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Hey Everyone,
I have recently gotten back into trad jazz (I'm mostly a straight ahead player) and am loving it. I use a Loar acoustic archtop as well as a National resonator guitar. Both have very high action and I find myself having trouble getting a good sound because of it. I know that traditionally high action is used for this music but I am unsure if the action I have is too high or not. What is an appropriate string height to use for trad jazz guitar?
Thanks,
Zane
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08-07-2018 08:11 PM
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is it for just rhythm playing?
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For both rhythm and solos!
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It depends on the player so you can’t really say one string action is typical to jazz. You can generalize a little like saying that traditional jazz players generally didn’t use light strings but you have a wide range of high, medium and low action players when you look through famous guitarists. That is speaking of jazz in general - get to specifying rhythm only playing and the typical action does go up.
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I set my action as low as I can, consistent with no fret buzz when I play normally. I don't believe that really high action is beneficial in any sense. Not everyone agrees with me, of course.
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I believe that there are diminishing returns but to say that there is no benefit to optimizing action for anything but playability conflicts with my experience.
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All I have to go on is my experience. I can't hear any better tone with higher action, as long as there is no fret buzz when strummed as hard as I normally would. Action for an acoustic needs to be higher than a pure electric, no doubt, because the acoustic will normally be played much harder. But I hear no better tone from really high action. Maybe it's my ears.
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Trad, start at just uner 3mm, and go up or down from there.
Play with the highest action you can handle with no compromise...
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Originally Posted by sgosnell
There are plenty of variables at play, and I was only talking from my experience as well. A lot has to do with how you play, what guitar you use, etc. Everyone hears differently, so I'm not taking a position of wrong vs right. From a purely physical standpoint, it seems like heavier strings and higher action exert more force on the top and therefore transfer more energy (up to a point where the force exerted actually diminishes the resonance of the top). Each guitar has a different sweet spot, and I find that the best acoustic sound for me has always required some (not too much, but some) compromise in comfort. However, I will also qualify this statement with my belief that raising the action and playing heavier strings influences how I play. It's hard to disambiguate the factors in order to say definitively that the strings make the guitar sound better. I think you can't answer that question without taking the player (i.e. the subjective element) out of the picture.
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No lower than 1"
love,
Freddie Greene
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I play trad and Gypsy jazz on National resonator too, and I set it up with a reasonably low action. I think resos have inherently high action, they assume you 're gonna play slide. But I manage to bring it down with truss rod adjustment. With high action playing any lead lines is super hard, so unless you are a strictly rhythm player, forget it.
OTOH, ditch the guitar altogether, get yourself a tenor banjo- low action, super loud and fits the style
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Django's Selmer-Maccaferri had very high action........Great video of close up inspection of the actual guitar here, I never noticed the zero fret before.
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when you play in an acoustic group (bass, sax/trumpet, no drums maybe violin) then you either use a mic in front of the guitar or play with a heavy pick, stiff strings and jack up the action as high as you can - the strings need clearance above the fingerboard in order to vibrate freely when strummed with a stiff pick. Otherwise they can't store the energy from the pick and transmit it to the soundboard.
As a part-time classical player I am struggling with this aspect constantly : when I don't practice regularly my left hand looses strength and stamina quickly and the volume AND the tone quality I usually get drops ....
Finding the sweet spot for your particular guitar (depending on your specific tonal needs) will be key but it takes time and patience - diligent practice for strengthening your left hand helps a great deal.
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Hey Hep, Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
I play trad and Gypsy jazz on National resonator too, and I set it up with a reasonably low action. I think resos have inherently high action, they assume you 're gonna play slide. But I manage to bring it down with truss rod adjustment. With high action playing any lead lines is super hard, so unless you are a strictly rhythm player, forget it.
OTOH, ditch the guitar altogether, get yourself a tenor banjo- low action, super loud and fits the style
Thanks for the advice. By the way, do you have intonation problems are your national? The B and E strings on mine are horribly intonated compared to the other strings and I can't seem to find a way to fix it. I keep hearing that you can't change intonation on Nationals.
By the way, I do happen to play mainly plectrum banjo when it comes to trad jazz. Can't beat the authenticity of a banjo!
-Zane
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The movie by itself is interesting and will make any Django fan smile but I'd be very careful with drawing any conclusions re action etc. from these images. Who knows where the guitar was stored and for how long, is the neck still straight, did anyone mess with the bridge (replaced it ?), is it tuned up to pitch etc. If I remember correctly he used rather light silver-plated strings and played with a small and thick pick. The recordings he made are also no real indicator since there was a mic in front of his guitar. It would be great to see/hear a live performance of him with his quintet but in general I'd say that maximum volume was not the main issue for him since there were no drums in his band and on stage most often he only had to "compete" with other guitars, a bass and a violin.
OTOH there are photos and even some movie clips of Freddy Greene where one can clearly see the unreal high action he had on his guitar(s) - he used one-, two- and three-note voicings exclusively and was therefor able to maintain the strength needed. I wonder though how he was able to keep the guitar in tune when he had to press down so hard and really stretch the strings by doing so ....
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The Loar should be able to be set up to play low and then you just adjust action with the thumb wheels for the situation. That adjustable bridge is basically your volume control. Originally Posted by randomman123
I have my action between 2-3mm for amplified playing, which is most of the time. I keep the neck straightish with a hint of relief. If I play acoustic with horns and drums I can whack the action up a bit in a matter of seconds.
It is amazing what the Loar will deliver when the action is high in terms of mid range cut. You can really ...err.... whack it hard.
Obviously if your action gets too high you may struggle to play lead. But that why the weird v is there, to help you push the strings down.
Traditionally guitarists of this era used very heavy strings, but I recommend .12 or .13 Martin Retros as a good compromise. The material of the strings is era appropriate and they complement rhythm playing well.
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Btw I wouldn’t use the term trad personally as that always makes me think of Chris Barber lol (maybe that’s a british thing?) ‘Early jazz’ might be better.
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Btw if your drummer plays any ride cymbal when comping you may as well not be there. But with snare, hat and bass it works very well.
Finding a drummer who understands this is difficult in my experience.
if you can get someone who has studied early jazz drumming and plays the correct instrumentation (small cymbals, hide heads etc) you don’t need amplification. It’s amazing.
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Martin Taylor tells how he got Django's pick (around 6:00 if you can't wait) Originally Posted by gitman
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Heavy strings are better, up to a point, and depending on the guitar. It's possible on some guitars for the strings to be too heavy, and actually muffle the sound a bit. That has to be determined by experimental trial and error. Modern archtops designed to be played acoustically tend to have more responsive tops, and need less energy input to return maximum volume, but there is a wide range, and that also has to be determined by experiment. And keep in mind, what the player hears is not what the audience hears. The player may hear relatively low volume, but a few yards out in front the volume will be much louder.
I'm not advocating really low action on an acoustic archtop, you have to get the strings high enough so you can whack them, but I do think that once you get the action high enough to not buzz when the strings are hit hard, then even higher action gives diminishing returns. The setup always involves compromises, and everyone has a different point around which they're willing to compromise. Just like everything else. I don't play acoustic archtop for a living, so I tend to compromise with lower action, better playability, at the possible risk of some volume loss. YMMV.
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Sgosnell it sounds like we’re mostly in agreement after all. I think we both believe that string thickness and action are optimization problems, where the utility function isn’t unboundedly linear or monotonic. I happen to think the sweet spot is just about where you can whack the strings with a heavy pick and not hear buzz. On my Epiphone Broadway I have been able to get more volume by juicing the action but not necessarily better tone, especially as my control diminishes. I’ve also experienced firsthand the negative effect of string size on volume after a certain point. For a while I was convinced that I needed a set of 14s. I now go for high tension 12s with 13 and 17 on top. The higher tension sets help to drive the top and have a bit more clarity than heavier bass strings, which helps for chord melody.
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Yeah, I think we mostly agree. An archtop guitar is a complicated mechanism, and every piece interacts with every other piece, sometimes in surprising ways, occasionally predictably. But every one is different.
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Mine is ok with intonation, it's not perfect, but acceptable. I don't see any way to intonate it better, the bridge is not exactly replaceable, ha. Originally Posted by randomman123
I have a pickup on mine, so unless I'm busking in places where amplification is illegal, I always amplify it with AER on the gigs.
Btw, no one I know on the scene playing with high action. Not Gypsy players, nor trads... When you have to amplify it anyway, why bother.
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Also - the Loar has an adjustable bridge so you can set the action any way you like in moments.
Set the guitar up to play low and clean and go from there.
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