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Post by wiz on Jan 25, 2022 17:52:20 GMT -6
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Post by Ward on Jan 25, 2022 18:42:57 GMT -6
certainly captivated me!!
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Post by svart on Jan 25, 2022 21:11:25 GMT -6
Yep. There was a guy years ago to did all kinds of tests similar to this. He engineered some kind of resonance test of the woods and found they made zero difference on solid body electric guitars. His list (only technical stuff) would have been:
1. Pickup.
2. Strings.
3. Electronics.
4. Setup.
5. Pick.
6. Bridge.
Very similar to what this guy found.
Tonewood in electric guitars is a MYTH.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jan 25, 2022 21:21:23 GMT -6
So the body and wood makes zero difference. At least that’s what I got from listening on the iPhone. |
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Post by srb on Jan 25, 2022 22:31:02 GMT -6
Interesting.
When we're using studio equipment, we don't look at how (or from what) the case is composed. We go to great lengths describing the electronic components, their configuration and the subsequent benefits.
The "romantic" in me wants wood, weight, finish, et cetera to matter when it comes to guitars.
We can have another discussion later about string tension and why some guitars play "tighter" than others.
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Post by Ward on Jan 26, 2022 17:13:40 GMT -6
There are 4 things not being considered here
1. Wood. Yes, Virginia, there is a Tone Wood. And does it affect the amplified sound of an electric guitar?
well, only sort of. See, different woods resonate differently which affects sustain and the entire decay envelope
2. Bridge Geometry. The sharper the angle on the bridge, like a 90º telecaster bridge, the more attack oriented the sound is. The differences with a Tele compared to a Strat to a Les Paul, to a Jazzmaster, are very evident when you put the same pickup in each.
3. Neck angle to body. The lower the strings are to the wood, the more tone seems to be soaked up
4. Headstock 'break' angle. Affects the angle at which the strings cross over the nut, similarly to the bridge geometry. There is a slight difference in harmonic content.
Which is why you can have the same pickup in a Les Paul, Tele, SG and Jassmaster and each guitar will sound different. Same basic electronics.
As luck would have it, I have a Telecaster (Tele-Gib Jeff Beck mod copy) I built, a 1982 Les Paul Standard, a 1982 Les Paul Custom and a 1975 SG all with Tim Shaw hum buckers in them. They each sound different to each other.
I kind of feel compelled to do a simple iPhone video showing off the differences on each. I'll use a basic wireless to make switching easy.
Which kind of amp would you think would best illustrate guitar differences? Vox AC30, Marshall JMP, Marshall Plexi, Dr Z Stangray or a Dr Z Maz. Or a fender Black face?
Just gonna do some simple things like the OG showed here.
If you can't hear the differences I hear, no harm no foul.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2022 19:31:54 GMT -6
Yep. There was a guy years ago to did all kinds of tests similar to this. He engineered some kind of resonance test of the woods and found they made zero difference on solid body electric guitars. His list (only technical stuff) would have been: 1. Pickup. 2. Strings. 3. Electronics. 4. Setup. 5. Pick. 6. Bridge. Very similar to what this guy found. Tonewood in electric guitars is a MYTH. You need to tell that to my Kramer Pacer.. I've gutted all the electronics, changed the strings numerous times, swapped out the pup's, replaced the trem with a fixed bridge and no matter what I do to it the thing sounds roughly the same. |
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Post by Johnkenn on Jan 27, 2022 12:19:00 GMT -6
There are 4 things not being considered here 1. Wood. Yes, Virginia, there is a Tone Wood. And does it affect the amplified sound of an electric guitar? well, only sort of. See, different woods resonate differently which affects sustain and the entire decay envelope 2. Bridge Geometry. The sharper the angle on the bridge, like a 90º telecaster bridge, the more attack oriented the sound is. The differences with a Tele compared to a Strat to a Les Paul, to a Jazzmaster, are very evident when you put the same pickup in each. 3. Neck angle to body. The lower the strings are to the wood, the more tone seems to be soaked up 4. Headstock 'break' angle. Affects the angle at which the strings cross over the nut, similarly to the bridge geometry. There is a slight difference in harmonic content. Which is why you can have the same pickup in a Les Paul, Tele, SG and Jassmaster and each guitar will sound different. Same basic electronics. As luck would have it, I have a Telecaster (Tele-Gib Jeff Beck mod copy) I built, a 1982 Les Paul Standard, a 1982 Les Paul Custom and a 1975 SG all with Tim Shaw hum buckers in them. They each sound different to each other. I kind of feel compelled to do a simple iPhone video showing off the differences on each. I'll use a basic wireless to make switching easy. Which kind of amp would you think would best illustrate guitar differences? Vox AC30, Marshall JMP, Marshall Plexi, Dr Z Stangray or a Dr Z Maz. Or a fender Black face? Just gonna do some simple things like the OG showed here. If you can't hear the differences I hear, no harm no foul. BF |
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Post by thehightenor on Jan 27, 2022 17:08:58 GMT -6
I think the point is, to play a guitar it has to have a neck and body and from those two imperatives
all other concepts of quality grow and grow in reflection of the quality of the instrument.
It's a great video, but for me so out of context as to be meaningless other than fun to watch.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jan 27, 2022 17:41:59 GMT -6
I think the point is, to play a guitar it has to have a neck and body and from those two imperatives all other concepts of quality grow and grow in reflection of the quality of the instrument. It's a great video, but for me so out of context as to be meaningless other than fun to watch. Yeah - I mean - I don’t want to buy the barn guitar in the video lol. There is a ton to be said about comfort of the neck, weight, how your palm rests on the saddle, etc. But it IS interesting to know all the talk about “this thicker neck makes the tone so much better on my electric guitar…” is not true. Not sure you can convince me with acoustics, though. |
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Post by jmoose on Jan 28, 2022 15:52:10 GMT -6
I can't for a second believe that wood doesn't matter. Not my experience at all.
If pickups & electronics were the only defining factors of an electric guitars tone then we could easily drop the same pickup... choose one... lets say a Duncan JB into a Gibson Les Paul, Ibanez RG, Fender Strat and when plugged in they would all sound the same yes?
But in reality doing that? They don't sound the same! I've done it. And its not even close.
Ok you don't buy it. How about running the racks at a guitar shop?
Get 2 or 3 "identical" guitars side by side... 3 brand new Strats all the same model. Or ESP's or whatever 'ya like. And by golly they all sound a little different. Go ahead and put new strings on 'em too! Make sure pickup heights are the same blah blah... but even unplugged there are differences.
And sometimes 'ya get a guitar that's just dead and no pickups can help. Had a US 62' reissue strat many years ago. Sherwood green. Looked killer. Played great. Deader then anything. No sustain at all. Had the transient response of a banjo. Play a note... wham. Gone. Nothing helped. Burned through like, 4 or 5 sets of pickups and endless setup tweaks. Adios amigo.
I liked the video. It was entertaining & kept my attention but geez... there were some obvious differences in sound between the Anderson & the 2x4 as we'd expect. The top end & attack/transient portions to me were wildly different.
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Post by Guitar on Jan 28, 2022 19:45:35 GMT -6
I didn't learn anything from the video, and nothing seemed to be proved. In fact his test "method" seemed to just be screwing around with little attention to detail.
But it was vaguely satisfying to watch the bench guitar at the end.
Would have made a good science project if the lad was still in grade school.
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Post by jhamm80 on Jan 28, 2022 19:51:31 GMT -6
I've built a good amount of electric guitars and basses from different piles of lumber and I have to say that wood definitely makes a difference.
So does the style of construction, the pickups, electronics, wiring style and the finish. It all adds up.
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Post by wiz on Jan 29, 2022 1:15:04 GMT -6
Hey what a tough crowd…. I thought the guy did a pretty good job and would’ve taken a lot of work to do and I appreciate the work and effort he put in I thought the interesting thing with the matching of the pick up heights And how that simply made one of the biggest differences are bringing the Sound sources so close together
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Post by thehightenor on Jan 29, 2022 3:57:21 GMT -6
I think the point is, to play a guitar it has to have a neck and body and from those two imperatives all other concepts of quality grow and grow in reflection of the quality of the instrument. It's a great video, but for me so out of context as to be meaningless other than fun to watch. Yeah - I mean - I don’t want to buy the barn guitar in the video lol. There is a ton to be said about comfort of the neck, weight, how your palm rests on the saddle, etc. But it IS interesting to know all the talk about “this thicker neck makes the tone so much better on my electric guitar…” is not true. Not sure you can convince me with acoustics, though. Well I think you've hit the nail on the the head mentioning acoustic guitars. I have a few budget acoustic guitars I use for gigging and for recording I'm lucky enough to have a Martin D-18. The Martin has 10x the tone of my budget acoustics and what seems like 50X the sustain! The D-18 just sounds glorious recorded and it's because of all that beautiful wood expertly constructed that creates that iconic tone. So the central question is .... and it is a question I've pondered many times before I even saw this video. Do the magnetic (motor) pic-ups only pickup the movement of the metal strings and turn that movement into electrical energy (which on the face of it does seem the obvious answer as wood doesn't directly effect magnets) Or does the wood of the guitar effect "how" the strings vibrate and then the pick-ups reflect that in the signal. It does seem reasonable that the body of the guitar does effect the sustain of the strings and also one can imagine the wood could impart tone to those vibrations in subtle but significant ways. Part of the proof is found in how a semi-acoustic electric guitar like a Gibson 335 sounds totally different to a Les Paul and proves acoustic character is transferred through string vibration to the pickups and through to the amp. How much all these factors include, as you point out, really small differences like neck width - I'm probably with you on this and I'd seriously struggle to tell the tonal differences between a 7.25 radius and a 9.5 radius neck!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2022 7:41:38 GMT -6
This was an interesting experiment and I thought he was intellectually honest about what he did. Although I tend to agree that a little too much is made of tonewoods in solid body electrics, I think it would be interesting to expand the experiment (it's not going to be me that does it). Our intrepid experimenter is working in the Fender-style world. The tonal color of that sort of guitar (along with single-coil pickups and light strings) is marked by some missing stuff in the midrange. Let me hasten to say that's not a judgement. There's a lot of missing high end in an oboe, for example. This is simply what characterizes the timbre of an instrument.
A humbucker style pickup, along with heavier strings, has a lot more of that midrange (and some more bottom, too). Perhaps there's some difference imparted by the body and constituent woods in this case. Guitar makers do use some florid language in describing their instruments. Some of it matters (particularly attention to detail) and some may not. At any rate, I did enjoy the video. I'm just waiting to hear someone say that Honda engines are a necessary component of good sound!
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Post by Guitar on Jan 29, 2022 10:18:08 GMT -6
Hey, wiz, just read my response, my tone (hahaha) was maybe a bit flat and blunt in text form. But it was written in a calm state of mind, not really with argument as the intention, but just to state my experience with the video. I'm glad to see this man investigating ideas and trying things, that's admirable. I guess the most significant thing that he discovered is the pickup height is important. Personally speaking that would have been step 1 for me. But the whole test seemed to be something like dancing about architecture, or woodworking about astronomy. I guess I'd appreciate the mad science of it and it was "interesting." All the comparisons sounded different to me, which would "prove" to me that all these details matter, rather than not matter. But that bench/air guitar thing at the end, was pretty cool, and I was thinking wow, yeah, that does sound pretty similar to the regular guitar. I guess that would have been the most successful moment of the test from my point of view. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2022 10:20:05 GMT -6
And the 2x4 guitar did remind me of an experiment I did when I was a teenager. I found a 1x10 board in my Dad's shop. It was maybe 20-22" long. I stuck a couple of bindings on it and went water-skiing (no sanding, no finish). The fact that it was warped added to the adventure. Nobody else would get near it, but I enjoyed it for a summer. One of many stupid things on my C.V.
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Post by jeremygillespie on Jan 29, 2022 18:28:39 GMT -6
Woods resonate differently. A fat honking neck resonates differently than a skinny neck you’d find on a Jackson. How you hold the guitar allows it to resonate in certain ways. That translates to how the strings resonate, and in turn how it’s seen by the pickup.
Everything matters. (And nothing matters)
(And yes a nitro guitars sound different than ones with a thick ass poly plastic finish)
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Post by askomiko on Jan 31, 2022 9:25:11 GMT -6
Take an Ibanez RG with their own Floyd rose style bridge, and a telecaster and install same pickup to both. I think it's more the bridge assembly than the wood, but anyways, the difference is huge. I mention Ibanez specifically, to my ear, they have a distinct tone only Ibanez' have, it's gotta be the bridge.
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Post by nick8801 on Jan 31, 2022 19:55:11 GMT -6
There’s a warmoth video where they compare woods. It’s subtle (or not depending on what you listen for). I like ash. Light ash. Makes a huge difference to me.
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