If electric guitar wood type really affects tone, where's the proof??

[wankdeplank]

I like having guitars that have different sonic characteristics, otherwise I wouldn't be able to rationalize having so many of them (ten electrics). But I also favor certain pickups, having experienced less than stellar results trying something different and also the cost to performance factor (pay for quality not prestige). So I end up having three guitars with Seymour Duncan 59s in the neck. My Gibson Les Paul and my Hamer Mirage II, both with maple caps do sound more similar than my Hamer HB Special with straight mahogany (no maple cap) - quite a pronounced difference actually which surprised me. I also have three Strats with GFS 60's repro pickups in them (not every position), Alder, Ash and Poplar and once again the difference in tone is quite pronounced.

[Virgman]

I like this.

[badpenguin]

I think the proof is quite simple. It's when you hear a guitar, and without seeing it, going, "That's a nice sounding Paul," or, "Damn!, That's gotta be an old tele!"

[onelife]

Overdriven guitar flattens all overtones the wood creates making one wood sound virtually the same as another.

 

The wood doesn't actually "create" the sound. It is like subtractive synthesis in the sense that it absorbs energy from the vibrating strings. The energy that is left in the vibrating string is what creates the sound.

 

The reason a maple capped Les Paul sounds so rich, even with lots of overdrive, is because the particular combination of wood absorbs less energy from the strings. An SG and a Les Paul sound quite different, even if the electronics are identical, unless the electrical signal is so processed (i.e. digital) that there is hardly any thing left of it other than pitch.

 

 

[hellion_213]

Old thread simple answer.

 

Overdriven guitar flattens all overtones the wood creates making one wood sound virtually the same as another. It may feel different with the wood against your body but the distortion removes all signature overtones making the woods unique other then some possible bass and treble slopes on an EQ graph.

 

With clean sound dialed up its usually much easier to hear the differences in wood types because the frequency peaks and resonances are not flattened by distortion.

 

Granted most solid bodies do sound similar because they all reproducing the same musical string tones. Most musicians have acute hearing and can hear all these various shades where the general public may not. Most can hear at least a difference between a brighter vs a darker piece of wood as well as how well it sustains in a blind comparison, even if they cant specifically make out what wood types it actually is.

 

Imagine how much more difficult it would be to tell one trumpet from another. Its dimensions and often the materials are the same yet trumpet players can often tell the difference between one form another, of not by the tone, the feel of the vibrations or the quality of the build.

 

PROOF - Wood Affects Electric Guitar Tone - Chapm…:

 

Have to disagree with you WR - if that was the case, then a Fender Strat would sound no diafferent than a LP or my Beast overdriven

Check out the video, you can hear the difference.

 

I used to play the trumpet, you can tell a difference between brass with a silver lead pipe, sterling bell, etc.. By the sound. Feel and ease to play as well, but also by the sound.

 

Virgman - the whole 'if you don't like it try another...' Takes a lot of time, patience, effort, and money. Time that could have been devoted to practice. It is detrimental to practice on a guitar you don't like, so with a little preemptive research on wood tone, pickup tone, etc, you can minimalize that time, effort, and money. I'm a metal player, mostly, so if I were to have bought an ES 335 and a Front man starting out, and emptying my freed up cash, by your theory, I should just practice. There's no way these two are going to pump out anything brutal without pedals, and even then the sounds colored by the acoustic effect of the 335. What about a player wishing to have bright tone, yet unknowingly buys a LP? Yes, I'm being a dick, but I think its a valid point. Practicing on what feels/sounds good to the individual is what keeps practicing cool and exciting.

[billybilly]

My ears are able to take me beyond what science has yet to discover.

 

I can hear the difference between alder, ash, mahogany, poplar, rosewood, ebony and maple. If you don't believe me, that's your problem. Now, please excuse me, I feel a real big dump coming on.

[GAS Man]

Funny for me to see this old thread resurrect, in that I don't think I'd have it in me any more to type/debate this topic now.

 

But I'm still enjoying the variety of tones.

[Chordite]

The proof is that they don't sell plastic guitars*, which would cost a manufacturer bucketloads less to injection mold

 

* with a few notable exceptions

http://img.focalprice.com//860x666/YM/YM1154/YM1154X.jpg

[knotty]

My ears are able to take me beyond what science has yet to discover.

 

I can hear the difference between alder, ash, mahogany, poplar, rosewood, ebony and maple. If you don't believe me, that's your problem. Now, please excuse me, I feel a real big dump coming on.

 

 

I can feel the difference when I hover over their names!

[WRGKMC]

 

PROOF - Wood Affects Electric Guitar Tone - Chapm…:

 

Have to disagree with you WR - if that was the case, then a Fender Strat would sound no diafferent than a LP or my Beast overdriven

Check out the video, you can hear the difference.

 

A good deal of that is because they have different pickups producing and coloring the sound.

 

I don't know if you remember me posting clips here from three different guitars on three different occasions over the years, with three very different woods using the same pickups.

 

I did three clips with the guitars overdriven, then three clips with the guitars clean. Overdrive settings were exactly the same. I just switched the cable between the takes recording direct without an amp to color the sounds. I didn't identify which clip belonged to which guitar and no one could match the driven clips and in fact some accused me of using the same clip.

 

The clean clips could be identified as being different and some even guessed which they belonged to. The guitars did have the same TOM bridges and all had brass nuts. All had the same Mini humbuckers. The best you could hear was a little difference in the bass frequencies, due to the wood types, but there wasn't enough frequency response differences when the guitars were driven to tell one from another.

 

I also posted frequency response graphs of the clips showing the hills and valleys in the frequency response of all the clips.

 

Later I added 3 more clips using a Piezo contact mic on the wood body itself and the differences were very notable. so I'm not disagreeing with you that wood types make a difference, in fact I'm backing up your argument. Its just any clips with a stock Paul and Strat are useless because you'll have someone come along and argue, and quite rightly so, the different pickup types are the cause of that. In my case I used the same pickups and you couldn't tell the difference between walnut, maple and birch. Two were even semi hollow.

[1001gear]

 

A good deal of that is because they have different pickups producing and coloring the sound.

 

I don't know if you remember me posting clips here from three different guitars on three different occasions over the years, with three very different woods using the same pickups.

 

I did three clips with the guitars overdriven, then three clips with the guitars clean. Overdrive settings were exactly the same. I just switched the cable between the takes recording direct without an amp to color the sounds. I didn't identify which clip belonged to which guitar and no one could match the driven clips and in fact some accused me of using the same clip.

 

The clean clips could be identified as being different and some even guessed which they belonged to. The guitars did have the same TOM bridges and all had brass nuts. All had the same Mini humbuckers. The best you could hear was a little difference in the bass frequencies, due to the wood types, but there wasn't enough frequency response differences when the guitars were driven to tell one from another.

 

I also posted frequency response graphs of the clips showing the hills and valleys in the frequency response of all the clips.

 

Later I added 3 more clips using a Piezo contact mic on the wood body itself and the differences were very notable. so I'm not disagreeing with you that wood types make a difference, in fact I'm backing up your argument. Its just any clips with a stock Paul and Strat are useless because you'll have someone come along and argue, and quite rightly so, the different pickup types are the cause of that. In my case I used the same pickups and you couldn't tell the difference between walnut, maple and birch. Two were even semi hollow.

 

Ok a fact and a guess;

 

Biggest Paul/Tele difference is the scale - which does tend to be audible. Pauls can do Nashville grade bridge twang but tend to sound darker heads up with a Tele.

 

AND ...

 

Could the ears be sensitive to phase movement which can go as slow as degrees per minute and would not be apparent in fourier analysis?

[WRGKMC]

 

The wood doesn't actually "create" the sound. It is like subtractive synthesis in the sense that it absorbs energy from the vibrating strings. The energy that is left in the vibrating string is what creates the sound.

 

I digress. Yes the strings produce the vibration and the neck and body conducts and colors it. Vibrations travel down through the bridge and nut/frets reverberate through the neck and body woods the come back up through the bridge and nut back into the strings. The bridge and not are not a one way gate, they pass lower amplitude resonances and overtones back up into the strings bidirectionaly. The vibrations travel faster through solids then they do through the air in fact.

 

The coloration comes from the frequencies lost/absorbed by the wood. The ones making it back up through the bridge into the strings have been stripped of the frequencies absorbed by the wood and the ones that do make it back produce a harmonic resonance in the wood and are not absorbed so easily. Its easily heard if you put one ear to the body or neck. The wood resonance is quite loud. you can surely feel the vibrations in your hands even if the body doesn't project the sounds outward like an acoustic does.

 

My point was however, distortion, clips the peaks of the sine waves the pickups generate. Wood resonance comes back into the strings at a much lower level then the peaks the strings produce directly into the pickups. If you've ever looked at the sine waves guitar pickups produce in an oscilloscope, the waves aren't nice an round like a plain AC wave. They waves have stepped peaks and often look sort of saw tooth shaped. When you enlarge them, you see the smaller overtone peaks.

 

When you pass those waves through different effects, the changes are very obvious. Distortion turns the rounded peaks into square waves. Chorus shifts the frequency response. Phase does a similar thing shifting and inverting the peaks. Echo adds additional peaks.

 

Its actually pretty cool stuff. I should take some time and break out my old oscilloscope and take some video shots on the signals while running a guitar through different effects. I used to use it on a daily basis repairing musical gear so its all electronics 101 to me, but I often forget many have never seen the signals on a scope no less seen a scope in action testing anything besides a clip from the old Outer Limits show.

 

The scope trace follows the waveform at a very high sample rate produces a two dimensional image so a technician can actually see what's going on in a circuit. Prior to having scopes and meters, electricity was all guesswork and theory refined by many great minds who took one mans great work and built upon it adding his own theory. Once tools were built to actually view what was going on, circuits could be refined well beyond human perception.

 

You can see things in waveforms using a scope your ears wont hear. This is because the scope is capable of reproducing waves beyond your hearing, well up into the megahertz ranges. Just because your ears don't hear them doesn't mean they don't exist. You could easily put multiple Piezo elements on a guitar body, strings and bridge, and by using a dual trace scope overlay the two waveforms and compare the sound originating from the strings and the sound resonating from the body and measure both the time delay of sound traveling through the body and the frequencies lost by the wood.

 

Its pretty interesting stuff is you're interested in finding the truth in back of natural occurrences. Developing an accurate mental image of what is going on should follow if you use due diligence compiling the measurements and extracting the proper conclusions. When you go to school for electronics you spend a good deal of time being trained to use the test gear properly, just so you can troubleshoot with it accurately and draw the right conclusions. It does tale allot of practice in real life situations and many times it like looking through a microscope seeing only a small view of a symptom. That's why you have to take many measurements along different points in the chain, and seeing how the various components change that waveform.

 

Acoustics uses all the same formulas electronics uses. Its all basic physics most can learn if they are shown how to use it. Figuring the size of a room, the size of a speaker cab, or the size of a guitar body to create a specific resonance does not involve voodoo science it can all be measured and predicted. It can get dam complex when you go beyond the basics, but what doesn't get more complex when you add more and more factors to a formula.

 

Anyone who is interested in actually measuring some of the things I've talked about here, can download a free program called RAL. Its a real time audio analyzer that's one of the best in the industry. In the past they used to use hardware versions that cost thousands of dollars for measuring acoustics.

 

With this program you can set it up on a laptop, plug a mic or instrument into the sound card and actually measure the things your ears hear so you know first hand what's going on. Again, using the tool creatively to reveal what you want it to is still needed but you can do just about anything an acoustic specialist does with this. Last time I used it was to Tune my studio using a reference mic. I set up a test grid, pumped pink noise into the room and found the areas like corners that needed bass traps added to get rid of standing waves. Worked pretty good in my case.

 

I would note this program needs to run on a stand alone computer. If you have a DAW setup it will; dominate two channels and block a multitrack card from working properly. I had to deinstall it to get my 8 channel cards functioning again, then I had to contact the manufacturer to download a new license to install it again. Real pain in the ass. I since found an old laptop I loaded it on and run the laptop for audio testing only. definitely cool stuff though if you're looking to refine your sound to industry standards.

 

http://ral-realtime-analyzer-light.yoshimasa-electronic-inc.blueprograms.com/

[hellion_213]

Cool stuff. I thought about skimming due to length, but found I wanted to read the entire thing. Pretty interesting really. I use adobe audition for home recording and you can adjust wave type and shape on a graph.

[Freeman Keller]

 

A good deal of that is because they have different pickups producing and coloring the sound.

 

I don't know if you remember me posting clips here from three different guitars on three different occasions over the years, with three very different woods using the same pickups.

 

I did three clips with the guitars overdriven, then three clips with the guitars clean. Overdrive settings were exactly the same. I just switched the cable between the takes recording direct without an amp to color the sounds. I didn't identify which clip belonged to which guitar and no one could match the driven clips and in fact some accused me of using the same clip.

 

.

 

Actually, if you listen to the discussion the specifically said that they were using the same pups (and everything else) which, if true, is the first time I've truly heard an A/B test where tonewood was the only variable.

 

Also, if you will remember, I was the only one who responded to your clips and while I made a good guess at which guitar was which based on popular belief about what influence different things had on sound, I was wrong. As it turned on in further discussions your guitars were a long ways from being similar - one was chambered, they had different pups and you admitted that the signal chain was not constant.

 

My conclusion was that your guitars sounded different but it could not be attributed to tone wood alone.

[knotty]

There is so much pseudo scientific b0llocks talked about this. Any perceived difference due to wood is so minute that for practical applications it does not exist.

In addition, to all those who think they have some test that demonstrates something, I repeat my challenge. First show me your benchmark proof of concept and testing by showing me 2 guitars of identical build that DO sound exactly the same.

[Freeman Keller]

 

Ok a fact and a guess;

 

Biggest Paul/Tele difference is the scale - which does tend to be audible. Pauls can do Nashville grade bridge twang but tend to sound darker heads up with a Tele.

 

AND ...

 

Could the ears be sensitive to phase movement which can go as slow as degrees per minute and would not be apparent in fourier analysis?

 

One way to test the scale length theory is to record a Fender tuned to concert. Then downtune one semi tone and put a capo on the first fret - don't change the strings or anything else. You have gone from a 25.5 inch scale to 24.2 - can you feel a difference? Hear a difference? Please post the clips.

 

AND

 

Fourier analysis takes one snap shot of a waveform from the time domain and transfers it to the frequency domain. It is very meaningful for a single note - lets say your high E string - it will tell you the amount of each component ("partial") included in that waveform. It is meaningless for comparisons if you are playing a complex waveform (ie a chord or multiple notes) which is what WR.... gave us the last time around. I think we concluded then that the data was meaningless.

[peskypesky]

I think the proof is quite simple. It's when you hear a guitar, and without seeing it, going, "That's a nice sounding Paul," or, "Damn!, That's gotta be an old tele!"

 

Exactly. Which is why back in the day, we all used to be amazed by Jimmy Page's Les Paul tone on early Zep recordings....when he was using a Telecaster.

[billybilly]

 

Exactly. Which is why back in the day, we all used to be amazed by Jimmy Page's Les Paul tone on early Zep recordings....when he was using a Telecaster.

lol, That's such an assumption. You can do better Pesky.

 

Newsflash.... Pesky knows "we all" thought Page's recordings on a Tele were a Les Paul.

 

What else did "we all" think?

[WRGKMC]

 

 

Actually, if you listen to the discussion the specifically said that they were using the same pups (and everything else) which, if true, is the first time I've truly heard an A/B test where tonewood was the only variable.

 

Also, if you will remember, I was the only one who responded to your clips and while I made a good guess at which guitar was which based on popular belief about what influence different things had on sound, I was wrong. As it turned on in further discussions your guitars were a long ways from being similar - one was chambered, they had different pups and you admitted that the signal chain was not constant.

 

My conclusion was that your guitars sounded different but it could not be attributed to tone wood alone.

 

Yes, but the pickups "were" the exact same pickups which was the whole point. They weren't responsible for changing the tones, the body materials were.

[MDMachiavelli]

Gasman kind of touched on this in one of his threads.

 

 

Wouldn't the best way to settle this would be to take guitars made with the same electronics but different woods and A/B them through the same amp. You could control as many variables as possible on the guitar such as strings, pickups, picks and other things, and especially the amp (A/Bing them through the same one).

 

While doing this take guitar players with a very good ear (not savants) and let them listen while blindfolded and afterwards give their interpretations of the differences.

 

 

Better yet, let the people who are adamant about the different woods take the test and see. I wonder how many could actually correlate differences with the different woods of the different guitars.

 

I'll be the first to admit, I have no idea either way but it sure would be interesting to see how it would turn out.

 

I would be more than willing to conduct the "study" and post it to youtube if anyone is willing and interested.

[Freeman Keller]

 

Wouldn't the best way to settle this would be to take guitars made with the same electronics but different woods and A/B them through the same amp. You could control as many variables as possible on the guitar such as strings, pickups, picks and other things, and especially the amp (A/Bing them through the same one).

 

.

 

This was exactly what Hellion posted in the clip in post #154 on page 11. Two guitars as identical as possible - same shape, scale, electronics, played thru the same amp with the identical picks. Same first position E chord. I can hear a difference in the clean sound - I've got to admit the dirty ones are mostly just noise.

 

That is the first time I have actually seen this done for electric guitars (I'm sure there are others but this one is pretty conclusive). Forumite WRG tried to do this last summer but IMHO his methodology was flawed - there were too many other differences to draw any conclusions about tone wood. It is relatively easy to do with acoustics - comparing a standard braced D-18 to a D-28 is basically about mahogany vs rosewood. Its just not that easy in the electric world to find two guitars that are twins except for the tonewood.

 

I am working on cleaning up some clips that we did of two guitars that I built - they are both Les Paul shapes with identically the same wood and pups, one is chambered and one is not. A friend played them thru the same clean amp, I recorded the session. We can both hear the difference but I'm having trouble extracting good audio clips to post here.

 

I build guitars, both acoustic and electrics, and I'm convinced that wood characteristics can have a small impact on the sound of the guitar - I think it is mostly overshadowed by other factors but Hellions clip convinces me that it is there.

[Chordite]

Just to add a related field to the mix, here is a Stradivarius vs modern. Blind test.

 

http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/blind-tested-soloists-unable-to-tell-stradivarius-violins-from-modern-instruments/

[MDMachiavelli]

 

This was exactly what Hellion posted in the clip in post #154 on page 11. Two guitars as identical as possible - same shape, scale, electronics, played thru the same amp with the identical picks. Same first position E chord. I can hear a difference in the clean sound - I've got to admit the dirty ones are mostly just noise.

 

That is the first time I have actually seen this done for electric guitars (I'm sure there are others but this one is pretty conclusive). Forumite WRG tried to do this last summer but IMHO his methodology was flawed - there were too many other differences to draw any conclusions about tone wood. It is relatively easy to do with acoustics - comparing a standard braced D-18 to a D-28 is basically about mahogany vs rosewood. Its just not that easy in the electric world to find two guitars that are twins except for the tonewood.

 

I am working on cleaning up some clips that we did of two guitars that I built - they are both Les Paul shapes with identically the same wood and pups, one is chambered and one is not. A friend played them thru the same clean amp, I recorded the session. We can both hear the difference but I'm having trouble extracting good audio clips to post here.

 

I build guitars, both acoustic and electrics, and I'm convinced that wood characteristics can have a small impact on the sound of the guitar - I think it is mostly overshadowed by other factors but Hellions clip convinces me that it is there.

 

 

 

Yeah but I'm talking about without using your eyes, just your ears, and being able to articulate those differences.

[WRGKMC]

Gasman kind of touched on this in one of his threads.

 

 

Wouldn't the best way to settle this would be to take guitars made with the same electronics but different woods and A/B them through the same amp. You could control as many variables as possible on the guitar such as strings, pickups, picks and other things, and especially the amp (A/Bing them through the same one).

 

 

That's exactly what I did. Took three different guitars, with the exact same mini Humbucker pickups from the same manufacturer, identical ohms, same value pots, same pickup distances from strings, same strings, same string height etc. They all had TOM bridges, and all had Brass nuts.

 

Neck and body woods were different. two were semi hollow.

 

The three clean clips were easy to tell they were different guitars. Driven not so easy. I've done the same comparison three times here over a 6 year period. The last one before the humbuckers was with three Strats with different bodies and necks and the neck pickup were exactly the same.

 

In all those tests, those who understood wood does influence tone understood why they sounded different. The ones who knew nothing about electronics argued tone came from the pickups and not from the wood and would begin to question the comparison instead of investigating their own understanding of what they know.

 

Some went as far as accusing me of jacking with the recording to make them sound different. That's when I said to myself, why am I bothering to spend hours making a scientific comparison to such fools gave up making such posts. Well, there were some who were curious and didn't have preconceived voodoo myths drilled into them who enjoyed learning some basics, but this is all kindergarten stuff you either learn and have an aptitude for or you don't.

 

 

In the big scheme of things, Knowing how a guitar makes good tone doesn't matter so long as you can personally identify it when you hear it. Even if a guitar doesn't produce great tones, it comes down to how well you can play the darn thing. If you can hear a player on a crappy AM pocket radio with zero fidelity and say, yea that guy can play, that's all that matters.

 

Everything else is just there to help you do it comfortably. If you've gone the route of buying the best gear, the best pedals, the best amps, the best speakers, you name it. Walk out on stage and have some kid playing a beat up chunk of firewood with a toy amp smoke your ass, then you know, gear doesn't mean diddley squat if you can't play it well.

 

Good gear gives you the potential to play as good as any star does and any star can take your gear and make it sound great. and when all the dust settles you still face the fact, you cant buy and you cant steal raw musical talent.

 

You can spend a lifetime chasing that dragons tail and you always wind up in the same place. If you want to sound the best, you have to work harder at it then anyone else, just like an athlete or an actor does to be the best in their professions. Its takes great physical dexterity and an educated mind in music and a little edge keeping ahead of the pack knowing the latest music happening and you can get out there and hang ten on any stage.

 

Those who understand such things already know without having to be given examples of wood types vs pickup types. They pick an instrument up and its either worse, better or equal to what they are used to. Those who don't understand usually aren't worth the trouble the challenge to their beliefs made in a comparison like that provides them. Out of all musicians, Guitarists are only second to lead singers when it comes to having inflated egos. If they have spent years thinking pickups are what create tone, then its best to just let them believe what they want.

 

I'm real easy to convince. I don't care what kind of music people play so long as its played well. The more oddball the better. So long as they can smoke that guitar with whatever style that suits them, I could care less if they think Elvis was an alien or the moon landings were a hoax. If they make good music with what they got, Then I got ears to listen and I'll support their efforts 100%. If on the other hand, its all bluff, I'll respect their right to bluff others into thinking they are great.

[hellion_213]

Check out the video, or Google -rob Chapman tonewood, and just listen, don't watch.