I just went to a lecture where the lecturer was explaining a way to measure the response of a accoustic guitar with an exciter on the bridge and a method called the exponential sine sweep method.
He was suggesting that you could measure and then replicate a guitars response onto another guitar and using this you could make far more accurate replicas. This could be used to preserve the sounds of old famous guitars.
My question to this community is would consider buying a guitar based on a graph of its frequency response and how that compared to other guitars? Is this valuable research?
I’d just use my ears tbh. That sounds like another chance to inject some more snake oil into our gullible guitar brains lol.
For building guitars, yea that’s cool af.
For a buyer or player? Complete bs probably used to inflate prices.
For someone researching guitar manufacture? Potentially interesting.
I believe the concept was more for manufacture and preservation of old instruments.
Clever idea but probably really a niche case - but I could see it making its way into the marketing for when e.g. Gibson puts out high end replicas of their old 60s guitars
I don’t know how that might impact my buying decisions, but sounds frickin cool.
Not necessarily valuable in practice. Much of your town will come from technique/string choice and a sign wave sweep won’t account for that. Also does not take into account recording/micing techniques .
Agreed. For me this research was cool, but even he acknowledged it didn’t take into account a lot of variables
Yeah interesting for sure.
If you are comparing two frequency response graphs, how do you decide which is “better”? It’s totally subjective and depends on what sound you prefer. And there’s much more to choosing a guitar than that. For example, the action and quality of the fretboard is a major consideration.
Pretty cool from a manufacturing standpoint and an interesting way to ‘archive’ historic guitars. But if I see any manufacturer use this as a marketing thing to tell people guitar Y sounds exactly like guitar X, I will be sceptical. The amount of variables is just to large to earnestly guarantee it based on the body alone. It will make a ton of cash for Gibson though.
related article about measuring violins with CT scans: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/study-confirms-superior-sound-of-a-stradivari-is-due-to-the-varnish/
