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Nylon Strat Arrived!

Really nice! I was surprised by how good the bloodwood neck looked.
The tuners look like Schaler Minis to me, is that correct? Are you having any trouble with them and the nylon strings?
 
Yes. They were schaller mini locking ...

............................. but I replaced those with the Gotoh SG 38.

The problems with the locking tuners were:
1) Easy to cut through the nylon strings with the locking

2) Not enough post on the mini

About 2:
The nylon strings stretch so much that with the mini locking tuners,
even when stretching the string up to pitch before locking the string, I was ending up with to much wound onto the post.

The normal tuners allow me to do a few winds and still have some post left over.


 
This AM the sun came up while I was playing and I caught the reflection off the frets through the clear nylon strings.

http://www.sightsea.com/gallery/skshots/nylon_sun_drops/

This guitar is pretty amazing.
I've been tweaking the action this morning and it's taking my playing to places I've not been for decades.
My right hand is starting to relax into finger picking again. It's been a long time.

I'm not yet convinced it's going to sound good plugged in. I did a recording test, and it was OK,
but the strings that were on it were poor quality, ( Ernie Ball 2409 - the bottoms were good but the top 3 were weak and dead sounding )
so I changed the strings last night and today it's feeling much better, but I've only been playing it unplugged.
I put on a set of Darco D30HB and I like them much better. The G, B, and E, are thicker feeling and more responsive.

I'm loving the straight 10" radius and the boat neck profile.
They're both contributing to a greater ease of pinning down the strings in extremely stretched finger gymnastics type chords.

It's also making me think of going more pick-less on my guitars strung with electric strings.

More pics to come soon. I need to feel the right time to take them it seems.
 
They're a pretty penny, but Savarez strings are pretty freakin' awesome.  Higher tension than your usual nylon strings, which I find makes for a more pleasing and harmonically complex tone.
 
Steve_Karl said:
More pics to come soon. I need to feel the right time to take them it seems.

Well, your instincts didn't fail you on those shots. Those are frame-worthy.
 
Here's something that came in my daily Acoustic Guitar email:


December 30, 2011
[/size]Choosing a Nylon-String Tension[/size]
Q: How do I choose among the different tensions available for nylon strings?
A: Unlike steel strings, which are labeled by gauge, nylon strings are categorized by tension, ranging from extra low to extra high. The right set of nylon strings will depend on the instrument they’re being used with as well as the feel and sound you’re looking for. A guitar with a very lightly braced, ultra-thin top will most likely sound better with low-tension strings, while one that’s built heavier may need higher string tension to drive the top efficiently. A low-tension set will offer easier playability than a tighter set, and players with a heavy right-hand attack are likely to prefer a harder tension than those who pick softly. Experimentation is the key to finding the ideal set for you and your guitar, and with very few exceptions, a high-tension set won’t damage an instrument optimized for a lighter set.
Few steel-string pickers would think about going through the trouble of selecting individual bass and treble strings from different manufacturers, but this is a common practice among serious nylon-string players. The reason for this is the greater difference between the wound bass strings (which consists of thin metal wire wound around a nylon filament core) and the plain trebles (which are solid nylon). For example, some trebles are thinner in diameter than others, and some companies (including Savarez) offer sets with wound second and third strings, which can really help with volume and tone.
Many nylon-string players change their bass strings more frequently than they do their trebles, and some even say that the trebles sound better as the material hardens with age.
 
Bagman67 said:
<snip>
and some companies (including Savarez) offer sets with wound second and third strings, which can really help with volume and tone.

Very cool!
Thanks for finding this.
I'm still strung up with my first set of Darco High Tension strings, but have purchased a set of high tension Savarez and will be trying them out soon.

I'm gathering from this article that lower tension strings will be more responsive if I want to use a lighter right hand?
Is that how you see it?

 
I caught an other good shot the other day.

1528.jpg
 
I read it more as saying that lower-tension strings sometimes are preferred on thin-topped, very lightly braced classical guitars of a type I cannot imagine being able to afford - which is orthogonal to what you're up to in any case.


FWIW, my classical guitar is a chinese POS that's easily 30 years old (predating the recent explosion of excellent East Asian instruments by a fair piece), and has a potmetal bridge!  (You didn't know they made potmetal bridges for classical guitars, did you?  Well, now you do!).  I picked it up for 40 bucks with a case that would easily run 125 new.  Anyway... happy hunting!
 
Yea. Understood now on the strings.

Even the high tension feel a bit gummy to me so I'll stick with the high tension.
 
Thanks. Yea. At certain angles and lighting the index hole plug is barely noticeable.

I'm working on getting a few samples recorded.
It's a very sensitive touch on this one and it's taking me a while to get used to it,
especially because I'm recording it raw, with no fx at all. I think that's important for these first samples.

Soon though ... I'm spending a bit of time every day with it.
 
This one was before my time here, so I'm just seeing it. What an interesting idea! Would love to hear it in a group setting.

Beautiful beast, too.  :icon_thumright:
 
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