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These guitars that sound like Teles but are made of odd materials - ok cool, but 1) not scientific as the player is deliberately trying to make them sound as such and 2) the pickups and hardware are from Teles, so will help get you partway there. Any subtly is lost in the recording and production on YT. And what does a Tele sound like exactly? It's a great mimic - Johnny Marr made his sound like a Rickie (actually it was Stephen Street's guitar), Page made his sound like a Les Paul, Beck made his sound like an Ude...
I'm trying to understand why 3TS is banging on about all this. Is he trying to save the guitar world from spending too much on guitars? Is he trying to piss everyone off? Or is he just trying to be a smug know-it-all?
As everyone has said, an electric guitar sounds like an electric guitar but there are subtle differences between models, there are subtle differences between individual instruments and some of those subtleties can be grouped (by and large) by species of wood. However it's not an exact science because wood is a naturally occurring substance.
These bullshit 'studies' that try to prove that a vibrating string strapped to a piece of wood (that *Does* sympathetically resonate in tune with that string) is not affected by the material it is strapped to have to be discounted. Firstly, common sense - if you vibrate a string and then introduce a different vibration to it, that vibration pitch and amplitude changes. Secondly, guitarists will tell you that feedback is a key piece of how a note decays and going back to point one, this is a feedback loop. Thirdly, electric guitars have been built and sold since the 1940s - are you genuinely suggesting that all of these buyers were 'wrong' in their opinions formed by playing them and that all those guitar builders were trying to hoodwink buyers?
This is is a moribund argument that is going around in circles - you are welcome to your own opinion but please allow others to have their own.
I think everyone is both right and wrong, of course the body material affects tone, no one raves about how 'toneful' steinberger cricket bats sound.
But when Eddie VH played one, he sounded like Eddie, my theory is the player, the amp, pedals etc have a far far greater impact on the tone than wood species, but that wood does have an impact.
Lets be honest here if Nicoli Amati had access to carbon fibre technology back in Italy in the 16th century he may well have used it.
In the 40's and 50's wood was cheap, high quality, and of course acoustic guitars were made of it.
Its us guitarists that hold back any progressive development, the guitar makers make guitars out of wood, simply because they always have, and we buy them, we as a community, dont accept alternative materials as readily as say Bassists or other musicians, I can't recall a drummer getting wound up because his snare skin isn't velum, or a pianist complaining about no Ivory on his piano.
Wood sells, we buy, it's as simple as that.
why? Because Hendrix had a wooden guitar etc etc.
Feedback can also be caused mechanically - i.e. energy from the speaker finding its way back into the string and causing the strong to resonate. This can happen via the body, which is why semis and acoustics are so much more prone to feedback.
Does the solid body of an electric guitar have a role in capturing this energy?
We have already demonstrated that energy passes from the strings to the guitar body. It is reasonable to assume that the reverse is true. So assuming that the energy from the speaker is sufficient to cause vibrations in the body then these must also be passed back to the strings. Sure the overall effect is much lower than it would be for e.g. an acoustic guitar, but the basic mechanism is still there.
Does a body made from a different material capture the speaker energy in a different way?
It is likely that it will depending on the density and structure of the material that the guitar is made from will affect the response to the energy from the speaker. This could easily have an impact on the 'tone' you hear.
Whilst the example of feedback is an extreme one, I am using it to make a point. The same effect may also be happening at lower levels that are not sufficient to cause what us guitarists would recognise as feedback, but that would still modulate the tone in a way that might conceivably be heard.
One other point- if parts of the pickup are able to move in relation to one another, and the strings cause the body to vibrate, then is it possible that this vibration might also cause a coloration to the tone?
Having said that, what I'm starting to realise (and goodness it has taken some time) is that I don't know all the answers to this!
And that the internet probably isn't going to provide it either.
I'd refer you to extensive research carried out by the George Formby Institute of Banjology but I can't find the link.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
A guitar body does not, for the most part, 'sympathetically resonate' with the string. A guitar body can resonate if it is energised at its natural frequency (or frequencies) as a result of something else that is near by or is touching vibrating at those same frequencies. However, in a guitar body these frequencies are unlikely to be related to any tuned notes. For almost all tuned notes a guitar body, rather than resonating, will be in a state of forced vibration - which is something very different. Also - as those papers I linked to point out - when resonance does occur in guitars it is associated with the creation of 'dead spots', not a generalised modification of the timbre of the instrument.
Yes, wooden instruments can be created where vibration at their natural frequency is a central part of how they sound, such as a xylophone, but crucially a xylophone requires a separate, specially tuned piece of wood for every note. Conversely, a guitar has one body. Also, the natural frequency something vibrates at is as much a function of its size, density and even shape as what it is made from. Hence, each key of a xylophone made from the same wood will have a different mass / size. However, different materials could also be used, such as composites, or the shape changed to produce the required pitch. For example, see the article below on a 'zoolophone'.
https://phys.org/news/2015-10-algorithm-d-vibrational.html
One consequence of the above is that, if the natural frequency or 'resonance' of the body of an electric guitar was really so important to its tone (as heard via an electromagnetic pickup) not only would the type of wood used have an effect, this effect would be vastly greater if different materials were used, and all those clips of metal-bodied guitars and so on show that this is simply not the case. Also, the natural frequency of the guitar would change if the mass of the body was varied or even its shape was changed. However, even with odd-shaped guitars, such as the Explorer, we don't hear people say 'Wow, listen to that, that's a real zig-zag tone', instead they will still witter on about it being made from korina or whatever.
In short, it is nonsense to say that the 'resonance' of a guitar's body has anything to do with the sound heard via an electromagnetic pickup.
The weakness of the idea that the body somehow feeds back energy to the strings, modifying its harmonic content has already been covered: given the very small amount of energy the string gives to the body, the high impedance of the bridge to body interface, the fact that the energy given by the string is dissipated over the entire body of the guitar and so on, it is clear that the amount of energy that is returned to the string by the body is totally insignificant. The research also shows that any such feedback does not affect the harmonics sounding on the string, certainly to a degree that is perceptible.
Yes, feedback due to the air been forced to vibrate by a loud amp is a central part of the rock guitar sound, but this has nothing to do with the sort of 'feedback' the believers in 'tone wood' argue for. Feedback due to microphonic pickups is also possible, but this just causes horrendous squealing, not a magical colouration of the timbre of the instrument.
As to why guitar makers have always preferred wood as the main material. There are a large number of obvious answers, from tradition through to cost, availability, ease of working, known technology, appearance, the conservative nature of the guitar buying public and so on.
Bandcamp
Spotify, Apple et al
While he is right on that, he is still completely wrong his assertion that there is a neglible effect on string vibration because of the body.
What @Gassage has done shows that strings do vibrate with an audible signal when excited by body wood.
The Bernie Marsden video spectacularly showed the sound from the 12 string pickups on the double neck when he played the 6 string neck. By far the most likely mechanism for that is vibrations transmitted through the body. If someone has one of those double necks, that could easily be proved by doing the same thing with the 6 string pickups turned down.
Mr Sunburst wants an absolute yes/no answer, and is more than happy to cherrypick and misinterpret data to provide him with the answer he decided he wanted from the beginning. That's neither scientific nor objective, it's an ego-driven pissing contest. I have availed myself of the ignore function, as there is nothing to be gained from "debate" with someone like that.
*An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.
It seems to me that @Three-ColourSunburst will not be happy until anyone here who has posted in favour of wood being essential to tone, confesses that they now feel stupid for having been duped by Fender, Gibson, Collings, PRS.
For one the string must have a higher energy level than the body, which is why the body is forced to vibrate, this energy then been dissipated via the production of acoustic sound, heat and so on. For the body to somehow pass energy the other way seems to run against the principle of entropy. (Just a thought, this is something I need to do more reading on.)
I also think that Marsden's guitar has been modified to turn the 6 and 12-string pickups together, with perhaps one of the pots acting as a mixer, and that this is what Marsden alludes to when Anderton says that he can't understand why he is hearing the 12 strings and Marsden says something about 'giving away his secrets'.
Had enough of this bollocks.
Ignore status activated.