It Worked for Me: String Dampening

by Mark French

Originally published in American Lutherie #109, 2012

I noticed that Michael Cone uses a piece of foam to damp the strings on the guitar for testing (AL#102, p. 8). This is pretty much universal. If you don’t damp the strings, the body response is swamped by the string response. I’ve been testing guitars since the early ’90s and have spent way too much time cutting pieces of foam to put under strings.

A little while ago, I thought to use disposable foam earplugs. They are cheap, universally available, and designed for high damping. Better still, they are just the right size to stuff between guitar strings. I have had the best luck with the yellow foam ear plugs made by EAR, but the cheap generic ones work well enough. You don’t even have to throw the earplugs away when you are done. ◆