"Jangly" Guitars

Maybe we should agree on what Jangly means. Not sure we are all thinking the same thing.

Jangly = Rickenbacker.

At one point I got a pretty 'jangly' sound from a Les Paul through a MusicMan combo amp. I hit the Bright switch by accident. ;)

'Course, a Rick 12-string would've sounded even 'janglier' through that same amp.

With fresh strings you could probably dupe 'jangly' with just about anything except maybe some big hollowbody jazz guitar with flatwounds and a single (neck) pup.

You could probably do 'jangly' 60s type Brit invasion stuff with a Danelectro 12-string and a clean setting on a little combo. They were using what was available back then as far as amps; Fenders, Magnatones, Magnavoxes, Voxes (with the treble boost of course), Standels; all amps trying to produce a clear, loud, clean sound; almost hi-fi to use the old term.

Gnease: Congrats, you've argued all the way around to making points I was making in the first place, losing me along the way :wink:

Long story short: if I tune my guitar up a couple of steps it becomes more jangly, as I define jangly (brighter, more pronounced attack, more treble less bass - sounding like you're picking closer to the bridge, but without killing the sustain as bridge-picking does). Nothing changes but the tension and probably a hint of the idiometer effect. I thought I had a handle on the physics behind it, but maybe not... :)

'Twangly'

http://www.rondomusic.net/product854.html

I think this would be jangly enough for me:

http://www.rondomusic.net/as820nat12stg.html

I get all GASsy whenever I see that one.

A jingle-jangle jream come true!

Gnease: Congrats, you've argued all the way around to making points I was making in the first place, losing me along the way :wink:

Yeah, sorry about that. My real point is nothing about this is really simple.
Long story short: if I tune my guitar up a couple of steps it becomes more jangly, as I define jangly (brighter, more pronounced attack, more treble less bass - sounding like you're picking closer to the bridge, but without killing the sustain as bridge-picking does). Nothing changes but the tension and probably a hint of the idiometer effect. I thought I had a handle on the physics behind it, but maybe not... :)

...and you also may be playing it slightly differently, or may not. I feel as if I can play harder on a higher tension setup, and that definitely affects the timbre.

Jangly for me is:

generally clean (amp)
Bright
"Loose", complex and even slightly dissonant (timbre)

OTOH,

What you are describing, I would call chimey.

So we may not be thinking of exactly the same thing, especially when it comes to my last point. I think jangly sounds a little dissonant, even on a well tuned guitar. Ignoring tempered tuning -- which really is dissonant anyway -- I'm am pretty sure the dissonant/consonant timbre is determined by where particular harmonics land as multiples of the fundamental freq, e.g., at those ideal 2, 3, 4, 5 multiples or more likely something like (making these up) 2.001, 3.05, 4.00077 and 5.0000001. And of course it is important how much harmonic energy falls on the even multiples (2, 4, 6 ...) and thus is musical, and how much is falls in the odds and is a bit amusical. Also, this is not steady state, the freqs and levels of the fundamentals and harmonics change from the time of the strum/pick through the release. It's easy to see this on a good tuner. On a strobe tuner, one can see that the various octaves are not always in tune when the fundamentals are.

So here we disagree: All other factors remaining the same, as tension rises, I think a guitar will sound more tonally pure or more chimey and less jangly. But that does not mean I think scale length is primary in this whole jangly discussion.

Gretsch too.

Those are in the Cavern Pub in Liverpool, across the road from the re-built Cavern Club......I call in there sometimes for a couple of beers, and wish there was no glass between me and the guitars - and the barman would go and change a barrel in the cellar.....

:D :D :D

vic

I gotta go there ..... someday.... damn!

Bob Jessie

What you are describing, I would call chimey.
I guess that's the nub of it. 'Chimey' fits what I'm hearing just fine too, but leaves me at a loss to imagine the difference between the two... I think I follow the theory you outlined, but I can't hear it in my head :)