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Body wood affects tone
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Below is a definitive list of 100 people who think you are talking balls.
Jimi Hendrix
(List courtesy of The Brazilian Institute of Talking a Right Load of Balls)
I wonder what they would think if it was put to them that their sound was due to the nature of the bit of wood their strings were attached to, rather than the magic in their fingers?
Mods, please do not close this thread down. I am quite enjoying the feeling of being a Victorian gentleman visiting Bedlam for an afternoon's entertainment.
http://www.leonardo-guitar-research.com/online-blind-listening-challenge
It is worth checking out- I'm not going to comment on it beyond that.
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Football is rubbish.
Those type of experiments have been going on in the classical community for many decades.
It is only the advent of the internet that has revealed this ancient knowledge to the uninitiated.
The Video of chapman guitars is a load of rubbish and cannot be taken seriously as a scientific test.
Vintage guitars such as the 62 strat talked about is also more about the beholder than the guitar. As someone who has owned a lot of vintage guitars, I would say but modern ones every day. They are better made and more consistent. A blindfold test with another person playing the guitars always sorts out the cork sniffers. People like to think we can tell the difference but the truth is we can only hear a difference, not differentiate between instruments.
In the hands of a master musician it's been proven to me enough times, that I cannot hear difference between a Les Paul Special and a Telecaster. So for those of you who think can hear the difference between a 62 strat a USA 62 reissue and a Mexican 60's reissue, you are talking rubbish. Take into account variables in pickups and pots plus bridge and nut material it's impossible.
So when you have an acoustic with a pickup inside the soundhole NOT under the strings... How does that work then?
And
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2) That guitar has strings on. His voice is causing them to resonate and this is then picked up by the pickups.
Well I wasnt actually sure so have been looking it up... I probably should have done that before responding.. But they don't all use Piezo pickups.. But the ones that don't and don't use the under string ones have a microphone.. So there you go... Learn something new every day
And for the shouty thing.. If I remember I am actually going to try it the next time I change strings on one of my electrics ...
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As I pointed out earlier, much the same has been found regarding the inability of most listeners and players to distinguish different violins, or even a Stradivarius from a modern instrument. And all this is with acoustic instruments where almost all of what you hear is the wood vibrating - along with the sound within the body resonating.
With a solid body guitar any differences in timbre due to the wood used are likely to be magnitudes smaller still. I think why this is the case is clear when one thinks of the differences in how acoustic and electric guitars are designed. (I'll post on this in a moment.)
OK, I have been trying to find some research that might explain the above more fully. I think a key issue is that many tone-wood fans are misled as a result of thinking that principles that apply to acoustic instruments also apply to solid-body electric guitars. I hope this clarifies exactly what I mean.
Firstly, an acoustic guitar is designed to have a very low impedance (and hence high conductance) at the bridge, this energy being transferred into a thin, light soundboard (in a top-quality instrument as light as 100g before bracing is added). The low mass and yet high stiffness of the soundboard means that the limited amount of energy available from the string can excite the board into a state of forced vibration with the minimum loss of energy, so maximising the sound output. (Even so, the energy in any body in a state of forced vibration will tend to dissipate rather quickly.)
In comparison, an electric guitar body is specifically designed not to 'resonate' (or rather be easily excited into a state of forced vibration) being solid with a high mass and, in the interests of maximising sustain, will be fitted with a heavy bridge with very high impedance and hence very low conductance.
The studies I have found so far indicate that, for all practical purposes, the conductance at the bridge of a solid body electric guitar is so low that it can be discounted. The conductance of the neck will be higher than the bridge - which is why the neck can often be felt to be vibrating - but even here it varies from frequency to frequency and position to position. Hence it does not have a consistent effect on the harmonic balance of the notes played, instead tending to cause 'dead spots' at a few locations on the neck. (Although these are often not noticed because the player's hand acts as a damper.)
Now, the tone-wood fans argue that, just as with the soundboard of an acoustic guitar, the wood of the body of an electric guitar is excited by the string into a state of forced vibration. Then supposedly, the 'resonances' set up in the body by the string in turn affect the harmonics sounding on the string itself, so determining the timbre of the instrument, as heard via the pickups. Further, the harmonics on the string are affected in the same way, whatever note is played and in whatever position, so giving the instrument its characteristic tone. Even further, the 'resonances' set up in the body, and so the harmonics that sound on the string, are species-specific, so each 'tone wood' will give the sound a characteristic timbre.
I think the tone-wood fans are wrong on every point of this 'explanation', but we might as well stop all the nonsense at the very first step. That is, the way the string is supposed to excite the body into a state of forced vibration, akin to the soundboard of an acoustic.
First problem here is the high impedance of a typical electric guitar bridge. They are designed to maximise sustain by stopping as much energy as possible being transferred into the body. Minimal conductance at the bridge causes minimum excitation of the body, which in turn means no string/body resonant system is created and the body can't work its Mojo magic on the harmonics of the string.
Secondly, it seems questionable just how the limited energy available on the string could set up any such 'resonances' in the substantial mass of the body of a solid body electric guitar, especially given that in a forced vibration system, the energy will be dissipated rapidly. (True resonant behaviour being restricted to certain specific frequencies that need not match any tuned note.)
For example, the vibrating mass of a 10-gauge top E string on a guitar with a 628mm scale length is just 0.25g. A typical solid body guitar - which the tone-wood fans argue has to be considered to be a complete 'system' - weighs about 3.4kg, and sometimes a lot more, and yet this solid, relatively rigid mass is supposed to be excited into a state of 'resonance' by the energy on that 0.24g string (0.000074% the mass of the body 'system'), even when it is lightly picked. This does not seem to make sense, especially given that in reality that string of an electric guitar will still give far more sustain than on any acoustic, indicating that its energy is actually being well conserved, despite it also losing energy to the air in which it vibrates, friction at the securing points and internal losses within the string. (Of course, this is exactly what we might expect given the high impedance of the bridge and so minimal transfer / loss of energy to the body.)
One obvious counter to the above might be that tone-wood works its magic when the guitar is played loudly through an amplifier, this adding the energy needed to create a 'resonant system' and overcoming all the issues relating to the minimal energy of the string, the high mass of the body, the high impedance of the bridge, the dissipative nature of forced vibration systems and so on, However, I don't think this is credible as the tone-wood fans generally claim that the tone of an instrument is apparent even when playing it acoustically. If a mahogany guitar only sounds like a mahogany guitar when you turn the amp up to 11, what does it sound like when played quietly, a maple one, or maybe basswood?
Perhaps it is true that some guitars are filled with 'mojo', as only magic seems capable of making 'tone-wood' work!
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Football is rubbish.
An electric guitar body is specifically designed not to 'resonate' (or rather be easily excited into a state of forced vibration) being solid with a high mass and, in the interests of maximising sustain, will be fitted with a heavy bridge with very high impedance and hence very low conductance.
Minimal conductance at the bridge causes minimum excitation of the body, which in turn means no string/body resonant system is created and the body can't work its Mojo magic on the harmonics of the string.
Secondly, it seems questionable just how the limited energy available on the string could set up any such 'resonances' in the substantial mass of the body of a solid body electric guitar, especially given that in a forced vibration system, the energy will be dissipated rapidly.
Give me a pithy one liner that I can slightly misremember.
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Football is rubbish.