Tone Evaluation

[Taffy Evans]

Hi Everyone, I've been away for a couple of weeks so I'm playing catch up again. Its amazing how much info goes through the Forum in 2 - 3 weeks, so my apologies for visiting past posts so late.

However this is new.

After finishing an instrument that is an order I try to hang on to it for as long as I can before the customer gets it, so I can hear the qualities of the guitar, or mandolin or whatever, grow as the instrument is played over the coming few weeks or so. However often the customer is at the workshop door too soon and I don't get the chance to really hear it blossom and rarely get to hear it's full potential. However my last commission could not be collected for seven weeks, so its been very encouraging hear this guitar and to judge, did I get what the customer wanted.

This month though I was able to do a comparison of four of my guitars, and will be able to add two more soon. The reason for this is my wife, on her return from holidays in the UK, presented me with a very good digital camcorder.
I have over the years recorded my instruments on video, the tape variety, but mainly for the visual aspects as the sound was a bit ordinary.

It was very enlightening and interesting to hear these guitars together, especially when I can switch from one guitar to another in an instant to compare sound etc.

The guitars I had to hand were:
My SW style first guitar #1 Mahogany/Spruce 1977,
SW style #6 Rosewood/Spruce 1980,
SW style #15 Rosewood/spruce 2003 and my
D18/35 Style[Dread] #14 in that style. Blackwood/Spruce 2009

It was interesting to hear the different tonal and volume qualities of these guitars.
Each had different build procedures, different bracing and tuning procedures, two had the same timber batch, size and shape but built years apart and sounded great but different.

It was good to have old #One to judge the others against. My humble assessment was that over the years my latest guitar stands out against the others, now its time to find out why. I record my progress on each instrument in notes as I go, not only what I do, but my thoughts about why I did it, so I will revisit these. Some changes are obvious and some I have possible forgotten.

Each guitar was played and recorded one after the other and I used the same variety of cords and single string passages.

I would think that you all do the same thing, but if you haven't started recording, start now. It may serve no other purpose than make you feel all the hours spent have been worth while, as it did with me, or you may wish to dig into the findings a bit deeper.

In closing I should mention that this week these same guitars were played by a very good working guitarist visiting recently from the UK, and after playing them carefully one by one, offered me money for old #One....go figure.