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My unscientific opinion as a guitarist is that thermal loss isn't a dominant factor. Most of the energy put into the instrument is converted to sound. Admitted
by beat 11y ago
My unscientific opinion as a guitarist is that thermal loss isn't a dominant factor. Most of the energy put into the instrument is converted to sound.
Admittedly, guitars are different from violins here, but... with a guitar, there's a pretty fixed amount of energy transmitted when a string is plucked. This energy may radiate quickly or slowly. In other words, there's a tradeoff of attack and sustain. An exaggerated case it the banjo. A banjo is loud, but has little sustain. An unplugged Les Paul electric makes little acoustic sound, but sustains for many seconds. Within the narrower world of acoustic guitars, small-bodied guitars tend to be apparently louder, but not as rich as large-bodied guitars, due to this attack/sustain tradeoff.
- Retric 11y agoSound contains far less energy than you might expect. 80 decibels, ~= 0.001 watts of energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_energy_density_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_energy_density_level PS: And yes most home speakers ~1% efficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker#Efficiency_vs._sensitivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker#Efficiency_vs._sen... At scale they can get into the 20% range, but even that suggests guitars are probably not that efficient overall.
- beat 11y agoFrom experience, an acoustic guitar is about as powerful volume-wise as 1/2 to 1 watt electric guitar amp with a moderately efficient speaker. And there just isn't a whole lot of energy transmitted from a guitar pick to a string. Whatever the efficiency is, there aren't wide variations in acoustic guitar volume that can't be explained by the attack/sustain tradeoff.
- CarVac 11y agoBowed instruments get around the attack/sustain tradeoff by having continuous energy input, so the attack strength can be sustained for the duration of a note. My cello is particularly resonant, and in hindsight (is this confirmation bias talking?) has very little sustain on pizzicato (plucking) compared to my cheap, less-resonant student cello.