Greg J.

On 5/10/2017 at 6:00 AM, pan_kara said:

interesting question. I heard the "heavier gauge is better tone" story, but is there really an optimum gauge for, say, a high E? (regardless of feel). In what way does "tone" become "better". I guess some sort of an answer is hidden in comparing open high E vs the various fretted options (5th fret on B, 9th on G etc). There you have changing scale length and changing gauge and ~constant tension. I'd love to do a systematic study some time (or maybe something already exists)

It may be something as simple as having a greater mass of metal moving increases the signal strength out of the pickup. Compare .008s and .011s. If you can't tell the difference in tone, then what I heard may have had some other cause.

I tried .011s instead of .010s because my open string hammer-ons were not producing nearly enough volume. With .011s it is much better.

As for scale lengths, it sounds like I need to do an experiment with different scale lengths so I can understand the trade-offs better (not sure how I'm going to do that, though; maybe a piece of wood and some nails).

I am on the warpath of trying to figure out what scale I should use for the 1st and 6th strings on a multiscale electric guitar. I used to use .009s, but after trying .010s and liking the tone (and using them for a long time), I recently tried .011s and discovered (much to my surprise) that they weren't noticeably more difficult to bend. So now I am wondering what gauge strings I should use for the "best" tone (perhaps thicker is better to a point), but this post is not about that.

If I settle on .011s, does that dictate an optimum scale for the 1st string to get very good tone? 24.5" to 25.5" seems like a bit too big of a range to arbitrarily choose just based on how close together I want the frets to be. Presumably there are tradeoffs and people differ in the qualities they prefer, so I am speaking in general terms.

Then I wonder, having chosen X for the 1st string scale length, does that dictate an ideal scale length for the 6th string (which would be a .049 in my case)?

(Math doesn't bother me.)