Maple fretboards on Strats

[LAracer]

Oh, is it time for this argument again?

 

Started out as a good thread.

[atrox]

yeah. sorry for the derail. got out of hand.

[john_p_t]

Sorry from me too if it irritated anyone. It's a subject I find interesting, what are the facts and what are the superstitions of musical instruments. Not meaning to start a tribal war or anything. Anyway, I think me and Atrox had a good discussion with no disrespect on either side (or certainly none intended from me, nor detected by me from him), so no problems there I don't think.

[WRGKMC]

I've been an electronic tech all my life. Its how I earn a living. With the proper test tools like a scope, frequency generator and frequency analizer, All of this can be proven and see with your own eyes.

 

I personally dont need to guess about anything. I've spent enough years experimenting and testing common know what is fact and phantasy.

 

From my perspective Its an "extremely" easy thing to apply vibration to a body or neck with a small speaker then use a piezio contact mic and see those vibrations occur on either a scope or frequency analizer.

 

This is no different than a doctor using a stethoscope to listen to a persons lungs or heart. It does require the education and experience to know "what" youre actually looking for and determine the different charecteristics between different woods and how they conduct sound, but these methods are surely not new and have been around a very long time.

 

Testing pickup responce is just as simple. You use a full frequency dummy coil to generate a signal in a guitar, sweep through the full frequency spectrum and then graph the output of the pickup to see where its frequency peaks are.

 

Choosing the best pickups for a particular instrument doesnt need to be guesswork if you know what frequencies you want to target. If an instrument has a particular resonant tone, something every solid object has (like a tuning fork it has a peak resonant tone) You can test and graph that responce and choose a pickup that will capture or block whatever frequencies you want.

 

This is all kindergarden stuff in the electronics world. Physics and the formulas used to proove theory are the same for both electronics and Acoustic science.

 

There was a time where people used to build and invent things things by having a theory to guide them and with a littel guesswork and luck they came up with things that worked.

 

Many of then are borrowed then modified for other uses. Something like a Guitar pickup dates back to early telephone and telegraph equipment. This is why passive guitar pickups cannot be patented and why Gibson has has Patent Pending stamped on their pickups forever. The original patents were held by Westinghouse, Bell/AT&T, and others. You cannot use someone elses patent and modify it slightly and call it your own. After so many years after the patents expire, if they arent renewed, they become public donain and anyone can use the designs without infringing on a manufactures claim.

 

Anyway, You can take a Piezio mic, and record its output to your computer. Apply white noise, or a sweep generator to the wood of the instrument with a small speaker. You van even have the neck removed from a guitar and test the neck by say applying vibration at one end and recieving it at the other end. (This is exactly how a spring or plate reverb unit work by the way)

 

Once the signal is recorded, you can pull it into a program like Harbal which will diaplay frequency responce results. Dollars for donuts no two necks will look the same because like fingerprints, different wood grans, Grain densities, moisture and sap content will all conduct sound differently and it will show on the frequency display.

 

Will the differences be enough for someone to hear?

 

For a musician who knows his guitars, it sure as hell should.

 

For a non musician, Most couldnt tell you if a guitars playing no less the type of guitar is being played. That all comes through ear training and recognition.

 

You can test with different neck types, body types etc this way, then you can overlay the responces and see with your own eyes, how different woods conduct sound. This completely removes "Ears" and "Opinions" and bogus theories from the subject and establishes facts you can build upon.

 

Of course in the end, Ears and personal preference are the only things that really do matter as I mentioned previously. Other than satisfying one own curiosity as to why things work, it has no meaning to most. You just need to realize there are many who go the extra hundred miles to retest claims on their own, from their own and come up with the same results others have already established. I cant tell you how many times I experimented and came up with things I though were a new discovery, only to find out later someone has already been there and done that and i would have saved myself all kinds of hard work if I had only kept my eyes in the right books and studied. There again, if I hadnent treadded the same ground It would be unlikely I'd be any good at my trade as an electronic tech or a luthier.

[csm]

I would just like to add that I don't much care for Ebony boards, or suicidal 4X4 drivers.

 

How about HOMICIDAL 4x4 drivers?

[prolog]

 

I don't know about stability or anything, but i know my maple-board strat sounds great. And that's all i need. I like the dark wear that maple has anyway.

 

 

Yeah, you either love or hate that, and I love it. Lets me know how much my guitar's been played.

[metalheadUK]

How about HOMICIDAL 4x4 drivers?

 

Indeed sir, I stand corrected!

 

[benzem]

 

I've been an electronic tech all my life. Its how I earn a living. With the proper test tools like a scope, frequency generator and frequency analizer, All of this can be proven and see with your own eyes. I personally dont need to guess about anything. I've spent enough years experimenting and testing common know what is fact and phantasy. From my perspective Its an "extremely" easy thing to apply vibration to a body or neck with a small speaker then use a piezio contact mic and see those vibrations occur on either a scope or frequency analizer. This is no different than a doctor using a stethoscope to listen to a persons lungs or heart. It does require the education and experience to know "what" youre actually looking for and determine the different charecteristics between different woods and how they conduct sound, but these methods are surely not new and have been around a very long time.

 

 

 

Is there a chance that these results or findings have NO effect on tone? Even when tests show relatively large acoustic differences?

 

Maybe?

[WRGKMC]

 

Is there a chance that these results or findings have NO effect on tone? Even when tests show relatively large acoustic differences? Maybe?

 

 

Lets put it this way, The wood and body dont, but how much that tone is restricted by its reproduction is another matter. Guitar is a midrange instrument and pickups generally have a frequency responce of say 100~5Khz. Amps generally tend to be the same. Tones, harmonics and overtones above or below those frequencies will not be reproduced well.

 

Much of this depends on the pickup design too. A low impediance coil with a lower resistance generally reproduce a wider frequency range up into the 6~7K range. They can reproduce the higher frequencies quite well. You also have Piezo bridge saddels that can be used to reproduce the acoustic qualities that can be blended with the pickup for a much fuller frequency responce up into the 10K range like an acoustic instrument.

 

Again, a guitar is a midrange instrument. When you play it with other instruments in a band you actually want its output restricted so its frequency range doesnt interfere with the other instruments. You dont want to much bass and have it mask the bass guitar nor too much high frequency so it interferes with the vocals, drum cymbals etc.

 

Even with these midrange limitations imposed, there is a big difference in how much vibration is felt in the hands and chest when you play it. Having full ranged body tone like say a semihollow body can be felt when its played. It feels like an acoustic whan its played yet the sound from the speaker is more electric. You can also take two different instruments with different wood densities and like say a Les Paul and a lightweight body with a maple neck. The two will have different frequency ranges and sustain etc. They both "Should" feel different in your hands

 

You can get them to sound simular by using EQ, but that isnt going to to change the fundamental frequencies the wood of the guitar produces.

 

I think this is the key to misunderstanding many dont understand.

 

You can take any number of pickups and place them in the same guitar and the only things that change are bandwidth and sensitivity as many discover to their surprise. You can put a gibson humbucker in a strat and it still sounds like a strat. It may have a shift in frequency responce and have different string dynamics though. This may make the instrument sound darker and fuller. One reason is the width of the pickup is wider and has a wider magnetic field so it reproduces maybe 2" of the string vs 1/2" of very focused area.

 

Next since the gain of most Humbuckers tends to be higher it requires less pick pressure to compress the signal output from zero to its maximum output. Dynamics are reduced. Someone playing with less dynamic controll can get all the soft notes to come through sounding louder.

 

On the other hand, a low output single coil has a much more focused magnetic field on a section of a string making it sound thinner. Its output from zero to maximum requires more and consistant pick pressure to maintain dynamics. This is why many have a hard time playing fenders clean and dirty them up to reduce headroom to get the feel of a humbucker dynamics.

 

 

If you take both pickups, have a simular gain level set, and the pickups placed in the same positions, the fundamental tone created by the wood resonance is identical on a frequency analizer. You will still have peak resonant humps in the same places.

 

What will be different is how large those humps will be. This comes from the frequency restrictions and frequency targeting the pickups provide. The humbucker may for example boost all the lower and mid humps in the spectrum, whereas the single coil may boost all the mid/upper humps.

 

All the humps themselves remain in the same positions on the scale, the pickups like an EQ merely highlight and of minimise certain ones. This is because the Humps in the frequency range are created by the body first before its amplified.

 

The only way to shift the humps is to do it digitally and use something like an octaver or harmoniser to actually sample the frequency humps, then recreate them in a different position on the frequency spectrum.

 

Of course you can also target a hump with say a parametric EQ and block or enhance it, but since the EQ is stationary, and the particular note has harmonics, the note wont be completely masked by the EQ. Plus as you change notes the humps will move and the EQ wont so unless you use a very broad EQ to target groups of peaks, its completely useless targeting specific tones to change the resonant charecturistics the wood produces. fundamental tone or harmonics chopped off.

 

Using a wide band EQing to roll or boost of highs mids or lows can mimick another pickups frequency responce but since the fundamental tones change with every note on the neck, it cannot be used to change the actual wood tone very well other than to limit or boost groups of the fundamental tones. Like on amp knobs, Boosting trebble on a humbucker, makes the guitar sound like a boosted trebble humbucker, not a single coil. Nor does turning trebble down on a single make it sound like a humbucker. Its just sounds like a muffeled single coil to a trained ear.

 

You also have the problem where a single coil has a focused magnet field which comes through in its tone which makes it easily identifyable, even when its driven.

 

So what does this all amount to? Its the chicken or the egg senario.

 

Tone comes from the instruments wood, bridge strings etc because its the source of the sound vibration and any specific tonal qualities need to be there in order for the electronics to reproduce it.

 

It does not work the other way around. The only exception here is the onset of digital. You can take any analog tone the instrument makes, convert it to digital, use that digital signal to trigger say a sampled note or modify the existing note, then convert back to analog and output a completely different signal.

 

So far in the world guitars, this has not been very successful. A guitar note is not a pure sine wave like it is an a geyboard oscilator. Its very complex signal with the overtones and dynamics as I mentioned. You can get single notes to digitize fairly well if the dynamics are compressed and you trigger off the fundamental peak. You can forget about playing chords though. Its nearly impossible to filter one note from another with all the overlapping harmonics and pure tones occuring at the same time.

 

The best you can do is to use a midi pickup and have channels for all the separate strings which works fairly well. The problem though is with the string sensitivity, dynamics, and how strings tend to go sharper as you pick them harder. Then theres the time delay it takes to convert from analog to digital, then back again is still unnatureal feeling, though they are getting better at it. Maybe another 20 years and you'll have one instrument being able to reproduce actual tones of other instruments pickups, wood types etc. There has to be a market for that technology to and someone willing to pay the high cost of its development though. As it is, Midi guitar iisnt the boone many thought it might be for many good reasons. One being is people like the analog sound a guitar produces.

 

So back to your original question. Nothing is so absolute and black and white here. The answer does not have a yes or no answer because of the complexity of what you're dealing with.

 

I will say this. There is a varying degree of how much the wood tone comes through the pickup via the string metal when its plucked. The initial transient or half cycle of the sinewave produced by the plucked string can contain the maximum "Metal" tone from the string occurs before the bridge, body, neck begin to resonate to their "maximum" oscillation. This is only a shift in tone from wood to metal and is by no means an absolute. The bridge and body begin to oscillate nearly instantly so the tone is there nomatter what. Solids conduct sound much better than air does so by the time the sound reaches your ears the solid is already vibrating. The pickup signal is electricity and traves closer to the speed of light. Tone wise, the attack can sound more metalic and by doing things like pinch harmonics, rakes, using thick picks and string muting, you can vary the amount of metal tone vs wood tone coming from the strings.

 

Of course all these things can also be done on a nylon stringed guitar as well where no metal is involved. Its proof positive that all those techniques are equally balanced by how much controll you're imposing over the wood tone vs how much string tone comes through. Both are equal an opposite. One cant exist without the other if you truely want good tone.

 

So I'll answer your question with a question and see if you can honestly answer it.

 

The only way to separate the two is to use the minds eye and imagine an unmounted string vibrating in the air on its own unconnected to an instrument to provide its tone. Do you think it would sound the same as it would be connected to the neck and guitar body?

 

If you dont recognise it, its what they call in Budahisim, the "sound of one hand clapping" and is considered an excercise in meditation that separates truth from fiction.

[john_p_t]

Put the bong down, dude.

[alphamarquis]

 

SNIP: This is all kindergarden stuff in the electronics world. Physics and the formulas used to proove theory are the same for both electronics and Acoustic science.

 

 

Actually, the way real strings vibrate is subject to debate. The most accurate method to simulate a string vibrating is by using finite analysis. There is a linear solution to what you call "kindergarden stuff" but this do not even begin to take into account 2nd, 3rd or nth order effects. These string systems have so many variables that in order to accurately map an appropriate transfer function for a pickup it is necessary to take data and reproduce it through the system. I have read countless papers on modeling real vibrating strings and to begin to get into the realm requires the use of non-linear equations.

 

Guitar players live in the 2nd+ orders. First order effects may be simple, as you noted, but factors such as pickup magnet hysteresis (which may or may not exist), coil inductance, and capacitance (and impedance) and coil geometry, (along with magnetic field geometry), lead to a wide array of tonal differences that are not easily defined. You can make generalizations and they are mostly true, but to guitar players who listen frequently, second and third order effects can be noticed.

 

This is why we have so many pickup winders, and why people have different tastes in pickups. If everything was so cut-and-dried looking for pickups would be as simple as shopping at digikey for resistors.

 

and to make this post somewhat on topic: I like maple necks. They are pretty. And I think fretboard wood contribute to sound, but how much is up for debate.

[benzem]

Lets put it this way, The wood and body dont, but how much that tone is restricted by its reproduction is another matter. Guitar is a midrange instrument and pickups generally have a frequency responce of say 100~5Khz. Amps generally tend to be the same. Tones, harmonics and overtones above or below those frequencies will not be reproduced well. Much of this depends on the pickup design too. A low impediance coil with a lower resistance generally reproduce a wider frequency range up into the 6~7K range. They can reproduce the higher frequencies quite well. You also have Piezo bridge saddels that can be used to reproduce the acoustic qualities that can be blended with the pickup for a much fuller frequency responce up into the 10K range like an acoustic instrument. Again, a guitar is a midrange instrument. When you play it with other instruments in a band you actually want its output restricted so its frequency range doesnt interfere with the other instruments. You dont want to much bass and have it mask the bass guitar nor too much high frequency so it interferes with the vocals, drum cymbals etc. Even with these midrange limitations imposed, there is a big difference in how much vibration is felt in the hands and chest when you play it. Having full ranged body tone like say a semihollow body can be felt when its played. It feels like an acoustic whan its played yet the sound from the speaker is more electric. You can also take two different instruments with different wood densities and like say a Les Paul and a lightweight body with a maple neck. The two will have different frequency ranges and sustain etc. They both "Should" feel different in your hands You can get them to sound simular by using EQ, but that isnt going to to change the fundamental frequencies the wood of the guitar produces. I think this is the key to misunderstanding many dont understand. You can take any number of pickups and place them in the same guitar and the only things that change are bandwidth and sensitivity as many discover to their surprise. You can put a gibson humbucker in a strat and it still sounds like a strat. It may have a shift in frequency responce and have different string dynamics though. This may make the instrument sound darker and fuller. One reason is the width of the pickup is wider and has a wider magnetic field so it reproduces maybe 2" of the string vs 1/2" of very focused area. Next since the gain of most Humbuckers tends to be higher it requires less pick pressure to compress the signal output from zero to its maximum output. Dynamics are reduced. Someone playing with less dynamic controll can get all the soft notes to come through sounding louder. On the other hand, a low output single coil has a much more focused magnetic field on a section of a string making it sound thinner. Its output from zero to maximum requires more and consistant pick pressure to maintain dynamics. This is why many have a hard time playing fenders clean and dirty them up to reduce headroom to get the feel of a humbucker dynamics. If you take both pickups, have a simular gain level set, and the pickups placed in the same positions, the fundamental tone created by the wood resonance is identical on a frequency analizer. You will still have peak resonant humps in the same places. What will be different is how large those humps will be. This comes from the frequency restrictions and frequency targeting the pickups provide. The humbucker may for example boost all the lower and mid humps in the spectrum, whereas the single coil may boost all the mid/upper humps. All the humps themselves remain in the same positions on the scale, the pickups like an EQ merely highlight and of minimise certain ones. This is because the Humps in the frequency range are created by the body first before its amplified. The only way to shift the humps is to do it digitally and use something like an octaver or harmoniser to actually sample the frequency humps, then recreate them in a different position on the frequency spectrum. Of course you can also target a hump with say a parametric EQ and block or enhance it, but since the EQ is stationary, and the particular note has harmonics, the note wont be completely masked by the EQ. Plus as you change notes the humps will move and the EQ wont so unless you use a very broad EQ to target groups of peaks, its completely useless targeting specific tones to change the resonant charecturistics the wood produces. fundamental tone or harmonics chopped off. Using a wide band EQing to roll or boost of highs mids or lows can mimick another pickups frequency responce but since the fundamental tones change with every note on the neck, it cannot be used to change the actual wood tone very well other than to limit or boost groups of the fundamental tones. Like on amp knobs, Boosting trebble on a humbucker, makes the guitar sound like a boosted trebble humbucker, not a single coil. Nor does turning trebble down on a single make it sound like a humbucker. Its just sounds like a muffeled single coil to a trained ear. You also have the problem where a single coil has a focused magnet field which comes through in its tone which makes it easily identifyable, even when its driven. So what does this all amount to? Its the chicken or the egg senario. Tone comes from the instruments wood, bridge strings etc because its the source of the sound vibration and any specific tonal qualities need to be there in order for the electronics to reproduce it. It does not work the other way around. The only exception here is the onset of digital. You can take any analog tone the instrument makes, convert it to digital, use that digital signal to trigger say a sampled note or modify the existing note, then convert back to analog and output a completely different signal. So far in the world guitars, this has not been very successful. A guitar note is not a pure sine wave like it is an a geyboard oscilator. Its very complex signal with the overtones and dynamics as I mentioned. You can get single notes to digitize fairly well if the dynamics are compressed and you trigger off the fundamental peak. You can forget about playing chords though. Its nearly impossible to filter one note from another with all the overlapping harmonics and pure tones occuring at the same time. The best you can do is to use a midi pickup and have channels for all the separate strings which works fairly well. The problem though is with the string sensitivity, dynamics, and how strings tend to go sharper as you pick them harder. Then theres the time delay it takes to convert from analog to digital, then back again is still unnatureal feeling, though they are getting better at it. Maybe another 20 years and you'll have one instrument being able to reproduce actual tones of other instruments pickups, wood types etc. There has to be a market for that technology to and someone willing to pay the high cost of its development though. As it is, Midi guitar iisnt the boone many thought it might be for many good reasons. One being is people like the analog sound a guitar produces. So back to your original question. Nothing is so absolute and black and white here. The answer does not have a yes or no answer because of the complexity of what you're dealing with. I will say this. There is a varying degree of how much the wood tone comes through the pickup via the string metal when its plucked. The initial transient or half cycle of the sinewave produced by the plucked string can contain the maximum "Metal" tone from the string occurs before the bridge, body, neck begin to resonate to their "maximum" oscillation. This is only a shift in tone from wood to metal and is by no means an absolute. The bridge and body begin to oscillate nearly instantly so the tone is there nomatter what. Solids conduct sound much better than air does so by the time the sound reaches your ears the solid is already vibrating. The pickup signal is electricity and traves closer to the speed of light. Tone wise, the attack can sound more metalic and by doing things like pinch harmonics, rakes, using thick picks and string muting, you can vary the amount of metal tone vs wood tone coming from the strings. Of course all these things can also be done on a nylon stringed guitar as well where no metal is involved. Its proof positive that all those techniques are equally balanced by how much controll you're imposing over the wood tone vs how much string tone comes through. Both are equal an opposite. One cant exist without the other if you truely want good tone. So I'll answer your question with a question and see if you can honestly answer it. The only way to separate the two is to use the minds eye and imagine an unmounted string vibrating in the air on its own unconnected to an instrument to provide its tone. Do you think it would sound the same as it would be connected to the neck and guitar body? If you dont recognise it, its what they call in Budahisim, the "sound of one hand clapping" and is considered an excercise in meditation that separates truth from fiction.

 

Honestly I cannot answer your question.

 

But, I appreciate your info and honestly admire your knowledge. I'm always learning new stuff about music and gear. Sometimes from people that have little technical knowledge! How do they do it?

 

[WRGKMC]

 

Actually, the way real strings vibrate is subject to debate. The most accurate method to simulate a string vibrating is by using finite analysis. There is a linear solution to what you call "kindergarden stuff" but this do not even begin to take into account 2nd, 3rd or nth order effects. These string systems have so many variables that in order to accurately map an appropriate transfer function for a pickup it is necessary to take data and reproduce it through the system. I have read countless papers on modeling real vibrating strings and to begin to get into the realm requires the use of non-linear equations.

 

 

I believe the term is second or third order harmonics, not effects. I realise reading and trying to understand anothers interpetation in papers written can be difficult and quite different from actually doing the tests and finding your own words for the same results.

 

I've never been super at picking out all the best words that can decribe facts and do tend to dumb them down alot. This often runs into using many more words then nessasary. But there arent a whole lot of actual techs hanging out on forums like these so using highly technical terms to Wow someone is not my first perference.

 

If I were to tell someone to Google up "Eli the Ice man", they would think I'm some kind of nut. In reality its deals with the absolute heart of guitar electronics and is the first major theory anyone would need to understand and have a clear complete inteleagable understanding of guitar electronics and how filters and oscillators work.

 

Even harmonics can be clearly seen on a scope with absolutely no problem at all so to me it truely is kindergarden stuff. How the signal can be influenced either electronically or through the build itself can be varied by all you mention but it can be seen and heard at the same time by splitting the signal, amplifying it while watching it on a scope. Using only one form of sences like the ears can tell some of the truth if the focused perception is there. To neglect the way test equipment is used to design, manuacture, test, and market those same components are inseperable from the complete picture.

 

In the electronics business you use test instruments to look into a circuit to see what is going. You may design via theory, but test equipment prooves the theory and how different materials influence electronrons. In simple words, through knowlege we see the tree brances move and understand its the wind causing it to move, not the tree animating itself.

 

Its only been recently since they have been able to actually "see" electrons passing through substances like silicon to "proove" out all the theory of what is happening. 99% of the theory has been proven to be true so in a general sence, it isnt up for a whole lot of debate other than from an educational perspective in tieing together all the loose ends people collect that dont always correctly constitute the whole.

 

The remaining 1% has brought about many benificial uses already though so not all is known. By being able to see electrons move through a substance like silicon with an atomic microscope for example they can actually see how impurities slow, deflect, or repel the current flow. This is exactly how they have been able to make computer chips as fast as they are in such a short period of time in the past few decades.

 

I'm not asking anyone to believe on a faith basis either. Just as I've followed others footsteps in seeking the truth in how things work, its only a matter of putting the effort into learning for anyone else to learn how to do the same.

 

Ears alone cannot tell the whole story nor does theory or testing. This is because sound/music is percieved by the mind like any other stimulus is. Like words to a story, everyone will visualize it within their own world of knowlege, on their own terms, and decide for themselves weather its pleasing or not. So in this, surely you can say peoples preferences vary all over the place. So is developing something, advertising it, and creating a market fo it I might add.

 

Weather one cap sounds better than another? Well You can see the effects of one over another quite clearly. Manufactures arent magicians. They use same test equipment to design the components techs use to test them with albiet more accurate in many cases. Quality control, tolerances, material purity, cost are all part of what makes one component more popular over another.

 

In reality, as I mentioned, all the electronics in a guitar were never specifically invented for the purpose of amplifying the instrument, they were all taken from other inventions and adapted to the instrument on a pick and choose basis, so surely personal preference is the #1 contributing to an instruments performance beyond the sales factors

 

I can say, theres is a buttload of missconception though of what constitutes good over bad. To some its just owning certain items because they're popular. Keep up with the Jonses as I mentioned. It may be that in a blind comparison they have no ability to percieve any differences between them yet the hype drives them to spend insane amounts on money on things that couldnt possibly make a difference. Of course the opposite can be true. Something can be intencely superior and since its poorly understood or marketed, it fails to catch on.

 

There are plenty of people who do test things down to the slightest details and use all the small variences in an additive way, to get a bunch of small variances to amount to something specific and substantial. I tend to fall into this catagory because my occupation is to troubbleshoot and repair faults, so its as normal to me as riding a bike for others. Hell I started repairing electronics when I was 9 years old in my uncles TV repair shop 44 years ago. Its difficult enough to understand why others cant understand electronics as clearly as I do.

 

I think of how many times I would spend doing repairs, testing and swapping components to find optimum functionality. I've been known to swap a single transistor 10~20 times in an amp to get the outputs to match as as perfectly as the test equipment and components allowed. It also makes you quite aware of all the limitations of what can and cant be done with the quality of resources available on the market.

 

Some of the stories I read are often more science fiction than science fact, but it does make for fun in either case. No worse than a calls I've taken doing electronic tech support jobs as well. You get a guy who says he just bought a computer and his his footpedal or cup holder dont work. (mouse/CD player) It does make for a major belly laugh. Same goes for some of what you read in forums like these.

 

Then of course, you try to help others tie a few loose ends together and what do you get? It may be my writing style that sets someone off, If it is I appologize. In other cases it may be their reading abilities, I dont know. Then again sometimes its just an inflexable adolecent prick who resort to name calling to get a rise out of others. You put your best effort out trying to help others understand something slightly more complex than what they might understand it as being and they repay that kindness by calling you a dope smoker.

[john_p_t]

 

I believe the term is second or third order harmonics, not effects. I realise reading and trying to understand anothers interpetation in papers written can be difficult and quite different from actually doing the tests and finding your own words for the same results.

 

 

Now, now. He simply means "effects of the phenomenon under discussion". There's nothing wrong with his terminology, and no need - or justification - for getting patronising.

[WRGKMC]

Honestly I cannot answer your question. But, I appreciate your info and honestly admire your knowledge. I'm always learning new stuff about music and gear. Sometimes from people that have little technical knowledge! How do they do it?

 

Thanks man,

 

I guess the answer I prefer is you can color the sound anyway you want. If you're imaginative enough to picture the string vibrating, you're got a mind thats creative enough to have it produce ant tone you want. Right?

[john_p_t]

 

and they repay that kindness by calling you a dope smoker.

 

 

No, this really won't do. Your first post in this thread was a pretty damn rude and incoherent ramble about how I apparently have "personal problems". If you're going to get all upset about a bit of gentle mockery at your frankly absurd and irrelevant waffle about Buddhism, I'd venture you're being a bit thin-skinned. This isn't even a case of being asked to take what you give out; this is a case of you being cut rather a lot of slack and still whining about it.

[enuenu]

Wow, I learned a bit about fretboards, and then some.

[Stoneball Jack]

Who knew fretboard would could get people all worked up.

 

Anyone have an opinion on pau ferro as fretboard wood?

[csm]

I'm not fussed. I have both maple board and rosewood board Strats. If pushed I probably prefer to play on a rosewood board...Maple feels like Ebony to me, but Maple boards look pretty.

 

In my subjective and inexpert universe, ebony feels a little like maple and looks like (dark) rosewood. The difference is that maple boards are lacquered (unless you've specifically gone for an unfinished -- or skilfully relic'ed -- one or you're lucky enough to have one sufficiently ancient to have the lacquer worn off by decades of playing) and ebony boards are usually plain.

 

Personally, I prefer (a) the look of a dark board and (b) the feel of wood under my fingers rather than lacquer. I've never owned an ebony-board guitar (though I've played a few), but I'd be happy with one.

 

Played acoustically, I've found maple-board guitars to be fractionally snappier and twangier than rosewood ones, but the distinction becomes less apparent once you're plugged in, and majorly non-cost-effective the more gain, effects etc you pile on.

 

Okay -- I now hand this thread back to peeps who actually know what they're talking about.

[john_p_t]

 

Who knew fretboard would could get people all worked up. Anyone have an opinion on pau ferro as fretboard wood?

 

 

It's definitely wood, and you can put frets in it. On that basis, I'd say you're all clear.

[RUExp?]

 

I didn't realise that there were Strats built before 68:confused:

 

 

Seriously? The Stratocaster came out in 1954 with an all maple neck and ash body.

[csm]

Irony doesn't always work on Teh Interwebz.

 

Discuss.

[Ratae Corieltauvorum]

 

Seriously? The Stratocaster came out in 1954 with an all maple neck and ash body.

 

 

I feel like I'm on the shores of Lake Gallilee

[Stoneball Jack]

 

It's definitely wood, and you can put frets in it. On that basis, I'd say you're all clear.

 

 

you don't think the fret board wood makes any difference? You don't even think it feels different?

[jgyn]

I wonder if there's a difference playing or sound wise between a maple capped or all maple neck.