Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

You're making the same mistake Non tone wood perpetrators always make.
Your premise is that there is 100% Induction/electrical transference of the the sound. No acoustic element
This is patently wrong. There is an acoustic element present in pickups which responds to the guitar body [ wood in most cases ].
If there wasn't there would be no need to wax pot pickups and employ many methods people do to stop feedback.
Guitar pickups feedback. Semi acoustic guitars feedback quicker/easier than solid body guitars.
Do you want to tell me why or what it is if it isn't acoustic feedback via the pickups ?

Just a quick poll. All of you seem to have come across your opinion through your own personal experience, so I won't bother asking that. But how many of you have attempted to replicate my personal experience. Because if wood pressed against the back of a guitar makes a difference acoustically, but not electrically; but wood built into the guitar makes a difference both electrically and acoustically, either there some different effect at play or physics isn't working today. Please help he find out which.

 

[PFDarkside]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

I still think it's interesting that Bob Taylor built a guitar out of a pallet and it apparently sounded decent.

This debate has inspired me to pickup my guitar and learn The Trees by Rush.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In the end, you are the winner in this thread.

All due respect but the premise is utter nonsense. Scott Grove tried to make the same correlation by touching the guitar to the wall or a table or something. He's like "see it's louder but the plugged in tone didn't change". It's asinine. Touching the guitar to something has absolutely no similarity to actually replacing the body wood (which is under tension) with another piece of wood.

Frank's discussion on fret material on the Axes & Amps podcast was fascinating to me... it affects tone but not in the manner in which you think it does.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

Mike Seegar did a test with autoharps. (Yeah I do play the autoharp. For real. I have three in different diatonic tunings.)

Anyways, he found that the acoustic tone was greatly improved when he held it against a funky piece of plywood he found on the beach!

Here I am playing one of my harps.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

You're making the same mistake Non tone wood perpetrators always make.
Your premise is that there is 100% Induction/electrical transference of the the sound. No acoustic element
This is patently wrong. There is an acoustic element present in pickups which responds to the guitar body [ wood in most cases ].
If there wasn't there would be no need to wax pot pickups and employ many methods people do to stop feedback.
Guitar pickups feedback. Semi acoustic guitars feedback quicker/easier than solid body guitars.
Do you want to tell me why or what it is if it isn't acoustic feedback via the pickups ?

Archtop feedback because the volume of the amp causes the body to vibrate, causing feedback. This is because the body is vibrating causing the strings to vibrate, which makes noice. In nonarchtops, most feedback is caused by the strings being moved in most cases. If you get a Les Paul to feedback by the wood before it feedbacks from the strings, your guitar is inherently crap.

Now that we are finished with my brief crash course on amps moving strings, back to the subject. If wood made that big a deal on tone, why doesn't the (in)famous cardboard Strat of 2015 not sound like total mud? Cardboard is extremely good at absorbing high frequencies, it's even so good at muting tones they use it for soundproofing. And explain to me how people who make guitars out of steel don't run out of business? My main Jazz man had a semi hollow steel Tele, that he used for rolled back jazz tones. Don't blame the tone cap either, he had a .01uf cap that never sat below 6.

You quoted me, but you still haven't said whether or not you tried it for yourself. All y'all is doing is telling me that it came out different than it actually did.

Another flaw in your test.....how do you know your amp is producing the frequencies that are being affected acoustically????

Like I said, I did it through 5 different amps. A Marshall, Vox, Ampeq, Fender Twin Reverb, and another Vox.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

Anyways, he found that the acoustic tone was greatly improved when he held it against a funky piece of plywood he found on the beach!

That's what I found too, the body blank shifted the eq downward when played acoustically, but when I plug it in I get zero change whatsoever.

Side Note: I knew a girl who played autoharp back in the day, made me want to try to learn it for a while.

 

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Finally found out how to continue the tonewood debate.

Re: Finally found out how to continue the tonewood debate.

Archtop feedback because the volume of the amp causes the body to vibrate, causing feedback. This is because the body is vibrating causing the strings to vibrate, which makes noice[?]. In nonarchtops, most feedback is caused by the strings being moved in most cases.
Essentially becoming a diapram like a microphone.

You quoted me, but you still haven't said whether or not you tried it for yourself. All y'all is doing is telling me that it came out different than it actually did..

No i'm not going to bother to try your "experiment ". As others have said and I reiterate. "It's a flawed premise " and your the one in self denial.

And you haven't ended the tone wood debate.

OH! Plug in your LP hold the strings still and crank it. You'll still get feedback.
You could even remove the strings and you'll get feedback.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Finally found out how to continue the tonewood debate.

Re: Finally found out how to continue the tonewood debate.

OH! Plug in your LP hold the strings still and crank it. You'll still get feedback.
You could even remove the strings and you'll get feedback.

Lucky for us I got one, I'll get on that right now. If wood can cause a pickup to feedback, then I'll admit defeat and close the thread.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

Status report: Dimed LP no strings through dimed DSl100 through Marshall 412 with a Soul Food dimed.

No feedback

Maybe you got your result because noisey pickups cause microphonic coils to feedback? Potting and shielding should help ya out in that area.

 

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

Status report: Dimed LP no strings through dimed DSl100 through Marshall 412 with a Soul Food dimed.

Maybe you got your result because noisey pickups cause microphonic coils to feedback? Potting and shielding should help ya out in that area.

:chairfall

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

Status = ?

:chairfall

Good catch, post edited.

 

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

Status report: Dimed LP no strings through dimed DSl100 through Marshall 412 with a Soul Food dimed.

No feedback

Maybe you got your result because noisey pickups cause microphonic coils to feedback? Potting and shielding should help ya out in that area.

While your at it . No strings ,dimed.
Tap on the pickup [ and/or the body ] with your finger. No sound ?

 

[AlexR]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

Another major flaw with all of this to-ing and fro-ing is what I mentioned in my very first post.
1 test or data point is not a thesis.

Once again with the feedback thing, just because you don't get it to happen doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Same with wood....just because your testing doesn't make any difference doesn't mean everyone else's testing will find the same result.

Wood is like snowflakes.....no 2 pieces are alike. But bits could be very close, or to certain guitar pickups or amp tonal reproductive abilities they could be identical.....hence another of my earlier posts. So its perfectly possible your test could be accurate for that bit of wood, but not with others.

So 1 test could simply mean your rig has not the capability to reproduce the differences in question. Or that no rig could.

The lack of data makes this test yet another one which rates only as an utter scientific fail. It is pointless discussing any other aspect of what has gone on in this without examining many individual tests of the same nature and rigs and pickups.

Another point which is closely related is burden of proof. To prove wood is not part of amplified tone you must test a significant proportion of all guuitars ever made in recorded history. So I would say your number must be perhaps over 10,000 before you reach statistical significance.


The 'wood makes a difference' camp is a much different burden of proof. Once you have 1 guitar where tone is different due to wooden constructive elements you have proven the case. Because you don't have to prove every guitar is different, just that wood is capable of making a difference.

So we come to the point yet again, your test is about as far away from ending a debate as it is physically possible to get - even if you were trying to achieve such a feat

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

How about this, I'll concede that this thread did not end the tonewood debate, but all it did was dispell the notion of wood bleeding off certain frequencies does not affect tone, as proven by adding more mass to the guitar not affecting the tone. It is however still possible that certain frequencies of wood reflect back certain frequencies differently than other woods and thus vibrate back to the strings either in phase or out of phase from the string.

The effect of this is still, in a practical sense, negligible. If a handful of change can buy a magnet that indisputably affects the tone and $400 worth of wood has an advantage so small over a $50 piece of wood that people argue if it even exists, I would take the cheaper option.

You can still play your guitar from 200 year old wood reclaimed from the Queen Annes Revenge by a blind monk, but I'll be fine on what ever piece of wood happened to have been at the factory that day. If you won't play a poplar guitar just because it's poplar, that is to be frank, your fault.

And yes I did get sound from the pickup.

 

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

How about this, I'll concede this ; yes I did get sound from the pickup.

:feedback:

Also:I get feedback through my LP with a Stag Mag [ SD Pup ] no strings.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

The 'wood makes a difference' camp is a much different burden of proof. Once you have 1 guitar where tone is different due to wooden constructive elements you have proven the case. Because you don't have to prove every guitar is different, just that wood is capable of making a difference.

I know I just tried to end the debate, but you have got to know that isn't true. There is not a single reputable school in the world that will tell you that under any circumstances you can only do a test once. And not a single researcher will tell you it is necessary or plausible to test 10,000 guitars.

If you can get a sample size of say 100 guitars made from materials from stone to cardboard, and prove that the vibrations from the wood do not interphere with the vibration of the string or pickup, then you can prove their isn't a difference.

But if that is not the case, you must be able to determine how much the material interpheres with the strings movements across frequency ranges. And then you would have to find a way to determine if those results are worth getting in a fuss over.

Until then, all we are doing is repeating what he have heard from other people or have tried ourselves. And I'm pretty sure none of what he have tried ourselves is without flaw.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

:feedback:

Also:I get feedback through my LP with a Stag Mag [ SD Pup ] no strings.

Does it have any hum or noise? Because the slightest bit of that will cause feedback at louder levels, with or without strings.

 

[GoldenVulture]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

Does it have any hum or noise? Because the slightest bit of that will cause feedback at louder levels, with or without strings.

To get feedback there has to be some acoustic element happening. Hum and noise will not contribute to that, they'll just create hum and noise, not feedback.
I could pick up twenty different guitars, especially semi acoustics and get feedback from all of them given enough gain. They're not all going to be suffering from microphonic pickups.

 

[Chistopher]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

How will wood start a feedback loop? It's not even wired in to the output jack. Something has to start the loop which could vibrate the wood which could start a feedback loop, given the pickup covers, pickup coils, or strings start vibrating.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

I know I just tried to end the debate, but you have got to know that isn't true. There is not a single reputable school in the world that will tell you that under any circumstances you can only do a test once. And not a single researcher will tell you it is necessary or plausible to test 10,000 guitars.

If you can get a sample size of say 100 guitars made from materials from stone to cardboard, and prove that the vibrations from the wood do not interphere with the vibration of the string or pickup, then you can prove their isn't a difference.

But if that is not the case, you must be able to determine how much the material interpheres with the strings movements across frequency ranges. And then you would have to find a way to determine if those results are worth getting in a fuss over.

Until then, all we are doing is repeating what he have heard from other people or have tried ourselves. And I'm pretty sure none of what he have tried ourselves is without flaw.

Ok, say you have your 1 test that you have done where there is no difference.
But then someone else has a test that does have a difference.

Do you disregard their findings because you think your test is the be-all and end all. NO scientist would, thats for sure. No-one with an open mind would either. Because your large test is not every guitar. A scientist would still look for more data in this case as they would know that even 100 guitars is not a good test.

Its only cynics and those who have a pre-conceived notion of what they want to believe that would see small test as conclusive.

So this is the precise situation in a nutshell. You have a test you have performed that would seem to prove no difference.
There are ample tests done and reported either on the net or from people even on this thread that have different findings.
Both yours and other tests reported here have equal validity or provenance as likely to be accurate.

So choose your side......cynic or scientist

 

[Taz Rules]

Re: Finally found out how to end the tonewood debate.

One thing I think we can all agree on...

The OP has definitely NOT found out how to end the debate. :doh:

Now please carry on banging your heads against the wall... :sword: :chairshot