In this video he says the reason to have high action, or a high bridge is to increase string tension for more attack.
But I’m confused, won’t that increase the pitch? Wouldn’t it work the same if you had a lower action/bridge and just tuned up?
And I’m assuming the reason for bronze strings is the tone, and not the tensile strength?
As a general rule, when you’re listening to an experienced and respected working musician like James Chirillo, you should give lots of weight to his opinion on “what works”, but very little weight to his explanation of “why it works”.
Where professional musicians do offer an explanation of the “why”, it’s very often based on unscientific word of mouth or conjecture, rather than serious scientific investigation. That doesn’t mean their advice about what works is bad, but don’t rely on them to accurately describe why it works.
Would you say his description of why it works is off the mark?
Edit:
So thinking about it more… It’s got to be due to the fact the strings use the body as a soundboard?
So the Hight is needed to get the tension in the Bridge and therefore into the wood?
I imagine he’s assuming you tune the guitar to the same reference pitch after adjusting the bridge height, so the pitch wouldn’t really be affected. If you raise the action, you will likely have to adjust the intonation to maintain decent tuning overt the whole fretboard.
Rather than pitch, he’s talking about the balance of overtones (specifically brightness). To cut through a Big Band, you need a lot of percussivity, meaning you need a lot of treble.
The dominant source of sound in an acoustic guitar is the movement of the top. On an archtop, that movement occurs by the vibration of the string pushing the top in and out. (On a flat top acoustic, the strings provide torque to the bridge/tailpiece which generates a rotational motion, but on an archtop the string ends are generally not attached to the bridge or the top, but to a bracket that does not touch the top, which means there is no torque on the top.) Increasing the height of the bridge has the effect of increasing the break angle of the strings over the bridge, thus providing more downward pressure on the top. This doesn’t exactly increase or decrease the vibration of top. Rather it changes the middle position of that vibration, which is to say it stiffens the top somewhat since it uses up some of the motion range of the top. Stiffness correlates with treble.
So, in broad strokes, more break angle means more treble, but there’s generally a sweet spot. Too much downward pressure means the guitar top will be choked so the volume will be lower and the tone will be brittle. Too little downward pressure means the guitar top won’t get enough activation from the strings, so the volume will be lower and the tone will be dull. Hopefully, somewhere in the middle range, you’ll get optimum volume and you’ll be able to dial in the brightness for good projection. The correct break angle depends entirely on the guitar in question. Wood type, bracing, and a bunch of other factors make it impossible to define a rule that applies to all archtop acoustics, other than ‘dial it in until you like it’.
The string height over the fretboard has a similar effect, but the break angle change from high action is generally much smaller than the change due to bridge height adjustments. Nonetheless, high action makes you grip tighter and provides less opportunity for the strings to fret out, both of which can affect the brightness and projection.
Tone and tensile strength are probably related (at least inasmuch as tensile strength correlates with tensile stiffness). Bronze strings will generally be brighter sounding than nickel: possibly because because of the increased tensile stiffness, or maybe because bronze is heavier than nickel. Whatever the physical explanation, nickel strings tend to require less tension to tune to pitch. Tension often correlates with brightness.
Most acoustic guitar strings are either bronze or phosphor bronze. Bronze is generally brighter, but corrodes faster, and the tone gets duller with increased corrosion. So if you like a brighter tone, go with bronze. If you like a duller tone, go with bronze and don’t change them very often. I tend to use phosphor bronze because I’m cheap and don’t like to change my strings.
Great stuff thank you.
I am wondering why he has high action then? I’ve been searching for archtop guitars and most of them seem to have the neck at a backwards angle in line with the strings. So the high action seems not needed?
As I said above, high action makes you grip tighter and provides less opportunity for the strings to fret out, both of which can affect the brightness and projection. How much of an effect it has and whether it’s worth the increased difficulty of fretting, I can’t say for sure.
But guitar players are sometimes kind of recipe oriented, and the neck angle of acoustic archtops is rarely adjustable, so maybe he found his optimal tone at a bridge height that gave him higher action, and he generalized. Or maybe it’s the SRV effect: “The harder I work, the better I sound.” I’m just speculating now.
Edit: Thinking about it a little more, it’s probably about avoiding buzz. In a Big Band context you’re going to need to pick pretty hard to be heard over the horns, etc. So you’ll want the action at least high enough to avoid buzzing and fretting out at your maximum picking strength.
His statement is incorrect, one picks any three of the following four and the final item is given by an equation:
A high action seems interesting because it suggests that the string is less likely to smash against frets as it vibrates, and this might impact the tone; I’m not sure how much of a problem this is, one might be able to watch with a camera or by means of an electronic device that can detect string/fret contact (as both are conductive).
When I was 18 I got my first jazz guitar (an old L-7). My teacher told me to string it up with Gibson E-440 gauged (14-18-28w-38-48-58). After playing 8-38, 9-42, that was a helluva jump in tension not to mention their sheer size!
About exactly the same time, my interest in saving my hands led me to do an experiment by lowering the wooden bridge saddle until these huge monsters were pretty much “on the deck”—meaning really low action!
This is where I discovered the secret of heavier gauges in the fact that there was no buzzing on the frets anywhere. So, as time went on I found this same principle worked for strings in the 12-54 gauged sets when I got my Super 400 CES. This guitar wouldn’t take the 14-58 at ALL as the scale-length of 25 1/2 inches made them too hard to play.
So, don’t believe that you cannot get a fabulous tone by setting up your guitar for lower action…You do not want to injure your hands when you are young, it isn’t worth it if you love playing guitar. Lower the action and lighten up your touch and you’ll be rocking, okay?
If any of you guys/gals here in the forum wants solid advise on the subject of strings, I can be of immense help to keep your tone huge and your musical life happier and healthier. Ciao!
Many people confuse tension with stiffness. Increasing the break angle will increase stiffness, i.e. how easy it is to stretch the string. And stretching is what you do when fretting or picking a string.
The amount of string between the nut and tuning pegs, and saddle and tailpiece also affect stiffness.