Well I woodnt have believed it.

[steve mac]

All my life I have just accepted it when folk told me that the type of wood a guitar is made out of makes all the difference to the sound. ie Les Paul's are lumps of mahogany to give a darker sound with more sustain. Whereas others are made with Ash or Alder for a lighter twangier sound. Now it seems that with electric guitars it has been proved that it makes no discernible difference. My illusions have been shattered. Who wood have thought it.

[Notes_Norton]

IMHO wood makes a big difference with acoustic guitars but if it makes a difference at all in solid body electric guitars, the difference is negligible.

 

The sound of an electric guitar is made by the strings disturbing a magnetic field, not an acoustic one. If your pickups are wound properly, they do not act like microphones.If you talk into the pickup you shouldn't hear your voice coming out the amplifier. Take the strings off, plug it in, and talk into the pickup. If you hear your voice coming out of the speaker, you have defective pickups.

 

The vibrating string disturbs the magnetic field of the pickup and generates a small electric current. This is how electricity is generated. Electricity and magnetism are related that way. It's pretty much how they do it at the power plant that feeds your grid and eventually your house.

 

The power company uses a fixed frequency (60 cycles per second in the US and 50 in Europe) while the frequency of the string's vibrations depend on how short/long and loose/tense the strings are (pressing behind a fret shortens the string). Different metal alloys have different magnetic properties so the design and manufacture of the string will make a difference in how that magnetic field is disturbed. If you put a nylon string on the electric it won't work (unless wound in a substance that reacts to magnetism like iron or neodymium)

 

The distance from the strings to the pickups matters a lot too as we all know. The closer to the magnet the strings are, the more the magnet will dampen the vibrations changing the shape of the waveform, but on the other hand, the electric signal generated will be stronger.

 

I suppose the wood vibrates a little which would disturb that magnetic field a little by moving the pickups in relationship to the strings, but since the strings are moving (I would guess) well over 100 times as much as the wood it shouldn't make a difference. After all the strings vibrate enough to see, the pickup does not.

 

In electronics class we learned that for almost all applications, anything under 10% is not enough to worry about. In fact, the resistors, capacitors, coils and just about everything else in your guitar, fx units and amps are manufactured to 10% tolerance. High grade military applications sometimes sse 5% parts.

 

After the electricity is generated by the pickups, it is trimmed by the filter attached to the tone control. If you have the treble all the way up the high frequencies are trimmed the least, and as you roll it to the bass side more and more of the high frequencies are trimmed.

 

Then it goes through any FX pedals you have, which also change the sound and after that the amp and speaker system which again change the sound.

 

Any difference the wood makes at the end of all this is probably less than a thousand of a percent. In other words, like a drop in the ocean.

 

So as far as solid body electric guitars are concerned, I would say that Tonewood is a marketing term designed to shrink the membranes in your wallet.

 

Of course, others have a right to disagree with me, but it won't do you any good

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[Notes_Norton]

Let me add, that I do believe the density of the wood is one of the things that contribute to the sustain of the strings, along with the general design of the guitar. But my 5 pound Parker DF sustains as long as my 8 pound LTD faux Les Paul. My 6 pound hollow body Gibson ES-330 sustains much less than the other two.

 

Notes

[daddymack]

Let me add, that I do believe the density of the wood is one of the things that contribute to the sustain of the strings, along with the general design of the guitar. But my 5 pound Parker DF sustains as long as my 8 pound LTD faux Les Paul. My 6 pound hollow body Gibson ES-330 sustains much less than the other two.

 

Notes

 

That is really the deal with solid body wood...sustain. I remember Gibson used to make an ES335 out of solid mahogany (ES-335-S in the early 80s and again around 2011), and that thing would s-u-s-t-a-i-n....but it weighed around 12-13 lbs...in theory, a set neck should sustain better than a bolt-on, and denser woods should provide better sustain, but how often do you let an open note ring more than a second or two during a live performance?

 

 

Also, some mil-spec/aerospace electronic applications use tolerance at 1% or less.

[Vito Corleone]

[video=youtube_share;lL4kJL_NDR0]

[pogo97]

All my life I have just accepted it when folk told me that the type of wood a guitar is made out of makes all the difference to the sound. ie Les Paul's are lumps of mahogany to give a darker sound with more sustain. Whereas others are made with Ash or Alder for a lighter twangier sound. Now it seems that with electric guitars it has been proved that it makes no discernible difference. My illusions have been shattered. Who wood have thought it.

 

Link, please -- I'd like to read how they ran the experiment.

[GtrGeorge!]

If you guys think weight=sustain...I know of a 72lb guitar I would like to sell you. Oh and btw: Its sounds like CRAP! I think its overly simplistic to think weight=sustain. And I wasn't kidding..I know of a solid brass guitar that ..if you played it....would change this belief. I have been fortunate to know guys that were top brass at Fender/Gibson etc and at the heart of those companies, they know consumer's believe these things but it isn't nearly that simple. But if the customer says it, you don't disagree.https://reverb.com/item/11464-1979-ibanez-solid-brass-ibanez-artist-2622-guitar-one-of-a-kind-and-functional

 

[steve mac]

 

Link, please -- I'd like to read how they ran the experiment.

Pogo,

Youtube is alive with folk talking about this, I particularly like this chap

I think its a bit like a religious debate, one side using reason and experimentation to prove something and the other side saying all the evidence means nothing as they can "feel" that it is true.

I haven't really given it a lot of thought before but it does make sense to me that the wood doesn't make any difference. But if folk want to believe then Ce la vie

 

[Notes_Norton]

I saw a show about Les Paul once. He explained that when he was developing the solid body electric, he was looking for dense woods to improve the sustain of the guitar.

 

I've heard a lot of Les Paul recordings, and rarely, if ever, have I heard him sustain a note - but I love his playing anyway

 

My bolt-on-neck Parker has a lot of sustain for it's weight (as a matter of fact they both do). It might be because of the radial joint - the pocket and neck are curved instead of square. Supposedly it makes for a tighter fit.

 

I also forgot to add, the hands and pick also contribute to tone, IMHO more than the wood choice.

 

Notes

[daddymack]

If you guys think weight=sustain...I know of a 72lb guitar I would like to sell you. Oh and btw: Its sounds like CRAP! I think its overly simplistic to think weight=sustain. And I wasn't kidding..I know of a solid brass guitar that ..if you played it....would change this belief. I have been fortunate to know guys that were top brass at Fender/Gibson etc and at the heart of those companies, they know consumer's believe these things but it isn't nearly that simple. But if the customer says it, you don't disagree.https://reverb.com/item/11464-1979-ibanez-solid-brass-ibanez-artist-2622-guitar-one-of-a-kind-and-functional

 

Weight is not necessarily going to improve sustain; the material uses has to be able to transfer resonant frequencies.The ES355S, well, you could plug it in, turn it down to zero, strum that guitar, put it in the stand and come back a few minutes later and still see the strings vibrating, turn up the volume and hear it...I wouldn't own one, but it did sustain. In the 70s a friend and I made a solid body out of teak...about the size of a SG, but 2.5" thick...sadly the headstock snapped off of it after a few months (cheap neck from a Teisco)..talk about heavy and sustain...I designed [but never finished] an all aluminum guitar in 1980... the body was bored/chambered to reduce the weight, and designed to be welded; I never could get the neck right and so eventually scrapped all the parts. It was designed to 'ring'.

 

The Lucite Dan Armstrong's were extremely heavy, but the sustain was not what you would expect; they suffer from low resonance. I have played gutars made of marble, granite, steel, aluminum, polycarbonate, carbon fiber, etc., and most did nothing for sustain. That brass Ibanez would likely sustain well, but you would have to sit to play it; a lot depends on the grade of brass as well..'bell' brass would be best.

 

Bottom line though, ability to sustain has little to do with tone, playability, or, in some cases weight (http://www.musiciansfriend.com/accessories/fernandes-fsk-401-sustainer-pickup-kit) the need for sustain is pretty much individual, and most of us have figured out how to replicate sustain via hand vibrato.

 

There is an old HC adage: "Tone is in the fingers..." but I think it is a combination of things like strings, pickups, pots, amplification, signal chain...and very little to do with neck and body woods. Then the whole overly-quantized discussion of subjectivity regarding defining good tone...and those who think 'tone' comes out of little boxes with buttons by their feet...

 

[pogo97]

The Heretic's Guide to Alternative Lutherie Woods, by John Calkin.

This article first appeared in American Lutherie #69. American Lutherie is the official publication of the Guild of American Luthiers. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of the author, John Calkin, and Tim Olsen from the Guild of American Luthiers (GAL).

Why do we even need alternative wood species for musical instruments? That's a perfectly valid question, and the answer is that we don't. Rosewood, mahogany and maple have served us well for centuries , we know what to expect of them, and our customers have already come to accept them as trustworthy and will pay for them. So why look further?

First of all (and speaking from a steel string guitar perspective), let's discard the notion that some species of wood make good instruments and that others don't. The concept of tonewood is a hoax. Of the few things that we can do to a guitar and still call it a guitar, changing the wood it is made of will have the least impact upon the quality of the sound that it produces. The tonal difference between a mahogany guitar and a rosewood guitar is exactly the same as the difference between two mahogany guitars or two rosewood guitars. Can you tell what a guitar is made of while listening to an unfamiliar recording? No one I know claims they can. No one at the blind listening sessions I've attended could reliably distinguish between mahogany and rosewood guitars, or maple and koa guitars for that matter.

Guitars sound like guitars. No matter how poorly or bizarrely they are made, you'll never confuse the natural sound of an acoustic guitar with that of a banjo, a mandolin, a drum or a flute. Obviously, not all guitars sound alike, but even when we think we can distinguish a night-and-day difference, it won't be so extreme that one will sound like a guitar and another won't. We may have a strong preference for one or another, but they will all sound like guitars. If they didn't, they would be called something else.

 

 

If this is the source article, then nothing is shown here. We aren't told any details of these "blind listening sessions" etc. etc. I won't say he's wrong, but there's no incontrovertible evidence here that he's right. He's got an axe to grind and he grinds it.

 

I'm with daddymac: "Tone is in the fingers."

[GtrGeorge!]

Notes Norton: fwiw: LePaul was looking for a material that WOULDN'T resonate..(wouldn't sustain). The previous instruments fedback, and his thought was "If I can make an instrument that didn't vibrate excessively, maybe it won't feedback at high volumes." Hence, he used a Railroad tie. It was as solid a material as he could get easily, put a pickup on it..and his experiment worked. Named,"The Log" it's become historical. It wasn't the first solidbody guitar.It was,however, the example that was celebrated in the media. Les Paul, was a great musician,an innovator, and a promoter of ideas.

[GtrGeorge!]

The hoax of guitar of tonewoods has been going on for years. I think it has dis-served so many of us. In acoustic guitars..wood matters greatly. But imho, on solidbodies it's a random element and in 2014 it's a hindrance to moving ahead. Woods vary tree to tree. They depend on sunlight rain and soil..all of which are very variable.Two different species of wood can vary markedly. Whereas many other materials can be used that are more consistant,lighter (if you choose) and made to resonate at specific frequencies. Just saying. Will guitar players adopt other approaches? I hope so...I,for one, would love to see more interesting things in guitar design ,other than designs from 1951.

[Notes_Norton]

Notes Norton: fwiw: LePaul was looking for a material that WOULDN'T resonate..(wouldn't sustain).

Thanks! I guess I misunderstood the audio. And I remember seeing him with the railroad tie in the movie. I think it was a documentary that I rented from Netflix.

 

Anyway, on an electric guitar, I always say Tonewood-Schmonewood - it's just a term to shrink the membranes in your wallet.

 

I have two Parker DF guitars. Same body, different pickups. I liked the DF524NS so much that I had them build one with Duncan P-Rail pickups and Triple-Shot rings (so I could have 2 similar guitars with different tones). I play the custom DF522NN (NN for Notes Norton) on the gig now and the DF524NS at home for practice.

 

Of course the tones are different because the pickups are. Which is what I wanted. I like the DF so much I don't play my other guitars anymore (in 4 years I may have picked up the Gibson twice) so I wanted he same guitar. The gigging guitar is often packed away and every now and then I can steal a few minutes of practice if I have one set up and on a stand at home.

 

The Parkers are so comfortable and easy to play it's almost like I'm cheating.

 

Where is this all going?

 

Sustain.

 

Both guitars weigh the same (within a couple of ounces), they are made out of the same wood, the only difference is the pickups and the routing for the different pickups. The DF524NN not only sustains noticeably longer, but I can feel the body vibrating more when I play it.

 

 

[GtrGeorge!]

Notes,

I agree with your LOVE of the Parkers. Yes, indeed, it's almost like cheating!!! I had the same thought many times when playing my Parker! You hit that SPOT ON! I had the cheapest one they made..out of Korea.I think it was. Wood Body and Neck, but the guitar benefited from the general design improvements Ken Parker put into all the guitars. Sadly, the hardware was crap.(and the other workmanship issues from the factory) .and after a while I sold it. I keep looking for a proper Parker I can afford, but our secret is out it: They are great Guitars for the serious player. Back on topic: Your experience with 2 Parkers ,imho, points out that its more a case of resonance to produce sustain than anything else. And wood, being highly variable...one of your guitars resonates at those freq.s you play, the other much less so. Maybe they should have kiln dried it less or more..or that tree recieved more sun than the other. Or the Laquer had a slightly heavier Dalton-weight...who knows? This is why guitars vary so much and the hoax goes on and on.

[daddymack]

In acoustic guitars..wood matters greatly.

Actually, the point of the article was that even in an acoustic, it is not the wood that makes the guitar's tone, it is the design, size, shape, bracing...and even an expert won't be able to tell you what woods it was made from if s/he can't see it.

Rainsong guitars sound every bit as good as the wood guitars in their price range...oh, boohoo, there is no woodgrain to ooh and aah over, and the guitar's character will not change over time [actually, if you think about it, you buy the guitar because you like how it sounds, right?] ...my Martin 000CXEBK sounds like a guitar, [especially when plugged in], yet there is no wood in the body top, back or sides. People dis these guitars because they look cheap, but they sound, well, like Martins, because they are structured like Martins. So I say good riddance to the wood snobbery and the myth of tone woods!

 

[moogerfooger]

its like the debate about screwing the stop tail piece all the way down or not. on the gibson forum it was stated that tone could leak out if you dont. I about lost my coffee on that one. I keep mine down just enough to keep the string in the saddle. less angle less string wear, less tension behind the bridge, easier bends, better tuning stability -- the benefits far out weigh any tone thats going to leak out.

[Notes_Norton]

Notes,

I agree with your LOVE of the Parkers. Yes, indeed, it's almost like cheating!!! I had the same thought many times when playing my Parker! You hit that SPOT ON! I had the cheapest one they made..out of Korea.I think it was. Wood Body and Neck, but the guitar benefited from the general design improvements Ken Parker put into all the guitars. Sadly, the hardware was crap.(and the other workmanship issues from the factory) .and after a while I sold it. I keep looking for a proper Parker I can afford, but our secret is out it: They are great Guitars for the serious player.<...>

 

The DF series is affordable and made in the USA. They make a PDF that is similar overseas, but I don't know if the hardware is the same or not. My DFs with the Sperzel tuners, graph tech nut & saddle and Parker whammy stay in tune better than my guitars with no whammy. The ebony fretboard and hardened stainless steel frets make bending a breeze, and it's like wearing the guitar instead of holding it.

 

Both my PDFs sustain well, but as I noted, one sustains better than the other. Since we are on the subject of Tone, there is a piezo under the bridge with a volume knob, so you can blend the piezo output with the mag pup output and get some very nice tones not available with just the mag pickups.

 

I have had good customer support from the factory as well. I had the wood on a guitar crack after the warranty was expired, they fixed it free. When it cracked in the same place well over a year past the warranty expiration, they decided there must be a fault in the wood itself, and they replaced the guitar with a new one. Since then I've had no need to contact customer service.

 

Back to tone. I like the DF with the Duncan P-Rails better. It's much more versatile. With the triple shot rings (and switches) I can get P-90 tones (almost as good as Gibson 'real' P90s), Rail, Series Humbucker and Parallel Humbuckers - any or all can be mixed with the piezo - or I can use the piezo by itself but I don't - the piezo by itself sounds very acoustic, but not like a very good acoustic guitar. It's rather thin without a lot of bottom - but then it's a solid body guitar.

 

Notes

[daddymack]

its like the debate about screwing the stop tail piece all the way down or not. on the gibson forum it was stated that tone could leak out if you dont. I about lost my coffee on that one. I keep mine down just enough to keep the string in the saddle. less angle less string wear' date=' less tension behind the bridge, easier bends, better tuning stability -- the benefits far out weigh any tone thats going to leak out. [/quote']

 

OMG... tone leakage? What happens? Does the lost tone slip up through the threads of the mounting bolts and escape without being heard?

[pogo97]

What I COULD see happening is that because the portion of the mounting bolts inside the guitar is reduced, there is a less robust connection between the tailpiece and the guitar body and also more energy lost along the free length of the bolt. You could fix this by using longer/heavier mounting bolts, but who'd bother?

 

I will say, though, that the height of the tailpiece affects the tone on my electric guitar. Better or worse, I dunno, who cares? I like it fairly high -- just like that sound better than screwed right down. I also know that changing to a roller bridge changed my tone -- I would image it altered how the vibrational energy is transfered to the guitar since with the rollers, the strings can more easily pass energy over the bridge and to the tailpiece.

 

I used to teach high-level canoeing courses. We often got into "how many angels can fit on the end or a pin" discussions about the dynamics of paddling. But it was all part of trying to understand what we were doing. Then we'd just get on the water and try things and what worked, worked.

[daddymack]

What I COULD see happening is that because the portion of the mounting bolts inside the guitar is reduced, there is a less robust connection between the tailpiece and the guitar body and also more energy lost along the free length of the bolt. You could fix this by using longer/heavier mounting bolts, but who'd bother?

 

I will say, though, that the height of the tailpiece affects the tone on my electric guitar. Better or worse, I dunno, who cares? I like it fairly high -- just like that sound better than screwed right down. I also know that changing to a roller bridge changed my tone -- I would image it altered how the vibrational energy is transfered to the guitar since with the rollers, the strings can more easily pass energy over the bridge and to the tailpiece.

 

You touched on the aspect of the fallacy, but missed it...the bridge [and nut] is where the vibration of the string terminates. The stop tail really has little to do with the transfer of vibration unless you are using a wraparound like a BadAss or old-style Gibby compensated [or, worse yet, un-compensated] tail piece. Plus, seriously, the difference in height setting on the stop tail is maybe less than half an inch. But anyone who uses a wrap-around knows that the action is controlled by the height of the stop tail, so you try to keep the stop tail low to keep the action low, not to transfer vibration...

 

Look at the stop tail bolts...they are 4+ times the diameter of the mounting bolts on a tune-o-matic bridge, yet the vibration transfer is far more a function of the bridge mount than the tail mount. The stop tail has to maintain the string tension, whereas the tune-o-matic does not. The designers either don't think there is a major tone correlation there, or figured out something else...[think about how piezo transducers are mounted on electrics and acoustics...under the bridge]. So, logic [and physics] dictates the transfer of vibration to the body of the guitar would be primarily via the bridge, not the stop tail. So why are the bridge mounting screws so much thinner on a tune-o-matic? Because it really doesn't matter? Apparently so.

 

[pogo97]

*shrugs*

 

Maybe we can just disagree based on our individual experience and perspective.

 

I also think the wood makes a difference.

[GtrGeorge!]

Yes, wood makes a difference...It's highly randomized,ruins any effort at standardization and is becoming rare. If you like wood, definitely enjoy putting outlet covers in your home..so the electrons don't spill out.

[daddymack]

dammit...electrons spill out of the wall sockets? No wonder I keep getting shocked lately...

 

and oddly enough, I came across this article today...http://tonereport.com/blogs/tone-tips/aluminum-guitars-a-primer

[pogo97]

 

This is an actual photo of pre-1920 low-viscosity electricity leaking out of an un-stoppered light fixture.