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Post by Admin on Dec 23, 2013 17:10:37 GMT -5
I have a fairly unique question...not that I intend to act on it, but - Martin guitars have a pretty recognizable sound in my opinion. I usually can tell when someone is playing a Martin, especially if it's a pre-war vintage Martin. It has a definite strong lively bass, strong treble, and good mids. Now, I don't know just how to describe what I mean by "lively" bass, but it's not the deep, "thumping" bass of a Gibson (pre-war) and it's stronger than the typical bass response of a Taylor. It's the Martin Bass, and it separates the Martin from almost every other acoustic guitar for flatpicking. So, my question is this - Is there a way to diminish the "lively" sound of the Martin and bring it more in alinement with say a Martin J45 or J50? Remove some of the sub-harmonics that are present and create a deeper - more "thumping" bass? Now why would someone want to make a Gibson out of a Martin? I don't know, but I had the question posed to me, so i thought I'd ask the experts...
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Post by dadfad on Dec 24, 2013 7:48:59 GMT -5
I have a fairly unique question...not that I intend to act on it, but - Martin guitars have a pretty recognizable sound in my opinion. I usually can tell when someone is playing a Martin, especially if it's a pre-war vintage Martin. It has a definite strong lively bass, strong treble, and good mids. Now, I don't know just how to describe what I mean by "lively" bass, but it's not the deep, "thumping" bass of a Gibson (pre-war) and it's stronger than the typical bass response of a Taylor. It's the Martin Bass, and it separates the Martin from almost every other acoustic guitar for flatpicking. So, my question is this - Is there a way to diminish the "lively" sound of the Martin and bring it more in alinement with say a Martin J45 or J50? Remove some of the sub-harmonics that are present and create a deeper - more "thumping" bass? Now why would someone want to make a Gibson out of a Martin? I don't know, but I had the question posed to me, so i thought I'd ask the experts... You can soften the sound of any string (strings) by putting a tiny "shim" under the string(s) you want to soften at the saddle. It has to be a... fiberous or vibration-absorbing material, like paper, cloth, tissue or a tiny pice of cardboard like from a book of matches, etc depending on how much you want to soften it. (It does raise the action a tiny bit depending on what you use, from infintesimally to oh.. maybe .010"-.015") I've done it when I wanted certain tones to be a little more dominant, like a bit more treble-to-bass, or bass-to-treble. (Or soften the G-string which frequently seems to be too "prominant.") Hope that helps a little, Jim.
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