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Thread: A new tenor guitar?

  1. #1

    Question A new tenor guitar?

    Hello

    I have a guitar tenor for many years and I would like to change.
    I would like to find an acoustic electro tenor guitar but, here in France, this instrument is little known and the local sellers do not offer.
    I could order one if I was sure to choose the right model. That is why I am addressing you so that you can give suggestions.

  2. #2
    Harley Marty
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    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Hello Morix. You could consider installing a k&k mandolin pickup in your existing guitar , I have 2 guitars set up with them, they are excellent! On the subject of new guitars I'm in the process of ordering a custom carbon fibre Tenor from Emerald guitars in Ireland.

  3. #3

    Question Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Quote Originally Posted by Harley Marty View Post
    Hello Morix. You could consider installing a k&k mandolin pickup in your existing guitar , I have 2 guitars set up with them, they are excellent! On the subject of new guitars I'm in the process of ordering a custom carbon fibre Tenor from Emerald guitars in Ireland.
    Ok, thanks Harley!

    I would like to buy another tenor guitar it's mostly that the one I have does not sound good. It was a low-end instrument.
    I would like to be conseiile models known for their quality and if possible solders who can offer them.
    Sellers from the UK or Europe would be best for me.

  4. #4
    Harley Marty
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    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Quote Originally Posted by morix View Post
    Ok, thanks Harley!

    I would like to buy another tenor guitar it's mostly that the one I have does not sound good. It was a low-end instrument.
    I would like to be conseiile models known for their quality and if possible solders who can offer them.
    Sellers from the UK or Europe would be best for me.
    I tried to google conseiile?

  5. #5
    Registered User fox's Avatar
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    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Hi Morix, there are quite a few models available, do you mainly want to strum or play it like a mandolin, do you want to tune in 5ths?
    I ask because there are two main scale lengths 21" or 23" & that can make a big difference to which guitar you choose.

  6. #6

    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Quote Originally Posted by morix View Post
    ... I would like to be conseiile models known for their quality and if possible solders who can offer them. ...

    Quote Originally Posted by Harley Marty View Post
    I tried to google conseiile?
    My guess is that the OP meant "conseille", not "conseiile". When I went to Google Translate and typed in "conseiile", Google Translate asked me if I meant "conseille" instead. So I tried that, and it says that "conseille" translates to "advises". So, something along the lines of advise, advice, advising, recommendations etc.

    So, when the OP wrote "I would like to be conseiile models known for their quality", I would think that probably translates to:
    "I would like to be advised of models known for their quality"
    or similar meanings such as, possibly:
    "I would like recommendations for models known for their quality".

    And about "solders who can offer them", I'm just totally guessing based on word similarities and context (I did not find anything relevant at Google Translate), I would guess that the most likely meaning would be "sellers who can offer them". (sell, seller... sold, solder - even though "solder" isn't a recognized form of the word "sold" I can still see the temptation to try to add an "-er" prefix to a word since in many other cases that does work.)

    Please note that I'm not picking on the OP's spelling, just hoping to clarify.


    An aside, off-topic: The suspiciously familiar-looking French word "conseille" got me curious as to word etymology (origins), I wanted to know if it was related to our English word "counsel". Aha, yes it is! According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the English noun "counsel" is derived from a 10th-century Old French word "counseil" which meant "advice, counsel; deliberation, thought", which in turn supposedly came from a Latin word "consilium" which meant "plan, opinion".

  7. #7

    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Quote Originally Posted by fox View Post
    Hi Morix, there are quite a few models available, do you mainly want to strum or play it like a mandolin, do you want to tune in 5ths?
    I ask because there are two main scale lengths 21" or 23" & that can make a big difference to which guitar you choose.
    The pitch is 23 ".
    I play more like with a mandolin (melodies with some integrated chords).

    Yes, I tune in 5ths: GDAE or CGDA

  8. #8

    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    "I would like to be conseiile models known for their quality and if possible solders who can offer them."

    Sorry for the mistake!
    "I would like to be advised for models known for their quality and if possible sellers who can offer them.

    Not easy for a Frenchman to write in English!

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  10. #9

    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Quote Originally Posted by morix View Post
    "I would like to be conseiile models known for their quality and if possible solders who can offer them."

    Sorry for the mistake!
    "I would like to be advised for models known for their quality and if possible sellers who can offer them.

    Not easy for a Frenchman to write in English!
    No worries, I've found that it's not necessarily easy for an English speaker to write in English either. English is a tricky language, it seems to be made up of bits and pieces adopted from other languages over the centuries and all mixed together in a big disorderly jumble, with rules that have a bunch of exceptions, etc. English is my native language and yeah I did well in school, but I still puzzle over certain things about the English language, much of it just seems to be pure memory work rather than any sort of logical rules... plurals for instance (goose - geese; child - children; mouse - mice; scarf - scarves; mandolin - mandolins etc, depends on the language of origin I guess). I 'see' words, the visualization helps with remembering them, but especially the older I get, the more difficult it is to remember everything.

    Back to your original question, your search for an acoustic-electric tenor guitar, I'm afraid I can't be of any help there. Many years ago I had a steel-bodied 1930s-or-so National resonator tenor guitar, but its intonation was never very good and I eventually sold it to a friend who'd been drooling over it for years.

    The last few years, as a tenor-guitar substitute, I've settled on using a regular cheap 6-string Squier strat-copy electric guitar with a capo on the 5th fret (makes a 19-inch or approx 48.3 cm scale length) and tuned in fifths (GDAEB) although I experimented earlier with CGDAEB - in either case, the high "B" is not really necessary but once in a while I use it for something. I currently use only 5 of the strings, on that instrument. I don't have any particular desire to narrow the neck or remove unused tuner etc, because I might want to use a low "C" string again sometime, and the instrument is playable as-is and has a very comfortable neck.

  11. #10

    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    "The last few years, as a tenor-guitar substitute, I've settled on using a regular cheap 6-string Squier strat-copy electric guitar with a capo on the 5th fret "

    JL277z : Can you tell me what jauges you used for your 6-string guitar to get the GDAEB tuning?

  12. #11
    Registered User
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    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Hi Morix,
    I've sent you a PM as I live in France and have a couple of tenors I'm thinking of selling. If you live near me in France you'd be welcome to try some of my tenors. Even if they're not what you're looking for, they might give you some ideas

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  14. #12

    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Quote Originally Posted by morix View Post
    ... JL277z : Can you tell me what jauges you used for your 6-string guitar to get the GDAEB tuning?
    Some of my choices below are probably a lot lighter gauge than what most people would recommend for a 19-inch scale length (after capo'ing at the 5th fret), but I prefer really loose/slack strings - I like the sound, plus I like to bend notes easily. Because some of the strings are so loose, I had to make significant adjustments to the bridge saddles (I moved some of the string saddles all the way back as far as they would go) to make these gauges play with accurate intonation. The only string that actually seems way too *tight* is my high "B" string, I'm surprised I haven't broken one yet. The E string might be approximately the 'correct' tension. The other strings are more slack, in varying degrees. So, here are the gauges I've been using the last several years - note that this is for *octave* mandolin tuning - the 'GDAE' part is actually an octave *lower* than mandolin:

    G .046
    D .024
    A .016
    E .010
    B .009

    (I don't know if guitar strings have metric equivalents? I have not heard of that but maybe they do? The numbers above are in inches, as measured by my cheap little digital calipers.)

    The G and D are round-wound strings, the others are plain.

    Here's one of my typical amateur home-recording video example of what that particular guitar sounds like when using those strings. The guitar is plugged into an older Roland Micro Cube (set to the "Acoustic" sound-modeling setting, it supposedly tries to emulate an acoustic guitar sound). The guitar is a "Squier Stratocaster Standard by Fender", a "Made in Indonesia" model that I bought back in 2011 or so (it was a music-store demo floor model, they'd had it for a while, not sure exactly what year it was manufactured). In that video, there's as 6th string installed but not played, the little piece of green foam you see stuffed underneath the 6th string is to dampen the annoying sympathetic vibrations from that string.

    I suppose for that kind of backing stuff, a regular guitar tuning would work just as well, but I've just never felt comfortable with standard guitar tuning. Despite some serious attempts to get used to a 'normal' guitar, I always end up gravitating back towards GDAE tuning because it just seems more logical, plus I already know where all the notes are. (I started out on fiddle, so I guess that permanently warped my judgment as to what a proper tuning is.)

    I cobbled together that set of strings from 3 other full sets of guitar strings. Next time I change strings, I might see about buying individual strings instead, if I can find the required Fender "Super Bullets" sold individually (this particular guitar takes strings with a weird-shaped end, not the standard ball-ends). However, I don't change strings very often, so any cost savings are negligible over a sufficiently long period of time.

    When I decided to commit that guitar to fulltime GDAEB tuning, I went ahead and made some other adjustments to it - namely, adjusting the pickup heights to make the treble side of the pickups nearer to the strings, and to move the bass side of the pickups further away from the strings. Otherwise, using the default regular-guitar settings, the bass sound was was overpowering and the treble sound was weak (even after twiddling with bass/treble tone controls). After adjusting the pickups' height, the sound is somewhat more balanced. *Although* this particular guitar has non-adjustable "pole pieces" in the pickups, which is annoying, because the 2nd-string pole piece sits a lot lower than the others, so the 2nd string has lower volume - apparently in standard guitar tuning that's a good thing, but not so much in GDAE or GDAEB tuning.

    Someday, when/if I get around to it, I will either replace the neck-pickup and middle-pickup with new pickups that have adjustable pole pieces, or else just take the old pickups out and try dislodging the too-low pole-piece and making it sit up higher - worst case scenario I'd ruin the pickup, but if I was already thinking of buying new ones anyway, it would be a reasonable gamble - if it worked, fine; if it didn't work, then I'd buy the new pickups. Meanwhile, I've sort of adapted my playing to just play the 2nd string more energetically than the other strings, which works ok although it was difficult to remember at first (now it's just habit).

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  16. #13
    Harley Marty
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    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    @JL227z. If your B string has too much tension 008's, or 0.200mm are available. I kept breaking the E on my 16" GDAE uke so I found the 008's (D Addario) work well. I notice that there are 007's out there but I haven't been able to get any yet.

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  18. #14

    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    Quote Originally Posted by Harley Marty View Post
    If your B string has too much tension 008's, or 0.200mm are available. I kept breaking the E on my 16" GDAE uke so I found the 008's (D Addario) work well. I notice that there are 007's out there but I haven't been able to get any yet.
    Thanks! I will look into the .008's.

  19. #15
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    Default Re: A new tenor guitar?

    There are three Eastwood dealers in France.

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