Body wood affects tone

octatonic

In case anyone hasn't noticed and/or remotely cares I also think Three-ColourWhatsit is crazy.

My entire point here is 'it is complicated' and I'm against having an absolute position either for or against the original premise.
What I know about building (a few) acoustic instruments is you can partially mitigate the inherent tonality of a piece of wood by making informed decisions around the rest of the build.
With electrics it is harder to measure because an electric guitar is not primarily an acoustic system.
The electronics/pickups/effects/speaker choices impact more.

But Thee Colours position is insane- go play 50 guitars unplugged and tell me that the wood doesn't affect what you hear.
But then go and play 50 identical guitars (same wood) and tell me that there is not a similar range of behaviours.

Ravenous

octatonic said:

But Thee Colours position is insane- go play 50 guitars unplugged and tell me that the wood doesn't affect what you hear.
But then go and play 50 identical guitars (same wood) and tell me that there is not a similar range behaviours.

I do wonder if he has ever played more than one guitar.  (He probably has and is just teasing us, but I do wonder.)

MartinB

Megii said:

I had a similar argument to this with a friend about pickup magnets recently. He was asking about the pickups I'd had made for a guitar, and I talked a bit about the specs, including the type of alnico for the magnets, and how this influenced the tone. Anyhow, he said that the only thing the type of magnet could influence was the strength of the magnetic field, and thus the volume/output of the pickup - the tone balance, in his view could not be altered. I pointed him to various things on the internet, which were dismissed as marketing nonsense.

That's a good illustration of what can happen in this type of thread.  Different alnico grades can have an effect on the inductance of a pickup in addition to varying in strength.  Alnico also loses some high frequencies through eddy currents, which are not an issue with ceramic.  This is repeatable and measurable.  But your friend settled on an oversimplified model that does not take this into account, and declared that to be Science and therefore inarguable...

bacchanalian

It is inhumane keeping this thread alive. I realise the futility of this post

Sassafras

Come on, cut him some slack. All the guy wants, quite reasonably in my opinion, is scientific proof to back-up some wild exaggerated claims made by an advertiser.
As we know, advertisers never normally make outrageous claims about their products without first carrying out stringent and exhaustive scientific research to validate their hyperbole, so I think he may have a point.

Sassafras

bacchanalian said:

It is inhumane keeping this thread alive. I realise the futility of this post

I agree, it is inhumane but I'm bored and there's nothing else to do.

impmann

Theres probably a reason why there haven't been scientific, academic studies into the exact effect of different woods to the electric guitar - because nobody other that 3TS gives a shit about all that and most would prefer to use their ears to make judgements as to whether one guitar sounds better/different than another *TO THEM*.

To quote the song, "I know what I like and I like what I know" - I'm quite happy to have an *OPINION* about something. Its not right, its not wrong and doesn't have to have a scientific basis - much like liking the taste of Peanut Butter, or being attracted to Blondes, or liking a particular piece of music. My own opinion is *yes it does* - but to what end is based on many other variables that have been covered many times over.

Time for the chain to be pulled on this thread, me thinks...

Sassafras

I think another reason there are currently no scientific studies on this subject is that NASA and CERN can't justify spending their entire budget buying '59 Bursts for their experiments.

Ravenous

Sassafras said:

I think another reason there are currently no scientific studies on this subject is that NASA and CERN can't justify spending their entire budget buying '59 Bursts for their experiments.

But the burst would have a pretty decent flame on re-entry.

Three-ColourSunburst

Oh dear, people do seem to be getting rather upset. I'd hate to get on the wrong side of you lot over something that actually matters in life!

Just a few points. OK, so everyone seems to accept that the claims that certain woods have specific and predictable tonal qualities is nothing more than marketing BS. Also, two very different instruments can be made to sound the same, or as close as makes no practical differences, even if they are made of very different woods and have a different construction. Given this, the species of wood a solid body guitar is made of is, from a practical perspective, something of an irrelevance, and so nothing worth getting worked up about.

Secondly, I don't deny that various guitars can feel and acoustically sound different when made of different woods, whether they are solid or hollow bodied and so on. However, whether these differences make a significant contribution to the sound coming from the pickups is another issue altogether!

I see nothing wrong with wanting to understand better what lies behind the solid body guitar 'tone wood' debate, irrespective of whether it is a real phenomenon or a not. It is hardly my fault that all the evidence I have been able to find so does nothing to dispel the idea it is a myth. As I said, I would love to read any credible academic papers, or come to that any sources, showing exactly why 'tone' wood is a real phenomenon. I have nothing invested either way and so 'admitting I am wrong' would cause me no grief. It seems that the same cannot be said about everyone who has posted on this topic!

As to academics not having provided any proof that 'tone wood' does have an effect, this is hardly likely to be due to simply not caring about the subject, given that the whole academic industry is on a ceaseless quest to find new research areas (grants, tenures and Doctorates depend on it) and they seem to have studied practically every other area relating to the construction of musical instruments that one can think of.

If Swift was alive today he would probably make the 'tone wood wars' a central topic of Gulliver's Travels, rather than writing about the egg-related disputes of the 'Big-Endiens' and 'Little-Endiens'.

ICBM

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Body Woods and an Electric Guitar’s Frequency Spectrum

Keith J. Soper

University of Toledo

ABSTRACT

There are many theories as to what significance particular wood species contribute if any to the overall tone of an electric guitar. In this paper two differing wood types are studied, ash and alder, and a method are investigated to determine their tonal spectrums. Analysis of the data shows that in an electric guitar the body wood type does not contribute significantly to the sound of the amplified instrument.

http://www.stormriders.com/guitar/telecaster/guitar_wood.pdf

This is going to be the first and last post I make in this thread, but you have at least saved me the time of finding this study, which I'd come across before.

The conclusion is simply wrong. Their own graphs prove, absolutely unequivocally, that the body affects the amplified sound significantly as well as the acoustic sound, although less so. Every string's pickup graph shows differences in the 5-10dB range at various frequencies. 10dB is a *huge* difference. It also shows that the alder body is significantly brighter-sounding than the ash, because there is a roughly 2-3dB greater output, consistently across all six strings, above about 5Khz. (Whether or not that will come out through the average guitar speaker is a different question!)

It does not prove that there is a consistent difference between wood species, but it does clearly show that the resonance of the body is part of the amplified sound of an electric guitar, contrary to what's stated.

I also agree with Sporky - both of them are going to sound like electric guitars, because these differences are in the 2% not the 98% of the total sound. But they are still unquestionably real and the scientific proof that it is so is in those graphs.

Bidley

God that 3 colour thingy bloke is annoying!

Sporky

ICBM said:

I also agree with Sporky - both of them are going to sound like electric guitars, because these differences are in the 2% not the 98% of the total sound. But they are still unquestionably real and the scientific proof that it is so is in those graphs.

I would like to make sure it's clear that when I say they all sound like guitars, I don't think they sound identical!

lukedlb

It took me until page 9 to finally see this is a windup. A shame since there's probably some interesting points in here that have been obscured by the polite grin that is keeping this post going. Come on, we've all got better things to do and genuine threads to discuss and offer advice upon. 

Sassafras

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Oh dear, people do seem to be getting rather upset. I'd hate to get on the wrong side of you lot over something that actually matters in life!

I'm guessing you don't know many guitarists.

richardhomer

Now you know me - always partial to a parody thread - but this serves as one already.

I'm amazed it hasn't been moved by this point....

clarkefan

It's simple stuff if you have any concerns:

Buy to Squier Strats, one maple neck, one rosewood.

Play one then swap in the neck from the other.

You will hear a difference. 

Done!  I wish it wasn't true but it is and is easily demonstrated.

Roland

Bidley said:

God that 3 colour thingy bloke is annoying!

That's what the Ignore function is for.

lukedlb said:

It took me until page 9 to finally see this is a windup. A shame since there's probably some interesting points in here that have been obscured by the polite grin that is keeping this post going. 

If the thread didn't contain useful information it would have been closed some time ago. I'm still thinking about letting Billy Goat Gruff out of his cage.

professorben

GSPBASSES said:

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Sporky said:

 I have a paper somewhere that suggests there is a band of ratios of stiffness to speed of sound propagation in woods that work well for instruments.

Acoustic instruments?

Does that paper explain how such difference affect the perceived timbre of a vibrating metal string attached to a solid plank of the stuff, as heard via an electromagnetic pickup? If not, or you or someone else can provide a paper showing this, such differences might be no more relevant than variations in the colour of the wood.

Whatever, I would still like to read it, if you have a link or can post it somewhere.

Thanks!

When I woke up this morning I thought this post would died a death by now, but unfortunately not. I will say this as politely as I possibly can. Get a life. Reading papers on wood, guitar making will only give you theory most of the time the theory doesn't match the real world.

 Go to a guitar shop. Play as many guitars as you can your fill difference between the makes the shape, you will learn more in a couple of hours doing this then reading any paper.

Then go to a supplier of tone woods, if you're anywhere near David Dykes that's the place to go. He has got every possible type wood an instrument maker will need, from violins, violas , double bass to guitars in vast quantities. You need to fill the wood smell it tap it. I will say again, you can only learn about woods by feeling it working with it. Experienced guitar makers instinctively know when they are holding a piece of wood whether it will make good instrument. This fill for wood only comes with experience, being in contact with other guitar makers discussing different types of wood. You can read every paper that’s been published but until you get out and work the wood you will learn nothing.

http://www.gusguitars.com/

 

So, stop asking us what papers we've read on the subject get out in the real world and start feeling the wood.

This discussion has now got a bit boring and so far from the point this will be my last comment.

I fill ya buddy. 

koneguitarist

@Three-ColourSunburst I think has a point. Some may think it as trolling, but essentially he has created a discussion about guitars that is now 10 pages long with no clear evidence that tone woods exist or how they impact on the tone of the guitar. 
If people disagree with that, no problem, that's the beauty of discussion you say what you all think. 

But think about this, you can measure frequency response between a Alder body V Ash body and get a figure, but get a hundred bodies of each and see if the frequencies are the same each time.
if they don't because they won't as the grain will be different, age of tree, part of tree as grain gets tighter further up the tree. 
Same with an acoustic spruce top, they say the best sounds are with a tighter grain, but I have played Martins with very wide grains that sound superb and tight grains that sounded shit, but that is what I thought, someone else may think different when they hear them. 
We all have different views on sound as we hear differently, that doesn't mean we are all wrong or just someone is wrong. 
As some have agreed already the evidence is inconclusive.