Fretboard woods: can anyone genuinely FEEL the difference?

Teetonetal

Awesome so picked the cheapest as best

octatonic

Teetonetal said:

Awesome so picked the cheapest as best

The exact spec of that guitar is Aria body, Mighty-Mite neck, PRS Mann Trem (taken from an 80's PRS that someone had me put a Floyd on), Kluson tuners, Suhr HSH (SSV+, ML, SSV).

WezV

octatonic said:

No one else has done it so I guess I'll tell you. 

1 was a Suhr modern- maple on basswood. 

2 was the ash bodied Aria. 

3 was an Anderson alder Strat.

If I was going to be a cock I would argue the woods are too similar for any difference to make its way through computer speakers... They are all 'fendery' to me - but I am aware that's a cop out.

A similar test with a greater variation between the woods would be good - but who really has time for that

.....

so what's the thoughts on thinline tele's.   Its an easy one to test because you can take a tele and hollow it out.   If body wood is unimportant this should not affect tone as the structure between nut and bridge remains unchanged.   I have done it and it made a guitar I hated into something quite brilliant.  I would swear the plugged in tone was massively improved.  For honesties sake, the other factors I changed were the removal of a neck pickup and switch to make it an esquire, everything else was reused.   I am  well aware the removal of the neck pickup will be partly responsible for the opening up of the tone as there would be less magnetic pull on the strings.  

octatonic

WezV said:

octatonic said:

No one else has done it so I guess I'll tell you. 

1 was a Suhr modern- maple on basswood. 

2 was the ash bodied Aria. 

3 was an Anderson alder Strat.

If I was going to be a cock I would argue the woods are too similar for any difference to make its way through computer speakers... They are all 'fendery' to me - but I am aware that's a cop out.

A similar test with a greater variation between the woods would be good - but who really has time for that

Not me, for sure.

so what's the thoughts on thinline tele's.   Its an easy one to test because you can take a tele and hollow it out.   If body wood is unimportant this should not affect tone as the structure between nut and bridge remains unchanged.   I have done it and it made a guitar I hated into something quite brilliant.  I would swear the plugged in tone was massively improved.  For honesties sake, the other factors I changed were the removal of a neck pickup and switch to make it an esquire, everything else was reused.   I am  well aware the removal of the neck pickup will be partly responsible for the opening up of the tone as there would be less magnetic pull on the strings.  

I didn't say body wood is unimportant.

I said that changing species of wood doesn't make a big difference when all other factors stay the same.

A thinline is a significant construction difference, so IMHO, there is usually a bigger difference rather than just changing wood species.

You are taking away a lot of the wood's mass- anywhere form 1/5th to a 3rd depending on the way in which you do it, which drops the resonant frequency of the body and therefore the guitar overall.

WezV

octatonic;1036027" said:

. :)so what's the thoughts on thinline tele's.   Its an easy one to test because you can take a tele and hollow it out.   If body wood is unimportant this should not affect tone as the structure between nut and bridge remains unchanged.   I have done it and it made a guitar I hated into something quite brilliant.  I would swear the plugged in tone was massively improved.  For honesties sake, the other factors I changed were the removal of a neck pickup and switch to make it an esquire, everything else was reused.   I am  well aware the removal of the neck pickup will be partly responsible for the opening up of the tone as there would be less magnetic pull on the strings.  





I didn't say body wood is unimportant.I said that changing species of wood doesn't make a big difference when all other factors stay the same.

A thinline is a significant construction difference, so IMHO, there is usually a bigger difference rather than just changing wood species.You are taking away a lot of the wood's mass- anywhere form 1/5th to a 3rd depending on the way in which you do it, which drops the resonant frequency of the body and therefore the guitar overall.

I would argue you can loose a similar amount of mass, and change the resonant frequency by choosing a different wood.

crunchman

It's not just going to be mass though.  A different wood will have different stiffness, different grain structure etc.  These will affect the tone.  You could probably find two pieces of wood of very similar density that would sound different.

octatonic

WezV said:

octatonic;1036027" said:

. :)so what's the thoughts on thinline tele's.   Its an easy one to test because you can take a tele and hollow it out.   If body wood is unimportant this should not affect tone as the structure between nut and bridge remains unchanged.   I have done it and it made a guitar I hated into something quite brilliant.  I would swear the plugged in tone was massively improved.  For honesties sake, the other factors I changed were the removal of a neck pickup and switch to make it an esquire, everything else was reused.   I am  well aware the removal of the neck pickup will be partly responsible for the opening up of the tone as there would be less magnetic pull on the strings.  





I didn't say body wood is unimportant.I said that changing species of wood doesn't make a big difference when all other factors stay the same.

A thinline is a significant construction difference, so IMHO, there is usually a bigger difference rather than just changing wood species.You are taking away a lot of the wood's mass- anywhere form 1/5th to a 3rd depending on the way in which you do it, which drops the resonant frequency of the body and therefore the guitar overall.

I would argue you can loose a similar amount of mass, and change the resonant frequency by choosing a different wood.

Changing species doesn't automatically alter the weight more than choosing a different piece of wood within the same species can.

Comparing a piece of lightweight alder to a heavy piece of ash and heavy piece of alder, the two heavy pieces will have resonant frequencies closer to one another than the lightweight piece of alder.

I know this because I've conducted tests of identically sized, different weighted pieces of wood of various species.

I've also conducted tests where I baked pieces of maple and poplar can compared them to the non-baked pieces.

Look at the range of body weights for strats- it is mostly around 4lbs.

You don't often get body weights of more than half a pound over or under that (give or take).

If you hollow out a strat you can drop as much as 1.3lbs of mass.

IMHO making a construction change like hollowing out a guitar body changes the tone much more than finding a lightweight piece of x species or changing from a heavy x species to a lightweight piece of y species and all of them have more of an impact than changing from a heavy piece of x species to a heavy piece of y species.

I'm not around for the rest of the day (picking up my new car) and then back to the workshop but I can pick this up later.

(I realise I am using weight and mass interchangeably here, I'm sure you know what I mean- we don't take our guitars out of the earth's orbit).

WezV

Indeed, I think we are agreeing wood choice becomes an important factor but its the individual bit you need to look at. The difficulty is making generalisations about species from that.

I recently listed my choices for the pancake les Paul build.i had planks of mahogany from the same batch with wildly varying weights and tap tones

Sporky

crunchman said:

I saw that Strad study discussed before on a forum.  There was a guy on there who also played violin who went on a major rant about how Strads project better, and even if the player couldn't tell, someone listening out front would be able to hear the difference.

But that wasn't what was being tested. I bet (ah-ha - this is my own bias showing) that if they'd done a test where one player played both instruments (not knowing which was which somehow) and a load of other players listened, and (this is supposition) it turned out that the listeners couldn't tell which was which this Ranty McRantface (c) would have instead gone off on how the audience might not be able to tell but the player definitely could.

It's like when people complained that BMI didn't give useful results for powerlifters, or that IQ tests don't measure one's ability to paint a decent watercolour.

Dave_Mc

^ I only skimmed those links I posted but I thought in one of the tests the player was given the option to have the audience listen as well. EDIT: Yeah it's that second, later test. The player was also given the option of listening to another player play the violin as well.

Also what's that about the BMI and IQ thing? Haven't come across that before, I'd be interested to hear that.

The wine ones are pretty funny too, I always find.

octatonic said:

I'm not around for the rest of the day (picking up my new car)

Wow, do you work out?

(Sorry )

johnonguitar

My favourite tone wood is morning tone wood

Sporky

Dave_Mc said:

Also what's that about the BMI and IQ thing? Haven't come across that before, I'd be interested to hear that.

I was being slightly facetious, but when BMI was "popular" a lot of people seemed to complain that it would rank various professional athletes as "obese", ignoring that BMI was only intended to be applied to those with a predominantly sedentary lifestyle (ie it wasn't designed to deal with active people with well developed muscle tissue and low body fat). Similarly, "IQ doesn't measure  emotional intelligence" is a popular battlecry amongst thickos. IQ is just logical, spatial and mathematical. It's not meant to measure anything else. As an aside, EQ (the hilariously cleverly named measure of "emotional intelligence") is just utter bollocks, of course. Doesn't tell you anything about how good the person is at skittles.

Both just examples of perfectly decent, useful tests that people decry for not applying to things to which they don't apply. Like complaining that a ruler isn't a great straightedge, or that a spoon isn't that brilliant for measuring distances. I feel the same when people complain about scientific testing off something not having tested something else. Why not go and test the other thing, if that's what you're interested in?

Dave_Mc

I definitely agree that just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's useless (despite what some of the things I've been arguing in here might suggest ), especially if it's not meant to measure that thing, but I think the emotional types do have a point when they complain about IQ- IQ does stand for "intelligence quotient", after all, and if it's pretty biased towards the logical/mathematical/spatial side of things I'd say that's a fair criticism considering what its initials stand for.

viz

Mkjackary said:

I don't push the string to the point that it touches the board

@mkjackary I can't really seem to understand this. Are you saying your touch is so light that the string is in contact with the guitar only at nut, bridge and fretwire? I haven't got a guitar to hand so can't try it out but surely it's virtually impossible to do consistently, and I can't imagine what the benefit is. Do you do it for barre chords too? And how do you do vibrato? Or is your neck scalloped maybe?

Sporky

Dave_Mc said:

I think the emotional types do have a point when they complain about IQ- IQ does stand for "intelligence quotient", after all, and if it's pretty biased towards the logical/mathematical/spatial side of things I'd say that's a fair criticism considering what its initials stand for.

But do they have to cry so much?

I honestly can't remember noticing fretboard wood. Surely if you play a lot you've got callouses like Batfink's wings?

UnclePsychosis

My background is in musical acoustics (I have a PhD in it) and in my experience guitarists and guitar makers are far, far too quick to make blanket statements about the effect of wood on the sound of an electric guitar. Sadly there aren't very many (if any) proper scientific studies of the acoustics of electric guitars. The Strad study is really interesting. I met Claudia Fritz (the chief researcher) a few times during my time as an acoustician and I'm glad she has got so much worldwide interest---she is a very good scientist and was always very friendly at conferences and so on. 

Back when I was doing my PhD, though, one hot topic was brass instruments and whether or not the metal of which your brass instrument was constructed made any difference to the sound. (Many/Most) musicians and makers will absolutely swear blind that it does: supposedly yellow brass sounds different to copper brass which is in turn wildly different from *whatever*. However, there were a lot of studies into whether or not the material makes any difference and the results were exceedingly unclear: if there is a difference, its hard to measure and in blind tests players dont seem consistently able to tell the difference. So, maybe the material does matter but certainly not to the extent that musicians would swear blind that it does. 

Interestingly, I've heard at least one exceedingly well known trumpet manufacturer remark that he doesn't think it makes any difference, but trumpeters believe that it does and so he has to offer a choice of material entirely for commercial, not musical, reasons. For this reason alone I am afraid I am sceptical when instrument makers swear it makes a difference: they have a vested interest in keeping a large part of their customer base happy. 

Anyway, back to guitars. Guitars are hard to take satisfactory comparitory measurements of. To make a sound you need pickups and electronics and strings and a nut and a bridge and a setup. Guaranteeing that the differences between two different electric guitars is because of the wood and not because any of those other things are different is pretty tricky. Even if you could guarantee that those things were the same you'd then need to look at variability within a single species of wood before worrying about whether or not Alder sounds different to Ash. 

Ultimately, my own opinion is that even if the wood does make a difference its so far down the list in terms of importance I really don't give a shit. I don't even know what wood my guitars are made of. My pickups, EQ and amp settings make a far bigger difference. 

Sporky

And then you get into the problem of guitar builders dismissing people who haven't built enough guitars, and people who haven't built any (or enough) guitars wondering if the guitar builders have a vested interest.

I often wonder if all of this is like asking junkies and drug dealers what is the best thing with which to cut heroin.

Probably we should all go for ice-cream.

WezV

Sporky;1037824" said:

And then you get into the problem of guitar builders dismissing people who haven't built enough guitars, and people who haven't built any (or enough) guitars wondering if the guitar builders have a vested interest.



I often wonder if all of this is like asking junkies and drug dealers what is the best thing with which to cut heroin.



Probably we should all go for ice-cream.

I hope no one I thinking I have a vested interest to the point my mind is closed.

Yes, I make guitars. No, I don't need to sell any.

But yeah, I do think you need to experience tap tone from plank to finished instrument a good few times before writing it off. But only I you are a builder..... Players should just play what they like.

Sporky

WezV said:

I hope no one I thinking I have a vested interest to the point my mind is closed.

I certainly do not - I did worry that that might look pointed, sorry. It was meant purely in jest. If I didn't think you knew what you were up to I wouldn't keep asking your advice!

Dave_Mc

Sporky said:

Dave_Mc said:

I think the emotional types do have a point when they complain about IQ- IQ does stand for "intelligence quotient", after all, and if it's pretty biased towards the logical/mathematical/spatial side of things I'd say that's a fair criticism considering what its initials stand for.

(a) But do they have to cry so much?

(b) I honestly can't remember noticing fretboard wood. Surely if you play a lot you've got callouses like Batfink's wings?

(a) lol good one

(b) yeah i do have callouses but i notice it when doing a lot of lead playing. rhythm playing, not so much.

UnclePsychosis said:

(a) Sadly there aren't very many (if any) proper scientific studies of the acoustics of electric guitars.

(b) Interestingly, I've heard at least one exceedingly well known trumpet manufacturer remark that he doesn't think it makes any difference, but trumpeters believe that it does and so he has to offer a choice of material entirely for commercial, not musical, reasons. For this reason alone I am afraid I am sceptical when instrument makers swear it makes a difference: they have a vested interest in keeping a large part of their customer base happy. 

(c) Anyway, back to guitars. Guitars are hard to take satisfactory comparitory measurements of. To make a sound you need pickups and electronics and strings and a nut and a bridge and a setup. Guaranteeing that the differences between two different electric guitars is because of the wood and not because any of those other things are different is pretty tricky. Even if you could guarantee that those things were the same you'd then need to look at variability within a single species of wood before worrying about whether or not Alder sounds different to Ash. 

(d) Ultimately, my own opinion is that even if the wood does make a difference its so far down the list in terms of importance I really don't give a shit. I don't even know what wood my guitars are made of. My pickups, EQ and amp settings make a far bigger difference. 

(a) Yeah that's kind of my point. It's one thing saying one group is irrational or talking nonsense when you have lots of good quality studies showing that that's the case. It's quite another when you have few, if any, studies, and when those studies have a lot of obvious flaws.

I suspect what difference there is, when plugged in at least, is subtle (certainly when compared to things like pickups), but that's not the same as no difference, nor does it mean people who think it makes a difference are crazy (they might have better ears).

(b) Yeah I suspect that's the case with guitars, too. Probably with a lot of products even outside music.

(c) Yeah definitely. It's incredibly difficult to get a genuinely fair test, and getting there often introduces other problems which make it less like a real world scenario.

(d) I wouldn't go so far as to say I don't care what wood my guitars are, but I do agree it's probably at least an order of magnitude below things like pickups etc. when it comes to affecting tone.