Sunday, March 6, 2011

Bonk

It's time to come clean -- I've started bonking my guitars. Despite all appearances of an amorous allusion, this is purely a single entendre. In the never ending quest to produce consistently wicked sounding guitars, I've started keeping track of how a finished guitar acts when, well, bonked. Hang the guitar up, stick a mic in front of it, bonk the bridge and record the sound. If you run that sound through a fancy filter, you get this....


That, to my eyes/ears, is what the sound of a great guitar looks like. Each part of the guitar tends to naturally vibrate at a certain frequency and the peaks in the chart above show those points. Three of the key points are the frequencies for the top, back, and air chamber. In theory I could build another guitar that had those same points and it would sound just like this one. In reality? Ask me again in 30 years.

In a bit of post-bonk revelry I decided I should record some actual music on this guitar before shipping it off to Dream Guitars early next week. Here's my attempt at Don Ross' "First Ride"...