Flat Poles vs Staggered Poles

[RedHouse]

I use wound G's on 2 of my main axes, but not on Strats. However, a surprising number of my students do have wound G's on Strats...

WOW!

They're using 12's, mostly.

Double WOW!

Whaddaya got going on there, an SRV school for the bionic fingered?
(kidding of course)

So why ya using wound G's these days, and if you don't mind me asking, why are your students doing it too, are you teaching some kind of vintage blues classes or something?

[fieldwrangler]

Believe me, no one is trying to bend these wound G's.

I use wound G's for the same reason some folks use light strings; namely, the overtones are much more in line with where they should be, which I think is why people wind strings in the first place. You can test this by playing a heavy plain G through a distorted setup; often you'll hear it beating against itself, and I don't think that string pull is always the issue. And in the case of a wound G compensation is a really helpful thing.

I teach jazz guitar at DePaul U. in Chicago. Most of my students are "modern" jazz guys, meaning they're not allergic to distortion & other effects, and most play solidbody guitars, as do I.

Bob Palmieri

[David Schwab]

Whaddaya got going on there, an SRV school for the bionic fingered?
(kidding of course)

Remember, he tuned down, that's why he used heavy strings. They feel like 10's tuned down.

[RedHouse]

...I teach jazz guitar at DePaul U. in Chicago. Most of my students are "modern" jazz guys, meaning they're not allergic to distortion & other effects, and most play solidbody guitars, as do I...

Very cool Bob!.

Remember, he tuned down, that's why he used heavy strings. They feel like 10's tuned down.

Yeah, I remember, Jimi did that a lot too. Jimi had some big hands though. Funny side-note, you wanna know what that's like (big hands) go play one of those $99 mini-Strat's at GC.

[fieldwrangler]

One of the things I like about lighter strings is the snap and crunch you get when you hit them hard. That's one of my favorite sounds! Heavy string just go "sproing."

In fact, certain effects of string resilience (and the cool stuff that can get spit out on the transients of light strings) is one of those things that I can't get out of the heavier setups. The best way I can describe it is that sometimes the heavy rigs just sound too "serious"... not "fun" like the snappier setups.

Also, I've been known to use light strings with low-action fret slap to mark the attacks in old-school R&B rhythm playing...

Bob Palmieri

[pdf64]

'These days it's not "stagger" that we need, it's "matching radius".'
I like stagger, it's a valid today as when Fender thought it up, the thinnest wound string has a weak soft tone compared to the thickest plain string if the poles/magnets are set flat or radiused. It's just that these days it's the D string rather than the G string.
Hendrix achieved the correct stagger (for a plain G string) by stringing a right handed guitar upside down - his D string would then have the highest magnet.

[Rick Turner]

Bob, the beating effect you're hearing with thicker unwound strings is because the harmonics are going ever sharper from the mathematical multiples due to string stiffness. This is the core reason why piano tuners stretch the tuning by flattening notes below middle C and sharpening them above. That is so the very prevalent upper partials of the lower notes come to be in tune with the fundamentals of the upper notes. This, by the way, is a separate issue from tempering, and each piano tuner has his or her own particular take on doing the stretch, and this is why some concert pianists insist on certain tuners over others. There was a fantastic article on all of this in Scientific American about 40 years ago that really opened my eyes and ears.

Basically, the more flexible a string is, the more it performs according to harmonic theory. The stiffer it is, the more it acts like a bar clamped at each end.

[David Schwab]

In fact, certain effects of string resilience (and the cool stuff that can get spit out on the transients of light strings) is one of those things that I can't get out of the heavier setups. The best way I can describe it is that sometimes the heavy rigs just sound too "serious"... not "fun" like the snappier setups.

It's also the same with bass strings. You see the slap guys using those really light sets. I think an .040 G string is snappier but gets thin sounding, so I stick to the sets with a .045 G. Heavier than that seems to lack personality.

[RedHouse]

'These days it's not "stagger" that we need, it's "matching radius".'
I like stagger, it's a valid today as when Fender thought it up, the thinnest wound string has a weak soft tone compared to the thickest plain string if the poles/magnets are set flat or radiused. It's just that these days it's the D string rather than the G string.
Hendrix achieved the correct stagger (for a plain G string) by stringing a right handed guitar upside down - his D string would then have the highest magnet.

What strings do you use? I'm wondering if it's your strings as I don't have that problem with Dean Markleys or D'Addario's that I use on my Strats with radiused poles.
(actually, now that I think about it none of my customers have had that problem either so maybe it's not strings)

[fieldwrangler]

Exactly. I sometimes think that those strings they talk about in the physics books are stretched to a fixed length but are almost infinitely thin...

By the way, Ken Parker told me recently that Norman Pickering (a fellow who probably knows more than a thing or two about winding coils) is the guy who Wrote the Book on real string behavior many years ago.

I haven't yet tracked it down, but I will...

Bob Palmieri

[SonnyW]

I think I remember reading in Clapton's book that Stevie superglued his fingernails back down a lot from bending with those heavy as barbed wire strings. He would be bleeding after a show sometimes.

Here's a stagger design I have been messing around with. I'd like some comments on what some of you think of it. I have wound a couple of them like this and they sounded good to me, but my hearing isn't always the best these days. The red lines represent the vintage fender stagger dimensions. This design is for 4 magnets at .685 length and two at .705. The radius is for a 12" radius fingerboard.

[Rick Turner]

Bob, precisely...

String theory is based on a literally one dimensional string...it has length, but no thickness nor width. As such it works perfectly...

[David Schwab]

Exactly. I sometimes think that those strings they talk about in the physics books are stretched to a fixed length but are almost infinitely thin...

When you add mass and stiffness the string will start to behave like a bar instead of a string. That's when the harmonics go out of tune.

Those compensated nuts are supposed to work because of the stiffness of the string when it passes over the nut, which is supposed to makes the notes sharp. I use zero frets, so I've not had a problem with tuning down there.

[David Schwab]

Here's a stagger design I have been messing around with. I'd like some comments on what some of you think of it. I have wound a couple of them like this and they sounded good to me, but my hearing isn't always the best these days. The red lines represent the vintage fender stagger dimensions. This design is for 4 magnets at .685 length and two at .705. The radius is for a 12" radius fingerboard.

I would lower the magnet under the low E so it is lower than the A. The ay you have it the outside strings would probably be louder.

I rewound an early Music Man Stingray pickup recently, and that's how they did it. The middle two magnets were higher, and the low E was lower than the G.

[fieldwrangler]

Very nice looking guitar! And I'm sure that hard, efficient and relatively un-resilient materials are all the more revealing of these anharmonicities of thicker strings.

Yup, the issue of "too much bass" is, like so many other things, quite context dependent. Often when someone plays a recording for me that they think has a huge power chord sound I hafta point out that they're sortof hearing the crunch guitar and the bass as one entity. So, leaving room for the bass is a big part of the formula, as is very good tuning agreement between the two instruments.

I'd certainly like to hear the Song that Spawned the Shutdown...

Bob Palmieri