BoSoxBiker

before painting..... do NOT trust that stupid wall tape. I'm still tasting sanded spackle. After painting...... The first soffit trap in place.... and then 4 of them

more pics..... A frame with half the dacron on... 6 weeks of various bass trap storage during the holidays. Oh how I love my wife!!!! And she let me get D-41, SJ and bird all in the last couple years. 🙂 the front wall.... Entrance..... Closet trap and ceiling with clouds....

This is the continuation of an ongoing effort to make a spare bedroom work as a decent sounding music studio. Come to find out, sound waves has it's own physical properties that can get in the way of itself. Gotta love Physics, right? So last April I left off with a bunch of studio foam on my walls. I had learned that studio foam can only do so much. In fact, I had actually made some things a little worse. I had reduced the high-end decay without touching the mids or lows. It became uneven. There are many of use here who don't need a darned thing. Their guitars sound great and their voices don't sound like the Gods in some Greek temple erupting in anger. Mine? Horrible. Always has been. the house construction and location combines for some really bad sound. I think the final insult came when someone here posted a video of himself playing in a basement area that was in mid renovation and had outstanding acoustics to the point of being rightfully complimented. Back to the drawing board for yours truly. So I made room in the budget and realized I needed far more than what I had made room for. I had a massive amount of low end rumble to deal with just because of proximaty to the 6-lane highway and an international airport's landing routes running alongside neighboring streets. If you fly into Raleigh, look for a triple cul-de-sac street in the shape of a backwards "F" and wave at the driveway with a tan car in the driveway. OK, so a couple months of planning and half a year of research, I opted for a massive DIY project. I get 2-3 hours a day where I can move around with limited additional pain, maybe 4-5 days a week. Besides, I wanted a Martin HD-35 to compliment my 'Bird and SJ-200. Winter was coming at that point, and those 3 months are somewhat easier than the rest of the year. I got the Martin, though I went for a D-41. THEN I started my project. But first, I also bought three 7-foot tall, improperly constructed gobo bass-trap panels for very short money. I made a mini, roofless vocal booth and tested out guitar and vocals. My vocals were not nearly as bad as I thought. I mean, it was a night and day difference. Big booming guitar was much better, though still had some cob filtering. Nothing on the ceiling, after all. It was convincing enough a test, though, and I knew I could salvage the traps and use them in my own design. So I did. I spent about $2k on lumber, fabric, wood, insulation, dacron and other materials. It was still under 1/2 of what I was looking at to buy traps from the most reasonable place online. As low-end was my major issue, I knew I had to knock that out first and foremost. I decided on the insulation based solution due to other options requiring more targeted solutions. The amount of trapping needed also meant that I had to go big without costing tons of space. Well, it did cost me space, but it was worth it. the room acoustically speaking, measures 125" x 162", which includes the depth of the closet that takes up 2/3 of the back wall. The design was simple. Roxul safe and sound converting sound wave energy into heat. Typical acoustic panel stuff. Basically I built wooden frames, stuffed them with insulation and covered with a full layer of Dacron and acoustic friendly fabric. They had to be thick enough to soak up a lot of bass. The "Closet" trap went a long way to that end. I also knew I was going to greatly deaden the space. I chose to add reflection and then diffusion as a next phase project. Simple enough, too, in that the reflection boils down to putting plastic and pegboard in key places. To acoustically measure the room, I used a calibrated microphone and some freeware called Room EQ Wizard. The software measures initial frequency response like what some EQs might show,as well as decay data. Pretty neat in a geeky way, though it took a long time to digest. Well, this whole thing took a long tome to digest. A short list. 1 Closet Trap: I removed closet doors and filled it with insulation, covered with Dacron and fabric. I left the 4-inch thick door frame in place for future use. 4 Soffit style bass traps 18" by 18" by 47" for the front corners. 7 gobos (acoustic panels) 24" x 72" 7-1/2 inches thick. 2 gobos 30" x 72" by 10 inches thick. 4 triangle shaped traps 12" x 12" x 30" 2 triangle shaped traps 10" x 10" x 20" 2 "mini-chunk" style traps 10" x 15" x 7" 2 "clouds" (ceiling mounted acoustic panels) 15" x 48" and 7" thick 2 clouds 30" x 48" and 7" thick 1 soffit style trap 12" x 12" x 30" 1 soffit style trap 24" x 48" x 13" Patched an painted room Built monitor stand spacers 3" thick to lift monitor plates inches above desk and, more importantly, over towards the center the last few inches needed to take them out of a bad null mode. Ok, so, did it work? Ab-so-lutely. There is a DIY "standard" of sorts where if someone treats a room and there is a 10db variance (+/- 5db from target) from one dip or spike to another that it's doing very well. Especially in a very small room such as mine. My initial measurements before adding reflection back in were very good. A desk reflection giving me a 8-9db dip, and a 12db at 70Hz. Both have likely improved as. The room has a very fast decay, which wax expected. I had a 1-2 second or longer standing bass wave at or below 42Hz at 62db that needed to be lopped off. It has greatly decreased, both in time and strength. It dropped 16-22db - say average of 18db drop, and starts the final decent half a second sooner. Needless to say, the clarity was greatly increased. It lacked life, though. 120ms decay time dropped 40db from the low-mids and up. Not all that pleasing of a listen. Even died too soon to be fully useful to mix in. I had a 360Hz rumble that I heard, but didn't know it rumbled for long until I bounced it an tested on another system. I was actually bummed out about it for a night. So then to add reflection and diffusion, I started simple and small, bit by bit, and then I hit a golden spot and got an instant MASSIVE improvement. I mean, massive - massive, like my Focal Alpha 80 monitors sounded just as fine as my Focal Eligia headphones kind of good. Reverb reverbs, thump thumbs and guitars sound oh so glorious. I thought I had an idea of how good it could sound. I was wrong. And on to the big reason. Some of you have heard my tracks. Vocals have been horrid thunderous boom and acoustic guitars both thundered and distorted at any recorded level due to all the comb filtering. I can play a decently aggressive strum on my SJ-200 with a Gibson heavy or a Taylor 1.0mm pick and not distort or screech at a tracking level of -20dbfs RMS (meaning I can peak at -8db sans distortion!!!). I do have to put some wheels on the bottom of my gobos to more easily move them, because I need just a teensy bit less life in them, I think. Also have carpet on the floor currently, which is bad according to experts. I found out that have a few spots of pegboard on the carpet when tracking guitar helps to even things out. I get tone everywhere, not just thump, though I can certainly get a thump at 160Hz or so with a little help from proximity effect. I mean, it's me, on a Gibson SJ-200, strumming hard with a 1mm pick. I can get some proximity effect. OK, enough rambling on. Some pics. I just started re-doing Pawn Shop guitars in it's entirety - again - so will see how everything tracks and translated over next couple of weeks, and I will post. Bad photo, but it was so pretty when walking into this after I was done. + Old Foam.... More old foam.... The beginnings of a closet trap.... and door storage. ha! Closet trap almost done... and the closet trap is done... more in next post

I would make a deal at the crossroads or give up a body part to have as much improvement at vocals as you've had in the last year or so. Quite impressive.

'gents, nice sounding guitars, for sure.

One of my two Maples (the 614) despises humidity. I had the other (the SJ) out on the front porch before it got super hot last summer and a similar result, but it could have been the strings getting a bit worn.

Me too, brother! Me too! 🙂 A Dove is the last "planned" acoustic purchase.

Someone posted a video of a cover song here about 6-8 months back. After watching it, there was link on Youtube of a different guy covering the same song, but on a Dove. It was one of the sweetest sounding strummed guitar tones I had ever heard. Just pure, concise and well balanced as can be. No idea what year it was. Kind of haunts me a little bit, but have had little time to look for it again. I will when dove buying time comes around. 🙂 So, Dave, got any recorded samples posted anywhere? Maybe top of my GAS tank a little bit? LOL

Nice price! That's near what I got mine for. I treasure it just as much as the Gibson acoustics. Longest by far that I have left original strings on. I hear ya. I have one slot left in my nice acoustic cabinet. I think it will have to wait till next year. Well, at least very late this year. A 335 of some sort has been calling my name for some time. 🙂

That's a fine looking guitar, Dave. 'Congrats! The back is mesmerizing to look at. A looker, for sure. I was tempted a few momth's ago. Wildwood didn't have what I inquired about. I asked them what it would be out the door for a DIF, knowing I couldn't. It was much less than expected, but still unable to pass up the great deal on a D-41.....perhaps next year.

The 80/20's do not do well in the room where I normally play guitar, and worse in my home project studio with shorter ceilings. The awful comb filtering combined with the extra brightness made everything sound far too harsh. I ended up hopping around various string types and landed on the Nickel Bronze for the SJ. However, in all seriousness, I did buy a set of those mondo expensive Titanium strings. I was going to put them on the 2018 'bird (standard), but I think I've decided to put them on the 2018 SJ (also standard). I did, recently, but a set of the Gibson 80/20 (not the new ones) on the bird. At first I hated them, but they simmered down after a few days and continue to do so a few weeks later.

I'm waiting on some Authentic Blood-Stained (Nickel Bronzes (IIRC) to come from an eBay seller from NJ. A little steep at $50, but you only live once and they did include shipping.

Nice, David! It definitely put a few small town images into mind from the 'ol memory banks. A few of them, actually. We moved around. Sort of kind of miss it, sort of, I think. Well, the being young part. One of our fellow forum-dwellers might even be able to guess the one town. Half-way between two of that state's smaller cities with a big used constructions equipment junkyard smack dab in the middle of town. The junk yard has been gone now for maybe 20 years, though. Marvel's Mystery Oil was a great way to disguise a knocking engine in a '85 Fleetwood with the 4.1HT(hook and tow) engine in it. Time to go play guitar.

I agree. It does sound like something in the mix chain chain dimmed, though it could always be YouTube's conversion. But it doesn't make up tone. To me, that guitar sounds like someone wanted a Froggy Bottom , but with the low end enhanced and high-mids rolled down. Imagine the sonic ground one could cover with one of each. 🙂

Another outstanding cover. Well played and well tracked and well everythinged.

Nice one, Buc! Nice tempo. Lotsa feeling.

It's your cover, so you get to choose what you wanna play and how you wanna play it. It'd be boring if everyone did the same songs the same way over and over again. And nice job, btw. I had totally forgotten about that song, too. I need to put in some early Beatles stuff tomorrow.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the 60's era J-45s on Reverb last night. Most of them still had definite burst remaining. A few did not. at least one seller called it an aged "Natural" finish. I was kind of surprised to see that price tag on it, too, though I do not know the vintage world at all.

I normally do not ask of such things, but I had this one in my hands and played it for 15-20 minutes the other day. I'm not interested in purchasing at all, but am curious to know. They say it's a J-45, but it's a 'hog. There is no sticker inside of it - just a small "J-45" etched into the bracing almost directly below the sound-hole. It was in very playable shape, but I did not look too closely at the neck angles and such. While it played nicely, I think there might be a fret or two causing an occasional issue. The tone sort of surprised me as a passing salesman thought he had heard it was an early 50's model. eBay says 1965, which seems more believable. Two things surprised me with my first time vintage playing experience since the 1968 HB almost 5 years ago. I thought it would have been lighter, and I thought the finish looked a little thick for the age. I know nothing about these, though, so, I defer to you guys. https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-1965-GIBSON-J-45-ACOUSTIC-GUITAR-W-NON-ORIGINAL-HARDSHELL-CASE/264564948754?hash=item3d994cbf12:g:1sgAAOSwKdNd8o3K

Very nice, Sal! As always.

I had 1-each to test drive at the same time a few months ago. I think the HD's ability to boom out helps to make sound chime-like or otherwise pretty. During the side-by-side test drives, I found them to each inspire distinct musical directions. The "D" let me really hop on the strings for some lively, but not too thick Martin rhythm sound. The HD pushed out a pretty musical tone with great ease. Chime-like, perhaps? I understand that these test drives can differ from store to store, guitar to guitar, which doesn't help written accounts much.

Technically speaking, my first was so bad of a player that making an Am chord took 10-15 seconds. A warehouse club Yamaha Strat shaped thing. About to give up, I drove to the local GC and told the salesman of my difficulties. He hands me a 2004 Ibanez GAX-70 from the all. Hit the chord instantly and the rest is history, as they say. It sounded great stock, but I tinkered with it quite a bit. P-90s and flat-wounds being the most fun. I have a complete wiring included set-up for active pickups upstairs in a box, but the guitar and a small has been at a friend's house for 2+ years as he slowly plucks away at learning. No harm - no foul.

It very well might be the case. From a visual perspective, my 17 month old Hummingbird, which was a warranty replacement, took on a different sheen the last few times out. Richer or deeper looking. Low speed melodic picking has really blossomed on it one, too, around the same time. Comparing these to my two nice non-Gibsons: My 2015 Taylor 614 (Maple x-braced) has always been a different sounding Taylor effort. Instead of blatting out pure volume, it blatts out a nice tone. That tone got richer along the way and really kicked into high gear about 3 years into ownership. On the opposite end, this years new guitar was a Martin D-41. It had several changes in the first 10 days. Some others have said similar things on their unofficial forum. I guess those need to be played a bit right from the beginning, but I don't know why.

I felt the need to share. My 14-month old SJ-200 opened up it's hood and out came an increased big motor purring sound this past week. It's never had a problem with low end, but it seemed to add a flavor layer. I could feel the vibration as it just exploded outward, seemingly from within. Good times! Someone here mentioned to me, back when I got my Hummingbird, that it was fun to listen to the new Gibson acoustics open up, even over time-frames. True to form, they've each had their growth moments. 😎

Guitar store setups can get interesting. Sometimes it's factory decree. Always easier to go down than up. I had to file 4 nut slots my last new guitar (Martin D-41) down .002-.003 to be somewhat uniform with string height and radius. I could go more, but it's still too soon. I normally like to wait a little bit before doing too much. What do you set your relief set to along with with these string measurements? Your specs are a lot lower than what most people post. Any loss of tone or anything? Did you have to level your frets to get to this spot?