Cheap Acoustic Steel String Guitars?

Hey guys,

I'm about to get a few more refrets done. I'm not a rich man, so my
current plan is to buy some really cheap acoustic steel string guitars
and mail them up to Ellison Smith in Boston to refret (shameless plug:
http://www.ellisonsmithguitars.com/). My question is - what are, for
the money, some good "cheap" guitars to buy?

I obviously don't care about the intonation, because we're wiping it
all and starting over. I also don't care about the action, because it
can be adjusted (so long as the guitar comes with a truss rod). So
aside from those two things, what are some good bad guitars to buy?
I'm talking in like the $100 range here.

Also, please pick two of the following four numbers: 15, 16, 19, 22

Thanks all
Mike

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> Also, please pick two of the following four numbers: 15, 16, 19, 22

19, 22.

On 27 February 2011 08:43, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> I obviously don't care about the intonation, because we're wiping it
> all and starting over. I also don't care about the action, because it
> can be adjusted (so long as the guitar comes with a truss rod). So
> aside from those two things, what are some good bad guitars to buy?
> I'm talking in like the $100 range here.

I thought you said cheap! I went for a fishing line job on a really
cheap guitar (maybe $20). It was problematic because the fretboard
wasn't flat. It may not matter so much with proper frets, but that's
something to check. If it's worth paying for a refretting, it's worth
paying for a decent guitar, so go for that $100 range. And try it out
in the shop. If it sounds good it can't be bad.

> Also, please pick two of the following four numbers: 15, 16, 19, 22

19, 22 :-P

Combining them is left as an exercise for the interested reader. I
never got that working, but as I said, my fretboard wasn't flat.

Graham

I too will say 19 and 22 on your guitar refrets

So far I've deleted 7 threads from last night ....

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>wrote:

>
>
> Hey guys,
>
> I'm about to get a few more refrets done. I'm not a rich man, so my
> current plan is to buy some really cheap acoustic steel string guitars
> and mail them up to Ellison Smith in Boston to refret (shameless plug:
> http://www.ellisonsmithguitars.com/). My question is - what are, for
> the money, some good "cheap" guitars to buy?
>
> I obviously don't care about the intonation, because we're wiping it
> all and starting over. I also don't care about the action, because it
> can be adjusted (so long as the guitar comes with a truss rod). So
> aside from those two things, what are some good bad guitars to buy?
> I'm talking in like the $100 range here.
>
> Also, please pick two of the following four numbers: 15, 16, 19, 22
>
> Thanks all
> Mike
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Are you going to have a chance to play them first, or are you just going to snag a couple on ebay? The thing about cheap guitars is that the quality varies greatly. I've had some good luck with Squiers in the past but also some really *bad* luck. Epiphones can be good, and I had a cheap Takamine for years that I really loved. I'd say for the money Epiphone will probably be the most consistent, but don't be afraid of getting a no-name brand if you can play it first and verify the sound.

I'd say 15 and 19. On a steel-string 22 will murder your fingers and you will have a hard time playing chords that take advantage of 22's harmonic features. Also I find that 19 actually sounds quite a bit more "septimal" and it's really easy to play a 4:5:7:9:11 chord with 19's open-string tuning--the same cannot be said for 22. 15 will be extra-playable and you can dazzle your friends with its "all-4ths-but-still-two-octave" open tuning, you'll get Blackwood and Porcupine, and to be perfectly honest steel-string guitars are so inharmonic the 4ths and 5ths will sound just fine. And I can't stress enough just how *simple* it is to play 15 on guitar--never has guitar felt so easy to me as it did when I played in 15.

And as I am the only person on this list who has actually played all four of these tunings on guitar, I can say that 15 and 19 are easily the most rewarding to play (by which I mean, the easiest to make sound good). 22 is frustrating because you *know* there are so many things you should be able to do with it, but on guitar it's a hell of a challenge to live up to the potential of the system.

Much as I love 16, I don't think you will find it as rewarding as 15 and 19. It will not impress your friends very much and you may find yourself cursing the crappy fifths.

HTH!

Also, if you want, I can e-mail you some chord and scale diagrams for these various tunings to show you what you'll be up against in each one.

-Igs

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> Hey guys,
>
> I'm about to get a few more refrets done. I'm not a rich man, so my
> current plan is to buy some really cheap acoustic steel string guitars
> and mail them up to Ellison Smith in Boston to refret (shameless plug:
> http://www.ellisonsmithguitars.com/). My question is - what are, for
> the money, some good "cheap" guitars to buy?
>
> I obviously don't care about the intonation, because we're wiping it
> all and starting over. I also don't care about the action, because it
> can be adjusted (so long as the guitar comes with a truss rod). So
> aside from those two things, what are some good bad guitars to buy?
> I'm talking in like the $100 range here.
>
> Also, please pick two of the following four numbers: 15, 16, 19, 22
>
> Thanks all
> Mike
>

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 1:33 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> Are you going to have a chance to play them first, or are you just going to snag a couple on ebay? The thing about cheap guitars is that the quality varies greatly. I've had some good luck with Squiers in the past but also some really *bad* luck. Epiphones can be good, and I had a cheap Takamine for years that I really loved. I'd say for the money Epiphone will probably be the most consistent, but don't be afraid of getting a no-name brand if you can play it first and verify the sound.

I was going to go here and just buy two of these:

http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Rogue-RA090-Dreadnought-Acoustic-Guitar?sku=423794

$40 bucks a piece, how can you go wrong? Well, I guess you can go
wrong if the intonation and action are screwed up. Wait, no you can't!
Muahahaha

> I'd say 15 and 19. On a steel-string 22 will murder your fingers and you will have a hard time playing chords that take advantage of 22's harmonic features. Also I find that 19 actually sounds quite a bit more "septimal" and it's really easy to play a 4:5:7:9:11 chord with 19's open-string tuning--the same cannot be said for 22. 15 will be extra-playable and you can dazzle your friends with its "all-4ths-but-still-two-octave" open tuning, you'll get Blackwood and Porcupine, and to be perfectly honest steel-string guitars are so inharmonic the 4ths and 5ths will sound just fine. And I can't stress enough just how *simple* it is to play 15 on guitar--never has guitar felt so easy to me as it did when I played in 15.

Do you have any video clips of you improvising in 15? (or 19 or 22)?
Your 16-tet improvs are part of the reason I wanted to switch to 16 to
begin with, as well as Ron Sword's thing here:
http://www.ronsword.com/sounds/Ron%20Sword%20-%2016-tone%20acoustic%20improvisation.mp3

The whole thing has some kind of otherworldly feel to it, once you
stop thinking in terms of modes and start thinking in terms of 5-limit
harmony (well, at least that's how I have to start thinking). Then
again, I feel like I should probably explore 15 or 19 or 22 first.

My question to you is - why do you keep recommending 19? What can 19
do that's so different? It has some rough 7-limit stuff and some even
rougher 11-limit stuff... It has magic, I guess, and Barbados[9], but
22 has the first decent porcupine and superpyth too...

> Also, if you want, I can e-mail you some chord and scale diagrams for these various tunings to show you what you'll be up against in each one.

Yes, please! And if you ever have any time, and want to do some more
guitar improv videos... :) Those were probably just as influential to
my development as a microtonal musician as the entire body of
knowledge I've acquired about regular temperament theory so far.

-Mike

15 and 16, although I am not particularly qualified to say.

I'm thinking second-hand medium-quality guitars in need of a refret would be ideal. The more frets you have, the more precise the guitar needs to be.

Mat Cooper

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> I was going to go here and just buy two of these:
>
> http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/Rogue-RA090-Dreadnought-Acoustic-Guitar?sku=423794
>
> $40 bucks a piece, how can you go wrong? Well, I guess you can go
> wrong if the intonation and action are screwed up. Wait, no you can't!
> Muahahaha

Fair enough! $40 is hard to argue with.

> Do you have any video clips of you improvising in 15? (or 19 or 22)?

19 is the only one I can do video for right now, as the Freenote neck went on the body that had the 15/18 fishing-line neck. I sold my 22-tone super-strat to Bill Sethares for $500 a few years ago...kinda regretting that now! But I'll try to do a video for 19 in the next few days, once I get my bearings.

> The whole thing has some kind of otherworldly feel to it, once you
> stop thinking in terms of modes and start thinking in terms of 5-limit
> harmony (well, at least that's how I have to start thinking). Then
> again, I feel like I should probably explore 15 or 19 or 22 first.

16 is hands-down the weirdest tuning I've played. Compared to 16, even 11 and 13 feel normal. When I first heard Ron's stuff in 16 my brain totally did a BSoD. It's great to have on hand to really slam people with the shock-value.

> My question to you is - why do you keep recommending 19? What can 19
> do that's so different? It has some rough 7-limit stuff and some even
> rougher 11-limit stuff... It has magic, I guess, and Barbados[9], but
> 22 has the first decent porcupine and superpyth too...

It also has Negri[9] and [10], which I find to be a much better 5-limit temperament than Porcupine in terms of melodic properties, though a bit higher in complexity. Also, 19 is really more Godzilla than Barbados because of of the 81/80 vanishing, in the 9-note MOS you get exactly 1 good 5-limit major and 1 good 5-limit minor. But at any rate, that scale is *really fucking cool* when you realize that it has 7 perfect fifths, but every triad has two types of third possible at the same time. The fact that 19's subminor 3rd is right between 7/6 and 8/7 means it can actually do double-duty: 6:7:9 triads AND 7:8:9 triads both sound really good. You'll see.

But seriously, in 22 the septimal harmonies just don't sound very striking. And the Superpyth scale is just wonky. Did you listen to the Superpyth track I did on "Early Microtonal Works"? It's called "Through the Streets". It sounds weak and really not all that interesting, especially melodically. Using Godzilla for septimal harmony in 19 seems to work a lot better.

19 also has some quirky dissonant stuff that seems to work out in interesting ways. There's an 8-note scale of 2 3 2 2 3 2 2 3 that I'm pretty sure manages to avoid 4ths and 5ths completely, and is a nice way to force yourself out of the 5-limit.

Most importantly though is that it's easier to push 19 to its limits on guitar than it is with 22. When I played in 22, I felt like I was constantly losing my place. I know, you probably think--"It's only three more notes, it can't be THAT different". Yet somehow it is. You'll see when I send you the chord and scale charts.

-Igs