Did you read what Bobbe says about guitars?

[Mark van Allen]

I knew Jimmy for a good while, and I was well aware of his "sense of humidity". In fact, the day I was interviewing him, there was a lot of kidding around about many things, including the D10/11 he was building for Buddy Emmons at the time. Sitting and talking with someone gives you insight into their demeanor and delivery the printed page won't convey.

If you'll re-read the excerpt above, you'll see Jimmy is saying that the thickness of mica, the type of glue, and the amount of pressure used to apply the mica are what affects tonal response in his opinion, not the color. He's saying the black mica was actually thinner than other colors.

I don't have a dog in this one, as far as belief systems go, but I am convinced he was serious about this aspect of guitar building.
Anybody who saw how meticulous he was would know he took building seriously. Just the amount of effort he put into getting the two different sized pegheads on Buddy's guitar to match up visually was astounding.

[Roual Ranes]

Try gun bluing on your tone bar. Looks black.....takes awhile......

[Danny Bates]

b0b is correct. It is a proven fact.

Color of Objects

White light is the presence of ALL the colors of the visible spectrum.

Black objects absorb ALL the colors and no light is reflected back.

As Black Objects absorb all of the colors, at a molecular level, the soundwaves carry these colors to your eardrum...

Hence the better tone. If you don't believe me, Turn off all the lights in your room and listen to how the tone of a black guitar changes. Play it for at least 15 minutes to emit the colors. Record it and listen for yourself. Total darkness only.

[Bobbe Seymour]

Sound waves carry these colors to your ear drums? Is this from the b0b Quasar school of steel guitar theory of steel guitar design?

Lotta' humor here!

[Chris LeDrew]

Black is the new white.

Mica is the new lacquer.

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

You guys are all wrong. PURPLE guitars sound best, followed by green ones.

Of course, if you really want your guitar to sound sweet, you should pour honey into the changer.

[b0b]

b0b is correct. It is a proven fact.
[...]
If you don't believe me, Turn off all the lights in your room and listen to how the tone of a black guitar changes. Play it for at least 15 minutes to emit the colors. Record it and listen for yourself. Total darkness only.

I tried that, and it sounded out of tune. Whoa! I think I've discovered a new scientific fact: the amount of light in the room affects the tuning of the guitar!

[Mark van Allen]

Actually, mica is the new lacquer. Or at least it was in '66.
This is a very entertaining thread.

[Tracy Sheehan]

And we all know what .02 cents are worth.First,i may have posted this before but not sure as i have slept since.In the early 70s i was working with one of the best female singers in the country.Took my ZB i played at the time for some changes and was loaned a black PP Emmones.The singer who i played for said that thing is ugly.Must be true.It is all in the eyes of the beholder.
As for my self,i didn't like the tone of the emmons as it was too tinny sounding for my style.I was not a strickly country player.So there you go.I was never so happy as when i got that thing back and picked up my ZB.Only reason i finally traded hhe ZB in was the triple raise and lowers were coming out.My ZB was a single raise and lower.
Now for the kicker,i still have the grey fender cords i got back in the 50's that goes from steel to pedal on to the amp.A year or so ago i bought some new popular high dollar patch cords that were supposed to improve the tone,which i never believed in the first place but bought them any ways.They were black.
If i was a betting person i would bet my steel,amp and fiddle against
,50 cents no one could tell which cords i was using with out looking.
Now i remember posting this before.I have listened to Curly Chalker play since the early 50s and he got the great Chalker tone over the ,many years no matter what steel he was playing.But never knew him to play an Emmons.
Not knocking any steel.Remember Curly went in for the deep fat tone i always loved.So thats how opinions go.Only opinions.
Just something to kick around.Tracy
BTY.I did spray my fiddle bow and horse hair black and have to admit it did improve the tone.After spraying the hair it makes no sound,

Correction.Curly got his great tone until sound men were first used,He said it him self.Take a life time getting your tone and a sound man 2 minutes or less to screw it up.

[Larry Rafferty]

I've found that the easiest way to change the color of a PSG is to use a generous amount of Tuning Fluid.
The more you consume the faster the colors will change. It can also change the tone better than any heavy tone bar, stomp-box, or volume pedal. You can rake a 17th fret chord late in the evening and wake up late the next day with that sustain still ringing in your ears. I've also seen musicians who use things they inhale or ingest and say they get the same results. I wonder what they use.........

[Chris LeDrew]

Actually, mica is the new lacquer. Or at least it was in '66.
This is a very entertaining thread.

So mica was the new lacquer.

Oh ya....E9 is the new C6.

[Tamara James]

He says: "The BLACK LAQUER or BLACK MICA does absolutely NOTHING to enhance the TONE". How about that? How about all you guys that have Black Mica Emmons'? Do you feel short-changed now?

We could get into a very deep discussion about this. While the actual color may not affect tone, the way you feel about the color will. When you feel good about playing the guitar it will play better. The guitar you are comfortable with will in turn be the one you spend time with, often more time than with a spouse. That will result in "seat time" which will make the guitar sound better. What makes the guitar play better is whatever causes you to spend hours and hours playing it. I think most would agree there is a direct relationship in that. I think I look good sitting behind my black mica PSG, so I do that as often as life will allow. I don't feel short-changed at all. Everyone has a right to their opinion, I just don't have to agree.

[Roual Ranes]

I knew there was some reason that I do not sound as good as I remembered, I don't have any Tuning Fluid around.

[Casey Lowmiller]

Well, if black sounds better and tone is all in the hands...shouldn't we all paint our hands black???

Casey

[Danny Bates]

This is good tuning/tone fluid... Don't use sparingly!

Remember...More coats = More tone

Let it dry in full sunlight to absorb the full spectrum of light waves.

[Danny Bates]

More proof....

Sept. 9, 2003: Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found, for the first time, sound waves from a supermassive black hole. The "note" is the deepest ever detected from any object in our Universe. The tremendous amounts of energy carried by these sound waves may solve a longstanding problem in astrophysics.

The black hole resides in the Perseus cluster of galaxies located 250 million light years from Earth. In 2002, astronomers obtained a deep Chandra observation that shows ripples in the gas filling the cluster. These ripples are evidence for sound waves that have traveled hundreds of thousands of light years away from the cluster's central black hole.

Earlier observations had revealed the prodigious amounts of light and heat created by black holes. "Now we have detected their sound, too," says Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, England, and the leader of the study.

In musical terms, the pitch of the sound generated by the black hole translates into the note of B flat. But, a human would have no chance of hearing this cosmic performance because the note is 57 octaves lower than middle-C. For comparison, a typical piano contains only about seven octaves. At a frequency over a million billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing, this is the deepest note ever detected from an object in the Universe.

"The Perseus sound waves are much more than just an interesting form of black hole acoustics," says Steve Allen, also of the Institute of Astronomy and a co-investigator in the research. "These sound waves may be the key in figuring out how galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the Universe, grow."

For years astronomers have tried to understand why there is so much hot gas in galaxy clusters and so little cool gas. Hot gas glowing with X-rays ought to cool because X-rays carry away some of the gas' energy. Dense gas near the cluster's center where X-ray emission is brightest should cool the fastest. As the gas cools, say researchers, the pressure should drop, causing gas from further out to sink toward the center. Trillions of stars ought to be forming in these gaseous flows.

Yet scant evidence has been found for flows of cool gas or for star formation. This forced astronomers to invent several different ways to explain how gas contained in clusters remained hot. None of them were satisfactory.

Black hole sound waves, however, might do the trick.

Previous Chandra observations of the Perseus cluster reveal two vast, bubble-shaped cavities extending away from the central black hole. These cavities have been formed by jets of material pushing back the cluster gas. The jets, which are a counter-intuitive side effect of the black hole gobbling matter in its vicinity, have long been suspected of heating the surrounding gas. But the exact mechanism was unknown. The sound waves, seen spreading out from the cavities in the recent Chandra observation, could provide this heating mechanism.

A tremendous amount of energy is needed to generate the cavities, as much as the combined energy from 100 million supernovas. Much of this energy is carried by the sound waves and should dissipate in the cluster gas, keeping the gas warm and possibly preventing a cooling flow. If so, the B-flat pitch of the sound wave, 57 octaves below middle-C, would have remained roughly constant for about 2.5 billion years.

Perseus is the brightest cluster of galaxies in X-rays, and therefore was a perfect Chandra target for finding sound waves rippling through the hot cluster gas. Other clusters show X-ray cavities, and future Chandra observations may yet detect sound waves in those clusters, too.

[Roy Ayres]

If black ain't best, how come Jack Daniels Black Label is the most expensive?

[Danny Bates]

More grist for the mill.... Watch it and weep Bobbe!

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1827235/o ... not_exist/

[Doyle Weigold]

And there's the new president.

[Danny Bates]

Doyle, If you're talking about my avatar (and I doubt if you are) ... it's not the new president... It's Miles Davis

BTW, Thanks everybody for letting me have some fun.

I have a confession to make... The best sounding push pull I ever owned was the '69 that I bought from Harold Fogel's widow Marsha (with help from Johnny Cox) and I sold it to Bill Simmons, somehow Randy Gillium ended up with it...
(Doesn't Randy end up with every guitar anyway?) and now it belongs to Dave Billar in Texas.

Now the bad news... It wasn't black!

[Ulf Edlund]

I once did a refinish job on a Franklin, from wood to black mica.
It enhanced the tone so much i could no longer handle it. Had to sell...
A rosewood Emmons (with black pickups) is just as much tone as i can take. But i'm still learning.

[Donny Hinson]

If black ain't best, how come Jack Daniels Black Label is the most expensive?

It's not. Their "Silver Label" is far more expensive.

[Gary C. Dygert]

Does tuning fluid work on the ojnab? Also, I know a guy who mistakenly put C6 tuning fluid in his E9 guitar, and the results weren't pretty.

[Randal Smith]

I don't think Tuning Fluid will help an ojnab.

Lighter fluid on the other hand. . .

[Bob Cox]

The real deal is when you have all Black steels you can own as many as you want, and your wife probably won,t know it.But the minute you buy a red or blue one and play it in front of her she will tree on it like Daniel Boone's coon dog.