfeed the strings causing secondary vibrations in the vibrating string, in other words, loops and lodes. These are what make warm pleasing tones/timbre.

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In other words, isn't there some existent tonal character, created by the string's initial relationship with finger and nut of a certain type, which preceeds any backfeeding?

It seems we posted at the same time again, Bobbe. Nevermind. Go ahead and sleep.

[This message was edited by Jeff A. Smith on 15 August 2003 at 10:40 PM.]

I sure wonder what he'd have to say on this subject, and how he'd say it! And what kind of words he'd say it with.