School me on smaller bodied guitars

BigPaulie · January 2022

I have very little experience of owning anything but dreadnoughts. Being physically big enough to handle a dread, there's been no reason for me to play anything smaller. Every time I hear people talk about smaller bodied guitars they say things like "sounds much bigger than it is" or "its volume belies its proportions" leading me to the misconception that they are a compromise for people who can't get their arm over a real guitar.

That said, I play with quite a light touch these days and can't help but think I'd like something more responsive and suited to that kind of playing. However, a lot of the demos I've seen seen of smaller guitars sound lovely when picked, but go to shit when strummed.

So what's out there that I should be considering for mainly flatpicking with quite a light touch and a heavy pick that can also handle the occasional "Pinball Wizard" moment?

I'm not interested in anything with a cutaway or side mounted controls.

Tannin · January 2022

Guitar tops are just like speaker cones. Making them smaller and lighter makes them more detailed and responsive and sensitive - but it makes them easier to drive into clipping and distortion if you push too hard. (It's not just an analogy, it is the same physics.)

So what you need, if you are going to go smaller at all, is something more in the Australian style than the American style - something you can hit hard in those Pinball Wizard moments. Of course, the very strength that makes it able to take those big chords without clipping also limits the amount of sensitivity you can extract from it. There is no free lunch.

Try not to pre-judge on the basis of electronics. Side-mounted controls on a guitar that comes with an in-house pickup as standard don't impact the sound in any way, and they don't add to the cost either - the extra loading on the bill of materials is more than compensated for by economies of scale and the admin and stock control savings from not having multiple models with and without pickup. But if they annoy you, they annoy you. Cutaways on the other hand involve a small but real impact on tone and volume. (Cutaways annoy me more than they should. I know they don't matter all that much but they annoy me just the same.)

My little collection of 7 has a bit of most things: two concert size, two grand auditorium, two dreadnoughts, and a very large jumbo. I play them all regularly, and swap from one to another frequently. My reason for mentioning this is that I don't much notice "dreadnought vs concert" or "jumbo vs auditorium"; the important differences are build style and timber. I am always very aware of (for example) that nasal honk of the Fat Lady's Bunya top, the piano-like thrum of the Thunderhawk (maple back and sides), and the crisp, edgy cut of the Guild (Adirondack Spruce).

All of that said (and I'm just thinking aloud really), when I look at the sort of playing you want to do and just think about what sort of guitar would suit that style best, the thing that comes to mind for me is a full-size guitar (dreadnought or small jumbo) with a softer-than-spruce top wood. Cedar is the most popular of these, and perhaps the place to start. Good luck!

EDIT: the point of a softer top wood, of course, is that is is more responsive. (But clips more easily.)

earwighoney · January 2022

Give this video a watch if you have the time.

It's a comparison of 3 smaller Martins, all 18 series.

Lewy · January 2022

My experience has been that, as long as you're physically comfortable with a dreadnought, for flatpicking specifically there isn't much inherent benefit to smaller guitars...which is why as you observe so many of them market themselves as getting dreadnought-sized sounds out of a smaller package. For fingerstyle it's different and they start to come into their own.

I've also seen enough young kids in person and on youtube shredding bluegrass on dreadnoughts to know that the physical challenges of playing them are somewhat overstated - it's more often that people don't want to work on posture and learning to play without crouching over to look at their own hands

bertie · January 2022

Tannin said:

in the Australian style than the American style -

that's a new one on me - never heard the term "Australian style" used for guitars before. What defines that @Tannin ; ?

Smaller bodied are in no way a "compromise" but simply more comfortable to play, and (can) deliver a different tonal response to those who prefer harder strumming/flat picking (cue Mr Cohen) Look at the guys who tend to use fingers/softer pick style - Clapton , James Taylor - even mad men like Tommy E and Mr Gom- tend to go for OM/Small Jumbo sized rather than Dreads (massive generalisation for figurative purposes)

My Brook is in the "large OM/Small Jumbo" arena and is just as well suited to hard strumming as light touch picking - my Furch is classic Martin OM - and does get some natural OD when hit hard - which TBH , I quite like

Plus they're not as ugly as a dread

stickyfiddle · January 2022

I generally agree with all of the above, but you do get some guitars that don't necessarily fit that baseline.

My Atkin 47 is ridiculous loud and honestly louder than my HD28, at least when picked. I mostly play fingerstyle on both guitars but even if you hit it hard with a pick it doesn't get boxy or mushy like my old Taylor 214 did (granted it bloody should be better at 5x the price!). The big Martin definitely sounds more refined with heavy strumming but the Atkin makes an astonishing noise for its size.

Personally I think those struggling with dreadnoughts are usually fussing about nothing (neck shape is the only really fundamental thing about a guitar's shape I've ever worried about) but I'm not going to judge. For me I'd look at what sound and "vibe" I want first and let that drive the shape and materials to get me there.

DavidR · January 2022

Smaller bodied steel stringed acoustics are generally more flattering to quieter fingerstyle pieces. You lose some base. As you get bigger with dreadnought size and definitely jumbo you get the most out of them by playing louder pieces with a plectrum or strumming. They are more basey and you lose definition. OM is such a popular size because its a good compromise of all these things.

Personal opinions obviously and these are generalisations to which there are exceptions. The great players get/got great music out of anything as anybody hearing Rev Gary Davis playing fingerstyle on a J200 will agree!

ToneControl · January 2022

Depends how you play, but for me Jumbo usually gives the best results
I find that very few small body guitars avoid sounding boxy.

For Avalons & Lowdens, the Jumbo size model has the best fingerpicking sound for me - everything there, and also lots of overtones. The Dread model has fewer overtones, and can get boomy. many dreads have a narrower nut, which makes fingerstyle harder.

For close-mic'd recording and pickup-playing, none of this matters, you see a lot of people advocating small guitars, but when I try those models, they sound poor compared to the larger body from the same maker

Occasionally there are some gems with small bodies, I have a small Avalon that sounds amazing

Most of the highly responsive guitars I've played have been Jumbo sized.
12 fret models are usually more responsive too. I have a 12 fret slope shoulder dread that is very responsive indeed

If you have a light touch and want to play fingerstyle, I'd say avoid stiffer spruce tops, especially Adirondack, they require more force to get the sound. Most people turn to cedar, but redwood can also work well

As always, a top maker can get more sound from a smaller guitar than normal, or make a highly touch-sensitive spruce guitar, but these are the exception.

this shows the sound differences within one brand

bertie · January 2022

^^ sorry, but I disagree with pretty much all of that.

ToneControl · January 2022

bertie said:

^^ sorry, but I disagree with pretty much all of that.

that's fine, personal taste differs

BigPaulie · February 2022

earwighoney said:

Give this video a watch if you have the time.

It's a comparison of 3 smaller Martins, all 18 series.

It's hardly surprising, given my stated preference for big bodied guitars, that I believe that the tone of these guitars improves respectively with their increasing size.

To my ear, I cannot imagine a use for the single O size, and find it hard to believe that someone would pay the same price for that as the OOO.

Tannin · February 2022

bertie said:

Tannin said:

in the Australian style than the American style -
that's a new one on me - never heard the term "Australian style" used for guitars before. What defines that @Tannin?

I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't - till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'

I made it up, of course @bertie, but is seems like an obvious term to employ and I'm probably not the first to use it.

Both of the Australian guitar manufacturers tend to build more on the robust side than on the flimsy side. They don't have the immediate soft-touch responsiveness of an Irish-style guitar, not the volume and big bass thump of an American-style instrument, but they have a sweet, pure tone and you can hit them very hard and they will won't complain. That's the "Australian style".

Maton, of course, have been building guitars this way for three-quarters of a century, but it is reasonable to assume that the reason Cole Clark chose to do the same thing (only more so) when they started up 20 years ago it was because they knew their primary market and designed guitars to suit it. Australian musicians grow up with that crisp, compressed sound and expect it. To most of us, anything that doesn't sound like that ... well, it might be a Martin, which is good and speaks for itself, or it might be one of those newfangled Taylors (which have their own, not-very-American sound, not entirely unlike the Maton sound), but otherwise it's probably not as good and we tend not to buy it.

Now to my mind, Cole Clark go a bit too far with the native sound: many CCs strike me as a bit dead (unless you plug them in) but they certainly stand up to a thrashing.

While these remarks apply to both dreadnoughts and auditorium-sized models, in my experience they apply more so to the latter. In my little collection I have two small body "American style" guitars (one made in the USA, the other made in Hobart); two "Australian style" ones (both small body guitars made in Melbourne); plus two dreadnoughts which despite coming from the same Melbourne factories are less distinctively local in their sound and feel. I enjoy them all, but they are very different.

Tannin · February 2022

ToneControl said:

If you have a light touch and want to play fingerstyle, I'd say avoid stiffer spruce tops, especially Adirondack, they require more force to get the sound. Most people turn to cedar, but redwood can also work well

As always, a top maker can get more sound from a smaller guitar than normal, or make a highly touch-sensitive spruce guitar, but these are the exception.

Top woods are really interesting. My two "American style" guitars, both concert size, make quite a contrast. The Mineur has a very light Engleman Spruce top. It is a fingerpicker's joy but hates anything beyond the lightest possible strumming. It has more bass oomph than any other guitar I own (save the huge baritone jumbo, which is really a different instrument) and a very soft feel. I'm not entirely convinced about the tone of the plain strings. Little by little, I'm learning how to get the balance as I want it - partly string brand, partly right-hand technique.

The Guild - broadly similar in most other respects - has a Red Spruce top (also called "Adirondak spruce"), probably the stiffest and lightest of all topwoods. It too requires careful playing: you need to hit the strings fairly hard when fingerpicking (to get that stiff top moving) but take care not to let it get shrill and over-percussive.

Now these are different guitars made in different decades on different continents; nevertheless, I don't think it is unfair to regard the top woods as the primary difference between them. Both offer me things I can't get from my other guitars; on the other hand, neither is as competent a multi-style all-rounder as two or three of my other instruments.

Tannin · February 2022

Tannin said:

I made it up, of course @bertie, but is seems like an obvious term to employ and I'm probably not the first to use it.

Sure 'nuff, I'm not.

Here is the inimitable Justin Johnson. Not sure he means the same thing I mean by it, but whatever. The interesting thing about this video, to my mind, is the sound of the EA-80C he's playing. It is the same timbers as my Cole Clark FL, but it sounds quite different. JJ rambles a bit on this video, so feel free to skip ahead here and there, but I love his playing; it is always worth taking the time to listen to.

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School me on smaller bodied guitars

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