Leon Of Late
New member
Re: Does wood matter?
I'm going to go play with my wood and see if it vibrates.
I'm going to go play with my wood and see if it vibrates.
Does wood matter?
- Thread starter vivanchenko
- Start date
GilmourD
Burritotoneologist
Re: Does wood matter?
Why do you keep quoting a famous internet troll? Might as well post Scott Grove videos while you're at it.
Darth Nihilus
New member
Re: Does wood matter?
He's another great one.
But once again you're trashing the man, not his research
He's another great one.
But once again you're trashing the man, not his research
zenmindbeginner
New member
Re: Does wood matter?
There are many aspects to tone that cannot be measured or quantified... but can be heard with the right set of ears. Not all ears are created equal.
Waveform analysis has a difficult time analyzing minute changes in tone... FFT has a variable margin of error depending on if they trade approximation error for speed of analysis.
Wood being a factor is just hard to quantify and usually falls within the margin of error of sound analysis and the hearing of the average human (most guitar players have decidedly less than average hearing because they blast their eardrums on a regular basis... worse if they play in a band and even worse if that band lays live... even worse if they are gun enthusiasts).
There are many aspects to tone that cannot be measured or quantified... but can be heard with the right set of ears. Not all ears are created equal.
Waveform analysis has a difficult time analyzing minute changes in tone... FFT has a variable margin of error depending on if they trade approximation error for speed of analysis.
Wood being a factor is just hard to quantify and usually falls within the margin of error of sound analysis and the hearing of the average human (most guitar players have decidedly less than average hearing because they blast their eardrums on a regular basis... worse if they play in a band and even worse if that band lays live... even worse if they are gun enthusiasts).
GilmourD
Burritotoneologist
Re: Does wood matter?
The research is the same sort of psuedoscience that has people feeding their infants wheatgrass water and wondering why they die at 6 months old. The reason I am calling them trolls is because they know they're foisting a load of BS upon us and people are eating it up.
F
Funkfingers
Guest
Re: Does wood matter?
Boy, I said, boy. Whatcha smokin', boy.
How does Fire transmit vibrations?
Boy, I said, boy. Whatcha smokin', boy.
How does Fire transmit vibrations?
MrTondo
New member
Re: Does wood matter?
I always love these discussions, they are awesome, it's a deep faith in their 'truths' on both camps. I mean people can get banned over these things
. I also love the the nuanced guys don't stand a chance usually and just flee the discussion. Half of what they say is taken out of context by the one camp, the other half by the other camp. I am gonna try regardless (no guts no glory), so here it goes :
Let's start with a statement: Tonewood/material matters for solidbody guitars. It does, you can hear it in mostly all comparisons you can find on youtube (including the quoted ones so far), and real life experience will tell you the same. However there are things that are far more important for tone. Let's go over the ones I think are more important (or don't, it may be quite a read
).
Just a qualification before I start: I am assuming nothing is a given, so this will be a list of what I think is the most important for tone, including the very obvious we usually skip over.
1) Your head. Since most of the tone we want is in our head anyway, we will tweak pickups, speakers, strings, amps, pedals, EQ settings, knobs on our guitars etc. until we get what we want. Let's agree this is most important, although it's a very personal thing, that changes from person to person, that's the way it is... You are the driving force behind the tone you want. Let's assume it's a solid body guitar tone here and not some other instrument.
2) Finger/Pick Technique/Versing. And let's get the fingers&co out of the way too, these have the most impact on tone, since they transfer what your head wants in a more-or-less educated/inspired way to the strings. Our fingers are instrumental in getting what we want, the way we fret, where we pick on the sting, with what force, speed, versing, vibrato etc. To me this makes up a large part of what I would call the tone. You can argue this is not 'tone' but music or versing, but to me in the end these are one and the same. Music is made up of tones and tones make music, so I my mind what we do with our head and hands are the basis of tone. To be clear I am not talking about the material of the pick or choice between fingers and a pick, but their use for expression of the tone and music in our heads.
Then we get to the materials we use, the things we actually discuss about most of the time. In my mind this list should be in the order of the most potential change on tone. So of all the things I can change, which one of these things can in itself give the most change to tone. Most of these things are a given in our rigs, so we don't often look at it this way, but bear with me.
3) Amps and Pedals. Now of course some pedals change tone more than others and deserve maybe a lower place on this list, however what amps and pedals do for our tone and expression is huge! Overdrive, distortion, (heavy) modulation and (loud) delay all are clearer differences in tone to me than a change in EQ. And Amps and pedals can change EQ too! Again a reminder: I am listing this in order of most potential impact, not actual use since this differs per person. And going from fully clean to heavy distortion is the biggest change in tone I can image possible for a guitar and that is (one of the) the job(s) of amps and pedals so they are first for me.
4) Pickups. Now between Pickups and the speaker it's a close call for me, since both have a huge EQ impact and they can differ quite a bit. However Pickups, in combination with their placement in the guitar (which I will conveniently take as one subject line, while it actually are two different things), make a night and day difference. From mid-powerful humbuckers to quacky strat pickups to piezo elements, bridge to neck position, there is so much EQ differences there depended on what you choose. If we talk one position and one pickup type the speaker wins over the pickup, so let’s get to the next point.
5) Speaker. Another huge factor in guitar tone which a huge amount of EQ influence (and maybe a little breakup too every now and then). From an Alnico loaded 1x12 open back to a 4X12 V30 loaded closed back cab there is a world of difference. If we stick to just speakers designed for guitar the difference is big, but maybe not so huge as kicking in a distortion pedal. If we include different speaker types we may have to choose Speaker over Pickup. Because listening to your amp through a PA speaker instead of a guitar speaker, is a bigger deviation than going from a traditional neck strat pickup to a super high output Bridge pickup.
6) Picks/Fingers, strings, frets, nut and bridge/saddles material/mass etc. So I am throwing this unto one big heap. That may be cheating a little bit, since there is quite a bit of nuance in this group. If I had to make an order of this group it would be, fingers/picks, bridge, strings, frets, nut. The pick/fingers change can really impact EQ quite clearly as well as you all probably know (put the pick down for a moment, use your fingers for a while and you’ll know for sure). In the bridge we can make a change on something that contacts the strings always. There is quite a bit of change in going from a floating trem to a TOM with nylon saddles. This makes a clear but subtle difference compared to changing speakers of amps. Same thing for a string gauge or material change, it can warm things up quite a bit. Changing fret material can do something similar (but let’s be honest, whoever just changes their frets on a given axe…), as well as changing the nut material. Also these are the materials/parts that pickup or transfer the vibration of our guitar body itself, they transfer the effect of tonewoods.
7) Tonewoods and construction/finishing. Just for fun I listed this one last, but actually for me this is pretty much on par with the previous category. Especially the construction can have quite a bit of impact, set-neck vs bolt-on vs. neck-through really determines how the tonewoods get to impact the tone on the guitar. Also the woods itself of course really have a different tone to them. Which we can hear acoustically as well. However the differences are subtle as well. Especially given the same construction and finish apart from the woods used, the change is subtle. For me the tonewood and construction create the intangibles we are looking for, the sustain, the 3D-sound, the airiness, subtle EQ differences. This is the part of our tone we crave so much, but is sometimes so subtle it is hard to get just right. Same thing with the right paint job that will or will not cost us some detail in the high end.
This is why tonewoods are so important to most guitarist. I think why we value these last lower categories so much is because often we are already in the ballpark of our tone. We do not need radical change, we need subtle change. We need just another flavor of a similar pickup, a similar, but different set of strings, a new axe with another set of tonewoods and slightly different construction. We tinker in the subtle areas and we forget that we are already there 95-99% of the way with what we already have… But these last 5% are so important, it means the world to us and therefore tonewoods are every now and then the most important piece of the puzzle in finding our tone.
Sorry it took me so long to paint this picture, but I felt I had to put it in context to the whole of the ‘tone’ of the guitar. To summarize, yes tonewoods matter, but more subtly so than a lot of other things in our rigs.
I always love these discussions, they are awesome, it's a deep faith in their 'truths' on both camps. I mean people can get banned over these things
. I also love the the nuanced guys don't stand a chance usually and just flee the discussion. Half of what they say is taken out of context by the one camp, the other half by the other camp. I am gonna try regardless (no guts no glory), so here it goes :Let's start with a statement: Tonewood/material matters for solidbody guitars. It does, you can hear it in mostly all comparisons you can find on youtube (including the quoted ones so far), and real life experience will tell you the same. However there are things that are far more important for tone. Let's go over the ones I think are more important (or don't, it may be quite a read
). Just a qualification before I start: I am assuming nothing is a given, so this will be a list of what I think is the most important for tone, including the very obvious we usually skip over.
1) Your head. Since most of the tone we want is in our head anyway, we will tweak pickups, speakers, strings, amps, pedals, EQ settings, knobs on our guitars etc. until we get what we want. Let's agree this is most important, although it's a very personal thing, that changes from person to person, that's the way it is... You are the driving force behind the tone you want. Let's assume it's a solid body guitar tone here and not some other instrument
.2) Finger/Pick Technique/Versing. And let's get the fingers&co out of the way too, these have the most impact on tone, since they transfer what your head wants in a more-or-less educated/inspired way to the strings. Our fingers are instrumental in getting what we want, the way we fret, where we pick on the sting, with what force, speed, versing, vibrato etc. To me this makes up a large part of what I would call the tone. You can argue this is not 'tone' but music or versing, but to me in the end these are one and the same. Music is made up of tones and tones make music, so I my mind what we do with our head and hands are the basis of tone. To be clear I am not talking about the material of the pick or choice between fingers and a pick, but their use for expression of the tone and music in our heads.
Then we get to the materials we use, the things we actually discuss about most of the time. In my mind this list should be in the order of the most potential change on tone. So of all the things I can change, which one of these things can in itself give the most change to tone. Most of these things are a given in our rigs, so we don't often look at it this way, but bear with me.
3) Amps and Pedals. Now of course some pedals change tone more than others and deserve maybe a lower place on this list, however what amps and pedals do for our tone and expression is huge! Overdrive, distortion, (heavy) modulation and (loud) delay all are clearer differences in tone to me than a change in EQ. And Amps and pedals can change EQ too! Again a reminder: I am listing this in order of most potential impact, not actual use since this differs per person. And going from fully clean to heavy distortion is the biggest change in tone I can image possible for a guitar and that is (one of the) the job(s) of amps and pedals so they are first for me.
4) Pickups. Now between Pickups and the speaker it's a close call for me, since both have a huge EQ impact and they can differ quite a bit. However Pickups, in combination with their placement in the guitar (which I will conveniently take as one subject line, while it actually are two different things), make a night and day difference. From mid-powerful humbuckers to quacky strat pickups to piezo elements, bridge to neck position, there is so much EQ differences there depended on what you choose. If we talk one position and one pickup type the speaker wins over the pickup, so let’s get to the next point.
5) Speaker. Another huge factor in guitar tone which a huge amount of EQ influence (and maybe a little breakup too every now and then). From an Alnico loaded 1x12 open back to a 4X12 V30 loaded closed back cab there is a world of difference. If we stick to just speakers designed for guitar the difference is big, but maybe not so huge as kicking in a distortion pedal. If we include different speaker types we may have to choose Speaker over Pickup. Because listening to your amp through a PA speaker instead of a guitar speaker, is a bigger deviation than going from a traditional neck strat pickup to a super high output Bridge pickup.
6) Picks/Fingers, strings, frets, nut and bridge/saddles material/mass etc. So I am throwing this unto one big heap. That may be cheating a little bit, since there is quite a bit of nuance in this group. If I had to make an order of this group it would be, fingers/picks, bridge, strings, frets, nut. The pick/fingers change can really impact EQ quite clearly as well as you all probably know (put the pick down for a moment, use your fingers for a while and you’ll know for sure). In the bridge we can make a change on something that contacts the strings always. There is quite a bit of change in going from a floating trem to a TOM with nylon saddles. This makes a clear but subtle difference compared to changing speakers of amps. Same thing for a string gauge or material change, it can warm things up quite a bit. Changing fret material can do something similar (but let’s be honest, whoever just changes their frets on a given axe…), as well as changing the nut material. Also these are the materials/parts that pickup or transfer the vibration of our guitar body itself, they transfer the effect of tonewoods.
7) Tonewoods and construction/finishing. Just for fun I listed this one last, but actually for me this is pretty much on par with the previous category. Especially the construction can have quite a bit of impact, set-neck vs bolt-on vs. neck-through really determines how the tonewoods get to impact the tone on the guitar. Also the woods itself of course really have a different tone to them. Which we can hear acoustically as well. However the differences are subtle as well. Especially given the same construction and finish apart from the woods used, the change is subtle. For me the tonewood and construction create the intangibles we are looking for, the sustain, the 3D-sound, the airiness, subtle EQ differences. This is the part of our tone we crave so much, but is sometimes so subtle it is hard to get just right. Same thing with the right paint job that will or will not cost us some detail in the high end.
This is why tonewoods are so important to most guitarist. I think why we value these last lower categories so much is because often we are already in the ballpark of our tone. We do not need radical change, we need subtle change. We need just another flavor of a similar pickup, a similar, but different set of strings, a new axe with another set of tonewoods and slightly different construction. We tinker in the subtle areas and we forget that we are already there 95-99% of the way with what we already have… But these last 5% are so important, it means the world to us and therefore tonewoods are every now and then the most important piece of the puzzle in finding our tone.
Sorry it took me so long to paint this picture, but I felt I had to put it in context to the whole of the ‘tone’ of the guitar. To summarize, yes tonewoods matter, but more subtly so than a lot of other things in our rigs.
DESERTRAT1
New member
Re: Does wood matter?
Of course wood matters. If we didn't have it we wouldn't be able to obsess over it.
Of course wood matters. If we didn't have it we wouldn't be able to obsess over it.
Dahla
New member
Re: Does wood matter?
Great video!
I agree with pretty much everything he said, and I couldn't hear the insanely difference in tone that is claimed between basswood and maple.
AND (like him) I could hear the difference acoustically, but that wasn't the argument.
Great video!
I agree with pretty much everything he said, and I couldn't hear the insanely difference in tone that is claimed between basswood and maple.
AND (like him) I could hear the difference acoustically, but that wasn't the argument.
Re: Does wood matter?
people think that acoustic perception of the tone and plugged electric sound are completely separated in some magic manner. In fact they are the same signal. When the guy would start swapping necks (cause neck wood/construction dominates the tone in the lower register), and also playing with distortion, the difference would be huge, provided that he knew how to pronounce this. The easy task is to show identical electric tone, especially with a minimalistic approach as his, the hard task is to demonstrate the differences. So this approach is not honest.
Great video!
I agree with pretty much everything he said, and I couldn't hear the insanely difference in tone that is claimed between basswood and maple.
AND (like him) I could hear the difference acoustically, but that wasn't the argument.
people think that acoustic perception of the tone and plugged electric sound are completely separated in some magic manner. In fact they are the same signal. When the guy would start swapping necks (cause neck wood/construction dominates the tone in the lower register), and also playing with distortion, the difference would be huge, provided that he knew how to pronounce this. The easy task is to show identical electric tone, especially with a minimalistic approach as his, the hard task is to demonstrate the differences. So this approach is not honest.
Dahla
New member
Re: Does wood matter?
Really? So our ears and a roll of copper wire with a magnet hears the same thing, i.e the same signal?
Really? So our ears and a roll of copper wire with a magnet hears the same thing, i.e the same signal?
Re: Does wood matter?
Go and search seymour duncan site and find this great article on how the humbucker works. This will help you understand how the whole envelope of string frequencies is converted into an equivalent envelope of currents, each one representing one frequency, + any external electromagnetic interference.
Yes, + plus the RF/HF noise + LF magnetic hum.Really? So our ears and a roll of copper wire with a magnet hears the same thing, i.e the same signal?
Go and search seymour duncan site and find this great article on how the humbucker works. This will help you understand how the whole envelope of string frequencies is converted into an equivalent envelope of currents, each one representing one frequency, + any external electromagnetic interference.
regan
New member
Re: Does wood matter?
For all intents and purposes yes, a microphone is essentially copper wire and a magnet as is a record stylus. Sound recorded with these devices essentially sound identical to them live
Really? So our ears and a roll of copper wire with a magnet hears the same thing, i.e the same signal?
For all intents and purposes yes, a microphone is essentially copper wire and a magnet as is a record stylus. Sound recorded with these devices essentially sound identical to them live
Dahla
New member
Does wood matter?
Well, I found this:
A microphone converts sound into an electrical signal. This means that the “input” is sound waves. These are compression waves, usually in the air around us, but they can travel in liquids and solids too, and there are microphones designed to “hear” sound underwater or deep inside the earth. A microphone can pick up anything that we would call “sound”
-
A guitar pickup cannot pick up sound in this way. It is not designed to. The guitar pickup can only pick up the vibrations of the string within the magnetic field. The strange thing about this is that the vibrations do not need any medium to travel through – a guitar pickup would still work in a vacuum. Seems almost like magic!
http://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/t...-difference-between-a-pickup-and-a-microphone
So, how can the outcome be the same, identical?
An SD article also says:
Pickups are the heart of your guitar. The right guitar pickups can bring a dead-sounding instrument to life. They can turn a good guitar into a great one. They might not transform a guitar that plays poorly into a magical instrument, but they will almost certainly deliver a huge sonic upgrade.
That can only be true if the acoustic sound and pickup is NOT the same, identical sound/tone/signal.
IMO.
http://www.seymourduncan.com/support-pickups-101/getting-started
So, a pickup is basically neutral when it comes to frequency response? Hm... Why all the pickup choices then?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Well, I found this:
A microphone converts sound into an electrical signal. This means that the “input” is sound waves. These are compression waves, usually in the air around us, but they can travel in liquids and solids too, and there are microphones designed to “hear” sound underwater or deep inside the earth. A microphone can pick up anything that we would call “sound”
-
A guitar pickup cannot pick up sound in this way. It is not designed to. The guitar pickup can only pick up the vibrations of the string within the magnetic field. The strange thing about this is that the vibrations do not need any medium to travel through – a guitar pickup would still work in a vacuum. Seems almost like magic!
http://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/t...-difference-between-a-pickup-and-a-microphone
So, how can the outcome be the same, identical?
An SD article also says:
Pickups are the heart of your guitar. The right guitar pickups can bring a dead-sounding instrument to life. They can turn a good guitar into a great one. They might not transform a guitar that plays poorly into a magical instrument, but they will almost certainly deliver a huge sonic upgrade.
That can only be true if the acoustic sound and pickup is NOT the same, identical sound/tone/signal.
IMO.
http://www.seymourduncan.com/support-pickups-101/getting-started
So, a pickup is basically neutral when it comes to frequency response? Hm... Why all the pickup choices then?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last edited:
GilmourD
Burritotoneologist
Re: Does wood matter?
Actually, heat itself is quite literally the rate at which the molecules in something vibrate. LOL
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
Actually, heat itself is quite literally the rate at which the molecules in something vibrate. LOL
Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
