Well, I'm a scientist, so I like to test things to see that I'm not fooling myself and put some cold hard facts where my mouth is. Me harping on about how this is a remarkably resonant guitar doesnt mean much.
So I thought I'd try and measure the resonance of my main guitars.
My 4 main guitars were tested. My other 4 electrics were left out because they either just plain wont cut it in this line up or they're set up differently, different gauges, different tunings and what have you, so it would be a meaningless test.
Basic assumption - the resonance of the instrument is going to be reflected in its unplugged volume.
All guitars set up 12-60, tuned to drop A#, all have action of ~1mm @12th high C to 1.5mm @12th low A#, all necks near flat, all strings are fresh.
All measurements taken with my decibelometer at 30cm from 12th fret, set DBO to record peak SPL, dbA, and hit all strings open reasonably hard a few times. Care taken to hit the strings equally hard and have the DBO aligned the same each time, but theres none of us perfect, so these will be the biggest sources of error. All looked and felt pretty much as good as I was going to get it by eye and feel, and a bit of well informed common sense tells me that errors of the order of mils in distance and degrees in orientation would lead to insignificant variations in the data compared to the differences in volumes found. I also know fine well how hard I'm picking, and do so consistently, but youre going to have to take my word for that (or listen to my clips: thats pretty consistent picking imo).
DX1 - tusty old buddy, had it for ~10 years, nothing incredible but it usually bests equivelent and more upper end guitars in resonance.
74.9db
1989 RG560. Nothing to look at, I like RGs, a lot, hence the shape of the Aurora, and this is the most resonant one I found, so I bought it. Spax screws Bob sent me for the neck join enhanced its resonance somewhat, too.
75.8db
MDV602
76.5db
Aurora
78.4db
Which puts it at ~2.25 times as resonant as the jackson, twice as resonant as the RG and about 50% more than the 602, by this admitedly clumsy and modestly scientific method. And its completely unbroken in. I hate to imagine how strongly this is going to resonate after a few years of the strings pumping vibrational energy into the wood, breaking down any structures in the wood that are inhibiting vibration (and on that note consider that the Legras just ousted 10 and 20 year old guitars, and they're 3 and 0 years old).
