[Len Ovens] >The big difference is that my cheaper guitars are not finished as well as >the more costly guitars... things like nut and fret ends not rounded as >nice etc. It's one thing when the nut or frets aren't too well-rounded, but other, similar results of sloppy manufacturing can harm the sound of the instrument, for example when the nut slots housing the strings aren't perfectly straight. The string will be twisted, lose sustain and become slightly more inharmonic, and since this additional inharmonicity will vary along the length of the string, proper intonation will be impossible to achieve on all frets. Also, friction of the string in the nut will increase, negatively affecting tuning performance and stability. Still, judging from my recent experience with new Fender Strats, I think that for $500-600 you can get a superb guitar that will play and sound just as good as a model costing ten times that much. You may need to examine a few more of the cheaper ones to find a thoroughly good instrument, but the average quality is already surprisingly good. Classical guitars seem to be different though, I tried to find an inexpensive "rare gem" recently but every time I tried the next more expensive one it did seem to play and sound better. This tendency didn't stop until the most expensive one I played that day, at $4k. _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
