Question About the Tonewood Debate Itself

jdgm

Garthy said:

carlos said:

hyperben said:

There shouldn’t really be a debate though. It’s just a fact that the wood makes a difference in quantity, density and species. 

#FakeNews

Though if that is the case why aren’t they made of plastic?  

I had a plastic guitar once; a Tokai MAT Strat. Wood neck and board, plastic body. It was ok, I did lots of gigs with it but eventually began to miss that woody resonance I'm used to.

However I made one of my best shots with that guitar - took it to a small, local no-money gig near Woking one night and (because I was lazy and depressed or p'd off) I didn't even take an amp but put it through the p.a. When we soundchecked I (of course!) craftily turned my volume down. The 1st number was "So Far Away" (Dire Straits) and when I played the riff it was so loud the drummer jumped! Ha!

After our set someone came rushing up to me and said "how do you get that tone?" He was amazed to find out it was a plastic guitar (with heavy strings) through the p.a.

True story, honest.

Danielsguitars

thegummy said:

customkits said:

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, the people who don't believe should be playing the cheapest piece of crap built from pallets or anything vaguely like wood but they don't

In response to that statement - do you think the colour of a guitar makes a difference to the tone? If not, then should you only ever be playing guitars that are the natural colour of the wood used and never one painted a different colour?

What's colour got to do with anything 

My statement is aimed at all the people that say it doesn't matter regardless, it's all in the pickups etc

I don't care what people play but to say it makes no difference is not true imo, I've built enough to know what i like and i still try different woods to see how it sounds and not all of it is great, I've got to take one apart and work out why it's not as good as i think it should be

hyperben

koneguitarist said:

I just get slightly annoyed when someone states something as fact, when it's subjective and often down to what the listener likes. 
Everyone can hear a difference between a body being changed for another, however you can have two bodies of ash cut from same tree and still have a difference in tone? 
And is that difference better or worse or are you just hearing a difference but not able to tell which is which in a blindfold test and if so it's meaningless anyway. 
I agree just find a guitar that's comfortable and you like it and just play it. 
As for @customkits comment, I use a tele with body made of ash and beech, still sounds like a tele, so did the mahogany body tele, the rosewood bodied tele, the Ash bodied tele, the Alder bodied tele. 
So yes material and species make a difference in what way I have no idea! 

It’s a shame you find it annoying but it is fact. Different wood, even from the same tree, resonates differently. You can’t argue with that. How that affects guitar tone is another thing entirely though. Many opinions there. My ears tell me what I like. And I’m sure your ears tell you what you like. You can spend hours analysing it if you want to, or you can just enjoy playing the guitar and just accept it. Now, it’s a Friday night, does no one have anything better to do that talk about wood?

Danielsguitars

hyperben said:

koneguitarist said:

I just get slightly annoyed when someone states something as fact, when it's subjective and often down to what the listener likes. 
Everyone can hear a difference between a body being changed for another, however you can have two bodies of ash cut from same tree and still have a difference in tone? 
And is that difference better or worse or are you just hearing a difference but not able to tell which is which in a blindfold test and if so it's meaningless anyway. 
I agree just find a guitar that's comfortable and you like it and just play it. 
As for @customkits comment, I use a tele with body made of ash and beech, still sounds like a tele, so did the mahogany body tele, the rosewood bodied tele, the Ash bodied tele, the Alder bodied tele. 
So yes material and species make a difference in what way I have no idea! 

It’s a shame you find it annoying but it is fact. Different wood, even from the same tree, resonates differently. You can’t argue with that. How that affects guitar tone is another thing entirely though. Many opinions there. My ears tell me what I like. And I’m sure your ears tell you what you like. You can spend hours analysing it if you want to, or you can just enjoy playing the guitar and just accept it. Now, it’s a Friday night, does no one have anything better to do that talk about wood?

Mind you there's alot of things that annoy me, I'm off for a cup of tea and cheese and crackers

carlos

Garthy said:

carlos said:

hyperben said:

There shouldn’t really be a debate though. It’s just a fact that the wood makes a difference in quantity, density and species. 

#FakeNews

Though if that is the case why aren’t they made of plastic?  

Because:
1 - people believe wood makes a difference, and people buy guitars
2 - wood isn't that expensive as most people think it is
3 - moulds for plastic ARE expensive, let alone all the other machine to inject the plastic, etc. Fine for cheap plastic chairs that are made in the millions, probably not fine for making thousands of each body shape. Mayb

Also this:


Also, if wood and what not is so important why doesn't anybody discuss the type of plastic on a strat's pickguard? I mean, isn't that directly facing the strings? Why not toneplastic for the pickguard? How about the difference of block inlays and no inlays? Don't the inlays lay directly on the path of the strings?

Also this:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/million-dollar-strads-fall-modern-violins-blind-sound-check

Also this:


Also this:


Waiting for your argument of:

bUt tHe gIbSoN CaTaLoGuE ToLd mE A SoLiD SlAb oF MaHoGaNy gIvEs mOrE SuStAiN

thegummy

customkits said:

thegummy said:

customkits said:

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, the people who don't believe should be playing the cheapest piece of crap built from pallets or anything vaguely like wood but they don't

In response to that statement - do you think the colour of a guitar makes a difference to the tone? If not, then should you only ever be playing guitars that are the natural colour of the wood used and never one painted a different colour?

What's colour got to do with anything 

Because the reason people who don't believe the wood affects the tone don't want a guitar made of piece of crap pallets is quite possibly the same reason you don't leave all your guitars the natural colour of the wood (assuming you don't do that and that you don't believe the coloured paint affects the tone).

thegummy

carlos said:

Also, if wood and what not is so important why doesn't anybody discuss the type of plastic on a strat's pickguard? I mean, isn't that directly facing the strings? Why not toneplastic for the pickguard? How about the difference of block inlays and no inlays? Don't the inlays lay directly on the path of the strings?

That did cross my mind recently - I found an old clip of me playing my bass when I first got it before I swapped out the anodised gold scratch plate and it sounded good - it crossed my mind whether or not the scratchplate being made of metal would affect the tone or not.

EricTheWeary

Just wrote a long and waffly bit and by the time I’d done that some of it had been covered by others. Honestly, this is the lesser waffly version:

The developers of the electric guitar were electricians and woodworkers, not plastics people. The range of plastics was different then and it probably would have been prohibitively expensive to develop a plastic guitar anyway. But lots of alternate materials have been used since such as carbon fibre, aluminium, lucite, concrete ( really), steel, pallet wood, paper and plastic ( I have played a 3D printed guitar) either experimentally or commercially and they all seem to have sounded like electric guitars. They’ve either not caught on, been problematic, difficult to use or just really expensive. As a relatively simple construction material wood ticks a lot of the boxes you need to build an electric guitar. Some woods will also be more difficult to work with or not strong enough, too light or too heavy, or not easily available ( or easily available in any given time or place). And some woods we like the look of more than others. 

It feels like the choices made as to what you make an electric guitar out of are constrained by a number of things before you get anywhere near the idea of tone wood. I simply don’t have the kind of experience that would tell me if one piece of wood sounds different from another. I am fairly sure,however, that in many musical contexts in which we hear the electric guitar those differences are so marginal that they aren’t detectable in the end result. 

Garthy

carlos said:

Garthy said:

carlos said:

hyperben said:

There shouldn’t really be a debate though. It’s just a fact that the wood makes a difference in quantity, density and species. 

#FakeNews

Though if that is the case why aren’t they made of plastic?  

Because:
1 - people believe wood makes a difference, and people buy guitars
2 - wood isn't that expensive as most people think it is
3 - moulds for plastic ARE expensive, let alone all the other machine to inject the plastic, etc. Fine for cheap plastic chairs that are made in the millions, probably not fine for making thousands of each body shape. Mayb

Also this:


Also, if wood and what not is so important why doesn't anybody discuss the type of plastic on a strat's pickguard? I mean, isn't that directly facing the strings? Why not toneplastic for the pickguard? How about the difference of block inlays and no inlays? Don't the inlays lay directly on the path of the strings?

Also this:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/million-dollar-strads-fall-modern-violins-blind-sound-check

Also this:


Also this:


Waiting for your argument of:

bUt tHe gIbSoN CaTaLoGuE ToLd mE A SoLiD SlAb oF MaHoGaNy gIvEs mOrE SuStAiN

Don’t be a dick, I was asking a question.

FelineGuitars

everything can make a difference.....including the player.
if someone else plays my own guitar somehow it does sound a bit different, although still similar in many ways.

WezV

Focus on the string 

Anything that changes the vibrational patterns of the string will have an affect on tone. 

Focus on the pickup

Anything that influences the magnetic field of a pickup will have an affect on tone.


There are loads of variables we could argue about, but if they are not affecting the string or the pickup then they are not affecting tone.

Material choice will affect both.  A good guitar will vibrate as one unit, it takes energy from the string and feeds some back in.  The pickup is also resonating with the instrument  Your amplified tone is the result of a vibrating string within a vibrating magnetic field.

I have built from loads of different woods.  Tried most of the alternatives at some point. I don't focus on species at all really.  It's all about the individual piece... But that is as a maker.   

Players can just pick the one they like best and carry on.

hyperben

I used to be incredibly cynical about the importance of tone wood like some on here. This caused me to waste a lot of money on guitars until I realised myself that the wood made a huge difference. I did this using my ears. Discussions like this are pretty pointless. What is to be gained in trying to convince others to your way of thinking and your beliefs if they’re already fixed in their own way of thinking? It’s the same as trying to convince Christians that God doesn’t exist - total waste of energy, that would achieve very little even if you were to succeed. You’re better off accepting that we all think differently and celebrate that that is a GOOD thing. If you have a lovely guitar, whatever it’s made of, and playing it makes you happy then you should be very pleased. As long as it sounds good to you, that is all that matters.

Sporky

hyperben said:

I did this using my ears. 

The human hearing system is not a reliable or accurate thing. It's trivially easy to skew a blind listening test in favour of the outcome you want, for example. 

I'm not saying the wood definitely doesn't make a difference; I am saying that there is insufficient evidence to support many of the strong statements that people make in either direction.

Arguments about guitars made from concrete or cheese aren't terribly relevant. 

hyperben

Sporky said:

hyperben said:

I did this using my ears. 

The human hearing system is not a reliable or accurate thing. It's trivially easy to skew a blind listening test in favour of the outcome you want, for example. 

I'm not saying the wood definitely doesn't make a difference; I am saying that there is insufficient evidence to support many of the strong statements that people make in either direction.

Arguments about guitars made from concrete or cheese aren't terribly relevant. 

Yes this is true. Hearing bias was taken account of during my experience/tests. In fact it was the most important and criticised variable. I had to make sure I wasn’t just convincing myself I heard what I wanted to hear.

Jock68

Having two guitars that are made by the same maker to the same spec ( different color of course) and the only difference is the weight.  One is 18oz lighter, and the difference is amazing.  Made 1 year apart and all the materials and parts are 100% the same tell my that wood does not make a difference.   Anyone who has a Solid body Korina guitar knows that it does not sound the same as their Mahogany version of the same model.  

hyperben

Jock68 said:

Having two guitars that are made by the same maker to the same spec ( different color of course) and the only difference is the weight.  One is 18oz lighter, and the difference is amazing.  Made 1 year apart and all the materials and parts are 100% the same tell my that wood does not make a difference.   Anyone who has a Solid body Korina guitar knows that it does not sound the same as their Mahogany version of the same model.  

It’s only a matter of time before someone tries to tell you your wrong and convert you to their way of thinking with some YouTube videos...

darthed1981

Sporky said:
Arguments about guitars made from concrete or cheese aren't terribly relevant. 

Especially as I'd end up grating my cheese guitar over pasta.

Thanks for reminding me I've got some fresh parmesan in the fridge though you have actually helped me out there

Winny_Pooh

Nothing makes a bigger difference than pickups.

I think do wood does make a difference in terms of damping, how much vibration it absorbs or propagates. The harder stuff like maple perhaps doesnt "sound" bright, just does not damp highs. 

Compare the smooother highs on a LP custom vs Standard or a mahogany PRS custom 22 vs a maple top. 

Then again you can get a 'not dark' guitar from cedar but then some real light wood misses the lows. 

I'd love to investigate in depth with this stuff if I ever built guitars. Make an all mahogany strat for example or an alder and maple LP.

historyisjunk

In my experience cats, which I think are probably all made of the same material, all sound quite different.

Size & shape does not seem to correlate in any way to pitch, volume or sustain. Age might do.

I hope this has helped clarify things.

VimFuego

the fact that is often overlooked in these debates is what brand of chainsaw did the forester use to fell the tree. Clearly, it is an unstated fact (that obviously I need to state) that Stihl cut trees make far superior in every way guitars over Husqvarna. That we are still having this debate is proof that some people will believe any old tosh.