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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.
http://www.rabswoodguitars.co.uk/
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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
http://www.rabswoodguitars.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/RabsWoodGuitars/
My Youtube page
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.
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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.
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
http://www.rabswoodguitars.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/RabsWoodGuitars/
My Youtube page
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?
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.
I talk about wood selection on a piece by piece basis, but sometimes start with a species to get in a ball park
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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.
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
http://www.rabswoodguitars.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/RabsWoodGuitars/
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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.
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.
http://www.rabswoodguitars.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/RabsWoodGuitars/
My Youtube page
As posted earlier.
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?