Walnut confusion

S

Stork

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I've got a walnut strat body on order (and a walnut neck with a rosewood board).  Based on the walnut body tone description on Warmoth's site I had expected the guitar to be quite bright (and partly why I went for a rosewood board).  I had therefore assumed that I'll need pickups that are not overly treble-heavy.  However, the guys at Bare Knuckle Pickups told me that in their experience walnut strats sound very dark and that I needed very clear and bright pickups, which appears to contradict the body tone description on Warmoth website. 

Furthermore, I then noticed that Warmoth's neck wood options page gave a different tone description for walnut than their body options page.  The neck page indicates walnut was more middle of the range rather than nearly as bright as maple, thus contradicting their body wood page. In other forums I've found more contradicting statements on walnut ranging from 'warm as rosewood' to 'ice pick'.

I am therefore a little bit confused what a strat with a walnut body and neck will sound like and therefore at pains to figure out how to match pickups to the body and neck on order.

Does anyone have any experiences on walnut strat tone, especially when it comes to deciding between bright or less bright pickups?

Thanks in advance!
 
I built an all walnut last year , with an ebony board .  It is bright  but has a good range. I wouldn't back off the pickups too much
  I used TV jones Classic / Classic Plus and couldn't be more pleased .
 
The tonal characteristics Warmoth touts on the pages where they describe their behavior are not only all relative and subjective, there's no scale, and we're not given a reference. So, the necks could be on a scale of 1 to 10 from bright to dark, while the bodies are on a scale of 1 to 100. Then, the range of the graphs is not marked, so the neck response graphs could be showing the whole 1-10 range, while the body response graphs could be limited to a range of 50 to 60 to describe bright to dark. This makes the difference more prominent. If they showed the entire range on the body responses, chances are they'd all fall into such a narrow range that they'd all look very much the same. Not that Warmoth is trying to mislead; it's just that difference is difficult to plot unless it's expanded.

This is a common trick in computer component performance stats, speaker response curves, and microphone curves, among other things. If you wanna sell a new widget, you gotta present in the proper light. With guitars, the question of body species performance is asked so often that you have to show something, so you expand the scale and only show the area where change takes place. This isn't to sell more of one species than another, it's just to answer the non-stop questions players have about how to build/buy their guitar so they can sound like their heros.

Making it worse is that wood is inconsistent even within a species. One piece will be harder than another, or more elastic, or more brittle, or lighter, all from the same log. Swamp Ash is a good example. The lower 6 feet or so of the tree will produce much less dense, lighter wood than the rest of it will, so it's going to sound a little different. It's just Ash, but it grew in a swamp where the lower trunk was constantly in some depth of water.  Spalted Maple would be another example. How spalted is it? In other words, how rotted is it? If it's very rotten, it'll look super-cool, but it'll be a very spongy, friable piece of wood. Gonna absorb vibrations pretty seriously.

In the grand scheme of things, body wood doesn't make as much difference in the character of the guitar as some would believe. It's just a slab of hardwood, and as such it has a lotta weight and inertia to it that isn't going to respond too sympathetically to the vibrations of metal strings a few thousandths in diameter tensed up to 10lbs-15lbs. That's why you have to have such high sound pressure levels to get feedback on electrics, while amplified acoustics will feed back if you look at them wrong.

That's not to say that body wood makes NO difference, just that it's not as great as often thought. Where you will hear a lotta difference is in neck woods, and even the same wood may sound different on different necks depending variations in the wood itself as well as dimensional differences in length and thickness.

Pickups are the main thing, but that's another post.



 
Cagey said:
Pickups are the main thing, but that's another post.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

Cagey, sounds like may have a view on which (single coil) pickups could work well with walnut body + walnut neck strat. Any suggestions?
 
Stork said:
Cagey, sounds like may have a view on which (single coil) pickups could work well with walnut body + walnut neck strat. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

I don't know what you want to hear, and even if I did it's difficult to know how a pickup set is going to behave in a given situation.

If it was me, given all the Walnut involved, I think I'd want something fairly bright. Also, since it's me, I wouldn't want any noise. Hate noise. Fortunately, the state of the art in noiseless pickups is pretty advanced these days. You can get single coil character without the suffering. I've used DiMarzios, Seymour Duncan, Bill Lawrence, GFS, and others in my own guitars, as well as Lollars, Gibsons, Fenders, Kinmans, etc. in other people's guitars, and I'm still down to Bill Lawrence and GFS parts. They sound great and don't try to rape you to pay for their marketing weenies.

From GFS, I'm impressed with their TrueCoil offerings. They sound like single coils without noise, period. Very effective. Not completely quiet, but close enough for rock and roll. From Bill Lawrence, anything sounds good, but check out the Micro-Coils (scroll down to see) Note: it's a terrible website, but don't be deterred.
 
I guess to answer my own question now that the guitar is complete (in case anyone else is thinking about building a walnut strat with walnut neck and rosewood board): 

A walnut body and neck (with a rosewood board) appears to be fairly balanced tone-wise, not too bright but not boomy or bassy either.  In the end I went with Bareknuckle pickups' "PAT Pending '63 Veneer Board" set which seems to work well with the choice of woods giving it a clear and balanced vintage sound.  The guitar is heavy though - right up there similar to my mahogany bodied gold top LP...
 
I wouldn't sweat too much what the body is.  Before I'm accused of "all woods sound the same," there are so many variables in electric guitar component choices, one can only argue the percentage proportions.  You're building a Warmoth, so I already know 2 things.  1.) You like to tinker. 2.) You have a disposable income/entertainment budget

The handful of things that color tone end with your imagination.  Hardware material/mass, pot values, cap values, brand and string gauge, pickup choice, neck wood, body wood, fretboard wood, nut material, fret material, etc.  It will sound most like you, your amp, gain level, pickups, neck wood, and body wood towards the bottom of the list.

To complicate things, you could build 2 identical guitars and they would sound different.

Enjoy.  We like pics.
 
Sorry but wood type matters most of all, over pickups, etc. It's the first and main source, assuming the typical types of strings, bridge & frets are used, wood trumps everything.

I have had so many warmoth bodies of all the lesser used woods. My walnut body is like a smoother version of a maple body. not like mahogany at all except for a touch thicker and deader in the lower mids to middle mids, yet slight peak in upper mids. Tighter low strings definition. not as open as ash, darker than hard ash. harder thicker than alder. Less highs than maple, not as tight or zingy upper harmonic bite as maple. Same thing with my Walnut Neck. Softer and smoother than a maple neck. Less bite than maple, but more defined than mahogany neck.

If the wood you have has a certain harmonic signature to it, it will always be there no matter what pickups, amp, you use. Will you notice? Do you care? Depends on how particular and perceptive you are and/or want to be with this. Wood always influences the character the most. Notice I said character. This is more complex than just treble or bass or the generic term "mids" which is too wide of a range its very deceptive. High mids? Low mids? Middle mids? What freq? I'm talking more about the complex resonances of all freqs in the mids too, which are hard to talk about and compare. Also woods affect dynamics and resonance greatly, which makes the FEEL of the strings and pick attack change. This is why wood is most important in the chain, as no pickup or amp can change those more complex factors that come from the WOOD. They are stuck there and will always be there. Pickups and amps can try to hide, mask or accentuate some of these factors, but can never eliminate them as main source of character, again not only of "tone" but "feel" and beyond, as deep as your mind and ear and fingers can process the more complex variances that are harder to define and talk about. Things such as pots, caps and cables are only simple rolloff filters that dont do much as compared to the complexities of wood differences, and are easily cheaply changeable, so dont worry about electronics at all til the end after you get the woods right. Worry about the wood the most. Get the wood right first, and the rest comes easy.
 
timuwmun said:
Will you notice? Do you care? Depends on how particular and perceptive you are and/or want to be with this.
Click to expand...




This is the meat of your entire post.  The rest is religion, or more charitably, opinion.


Edit:  More correctly, yes, the tone of a guitar is dependent in the aggregate on all the factors that go into the axe, including body wood.  My point is you're asserting certain things as incontrovertible fact when they are objectively at variance with verifiable reality, or else you are overstating your case because of your own particular beliefs.  If we were talking acoustic guitars, I would agree quite strongly with your central thesis, i.e., that the body wood is the most important thing when it comes to how a guitar sounds.  But electric guitars work differently.  The manner in which the primary noise they make is delivered to the ears is via amplification of an electrical signal, not the sympathetic vibration of the body wood itself.  The mechanism for creation of that electrical signal is thus the primary - but certainly not the only - factor in what goes into your ears.


Welcome, and I hope you continue to find our debates around here worth participating in.  Coming on this strong right out of the gate is a tad off-putting, though.  Just sayin'.
 
Well I'm new to the board, but not new at this game, I've been building warmoths since before they even sold direct to the public (they used to be dealer network only in the early 90s before the internet) and every year have tried new combinations of the lesser used woods, approx 4-5 orders a year times nearly 20 years adds up to my trying close to maybe 75-100 different bodies and necks outside the more normal woods. I have also in that same time frame had prob 100 pickups, dozens of types of bridges, amps, speakers, mics, mic preamps, effects, outboard recording gear, rack guitar gear, etc. I'm obsessed with this stuff. So not new at this.

The primary source of the harmonic signature of the electrics sound is the largest medium between the bridge to fret or nut fulcrum points, which is the wood. Any electronics are secondary and can be used to color the primary, but cannot over ride it.  When I said "want to be" means does a player care that much about their sound to delve into the finer details.  I do because I love it and am very sensitive to harmonic details and dynamic feel. Changing pickups and electronics does not do much beyond simple EQ, and does nothing to change dynamic feel interaction. They just change levels of what is already there or not in the wood, so if it is not in the wood it's not coming thru the pickups, I have found this time and time again with all the warmoth variations I've tried.

you wrote:>>>The manner in which the primary noise they make is delivered to the ears is via amplification of an electrical signal, not the sympathetic vibration of the body wood itself.  The mechanism for creation of that electrical signal is thus the primary - but certainly not the only - factor in what goes into your ears.

The vibrational feedback loop of string to wood and back which creates a strings harmonic distribution and dynamics is the physical tone generator for the pickup. The most unique differences in harmonics and dynamics you can get are from wood variations.  Pickups and electronics are only after the fact final icing on the cake and very simple filter devices. If you think pickups are primary over wood, then you either dont care about where the fine details of harmonics and dynamics come from, or you cant tell those differences, and thats fine, you dont have to know or care, most players dont. But that doesnt mean those differences are not there or not important. 
 
I don't think we disagree about how it works; I think our difference of opinion concerns the degree to which wood contributes.  I can live with that difference of opinion.  As long as we're ultimately happy with what we're doing, well, the details where reasonable minds differ are insufficient to take the joy away.



 
.... point of clarification ....

I was not intentionally trying to be confrontational in my last post, but in hindsight I fear that it might unintentionally be seen as such. Discourse is welcome here, of course. I only wanted to present a couple of instances of alternate construction, and was looking forward to your impressions of those, in light of the views that you've put forward.
 
Prometheus said:
(as a post above was duplicated in another thread, I also am double-posting my reply, from there, to here)

Interesting, and strongly-stated opinion. Would you care to offer your impressions of the 3 "tonewoods" below?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFyQXy74xz4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYLSzKlisx8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hip2YiQCGs
Click to expand...

first off you cant tell anything from youtube samples, miced using camera mics with room sound mixed in, and using distortion, all that stuff cakes over and buries nuances. But more importantly we as players in order to see if a guitar has potential dynamic and harmonic nuances to exploit the variations thereof HAVE TO PLAY THEM OURSELVES to FEEL the level of dynamic/harmonic control! Doesnt matter what anything sounds like on a video, record, or even live in person to me from someone else playing it. I HAVE TO PLAY IT to be able to judge it by feel AND sound. The two are LINKED and that is what most people are missing with judging elec guitars, they think its all just about sound. Its not. Unless they dont care. Then sound is all they judge. Not all players are FEEL players like gilmour, trower, scofield, etc but they get that great exoressive sound from the FEEL first, then of course it sounds greatly expressive as a result. My point is that which inspires the actual player to play their best is the most important thing, and that "Thing" is dynamic control from feeling in control of expressive ranges of harmonics from wood IN DIRECT RELATION to response to dynamic range variation. Dynamic control of the tonal nuances and harmonic content from variances in pick attack is where the magic lies, and very expressive players such as gilmour, trower, scofield and others at that level that are known for their dynamic touch variations are masters of exploiting those nuances. If your woods allow for wide variations in response at many different freqs with picking dynamics variations, then a very expressive sound will follow, and the player has ultimate control to wring out every bit of emotion they can put in, IF they are dynamic players like the guys mentioned above. If they are just players bashing out stuff at a constant level and dont exploit wide variations of touch in their style, then nuances really dont matter as much to them and wont come out of the guitar anyways, so doesnt really matter what they play. If the trower/scofield/gilmours of the world played concrete acrylic or aluminum guitars, their range of organic dynamic harmonic variations would be severely limited. Their feel and sound would be restricted and we would not get to hear them pull off their magic.

I have played aluminum Travis Bean guitars, as well as acrylic strat bodies and dan armstrong ones, and masonite particleboard cheapo Kalamazoo and Gibson Sonex (resin/bondo?) body guitars. Also moses graphite necks, and carbon Parker flys. They all "make a sound" but suck dynamically as they have their own limited one dimensional range of harmonic/dynamic expression. Same with a concrete guitar. I have experimented with anchoring strings between different building materials and same thing...limited range unless its wood. Wood has complex organic core structures that resonate harmonics and dynamics differently than simpler more homogenous materials such as acrylic/masonite/concrete/metals/bondo/fiberglass/etc. They dont have a wide dynamic variation when I played them. The acrylic guitar felt plastic and dead, so in person me playing it sounded that way too, did not respond to dynamic/harmonic variation. The alum travis bean bright cold thin dead. Good sustain tho, but who cares bout that. The cheapo particle board guitars lifeless. Same w graphite+carbon. The concrete post string test I did gave lots of sustain but a hard simple one dimension sound. That piezo guys concrete block guitar sounded like crap, one dimensional, yet he said his piezo made it sound like a good acoustic? What a load of crap. Just sounds like a piezo on concrete and thats it, nothing good about that. Does it make a sound, yes and thats good enuff for 90% of players who dont care what they play, they just want to rock or folk out. No classical or jazz player or true electric tone freak will be fooled.  Piezos suck regardless, I've tried even the best of them too, and still no comparison to micing a real acoustic.

So long story short, to truly judge finer wood nuances if you aspire to gilmoure trower scofield etc levels of expression, you have to play everything YOURSELF to FEEL the level of dynamic control range in relationship to harmonics at diff freqs, and this is impossible to get out of listening to someone elses playing on clips or videos or even in person.  So thats why in my first post I say DO YOU CARE? Many dont care or dont have the feel of the master touch type players above, so most anything is good enough for them, they just want to rock out, blues jam out, etc.

Think of this FEEL dynamic/harmonic interaction analogous to the difference between playing a tube amp vs a solid state amp or modelling amp. Most people get this FEEL difference right away, regardless of tone or sound...ie if it doesnt FEEL right to start, its never going to give them variation range in sound to allow max expressiveness. But again do they care, can they tell, does it matter to them. Depends what kind of player they are, style, heros, music, etc. Not everyone is a gilmour trower scofield type. Most rockers/metallers/shredders/indie/punk/pop/country/folk or dirt simple blues type players could care less about nuances at finer levels. Not every style of guitar music puts emotional expression as most important at all. Its more for refined guitar music type players into deeper instrumental expression where nuances become more important than not. It all depends on what level of importance one wants to put on their expressiveness. Some dont even know there is more expressiveness out there to be had, or even know what they want. They will never know til they try it themselves.

 
Goll-ee! You've had a lot of words saved up over the past thirty years.... I kind-of agree with you about some stuff. Though, I've spent more time the past few years playing maple and aluminum steel guitars than anything else - kind of bright, you might say?  :laughing3: But I use and make a whole lot of different bars to play with, and decay is hugely important part of musical sound. The modern obsession with sustain as the be-all and end-all of quality is nutty, and electronic compression just compounds the whole soulless problem. You can't FIND a guitar solo on a modern country radio hit that isn't WAY more distorted and compressed than 90% of anything Hendrix or Page ever put out. It just sounds like shit, and even the players know it. The Nashville studio cats spend their nights in clubs down on Broadway street, atoning for their sins by playing bebop on hollowbodies. And I agree totally about piezos, HOW that sound ever became marginally acceptable is beyond me. There are people who now think that how guitars are supposed to sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVUwrifwKrI

I agree with the comment that Steven Stills is amazing there on his "solo" around 5:00 - that's one of the most hideous-sounding, sloppy-ass fakey-eastern pieces of crap I've ever heard, the $2.99 plastic ukelele tone is astonishing and I'm AMAZED he hasn't demanded it be destroyed.

However, I disagree about much too. One of the "ones I really wish I had back" was a Travis Bean TB1000, and it was HUGELY expressive, almost too much - every single nuance of your fingers was reproduced exactly, and you had to be fully engaged to make it sound good. To this day the single best test I can use to examine a guitar student's playing is to plug them into a bright, dead-clean, no-compression no-overdrive amp setting with just a hint of reverb - can they play music? Or merely make guitar noises....

The alum travis bean bright cold thin dead. Good sustain tho, but who cares bout that.
Click to expand...

And in playing things like steel guitars, me ol' Bean, my current aluminum Telecaster, I can ASSURE you there are tons of bass and midrange in there too, more than anyone can ever need. They sound "thin" cause they're not loud enough, they sound "ice-picky" if you haven't figured out how and where to EQ them properly, or they sound bad because you can't PLAY them. MOST steel guitarists are hugely picky about speaker choice, because they all have huge roll-offs past 2K somewhere, and learning about those and how to arrange the proportions of low-mids, upper-mids and highs is an ongoing job, that's all. A four-band EQ with at least semi-parametric control over separate lower and upper mids is pretty much standard for a steel setup these days, and those things are a joy to play guitar through when you figure it out.

Of course there have been many happy accidents over the years. A mahogany setneck into a dimed 50-watt no-master Marshall into clean PA speakers (NO horns) is a favorite that worked for early Santana, middle-Beck, and especially Duane Allman; a Gretch guitar into a Fender Bassman, a Strat into a Marshall with correct speaker choices and attenuated highs; but reproducing accidents is a ridiculous, expensive & even futile task for people who don't even know where frequencies are, try asking a guitarist where the "mid-range" is - half of them point to their 10th fret....

Speaking of walnut, this is a bloodwood roundback neck, fretless ebony board neck on a truly evil piece of first-growth Appalachian walnut - I reshaped the lower cutaway a bit, and a wood rasp just bounced off the stuff - not too many Jaguars weigh 12 pounds.... sustains like a howling mother, and can be played with all the nuance in the world. But only if you know how and if you picked the right mother.

 
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