Wood debate, from a scientific point of view, with math.

[Cagey]

Totally different in 100% acoustics guitars though.

Right. I'm sure that's where a lot of the misinformation about electric guitars comes from. People read or hear something and if it isn't qualified as pertaining only to acoustics, they assume it means all guitars. Then it gets repeated enough times to become dogma, and here we are.

 

[jay4321]

He's not a bad contributor on YouTube but he's got a somewhat thin skin. I've seen one of his videos on this subject, not sure if it's this one, where he somewhat backpedals on the issue without realizing it. He noted that wood species isn't important, it's the properties of the piece of wood. I think fair to say without hard data that certain species tend more to certain properties (notably weight, density). Which is something you need to factor in before building an instrument.

Petty attitude aside, he at least gets people talking about some of the snake oil being sold to customers & puts his positions out there clearly, with reasoning. 

 

[Strat Avenger]

From my experience, I know for a fact that the weight and density of the wood that bodies & necks are constructed of does indeed affect the tone of an electric guitar. People always refer to species, but that's just a generalization. If you have two slabs of wood of the same species but from different trees, the weight & density of one could be different from the other, and the two could produce different tonal qualities from each other. I also know for a fact that the fretboard material doesn't do diddly squat  to shape the tone of an electric guitar. Maybe acoustic guitars, but not electric. It's a bunch of guitar magazine mythology that continues to be perpetuated.

 

[sadman]

  from religious point of view...
the neck  -  the father
the bridge  -  the son
the electronics  -  the holy spirit
the body  -  the masses of believers 

Merry Christmas

 

[kgk9000]

I can promise you one thing, he's not a physicist, that much is clear.

There seem to be a few professional scientists and engineers looking at this stuff (http://asa.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1121/1.4871360), but I haven't read any of their work.  :headbang5

In my very limited view, the most important things are (roughly in order) how/where the pick hits, the pick material, the tension on the string (for the transient response), the pickup location, and then the pickup architecture; after that, I have no idea.  I'm sure that wood will make an impact, but it must be dwarfed by the above factors (?).  But don't listen to me, I have tin ears!

 

[amigarobbo]

He's not a bad contributor on YouTube...

He got caught a trollin' His friend and allies Duncan at DKG Custom, in a series of Popcorntastic rather  personal, now deleted youtube videos. 

So I'm not too sure about that.

As regards wood effecting the sound of a guitar, I though in a live situation I would be able to tell the difference between single coil and humbuckers, and that's about it.

To cut a longish story short I went to see Scandinavian pop starlet Mø live, very pop*, not rock at all, but at certain points the guitarist would pull out a 12 string. I really couldn't tell from the sound alone.

[youtube]WjogtWzdjc8[/youtube]
17:30ish in, if you're interested.

Sure it's not the most guitar oriented sound, but like I could tell the difference between an ash or alder body in a live situation?



*The early stuff was alright, but she's too commercial now.  :toothy11:

 

[Logrinn]

... but like I could tell the difference between an ash or alder body in a live situation?

Very true

 

[Cagey]

And yet, Al DiMeola and Frank Zappa both played guitars made of Mahogany and sounded wildly different. Go figure. I wonder if it could have had anything to do with how they played? Nah. I bet it was that Al's guitar had a polyurethane finish. No other explanation, really.

 

[AirCap]

I also know for a fact that the fretboard material doesn't do diddly squat  to shape the tone of an electric guitar.

Your facts lack evidence to back up your claims.

The fretboard doesn't have much influence on the sustained note of the guitar, but it does determine the attack of the note. Denser stuff like ebony has a quicker, brighter attack - but a darker sustained tone. Maple boards aren't quite as quick, but exhibit a bright sustained tone. Rosewood - less quick, and so on.

 

[snouter]

I encountered that guy on You Tuber, he is okay, just opinionated. He even invited me to some You Tube live event of some kind.  Anyhow,  I did a video or two at least using iZotope and Cakewalk plugins to support my view that the body and neck both have an effect on the sound.  It is more obvious when one is interacting with the instrument because it is not the sound the "audience" hears but the way the sound feels to play.  To me this was obvious after swapping a Maple/Brazilian Rosewood neck with a Padouk/Pau Ferro neck on the same guitar.  It was like no wonder, sadly, Brazilian Rosewood was overharvested.  More punch and mid to upper frequencies. 

[youtube]AwTW2NShwng[/youtube]

 

[snouter]

One more...and there are even more!    :headbanging:

[youtube]I1aXznM8N70[/youtube]

 

[mayfly]

*The early stuff was alright, but she's too commercial now.  :toothy11:

I liked the groovy lights  :icon_jokercolor:

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

We need Sheldon Cooper on this!

 

[snouter]

When I was just learning about the relevance of tone wood I happen to stop by Carmine Street Guitars in Manhattan.  The owner said was an associate of PRS before PRS was big time.  He had a giant piece of ebony holding the front door open.  He was one of the first guys to discuss the microscopic structure of tonewood that it gets better over time because of drying out, etc.  Which roasted maple solves.  He had a stash of a wood he used for necks (I forgot the name) harvested about 100 years ago which he said was so stable did not need a truss rod.  Seems kind of outrageous and have no idea what happened in that regard.

I think this is his current website.

http://www.kellyguitars.com/

 

[Strat Avenger]

I also know for a fact that the fretboard material doesn't do diddly squat  to shape the tone of an electric guitar.

Your facts lack evidence to back up your claims.

The fretboard doesn't have much influence on the sustained note of the guitar, but it does determine the attack of the note. Denser stuff like ebony has a quicker, brighter attack - but a darker sustained tone. Maple boards aren't quite as quick, but exhibit a bright sustained tone. Rosewood - less quick, and so on.

My ears are the only evidence I need. Whether you believe it or not is not my problem. It does not affect the "attack" or anything else, all else being equal in a comparison. It's nothing but guitar magazine and marketing hype.

 

[Cagey]

Sometimes the differences are so subtle that the space between real and imagined is pretty thin. Plus, there really is such a thing as a "trained" ear. For a more obvious example, many people can't hear the difference between a FLAC recording and an MP3, while to others one of the two is a waste of storage media.

 

[Strat Avenger]

Sometimes the differences are so subtle that the space between real and imagined is pretty thin. Plus, there really is such a thing as a "trained" ear. For a more obvious example, many people can't hear the difference between a FLAC recording and an MP3, while to others one of the two is a waste of storage media.

True, but I happen to have very good ears, which is one of the reasons I became a musician.
I can hear the difference between different neck & body materials (all else being identical), but I, as well as others have discovered that fretboard materials have pretty much zero effect on electric guitar tone. There is definitely no "warm" and "bright" difference between a maple neck, and a maple neck with a thin slab of rosewood on it.

 

[Cederick]

I encountered that guy on You Tuber, he is okay, just opinionated. He even invited me to some You Tube live event of some kind.  Anyhow,  I did a video or two at least using iZotope and Cakewalk plugins to support my view that the body and neck both have an effect on the sound.  It is more obvious when one is interacting with the instrument because it is not the sound the "audience" hears but the way the sound feels to play.  To me this was obvious after swapping a Maple/Brazilian Rosewood neck with a Padouk/Pau Ferro neck on the same guitar.  It was like no wonder, sadly, Brazilian Rosewood was overharvested.  More punch and mid to upper frequencies. 

[youtube]AwTW2NShwng[/youtube]

Listen to the second part with "cleaner" sound.

It's obvious that he didn't strum the strings even remotely the same.

On one guitar he managed to hit the higher strings harder, and on one the lower strings harder.
That's very misleading.

Not saying he can't be right about the chambered thing, but he must at least strum the strings more consistently on each take.

 

[Cederick]

I made this experiment a while ago. Took a big body blank, recorded, cut off most of it, and recorded.

My conclusions:

1. Practically no affect in tone/EQ
2. After cutting the body, the smaller one appears to have a little less sustain.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KdncmJtijY[/youtube]

Some people have said "I can hear a clear difference".

But then... just like the above clip with the Chambered Tele...
That guy didn't even strum the strings consistantly at all.
I at least tried my best... but it's a bit hard to strum exactly the same when the body size is so ridicolously different because of arm position etc etc.

Even if there is a different, I think it's a waste of time to worry about shape / size.

Some people swear they can hear a difference between Flying V and Explorer, especially if you go to any Gibson forum...

People even worry about loss of tone when routing a SSS strat for HSS, I've seen that! Like "if I rout for a humbucker, will the wood cut away affect the tone?"  :toothy12:

 

[Cagey]

The power of suggestion is tremendous, even when it's just implied. For instance, not too long ago a buddy was over playing my Velocity, which has a set of those newfangled Fishman Fluence 'single coil' pickups in it. There are two switchable features to those units. One is more or less an output level boost to simulate a "Texas" overwind, and the other is what they call a "HF Tilt", which is basically just a small high cut to simulate the capacitance effect of a long cable.

He couldn't hear the high cut happening, and was of the opinion I didn't wire it, or wired it wrong. That the battery was dead after a month of sitting but not plugged in reinforced the wiring error theory. My hearing is good enough that the flyback transformers on some CRT-based monitors and TVs bother me, which usually sing along with Mitch at around 16Khz, so I could hear it. I told him that his ears were too decrepit after 60 years of rock 'n' roll to hear anything, and that he should move into a home where they could feed him mush and change his diaper real regular. He told me to scratch glass and turn blue. Things deteriorated from there, and I think I'm out of the will now.

Anyway, I can't have batteries dying prematurely so after he left I opened up the the Velocity's guts to check my wiring. Turns out I never wired that switch for some stupid reason that escapes me now, so there's no way I heard it having any effect on the pickup's operation. The only thing affected was my deflicted brain.

The power of suggestion. It's a thing.