AKARSH SHEKHAR
Make Your
Sound Better
Picks
One of the most interesting upgrades you can do , for a guitar , is to get a better guitar pick . While it ’ s ‘ just a piece of plastic ’, but that piece of plastic is what you ’ re using as a tactile connection to articulate the string . It ’ s hugely important .”
Saddle / nut material
It makes an important difference to the sound of your acoustic guitar . That thing needs to be set up correctly , and if you have real lowquality material , you ’ re going to hear it .
Think of the acoustic guitar as a signal chain : the very first thing the string resonates against is the saddle . The saddle is conducting every single note you play , so having quality saddle material and making sure the saddle fits into the slot well is really important .
Strings
Strings can make a huge difference to the way your guitar sounds . Not just between materials , but between different manufacturers , too . Strings are as much a variant as the guitar itself .
Even if your guitar has the voice you want , picking a different kind of string is one of the quickest and easiest ways of changing that voice .
Different acoustic guitar strings will have different characteristics , and it ’ s not that difficult or expensive to get a few different brands , even of the samesize string . Get a couple of different sets and work out what sounds best for your playing style and for you .
Fix String Buzz
If your acoustic guitar is buzzing open and you ’ re not touching anything , chances are that the nut slots are low , and the string is just sitting on the 1st fret . If it buzzes in the middle of the neck and not so much elsewhere , it ’ s probably that the neck itself is ‘ round ’. If you have a guitar with an adjustable truss rod , you can adjust it and flatten that out .
There are some subtleties that won ’ t make a lot of difference , but if you have a huge number of coils on the headstock that are all overlapping and messy , that can make your tuning unstable , because the metal is always compressing and won ’ t want to stay in tune .
Stringing and stretching
If your guitar ’ s strings are stretched to the point where they lose intonation and won ’ t stay in tune , so you don ’ t want to go too crazy .
The core wire gives it some stiffness and strength , and along the string path there are a couple of points where it has to make a little bend . What you can do is put your string on , tune it up to pitch and get it set . Then , right behind the saddle , with the edge of your pick , press down a little to seat it against the saddle .
You repeat the process over the nut , and then if you press the string against the tuning post , it ’ ll even out the last bend . The string will go flat in pitch , but when you tune up , it should be stable from then on .
Electronics
Pickups will make your acoustic guitar louder . So you need to find the system that sounds how you want it to sound . It ’ s not just something that generates noise ; it ’ s going to have its own characteristic .
The Score Magazine
34 highonscore . com