How do nylon strings sound with distortion? ...is a question I got a few times under my solidbody nylon string guitar demo video. So here is the answer. Like: / traqguitars Original nylon string guitar demo: • Guitar demo "Nylon One"
The nylon strings may sound a tad muddier, but they’re absolutely heavy when palm-muted. For styles like doom and stoner and maybe even sludge, I think that might be a really good way to go. Hook that up to a hyper fuzz or something by Fuzzlord and you’re golden.
Clearly its a matter of taste :) for some of the things I was playing here the nylon strings didn't quite give me the right feel (or rather the feel I was used to), but I can totally see the nylon tone being usable in the right context.
This Could be twangy in a baritone tuning. Step down? Might be a djenty twang dialed in right maybe on my bias fx. Did it feel like flat wounds? I was amused by my steel string on a drop c tuning I never found a lefty classical style yet. All hypothesizing of course. Sorry, i just stumbled on one online that's an lp version and I'm seriously considering. It's a left too
Because normally nylon strings tend to sound darker and softer. More softer less metallic twangy tones. So they sound darker and less bright than steel strings.
Mostly there isn’t a lot of difference. Some of the more shreddy stuff is a bit too muddy on the nylon. But some of the heavy stuff is heavier on the nylon.
This is brilliant. Your playing is off the chart and the demos were really effective. I'm seriously thinking about piezos in my next guitar build with tons of switching options. Thanks for the post.
@@buddyholly9960 you mean the distorted electric parts played on a distorted nylon string? I always wanted to do a cover/breakdown of the Innuendo flamenco break, it sounds pretty good on this guitar (I even did it live once)
Thx for the great survey. I just love the feeling of a nylon but the sound of a e-guitar. This vid showed me a wide variety of possibilities and of what to expect when getting one. Rly good work, mate!
Thanks. Your nylon electric sounds wonderful. I just picked up a Godin Multiac nylon and I asked myself that exact question. To me, it makes the nylon string sound virtually the same as a steel string, so really no point. Great demo - wish more were like yours.
thanks! I admit I haven't really spent time on trying to "mimic" a steel string sound, I just played the same things the same way. I guess one could get closer with some adjustments to technique, though at the end of the day this will only take you so far, the piezo vs magnetic difference in the frequency spectrum and the difference in the tone of the strings will always be there. This combination does have a tone of it's own, maybe someone will find it useful for something at some point :)
FINALLY!! Thank you!! This is the tone i been trying achieve since I started learning to play for my first metal bands +13 years ago. Feel kinda dumb now since i learned everything on a classical guitar lol even though Im just now starting to learn how to play classical style.
absolutely! they might sound a bit "weird" but that's just cause I'd normally expect to hear something else when playing them. But there's not hard rules. Distortion itself is after all a "defect" in the amplification chain :)
Fuzzy and Boomy is what started Metal with Black Sabbath! I think this is an idea that's been waiting to pop and I feel obligated to try it for myself...but if someone beats me to the punch, more power to them. I just want to hear new great music.
Great job. With comb filter you can simulate the position of singlecoil magnetic pickup. Humbucker with two combfilters etc. (but it is a little more complicated when you make string shorter you muss count this in comb filter time variable for each string individual)
yes, I always imagined the variax works this way, and I was a roland system that did something similar. having pitch detection allows the system to guess where the note is fretted and apply appropriate filtering for the given pickup combination it's trying to emulate. Thanks for the links, I've been to that page a few years ago, but I have to read up, he's discussing some things that I'm also researching
and yea, for a fair(er) comparison I should have used a piezo with the metal strings... I guess I wasn't going for a scientific comparison, but rather something that people can use as a familiar point of reference (humbucker). Metal string piezo with distortion is also not very common :)
i like the nylon but... its super noticable that theres some note issues with the nylon as if you are having trouble getting a clear sound vs the steel string which just sounds flawless.
I have been looking for a video like this for many years. Thanks, man! BTW, I am just an amateur guitarrist who have done the same, playing a nylon-strings as an electric one. Could you check some of the experiments I have done with that in my YT channel? Just to have an expert's opinion. Thanks again. Greetings from Panamá.
Hello, honestly, I haven't even seen the worse sides, but I like the guitar with nylon strings, because I have stronger fingers, I need to know how wide the zero fret is, what the price of the guitar is and where it sits to buy, I don't know any of this even though I went through all your information. I would like an electric guitar with a zero fret width of 48 to 50mm with nylon strings, but you can also advise me with metal strings, please politely thank you Kejík
Check out Polyphia Playing God... are those guitars similar to this one? I mean, are them elctric acoustic guitars, without a hole, or electric guitars with nylon strings? I definitely want one of those!!!
The tapping technique on the nylon guitar was heavenly, but the lower notes are definitely something-- they felt really crunchy at times, and I ADORE THAT, but at some other times it felt really muddy. That bass is really weird hahahah What would it be like if you went with steel strings for the 4th, 5th abd 6th string?
Hi! You've built a superb and beautiful nylon strings guitar. Congrats!! and it sounds great with distortion. Is it possible to know what pedal did you used in this video? As I'm looking for a similar result. Thxs!!
thanks! this is actually not a pedal, I'm running through the Kemper profiler. The patch is some Marshall Plexi simulation, so what you're hearing is basically old Marshall type of distortion.
Have you tried using the nylon strings on a classical guitar with piezo pickup and try to play it with distortion with a bit of a reverb? That would be cool to hear from you.
Actually, I don't have a classical guitar with a piezo .. but I don't think the results would be THAT much different. The string vibration would be dampened a little by the energy being sucked away to move air (in the hollow body) and the sound might be changed a little, but probably not much more than that. (judging from comparing an electric guitar with piezo and acoustic guitar with piezo)
It's all going through the Kemper profiler. The clean tones have all amp sims switched off (the guitar is going direct) and the distorted ones are running through some Marshall patch IIRC
@@TraqGuitars Thank you! Great! If you listen to the following video you will notice that it is part of our sound search. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CXnQaQFviT8.html
my guess is that the piezo system gives too much bass which clogs up the distortion resulting in "lack of tightness". I was able to get a lot of that out by inserting a high-pass EQ _before_ the amp. So yea, there's room for experimentation here for sure
Hello Traq Guitars, I love your guitar and you play very good. I would like to build one. Can you please guide me with the measurements or a link where I can find information about? I would really appreciate it!
hey! thanks :) I don't have specific measurements for this guitar anywhere, I think back then I just drew the shape and measured everything such that it would fit. The neck dimensions are copied from a classical guitar that I had. And the body is just a variation of the Strat shape.
Why the comparisons are always with such heavy distortion... ? Would like to hear it with only a bit of overdrive. A less heavy distortion might work..
hello, wath is the pedal that you use please ? and could it be effective with a low budget yamaha AEX500NS with only ra ubbish piezo ? lol what piezo are u using please ? i have a terrible result when i try distorsion on this yamaha (pluged with lots of effects into a marshall acoustic) Thx
the piezo here is a Graphtech system (ghost or acustophonic it was called?), pickups in the individual bridge saddles. As for effects there is nothing, I'm running into a Kemper Profiler for the distorted tone. But I don't think you'll get a good distorted tone with an acoustic amp, the speaker is too wide range. This would have nothing to do with the kind of guitar you use, if you put a distortion pedal in front of an acoustic amp I expect the sound to be unusable. You'd need some kind of amp sim that also simulates the speaker in a guitar amp, otherwise the sound is going to have way too much high frequencies
I think classical pieces are in general too dense harmonically to sound good with distortion (unless it's just delicate breakup), but generally I can't play any classical piece at the moment :|
One of the coolest comparisons I have ever seen. Well done - hats off. Nice guitar too : -) So now the question comes what difference between "normal" and "hard" tension strings ? Wound 2nd and 3rd strings (Nylon on Nylon). Or Nylon top 3 and flat wound steel lower 3 ... So many questions; if there is too much bass coming from the guitar that it chokes the amp, we need a different amp (or model ...). I think there is a lot to discover here ... And what about different piezo pick-ups ?? The acoustic crowd is always saying that piezo's are to "nasal" and they don't really like them. But fans love Willie Nelson's Trigger with the PrismaTone pick-up. That's an ultra rare vintage pick-up. But what about an LR Baggs LB 6X to approximate the PrismaTone ... There is a lot of room for experimentation here, lots of room : D
you're right, this is an unexplored field to a large extent. I don't expect a ton of change from high tension strings, different piezo or different piezo preamp will of course change the frequency content a bit, also different amps can be used depending on what one wants. To me the "choked" chug sound is not really what I'm trying to achieve, but I can totally imagine someone making it a sound of their own.
@@TraqGuitars Just seems to me that we've sort of covered most of what steel strings and single coils, or humbuckers can do ... There is some developemnt going on at the OEM level like my Thinline Ibanez nylon cut-away. But it's not a lot. And that surprises me. A lot of musicians talk of "searching for new tones", but seem to be doing almost what everyone else is doing ... You are sort of out there on the edge, and that is way cool. Keep up the good work, and stay well : -)
@@axelmorisson great to hear that! I guess I'm a bit conservative in the way I want my chugs to sound :D but if you like this kind of sound and can put it to good use, all the better - at least that's something new!
Witaj Piotr. Przepraszam, że nie odniosę się bezpośrednio do tematyki Twojego filmu, ale jestem bardzo ciekaw, czy planujesz udostępnić filmy z warsztatu/budowy, jeśli nadal budową gitar się zajmujesz :) Pozdrawiam.
Hej! Dobre pytanie. Generalnie dużo więcej filmów o budowie nie planowałem robić, bo nie bardzo mam o czym. Poza tym miałem kilkuletnią przerwę w budowaniu, choć być może powoli będę teraz wracał. ALE. jak się chwilę zastanowiłem to jest jeden świeży film z budowy z którym nie do końca miałem pomysł co zrobić ... jak znajdę czas to go zbiorę do kupy i wrzucę :)
@@TraqGuitars To świetna wiadomość. Na prawdę wyciągnąłem sporo inspiracji z Twojej budowy mini Gitary, dlatego zawsze chętnie obejrzę więcej. Dzięki za odpowiedź i pozdrawiam. Może, jak będziesz miał minutkę zapraszam Cię na stronę "Stukupuk" na FB, wrzuciliśmy tam świeżego Musiclandera w wersji Ukulele :D
sure, but it's not something you can find in shops, I built it myself and called it "Nylon 1" since it was the first guitar I build and it was a nylon string :)
or running direct in parallel. that could work, maybe with a crossover at some low frequency to just send the higher stuff into the distortion. yea, good idea
I'm not sure if you check these comments still, but I've been searching everywhere for an answer for this question. I bought a solid body nylon string guitar called Bullfighter Brown-GD. It has an onboard preamp and the pickup is proprietary and they just call it "bullfighter". When i hook it up to my amp, it is literally incapable of distortion, overdrive, whatever you call it. I can change the EQ/tone and volume however I want, but that's it. Is this a limitation of the pickup? The preamp? I can't figure it out and I would love to customize my guitar to give it this capability in the future. You have my endless gratitude if you can provide me with an answer. EDIT: Apparently if I hook it up to my Line6 UX1 preamp on my PC, I can add whatever effects I want to through their Pod Farm software, but that may just be because it's being processed through the computer first. I'm gonna be honest, I barely understand any of this...
sorry it's been a while indeed.. in simple terms distortion is when your signal is too loud for your input device to accept. It usually sounds ugly, but in some equipment distorts in a way that actually sounds cool. The rest is history lol. But what I wanted to say is this: the only reason for something "not being able to distort" is if it is too quitet to distort your amp, stomp box or whatever you're using at the time. Take a distorted amp and roll down the volume, or just play softly. You should be able to get the distortion to go away, if you go quiet enough. So if you couldn't get an amp to distort with a guitar, that means the signal feeding the amp was for whatever reason not strong enough - weak preamp, low battery, or some other electrical issue. Asumming the amp is capable of distortion (and not an acoustic guitar amp for example) Maybe the Line6 preamp had some extra gain that brought the signal up to the required level?
bending works much worse on the nylons. On the other hand you can get really nice vibrato by pulling the string along its direction - as opposed to the bend-vibrato normally done on metal strings
You can but sets of piezo bridge saddles for different types of bridges. That's what I did here, I swapped out the original saddles for piezo saddles from GraphTech.
Exactly the same maybe even better than the electric, except for the palm muting (stubbing) but maybe that has to do with the flat tele like bridge on which it’s very difficult to mute.
… I actually think the nylon sounded way better - fuller, and though individual notes were ‘muddier,’ I felt that each chord tone was more evenly audible than in the normal electric guitar I really want a nylon piezo electric now
well at that point it would sound like an electric guitar with a piezo pickup. I use that configuration to get an "acoustic guitar" sound from a solidbody electric without having to switch guitars in the middle of a song for example. Like here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3utV2GZkPZg.htmlsi=2JBsqUWsadpf0En7&t=207 With distortion it sounds similar to a magnetic pickup, but - in short - less "full" in the mids since piezo pickups have much more high end and that drowns out the mids.
imao. I find a better sound and more character in the classical strings, in only some styles of playing. Some styles with the classical strings sound a bit dirty, and not so clear. Lines sound better in the classical strings. Chords sound better in electric strings.
