Amy, Bob, Richard
Thanks for your response and interest. I'm retired used to be an
engineer
before management laid waste to that. I've started taking weekly guitar
lessons over a year ago and slowly getting a bit better. It's a hell
of a challenge at 66. I want
to buy a better guitar and all guitars don't sound the same, even the
same model. One shouldn't expect them to because they're all made from
different cuts of wood and assembled by human hands. What amazed me is
that the materials used for the nut, neck, saddle and bridge as well as
the mfg and age of the strings have a noticeable effect on the sound.
The bridge pins, angle of the strings out of the bridge pin holes and
tuners also have effects.
In the last year I found at least four guitars that I really liked, 3
used ones and a new one all over a $1000.00 but I passed because I'm not
that impulsive or flush with cash. A good player can make just about
any guitar sound good, or a hell of a lot better than me.
I'm into ham radio also and last year at hamfest I traded for an HP
3582A spectrum analyzer but the learning curve is a bit steep for me.
So unless I can find an experienced user or devote much more time to it
I'm going to have to trade it.
Last week I won an HP 3561A on ePay but it has a problem that I hope I
can fix. In the meantime I thought it might make sense to scope out
sound cards and related software. I know a lot of hams use sound cards
for various & different applications and it's about time I took a wack
at one and what better way than trying to figure out what it is that
makes one guitar sound so much better than another. Or if changing the
nut, saddle or bridge pins really improves the sound or is it just
wishful thinking.
And I can make use of it for ham radio weak signal detection and
analysis.
I used a term; slab diagrams which may be known as stack diagrams. I'm
interested in watching a plucked and later chords as they decay over
time in sort of a 3D plot. There's a good example of what I'm looking
for in the HP catalog describing the HP 3561A.
tnx

73
Hank WD5JFR

"Richard Clark" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:16:29 -0600, "Henry Kolesnik"
wrote:

There's a good example of a 3D plot he
http://www.spectraplus.com/screenshots.html#3d
Has anyone used this software?

Hi Hank,

Yes, I have. It is exceedingly expensive, but you can probably get 30
days of free use if you have a one-time knock off project. Of course,
it may take 30 days to figure it out.

FFT analyzers are a dime a dozen, but few know how to use them
accurately - or are even aware of what can be done with them. Bob's
complaint, notwithstanding, a 1024 bin FFT employing the proper mixing
inputs can resolve any note on a guitar to within hundredths of a
cycle. I am sure this is of no interest to you, however.

What are you trying to measure? The dime a dozen analyzers (meaning
free, or packaged with other software) can do enough if you are not
particularly demanding.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC