Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

well......science 'proves' it. With no room for argument. But its not a physical exactness as there is no 'stock' bit of any species of wood to quantify
prove you can hear it.......well this is the interesting one. But there are enough people with an open mind around to make the 'balance of probability favour the 'yes' camp.
Audience - irrelevant to the argument
compensation - irrelevant
different wood/pedal - not sure what on earth you are going on about here and why pedals come into it......but irrelevant nonetheless.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Blille said:
While you should be right the problem with this argument is that the point of debate changes all the time depending on who starts to be in the losing camp:
- first prove it does/doesn't affect tone
- then prove you can hear it
- then prove the audience hears it
- then prove it can't be compensated by other factors
- then prove a different wood is a good investment as apposed to adding a pedal
- etc etc

It all leads to nothing but it's entertaining.


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Click to expand...

But in the end the whole question becomes pointless, because tonewood as a "thing" doesn't exist. Only thing that annoys me more than uneducated people rambling how wood cannot affect magnetic fields etc... are people who actually pay for bubinga neck and whatever, and then ramble how great it sounds. There are plenty of regular, inexpensive, easy to obtain woods out there, that are just as good. Could even be better...

Paying loads of money for something fancy from other side of the world is just dumb. And complete waste of natural resources too. (This might the only case ever, where I actually side with the environmentalists.)
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

I think that younger players, or players of any age, who always play with a lot of distortion may not be sensitive to subtle differences in tonewoods. The sound of their guitars is the sound of hot pickups through a distortion pedal through a distorted amp and that colors the sound so much that the subtle beauty of a guitar made from one wood or another wood is overwhelmed by distortion.

So "yes"...in that case and to that player all guitars sound pretty much like a zipper...regardless of what they're made of.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Mincer said:
I'd just like to see scientific proof, either way. This comes up on every single guitar forum. I want an absolute percentage.
I don't think this is possible. So until then, it becomes people arguing for their experience.
Click to expand...

It's been done (although I doubt anyone has narrowed it down to a specific percentage), but people either ignore it or try to discredit it rather than perform their own experiments to objectively prove that wood doesn't make a difference. It's the guitar world's version of truthiness... the assumption that something must be true simply because we believe it to be true, regardless of the facts presented to us proving otherwise.

Try reading through Freefrog's posts on MLP;

http://www.mylespaul.com/threads/ultimate-does-wood-make-a-difference-to-tone-video.336773/page-11



Personally, I think the brain is better at identifying differences than similarities and isn't very good at remembering specifics.

I think that's why some focus on pickups being the source of a guitar's tone in these debates. It's easy to hear the differences, even if there's been a long time gap, and it's a relatively cheap experiment. But, if you put the same pickup in enough guitars you eventually realize that the pickup doesn't do a whole lot to change the sound of the amplified guitar... being a passive device it can't create frequencies that are missing, it only has the ability to shape what's left.
 
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Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Quote Originally Posted by Mincer:
I'd just like to see scientific proof, either way. This comes up on every single guitar forum. I want an absolute percentage.
I don't think this is possible. So until then, it becomes people arguing for their experience.

It's been done (although I doubt anyone has narrowed it down to a specific percentage), but people either ignore it or try to discredit it rather than perform their own experiments to objectively prove that wood doesn't make a difference.
Click to expand...

How actually you can say that's about 65 % of tone... Are you saying 65 % of the eq spectrum has noticeably changed (which isn't really a same thing as "tone" of guitar as a whole), or are you just saying whatever percetage comes to your mind by the way your gear now sounds after changing something? How can you be absolute in that?

It seems like one of those concepts people use that doesn't really mean anything...
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

I think that people think that this is a two-sided argument, ,t hat there are the people who believe wood makes a difference (i.e. corksniffers) and people who don't (i.e. tin ears). But I believe that most of us are really trying to argue the point not that wood is pointless, but that it is pointless to worry our little heads so much about it.

A guitar made from 200 year old Tasmanian Blackwood harvested by a virgin will still sound like crap through the $10 you found used at Guitar Center. And it doesn't matter how much mids your alder body Strat has, it will still sound scooped through a Mesa Boogie.

Or you could build a guitar made out of stone, record the direct injected frequency response curve on a graph, then gut the electronics and hardware and repeat the exact same thing on an identical guitar except it's made of paper. Then you can prove if it makes that big of a difference.
 
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Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

The lack of understanding displayed here regarding the scientific method is staggering.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Chistopher said:
I think that people think that this is a two-sided argument, ,t hat there are the people who believe wood makes a difference (i.e. corksniffers) and people who don't (i.e. tin ears). But I believe that most of us are really trying to argue the point not that wood is pointless, but that it is pointless to worry our little heads so much about it.
Click to expand...

I think that half the problem with these threads is some people see the debate in black and white while others see it in shades of grey.... then toss a few people trying to play devils advocate and coming under attack from both sides while trying to defend a point of view they don't necessarily believe in.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Silver said:
The lack of understanding displayed here regarding the scientific method is staggering.
Click to expand...

Fine, if you insist, get 100 guitar bodies, each identical in terms of shape, scale length, and pickup location. The only difference is the what the guitar is made from, from aircraft grade aluminum all the way to particle board. Play a single open string (chords increase the chances that a string was plucked harder or softer than the others, increasing the chance of bad data). Make sure to record this into a chart of the frequency response curve on your computer through a direct injection box. Using the same pick you used earlier and picking from the same location on the string, repeat the above step. Do this several times and then average the frequency curve on the graph.

For the next step, remove all hardware from the body and switch it out with the next one, making sure that the guitar is set up exactly the same as the precious body. The most important areas to focus on are string height and pickup height from the strings. If you are using a string through style of body, it is important that for each body you replace the strings with a fresh set of the same set of strings as you did earlier. If you however are using a top loader guitar and aren't testing this enough to the point that your strings wear out you should be fine. Repeat the process of recording the frequency response curve.

If you do all of this with as little human error as possible, you will have the answer to whether or not wood makes a marginal difference. I however am not of the camp where I notice the difference that a dead plant makes in my tonal recipe, so I will not bother with all of this.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Chistopher said:
If you do all of this with as little human error as possible, you will have the answer to whether or not wood makes a marginal difference. I however am not of the camp where I notice the difference that a dead plant makes in my tonal recipe, so I will not bother with all of this.
Click to expand...

At the end of the day, all we really need to do is pick out a guitar that sounds good.

Some want a deeper understanding, which isn't a bad thing, even if it's not necessary.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

This test seems pretty good to me. I'm sure you guys will come up with several ways to find fault with it such as you didn't notice a difference or that different players were strumming. The 1st demo is at 4:30.

 
Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Chistopher said:
Fine, if you insist, get 100 guitar bodies, each identical in terms of shape, scale length, and pickup location. The only difference is the what the guitar is made from, from aircraft grade aluminum all the way to particle board. Play a single open string (chords increase the chances that a string was plucked harder or softer than the others, increasing the chance of bad data). Make sure to record this into a chart of the frequency response curve on your computer through a direct injection box. Using the same pick you used earlier and picking from the same location on the string, repeat the above step. Do this several times and then average the frequency curve on the graph.

For the next step, remove all hardware from the body and switch it out with the next one, making sure that the guitar is set up exactly the same as the precious body. The most important areas to focus on are string height and pickup height from the strings. If you are using a string through style of body, it is important that for each body you replace the strings with a fresh set of the same set of strings as you did earlier. If you however are using a top loader guitar and aren't testing this enough to the point that your strings wear out you should be fine. Repeat the process of recording the frequency response curve.

If you do all of this with as little human error as possible, you will have the answer to whether or not wood makes a marginal difference. I however am not of the camp where I notice the difference that a dead plant makes in my tonal recipe, so I will not bother with all of this.
Click to expand...

I think we should also build a robot to pick exactly the same way every time.

We might as well end up with a cool robot after the silly effort.


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Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Clint 55, I saw that video and as you stated, I will point out a difference. The differences in tone in that video could also possibly be accounted to just differences in electronics. We don't know for certain that they didn't have differences in electrical tolerances. I know a lot of pots are +/-10% and I for one have a set of 59 bridge models with a neck position of 7.9k and a bridge of 8.5k.

You can also read the comments on youtube if you want people to nitpick the smaller details. :D
All I'm saying is the differences they found are within the standard range of tolerances of two guitars of the same model.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Yes, but the Ash also "happened" to be brighter than the Mahogany. I wonder why. It must have gotten brighter pots.
 
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Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

I bet this debate could've been sorted long ago, but it's just not in anyones interest to do so.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

^ We know the acoustic properties of an electric guitar shape its amplified sound, right? I hope nobody is ignorant enough to dispute that.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

I'm just saying that there are so many people out there who don't give certain guitars a chance on the sole basis of the wood that it's made of. There are tons of people who won't buy a poplar guitar (or basswood back in the day) because they hear people say that it's a bad wood.
It's also annoying when people complain about a guitar being too bright and they say "ahh, it must not be the Ash pairing well with the pickups." When in reality it's just the wrong pickup.

People who talk about guitars this way are no better than wine tasters. You can talk all you want about how sweet and creamy your Les Paul is all day with its undetones of Mahogany and how the Maple cap balances the tonal pallette, but as a common man all I care about is having a slab of wood that makes nice noises. I change what's on the slab of wood to make it make nicer noises, but in most cases I can get any slab of wood to sound how I want it to regardless to what tree it came from. The point to all this is, don't be a wine taster and don't tell me your dead tree is any better than mine.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

I'm comfortable with whatever your preferences are. I've had the wood wreck the guitar before though. I used an unfinished neck that I knew I liked with a pickguard that was pretty good, and I put that together with an unfinished body (yes it was poplar). No dice. The sound was horrible. Unusable. I don't know how much of it was due to the body being unfinished and how much was due to the wood itself, but my point is that your neck and body materials make a big difference.
 
Re: Check out this "tonewood" statement . . .

Aside from being curious about the science -- and thinking I'd be a good choice to help bring the science to the topic -- I don't really care what the truth is. I continue to act as though tone woods matter, because it's fun. I'm cognizant and appreciative of the placebo effect. It's like wearing designer underwear: Nobody else is going to see it, and it may not directly affect anything as you go about your day, but the confidence boost it gives you is quite real.
 
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