Nickie
Well-known member
What is the best combo of woods for sustain, and consistent volume up the neck?
What's the best?
- Thread starter Nickie
- Start date
Don't know if it's the "best". Because much depends upon the builder and the design, the glues, the finish, and the strings that are used with it. Plus, there are different Spruces. And different Rosewoods. Then, torrefied spruce vs. standard aging.
My favorite combination is Sitka Spruce/Indian Rosewood. As used on my Kinnard Series 2 Tenor. Just beautiful sound and sustain that lasts, but not so long that it muddies the following notes when picked.
I think it's just a bit clearer than a cedar top. But I have cedar-topped rosewood tenors that are also terrific sounding with excellent sustain. And redwood...
My favorite combination is Sitka Spruce/Indian Rosewood. As used on my Kinnard Series 2 Tenor. Just beautiful sound and sustain that lasts, but not so long that it muddies the following notes when picked.
I think it's just a bit clearer than a cedar top. But I have cedar-topped rosewood tenors that are also terrific sounding with excellent sustain. And redwood...
I have an Ohana tenor -- all-solid: topwood cedar, B&S Indian rosewood. I played it about 3 hours ago and the last tune's final chord is just now starting to fade away.
Croaky Keith
Well-known member
I think it is more the quality of build, of body size, & fretboard/string length that determines length of sustain.
I have some, a solid mahogany Ohana tenor neck concert body uke, a Kala cedar top bari, a Baton Rouge solid spruce concert, & a KoAloha Opio solid acacia tenor neck concert body, that all have quite good sustain - strings also make a difference.
Edit: Having said the above, even my basic Kala tenor with Living Water strings has reasonable sustain....
I have some, a solid mahogany Ohana tenor neck concert body uke, a Kala cedar top bari, a Baton Rouge solid spruce concert, & a KoAloha Opio solid acacia tenor neck concert body, that all have quite good sustain - strings also make a difference.
Edit: Having said the above, even my basic Kala tenor with Living Water strings has reasonable sustain....
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Jerryc41
Well-known member
Jerryc41
Well-known member
I bet the answer would be scientifically complicated. So many things affect sustain that determining the best combinations would require lots of research - and a large grant. If someone would give me $10,000, I would begin immediately. 
EDIT: https://www.frudua.com/guitar_susta... principle of how,the vibration of the string.
https://blog.taylorguitars.com/buyers-resources/guitarology-volume-sustain
https://www.cycfi.com/2013/11/sustain-myth-science/
EDIT: https://www.frudua.com/guitar_susta... principle of how,the vibration of the string.
https://blog.taylorguitars.com/buyers-resources/guitarology-volume-sustain
https://www.cycfi.com/2013/11/sustain-myth-science/
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A soft wood top with a hardwood back and sides. All things being equal spruce top will give the most sustain. Cedar is popular on classical guitars for the quick note decay compared to spruce. This is critical for some complex songs so the notes don’t run into each other causing things to get muddy sounding
Ummm..., whatever combo of woods Chuck Moore picks?
Doc_J
Well-known member
I agree with Dave. In general a Spruce top with dense hard wood back & sides. Variation on the type Spruce are interesting Eastern Red, Sitka, Carpathian, ...
A few luthiers I know prefer a redwood top with Brazilian Rosewood B&S.
But, I’ve also have great sounding ukes in all cherry, mango, koa, and walnut. A skilled builder will know how to get the best sound out of most woods.
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I'm always surprised to see posts that ask for "the best" of something, the bottom line is, there is no "best" in that it's a very individual experience. My experience over more than 7 years playing ukulele and going through about 25, none of the K-brand, is that my $379 Kala tenor cutaway with solid cedar top and laminate acacia koa body has the projection and sustain that I like the most of my current 9, but my cheap $100 all solid bamboo with new D'Addario black strings comes close. I also have $125 Hanknn two hole laminate I bought from China at the very start that holds its own. My custom $700 Bruce Wei Arts gypsy jazz style has a great tone and his custom spalted mango with sound holes only around the bouts has lots of projection.
So there you go, it's a very individual thing.
This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly Grove near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 4 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 39)
Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
Member The CC Strummers: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers
So there you go, it's a very individual thing.
This is Michael Kohan in Los Angeles, Beverly Grove near the Beverly Center
9 tenor cutaway ukes, 4 acoustic bass ukes, 12 solid body bass ukes, 14 mini electric bass guitars (Total: 39)
Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children in hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
Member The CC Strummers: www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/video, www.facebook.com/TheCCStrummers
Jerryc41
Well-known member
Advertisers are allowed to say their product is"best," but they cannot say it is "better" without conclusive proof.
IMHO, sonic quality is less on sustain and volume (which can be easily measured) and more on timbre and differences in overtones (which takes a human to appreciate; and as with all perceived quality, people like different things).
It's like judging a painting based brightness and contrast. If those are the criteria, then it'll be really hard to beat a black-and-white painting of a chessboard done with magic markers.
Actually, "better" is a lot easier to say in advertisement. You just pick another product that you want to be better at, and pick a trait where you beat it. It happens all the time in engineering; you see a lot of bar graphs illustrating how much better a product is compared to others, "better return on investment in the past 15 years", "better at drawing a bullet flying towards your in-game adversary", etc. Sometimes these bar graphs get too complicated that they even have to say "lower is better".
I don't know if it's still true, but it used to be that a direct comparison ad with a competitor's product where you claimed your item was "better" in some fashion, if the competitor complained to the FCC, you had to have proof to back up your claim.
If you said it was the best among all of the directly comparable products, you usually had an out by showing the ways your product was better.
Or you did what the "My Pillow Guy" does. He touts all kinds of independent tests that show why his newest model pillow is the best. And in the fine print, the tests were comparing his older pillows against the new ones.
Or, you do testimonial ads where the people interviewed talk about the product and why it's so much better. All impressions and subjective. Usually the advertiser cherry picks the comments to get the best sound bites. If you really want to be shady, you let the people being interviewed know that they may wind up in a commercial before they test the product.
If you said it was the best among all of the directly comparable products, you usually had an out by showing the ways your product was better.
Or you did what the "My Pillow Guy" does. He touts all kinds of independent tests that show why his newest model pillow is the best. And in the fine print, the tests were comparing his older pillows against the new ones.
Or, you do testimonial ads where the people interviewed talk about the product and why it's so much better. All impressions and subjective. Usually the advertiser cherry picks the comments to get the best sound bites. If you really want to be shady, you let the people being interviewed know that they may wind up in a commercial before they test the product.
Sustain is basically a measure of efficiency. You put energy into the string when you pluck it. Some of that energy goes in to causing the top to vibrate the air inside the soundbox, which we hear as sound. Some of the energy is lost to the instrument in that process, and the rate at which energy is lost is what determines sustain. So - if we want a lot of sustain, we want an "efficient" design - one that robs the smallest amount of energy from each vibration.
There are a lot of variables that go into efficiency, though. If we're talking purely about wood selection, then you can basically distill this down to stiffness (elastic modulus) versus mass. A stiffer, lower mass plate will lose less energy over time than a heavier, less stiff plate. Think of a sheet of rubber - really high mass and incredibly low stiffness. The worst! Luckily, wood is very good in this respect. And, no surprise, many typical soundboard woods are the best. Generally, softwoods have a better ratio than hardwoods - most fir, spruce, cedar, pine, redwood etc are very good. This is reflected in instruments more mature than the ukulele (i.e. guitars, bowed instruments) although some of the choices made in those instruments are out of tradition or at least what species were available when they were developed. Plain old boring douglas fir is probably the best among commonly available woods, but unfortunately it's associated with cheap 2x4s and it doesn't seem like anyone wants a uke made from a wood associated with cheap 2 x 4's.
In terms of the body, there are different camps of thought - at least, for uke sized instruments. Some builders try to think of the body as inert - you don't want it moving at all, you want the energy to all stay in the top. Other builders think of the body as a sort of sympathetic soundboard, so you want to build it efficiently, just like the top. Builders that use heavier, denser sides and backs (like rosewood) fall into the first camp. Rosewood sure is stiff but it's very dense. I don't think there's a right answer here, it's as much about the design choices as it is about the wood selection.
Which ultimately is probably the most important variable here - design choices. Not just choosing the right species, but also choosing the right piece of wood and making other building decisions. In my own building experience, I can tell you that it's possible to make two ukes from very different woods that sound close enough (including sustain, not just tone) that you can't tell them apart in a blind listening comparison. Choosing a specific wood in order to get to the goal of sustain can be important, but building choices are going to be just as important if not more so.
In terms of consistent volume up the neck - IME that's as much about string choice and setup as anything else. If I know someone is going to play up the neck often, I do build in a tiny amount of relief (versus building dead flat or with fall away) since that keeps the string break angle over the fret a little more consistent. Again though, there are lots of approaches to this and different builders will have different successful approaches.
There are a lot of variables that go into efficiency, though. If we're talking purely about wood selection, then you can basically distill this down to stiffness (elastic modulus) versus mass. A stiffer, lower mass plate will lose less energy over time than a heavier, less stiff plate. Think of a sheet of rubber - really high mass and incredibly low stiffness. The worst! Luckily, wood is very good in this respect. And, no surprise, many typical soundboard woods are the best. Generally, softwoods have a better ratio than hardwoods - most fir, spruce, cedar, pine, redwood etc are very good. This is reflected in instruments more mature than the ukulele (i.e. guitars, bowed instruments) although some of the choices made in those instruments are out of tradition or at least what species were available when they were developed. Plain old boring douglas fir is probably the best among commonly available woods, but unfortunately it's associated with cheap 2x4s and it doesn't seem like anyone wants a uke made from a wood associated with cheap 2 x 4's.
In terms of the body, there are different camps of thought - at least, for uke sized instruments. Some builders try to think of the body as inert - you don't want it moving at all, you want the energy to all stay in the top. Other builders think of the body as a sort of sympathetic soundboard, so you want to build it efficiently, just like the top. Builders that use heavier, denser sides and backs (like rosewood) fall into the first camp. Rosewood sure is stiff but it's very dense. I don't think there's a right answer here, it's as much about the design choices as it is about the wood selection.
Which ultimately is probably the most important variable here - design choices. Not just choosing the right species, but also choosing the right piece of wood and making other building decisions. In my own building experience, I can tell you that it's possible to make two ukes from very different woods that sound close enough (including sustain, not just tone) that you can't tell them apart in a blind listening comparison. Choosing a specific wood in order to get to the goal of sustain can be important, but building choices are going to be just as important if not more so.
In terms of consistent volume up the neck - IME that's as much about string choice and setup as anything else. If I know someone is going to play up the neck often, I do build in a tiny amount of relief (versus building dead flat or with fall away) since that keeps the string break angle over the fret a little more consistent. Again though, there are lots of approaches to this and different builders will have different successful approaches.
OP
OP
Nickie
Well-known member
Thanks everyone, for your input. This gives me some good ideas....
