Scale Length Shootout Video

[aarontunes]

Prepare to be dazzled:


[youtube]https://youtu.be/PHY4AD55wuM[/youtube]

 

[Cagey]

Well done! I'm really happy to see this one - the question does come up a lot. I thought the difference was so subtle that it's almost not worthy of discussion - it could very easily get attributed to playing style*, since you're one of those... whaddaya call... humans.

*One thing I did notice was how effortlessly/consistently/unobtrusively you were able to snap pinch harmonics. Kudos on your skills!

 

[Logrinn]

Excellent demo ccasion14:

 

[rgand]

Another super video! I detected a very slight difference between the two but if I had run to refill my coffee mug between them, the difference would have gone unnoticed.

Great information and Aaron, you did a spectacular job as usual.

That Northern Lights guitar looks splendid, by the way.

 

[VinceClortho]

That was cool. Thanks especially for taking the effort and care to use the same piece of lumber for both necks.  That was the first thing I thought of that might skew the results.

I'm curious what you do with all of the guitars you test in the videos.  Is there a room somewhere with guitars piled high?

The Northern Lights finish is incredible!

 

[spe111]

Appreciate the clean test... it's annoying when someone A/B's two things and it's drenched in multi stage distortion, that kind of muffles the results. I wonder what the difference would be with single coils.

 

[aarontunes]

I've done this with a T body and single coils before. Results were essentially the same.

A couple people on the YouTubes have brought up how I didn't change string gauges to ensure that the string tensions was the same on both guitars. My prediction for the results: essentially the same.

I've done a half-dozen of these shootout videos now. The two things I've learned are:

1. There is no smoking gun. When you isolate a single thing, the resulting differences are always subtle. A guitar's voice is the culmination of every part of it.
2. No matter how much effort you put into eliminating variables, people will find a way to criticize it.




I do both clean and distorted tests because people like both. Honestly, I can often hear differences clearly with distortion that I have a hard time pickup up with clean tones.

 

[DangerousR6]

I've done this with a T body and single coils before. Results were essentially the same.

A couple people on the YouTubes have brought up how I didn't change string gauges to ensure that the string tensions was the same on both guitars. My prediction for the results: essentially the same.

I've done a half-dozen of these shootout videos now. The two things I've learned are:

1. There is no smoking gun. When you isolate a single thing, the resulting differences are always subtle. A guitar's voice is the culmination of every part of it.
2. No matter how much effort you put into eliminating variables, people will find a way to criticize it.




I do both clean and distorted tests because people like both. Honestly, I can often hear differences clearly with distortion that I have a hard time pickup up with clean tones.

You could do a video playing one string on two different lengths of a 2 x 4 and someone would find some reason to criticize...

And I concour, most of the time I can hear more variations with distortion than on clean setting.. :headbang4: :guitarplayer2:

 

[Cagey]

I'm not surprised. Distorted signals often have more harmonic content, more evenly expressed (compressed), and the human ear is more sensitive to dissonance than consonance. I know a couple guys who almost exclusively tune to chords, rather than single notes. It's easier to hear if something's out. Although, it's more difficult to identify what's out, which I suspect is why you don't see that done more often.

 

[DangerousR6]

I'm not surprised. Distorted signals often have more harmonic content, more evenly expressed (compressed), and the human ear is more sensitive to dissonance than consonance. I know a couple guys who almost exclusively tune to chords, rather than single notes. It's easier to hear if something's out. Although, it's more difficult to identify what's out, which I suspect is why you don't see that done more often.

An old guitar teacher I had way back in the early 80's tuned guitars that way. Which I thought was odd, but I would notice that his guitar would always sound a bit off of mine or vice versa. And he showed me thru a tuner that mine would be slightly off. I had to retrain myself to tune his way. He would even tune open string, starting from high E string and would be spot on..

 

[Cagey]

I haven't tried one yet, but I wonder if one of those "polyphonic" tuners would make that easier?

That's one version, but in hunting down that pic I notice there's actually a bunch of manufacturers offering them now. Lets you see 6 strings at once.

 

[DangerousR6]

I haven't tried one yet, but I wonder if one of those "polyphonic" tuners would make that easier?

That's one version, but in hunting down that pic I notice there's actually a bunch of manufacturers offering them now. Lets you see 6 strings at once.

:icon_thumright:

 

[rauchman]

AWESOME!!!!!!

Thanks for this!  I did hear some differences, but as mentioned, not hugely impactful.  I caught a little bit more "snappiness" on the 25.5" with an edgier tone, while the 24.75" was rounder / fuller.

Great vid and by the way, beautiful guitar and great playing.