Body wood affects tone

professorben

WezV said:

If anyone doubts the body of an electric resonates with string energy (despite being able to feel it), try attaching a clip on tuner to various parts where you can't normally feel it.

you can tune from the switch tip, scratchplate, strap button - anything else you can attach it to.  You will get a reading of all of them.   With my stroboflip tuner I can tune almost as accurately from the switch tip as I can normal headstock location

I don't think anyone is saying the body doesn't vibrate on an electric guitar, but rather if those vibrations have any effect on the resultant signal exiting the guitar. 

Rabs

professorben said:

WezV said:

If anyone doubts the body of an electric resonates with string energy (despite being able to feel it), try attaching a clip on tuner to various parts where you can't normally feel it.

you can tune from the switch tip, scratchplate, strap button - anything else you can attach it to.  You will get a reading of all of them.   With my stroboflip tuner I can tune almost as accurately from the switch tip as I can normal headstock location

I don't think anyone is saying the body doesn't vibrate on an electric guitar, but rather if those vibrations have any effect on the resultant signal exiting the guitar. 

Yes but surely this is where the sympathetic vibrations come in..  One vibration effects the other.  So if the strings and the body  and neck are vibrating the frequency will be determined by all of those factors no?

The thing is that it seems that actually everyone does agree that guitars sound different acousticly even the sunburst guy... So if someone can prove that vibrations from the body and neck ARE picked up by the pickups then wood MUST make a difference.. Even if it is small.

I am going to do some tests to try and prove or disprove that soon.

EricTheWeary

customkits said:

crunchman said:

I don't know why I'm keeping this thread alive, but I just thought of an interesting experiment if anyone has an EDS-1275 doubleneck.

If we want to test whether vibrations from strings can get into the body, and then vibrations from the body can affect the strings, you could play on one neck, with the pickups from that neck silent, but have the pickups from the other neck turned up.  If the vibrations from the wood start to make the strings on the second neck vibrate and there is any kind of sound generated then we know for certain that vibrations from the wood will affect the strings.

I think I've heard Bernie Marsden doing that exact same thing and it worked nicely

Yeh, I've seen that - one of the videos he did with Andertons? 

Rabs

EricTheWeary said:

customkits said:

crunchman said:

I don't know why I'm keeping this thread alive, but I just thought of an interesting experiment if anyone has an EDS-1275 doubleneck.

If we want to test whether vibrations from strings can get into the body, and then vibrations from the body can affect the strings, you could play on one neck, with the pickups from that neck silent, but have the pickups from the other neck turned up.  If the vibrations from the wood start to make the strings on the second neck vibrate and there is any kind of sound generated then we know for certain that vibrations from the wood will affect the strings.

I think I've heard Bernie Marsden doing that exact same thing and it worked nicely

Yeh, I've seen that - one of the videos he did with Andertons? 

Wow, I never saw that before...  Very cool...  But that's happening cos the strings are vibrating where the pickups are on so dosnt really prove what we are talking about..  But still cool

For those who haven't seen it check this at 32:00 in

WezV

professorben said:

WezV said:

If anyone doubts the body of an electric resonates with string energy (despite being able to feel it), try attaching a clip on tuner to various parts where you can't normally feel it.

you can tune from the switch tip, scratchplate, strap button - anything else you can attach it to.  You will get a reading of all of them.   With my stroboflip tuner I can tune almost as accurately from the switch tip as I can normal headstock location

I don't think anyone is saying the body doesn't vibrate on an electric guitar, but rather if those vibrations have any effect on the resultant signal exiting the guitar. 

I don't think anyone knows what is being said anymore.  It certainly was suggested earlier in the thread.

my point is that resonance affects both the string and the pickup.... and everything else to a greater or lesser degree

Its hilarious that some rule out one factor so completely whilst admitting other parts made of wood could have an affect.  

People need to consider the whole system and the way different things will change the importance of different factors

i.e.  No point talking about neck stiffness without considering headstock size and thickness.  No point talking about body wood without considering bridge type and neck join.  No point talking about scale length without considering string gauge and tuning.

professorben

Rabs said:

professorben said:

WezV said:

If anyone doubts the body of an electric resonates with string energy (despite being able to feel it), try attaching a clip on tuner to various parts where you can't normally feel it.

you can tune from the switch tip, scratchplate, strap button - anything else you can attach it to.  You will get a reading of all of them.   With my stroboflip tuner I can tune almost as accurately from the switch tip as I can normal headstock location

I don't think anyone is saying the body doesn't vibrate on an electric guitar, but rather if those vibrations have any effect on the resultant signal exiting the guitar. 

Yes but surely this is where the sympathetic vibrations come in..  One vibration effects the other.  So if the strings and the body  and neck are vibrating the frequency will be determined by all of those factors no?

The thing is that it seems that actually everyone does agree that guitars sound different acousticly even the sunburst guy... So if someone can prove that vibrations from the body and neck ARE picked up by the pickups then wood MUST make a difference.. Even if it is small.

I am going to do some tests to try and prove or disprove that soon.

Well I suppose we have 2 different thoughts there. 
1) does having a body of any type affect sound?
2) does different wood type affect sound?

So if you mounted a pickup completely isolated from string vibration, and compared it against the same pickup mounted on a body???

i think the issue really is that EVERY single tiny part of the instrument influences the resultant sound, I believe the hurdle a lot of players struggle to get around is although the body of the guitar is by far the largest physical component, it's perhaps quite a way down the list in terms of influence when placed against

Nut material 
Bridge type
Pickup type
Pots and switches
Machinehead type
Plectrum material

Take a normal guitar. 
Play it and record it, now cut a few holes in it and plug those holes with a different wood type, does it sound different? 
I don't know, I'd love to see, how much original body wood do you have to replace before you notice any perceivable change??

A lot of scientific research has proved results that are very counter intuitive, especially when it's around a subject with direct human interaction as everyone hears/feels/sees/senses the world slightly differently. 

The instrument we use is still in the grand scheme of things in its infancy, it's entirely possible that in a hundred years everyone will be playing carbon reinforced guitars and smirking about how deluded we all were about any type of wood affecting tone, or maybe not. 

Rabs

professorben said:

Rabs said:

 

Well I suppose we have 2 different thoughts there. 
1) does having a body of any type affect sound?
2) does different wood type affect sound?

I think it goes a bit further than that...

If we can prove that the pickups do detect vibrations in the wood then it must make a difference..  The thing is that EVERY bit of wood is unique...  If you work with wood you will know that you often get these dense pockets when cutting through them..   This is different and unique for each piece.

So actually all of this is kind of pointless because it means that you can only judge each guitar by its own merits which I think most of us know anyway... even when you have guitars made of the same tree they will all be slightly different in feel and sound...

I do however think that you can use almost anything for a body and it will still sound (generally speaking) like an electric guitar.. If that guitar is resonant or pleasing on the ear is another thing entirely though.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

AustrianJohn

How has this debate (ok, I'm being kind) meandered on for 19 pages?

Early on I asked "If you heard an electric guitar being played at a gig without seeing the guitar, could you really tell me what type of wood it was made from?" No-one said they could tell what wood the guitar was made from.

Then on page 5 I offered people £100 if they could guess 2 out of 3 wood types. Again, no takers.

It is pretty clear that one piece of wood can sound different (in a guitar) to another piece of wood. It is also clear that this difference is unpredictable (otherwise I'd have lost £100).

So what exactly is it that is being discussed?

koneguitarist

@Rabs @WezV @professorben Exactly , each piece of wood is different, they all resonate to a bigger or lesser degree, this must have an effect on what we hear, but as each piece of wood is different even between same samples let alone different species then how can anyone say that tone woods are the answer. 
Yes they must make some difference no matter how small, but is that difference quantifiable as no two pieces are the same. 
So we all come back to same answer, no one really knows the answer, you can hear the difference between two identical guitars, so the difference cannot only be about wood as already proven but about the whole package. 
Not sure about some of you but after 40years of guitars and working in Aircraft and engineering industry my hearing is not that brilliant anyway. But going back about 25 years ago I bought a Rosewood tele reissue I couldn't hear much difference between that and a regular tele even then. 

WezV

I don't say anything about tone wood.  Been pretty clear on that many times.

   I talk about wood selection on a piece by piece basis, but sometimes start with a species to get in a ball park 

PolarityMan

Rabs said:

Yes but surely this is where the sympathetic vibrations come in..  One vibration effects the other.  So if the strings and the body  and neck are vibrating the frequency will be determined by all of those factors no?

This is why I constantly wiggle my guitar while I play.

NelsonP

WezV said:

If anyone doubts the body of an electric resonates with string energy (despite being able to feel it), try attaching a clip on tuner to various parts where you can't normally feel it.

you can tune from the switch tip, scratchplate, strap button - anything else you can attach it to.  You will get a reading of all of them.   With my stroboflip tuner I can tune almost as accurately from the switch tip as I can normal headstock location

Such a simple experiment. Nice thinking!

To summarise:

Fender, Gibson, Suhr and Jackson all say that the wood the guitar body is made from makes a difference to the tone.

Its easy to prove that vibration is transferred from the string to the body and neck (as evidenced by the tuner experiment above or simply putting your ear against the body, or using the nearest window  as an acoustic amplifier).

It's quite possible that vibrations are also passed from the speaker back via the guitar body and neck and into the strings.

In response to energy from the strings (and speaker?), the guitar body and neck will resonate at certain frequencies depending on it's density and stiffness. 

Some of that resonance will be passed back to the strings.

It seems that the string/neck/body interaction alone may not be sufficient to change the electrical signal generated by the pickup.

But it does appear to be large enough to be picked up by a microphone.

Therefore it is likely that guitars made from different woods will produce different tones, provided that the system allows transfer of energy between each of its components.

This fits with what the manor manufacturers say and what many guitarists appear to intuitively know.

It's possible that the human senses (hearing and touch) are able to discern these differences.

I'd like to see a proper study into a lot of the points above, but that might never happen.

AustrianJohn

NelsonP said:

WezV said:

If anyone doubts the body of an electric resonates with string energy (despite being able to feel it), try attaching a clip on tuner to various parts where you can't normally feel it.

you can tune from the switch tip, scratchplate, strap button - anything else you can attach it to.  You will get a reading of all of them.   With my stroboflip tuner I can tune almost as accurately from the switch tip as I can normal headstock location

Such a simple experiment. Nice thinking!

I hope that no-one is suggesting that guitars don't vibrate. What insight does this experiment provide for a guitar builder or a guitar player?

NelsonP

AustrianJohn said:

NelsonP said:

WezV said:

If anyone doubts the body of an electric resonates with string energy (despite being able to feel it), try attaching a clip on tuner to various parts where you can't normally feel it.

you can tune from the switch tip, scratchplate, strap button - anything else you can attach it to.  You will get a reading of all of them.   With my stroboflip tuner I can tune almost as accurately from the switch tip as I can normal headstock location

Such a simple experiment. Nice thinking!

I hope that no-one is suggesting that guitars don't vibrate. What insight does this experiment provide for a guitar builder or a guitar player?

See the discussion of high mechanical impedance earlier in this thread

Rabs

Well I just went and tried something for whatever its worth.

I played some music through some headphones (the DJ type) and I put one speaker on each side of the body (just above the pickups).. I then plugged the guitar straight into a digital 4 track recorder and held the strings so they weren't vibrating and recorded if anything was coming out..

And indeed you could very softly hear the music that was playing through the body through the pickup output.

Which says to me that electric pickups do indeed pickup vibrations from the body as well as the strings. (and the headphones arnt even that loud as I was playing it through my phone).

So there :P

NelsonP

Rabs said:

Well I just went and tried something for whatever its worth.

I played some music through some headphones (the DJ type) and I put one speaker on each side of the body (just above the pickups).. I then plugged the guitar straight into a digital 4 track recorder and held the strings so they weren't vibrating and recorded if anything was coming out..

And indeed you could very softly hear the music that was playing through the body through the pickup output.

Which says to me that electric pickups do indeed pickup vibrations from the body as well as the strings. (and the headphones arnt even that loud as I was playing it through my phone).

So there :P

Another clever experiment. Possible that you are hearing inductance of the headphone speakers via the pickups.

Care to try again with the headphones further away from the pickups? Perhaps also with the headphones near the pickups but not physically touching the guitar?

Also try it with the strings undamped.

Rabs

NelsonP said:

Rabs said:

Well I just went and tried something for whatever its worth.

I played some music through some headphones (the DJ type) and I put one speaker on each side of the body (just above the pickups).. I then plugged the guitar straight into a digital 4 track recorder and held the strings so they weren't vibrating and recorded if anything was coming out..

And indeed you could very softly hear the music that was playing through the body through the pickup output.

Which says to me that electric pickups do indeed pickup vibrations from the body as well as the strings. (and the headphones arnt even that loud as I was playing it through my phone).

So there :P

Another clever experiment. Possible that you are hearing inductance of the headphone speakers via the pickups.

Care to try again with the headphones further away from the pickups?

Well I did that and you couldn't hear much but then I couldn't amplify it much through the way I did it...  I need something a but more powerful than the headphones I used, even at full volume its not that loud.. And then I can run it through my amp to well amplify it more

I once saw a video on Youtube where a guy did something similar...  He had a blank of wood and attached a pickup at one end which went directly to an output and amp and on the other end of the board he played a small music box, the one where you turn it by hand and a small barrel revolves and pings metal strips and it could clearly be heard.  Cant find that vid any more...

If I do it (wont be tonight) I may record it so I can share it with you all.

Jay

I wouldn't like to agree or disagree about tone wood, just keeping an open mind. No doubt some boffins might discover some solid proof in future. 

Three-ColourSunburst

Jay said:

I wouldn't like to agree or disagree about tone wood, just keeping an open mind. No doubt some boffins might discover some solid proof in future. 

One of the enduring legacies of Karl Popper’s philosophy of science is his belief in the central role of falsification in scientific advancement. According to Popper, scientific theories can never be conclusively verified. Although evidence may be gathered which is consistent with a theory, the possibility always remains that instances will be uncovered that prove it to be false. In contrast, scientific generalizations can be conclusively falsified by a single disconfirming observation. Thus, science progresses primarily through falsification. Negative evidence permits the rejection of erroneous theories and allows the promotion of more viable alternatives.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4575142/

As posted earlier.

Sobre o acoplamento corda-corpo em guitarras elétricas e sua relação com o timbre do instrumento. Physicæ 9, 2010, pp. 24 - 29

(String-body coupling on electric guitars and its relation with the timbre of the instrument.)

Rodrigo Mateus Pereira(1), Albary Laibida Junior, Thiago Corrêa de Freitas.

(1) Tecnologia em Luteria, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil.

Abstract.

Nine electric guitar bodies were built in the form of the Telecaster model by the author RMP. These were assembled using the same neck and pickup assembly. Once each body was assembled two strings of the electric guitar were mechanically excited and the sound, obtained directly from the instrument, was recorded for later analysis. Also recorded was a musical piece played with each electric guitar. These sounds were analysed via a Fourier transform in order to obtain the component harmonics of the sound, these harmonics are responsible for the timbre of the instrument. The harmonic spectra of each electric guitar were compared to each other and there were no significant differences between them. Thus the variations of timbre of electric guitars, according to the results obtained here, depend on other factors than the wood of the body itself, a fact that arises from the absence of a significant coupling between the string and the body of the instrument. Also proposed is a modelling of the string-body coupling, which shows that only a negligible amount of energy from the vibrating string reaches the body of the instrument and that a smaller amount still returns up the string.

http://physicae.ifi.unicamp.br/index.php/physicae/article/view/physicae.9.5/116

https://physicae.ifi.unicamp.br/index.php/physicae/issue/view/Ano%209%2C%20N%C3%BAmero%209%20%282010%29

koneguitarist

NelsonP said:

WezV said:

If anyone doubts the body of an electric resonates with string energy (despite being able to feel it), try attaching a clip on tuner to various parts where you can't normally feel it.

you can tune from the switch tip, scratchplate, strap button - anything else you can attach it to.  You will get a reading of all of them.   With my stroboflip tuner I can tune almost as accurately from the switch tip as I can normal headstock location

Such a simple experiment. Nice thinking!

To summarise:

Fender, Gibson, Suhr and Jackson all say that the wood the guitar body is made from makes a difference to the tone.

Its easy to prove that vibration is transferred from the string to the body and neck (as evidenced by the tuner experiment above or simply putting your ear against the body, or using the nearest window  as an acoustic amplifier).

It's quite possible that vibrations are also passed from the speaker back via the guitar body and neck and into the strings.

In response to energy from the strings (and speaker?), the guitar body and neck will resonate at certain frequencies depending on it's density and stiffness. 

Some of that resonance will be passed back to the strings.

It seems that the string/neck/body interaction alone may not be sufficient to change the electrical signal generated by the pickup.

But it does appear to be large enough to be picked up by a microphone.

Therefore it is likely that guitars made from different woods will produce different tones, provided that the system allows transfer of energy between each of its components.

This fits with what the manor manufacturers say and what many guitarists appear to intuitively know.

It's possible that the human senses (hearing and touch) are able to discern these differences.

I'd like to see a proper study into a lot of the points above, but that might never happen.

Yes all guitar manufacturers want to sell guitars and saying their wood makes a difference is not a lie, what's unclear right from the start and still is, what is the difference? 
I have seen guitars made from granite, plexiglass, brass and steel not resonance friendly materials. All sound like regular guitars. 
The difference between a granite telecaster with a graphite neck to a standard telecaster is no bigger than one telecaster to another, so wood species is not important? 
It can't be can it?