Nylon Stringed Acoustic Sounds

[jc_x_c]

This has probably been done to death...two questions:

 

1) any idea if Line 6 will provide a nylon string acoustic model?

2) if we won't see this any time soon, any thoughts on how to achieve something like this?

 

I'm using a Jtv69s and an hd500

 

Ta

[ozbadman]

Apparently nylon string models is the current number #1 request for ideas for the JTV, so you're not alone. That's a good sign.

[TxHCBP]

I've been hanging out here for a week or so, and also the ideascale site, and affirm what ozbadman sad: LOTSA people (including me) are asking for nylon! I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't show up in the next fw update or two.

[clay-man]

The problem is that you're changing the string itself, which is the core of where your tone comes from, in fact, it is your tone in it's rawest form.

 

modeling pickups and bodies are much easier because it's recreating algorithms to make the piezos act like your string is going through mags and a specific guitar body. Nylon string is asking to change the characteristics of the string itself, not just asking it to go through a pickup/body filter.

 

It'll be more difficult, and honestly probably won't be as stunningly accurate as the current models, unless Line 6 manage to do some magic stuff in the programming.

[Charlie_Watt]

I don't own any nylon string guitars but I have played some and I would imagine that the feel of playing steel vs nylon would totally different.  It may be possible to make a Nylon model but the guitar isn't going to play like a nylon equipped acoustic.

[Rewolf48]

Variax Acoustic included a Nylon model back in 2004: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep04/articles/line6variax.htm

[Charlie_Watt]

And they briefly sold a nylon string acoustic.

[TheRealZap]

I have the variax acoustic 700, with that nylon string model... and i'm not even mildly impressed with it... you could probably come up with an EQ setting in the pod to come close.. it's far from magic.

i'd love for them to impress me with a new nylon model... but i'm not going to get my hopes up.

[guitarno]

   I agree, a Nylon String model would be a big plus. :)  I had a Roland VG-99 previously and that system did a fairly good nylon string emulation with piezos mounted on a 6 string solid body electric. I'm sure this can also be done by line 6 Variax. I recently bought both a JTV-59 & a Pod HD500X, so I am pretty new to both of these, but I was screwing around with some downloaded patches from customtone, and got some sounds that were somewhat similar to a nylon, or at least had some qualities of that sound. I was blowing through a number of different patches & settings on the JTV, so right now I don't really remember which patch or guitar model I was using at the time. I stored the patches on the HD500X. I'll have to go back over them and see if I can find the combination that reminded me of a nylon string.

 

   I'm not saying it was an excellent nylon sound, but somewhat similar. I got to believe that if you knew how to really dial in the pod & variax settings, with the right EQ & effects, you might be able to get close with what's already there. It would be great to have a dedicated model though.

[fr0sty]

I would like a nylon string and or a mandolin.

[clay-man]

Well now that I think of it, they did make resonators which were pretty impressive. The thing they did with those like the sitar is use an attack filter which made it sound like a sitar, and for the banjo they made a decay envelope to make it sound like banjo.

 

I'm sure if they put some thought into it they can recreate the nuances of a nylon. It's not going to be spot on but I'm sure they can get pretty close this time around.

[Charlie_Watt]

They can make a nylon string acoustic model.  They did it before.  However, it won't have the feel of a nylon string acoustic. 

[clay-man]

They can make a nylon string acoustic model.  They did it before.  However, it won't have the feel of a nylon string acoustic. 

 

Yeah but Zap said it was poorly done before. I'm hoping that 10 years into the future from then would help make it better though.

[TxHCBP]

Of course, it won't feel like nylon. The 12-strings don't feel like 12's, or the banjo... You get my point.  :)  However, with a few (maybe several) hours practice, most people should be able to make it sound like nylon. I'd really like to see/hear/feel that in my (brand new) 59!

[clay-man]

Variax was never about feeling like something, it's about sounding multiple things through 1 guitar.

 

The idea of wanting the guitar to feel like the guitar you're playing is science fiction fantasy. We're not that far into the future.

[toasterdude]

The nylon patch on acoustic variax doesn't sound even close to the nylon string variax. Then again the acoustics on the acoustic 700 sound better than the acoustics on JTV. The way I see it. If I am playing a song that will be 100% acoustic I use the acoustic variax if I have it with me. If I have to change mid song, or don't want to or can't switch guitars the JTV acoustics will get it done. Same with nylon, if the JTV had a patch that was similar to the one on acoustic variax, it would be usable in a full band situation or when you can't use an actual nylon.

 

Maybe Nylonish would be a better request.

[clay-man]

at the end the Variax software does a job similar to that of a make-up artist when s/he tries to clone some famous people

surely it is easier to clone in a convincing manner someone who has at least some basic common physical characteristics of the person being cloned

 

In this case I imagine it's quite difficult to get a convincing nylon string sound from a steel string, the attack transients and the overtone contents of the two types are on 2 different planets

 

Thank you, exactly. 

 

It's not just filtering the strings through pickups, but asking to change the strings entirely as well.

Steel modeling Nylon will never be spot on, but they can try. It might be why we don't have one honestly, because they might think it's a waste of time to give us something that might come out to be way off.

 

It's hard to explain, but modeling a pickup is easy because all you need to do is make an algorithm that normalizes piezo input to what absolute raw string input would be, and then base that on algorithms of what frequency coloring the pickup they're modeling does to the raw sound of the strings.

 

Making Steel sound like Nylon is a whole different story. It's like asking a guitar to sound exactly like a violin.

[TxHCBP]

at the end the Variax software does a job similar to that of a make-up artist when s/he tries to clone some famous people

surely it is easier to clone in a convincing manner someone who has at least some basic common physical characteristics of the person being cloned

 

In this case I imagine it's quite difficult to get a convincing nylon string sound from a steel string, the attack transients and the overtone contents of the two types are on 2 different planets

 

Seems to me that, if you can model a compressor, changing attack, blend, sustain, etc., you should, at the very LEAST, get close to the sound of nylon. As far as overtones are concerned, if I can get a stompbox to do vocal harmonies for me, maybe a s/w engineer can, with a little effort, get a respectable sound of nylon strings. Don't know if this would require more processing power or RAM than my Variax has now, but I can't see that this would create an insurmountable barrier for Line6.

 

I MAY be completely wrong about ALL this, but... well, I don't THINK so. :rolleyes:

[clay-man]

 

 

I agree

has already been very difficult to obtain a transient attack very similar to that of the magnetic pickups from the piezos

imagine how much it would be difficult to get a convincing nylon string sound from the steel

 

in the past I have studied the synthesis of sounds with various types of synthesizers working by: FM, subtractive, additive, sampling, and mixed techniques

one of the things I learned is that the transient attack is perhaps the most important and characteristic part of each sound, and it's that characteristic before all the others that makes us instantly distinguish one sound from another with eyes closed, if you took several one note recorded tracks each with a different instrument, and you cut out just the transient attack part of each one, it would be much harder to distinguish one sound from another

 

you can get an aproximate idea of what I said by using the HD looper and pressing the reverse switch

 

by the way if you want to get very approximately a violin sound from the electric guitar (better if distorted) just cut the transient attack with the volume pot or pedal ;) and use vibrato on your longer notes

 

 

The thing about the Variax is that it does use an ADSR system, at least on some models, though it might be more of just decay if anything. Like the Banjo, it uses a decay system to make the notes short like a Banjo.

 

I also believe they might be using an ADSR system to address the palm muting issue. 

The problem is that when they do this, they need to do it without making the guitar glitch out.

Luckily they have a 6 pickup system so they can apply the effect to each string.

 

I think the piezos are alright, and it helps if you're using high quality piezos, which is what the JTV kind of does against the old Variaxes.

The whole point of using piezos though is because it's ideal for modeling.

 

I've seen a video about someone discussing how piezos have a flat and large frequency response compared to magnetics. It's almost like monitoring headphones but with guitar strings, if that makes any sense.

This is appropriate because that's exactly what you'll want when it come to processing something through pickup algorithms.convolutions, is that you'll want the rawest form of input from your strings you can get, else you'd lose character in the strings and not be able to model them correctly.

 

It does become a problem though when the behavior is a little off. Luckily Line 6 has helped it by combining the best piezo pickups they can get, with programming the sounds just right.

[stevekc]

If your gig requires swift change to Classical Nylon model, consider a different tool

 

http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=17683.msg126185#msg126185

[eguitarro]

Still no nylon string option?

[cruisinon2]

Still no nylon string option?

It's in the pipeline...right after the bassoon and harpsichord models. ;)

[cruisinon2]

If your gig requires swift change to Classical Nylon model, consider a different tool

 

https://youtu.be/ssRzCBg_HzQ

 

http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=17683.msg126185#msg126185

OK, that's impressive...I really need to stop finding things I want. Oh well...just hafta start working 32 hours a day, is all. ;)