Don't talk to anybody else about embarrassment when you just proved you have the reading comprehension of a 4-year-old. And it was literally my suggestion to refer to a third-party, though you'll notice I suggested one that has knowledge specific to guitars, because that'd be, y'know, actually relevant. On the note, here's another freebie for you: go check how the Seymour Duncan site's pickup wizard separates different woods as defining articles of an instrument's base tone. Funny how the company of the very site you're on also believes that the woods used are a consistent factor in tone...
There's a difference between an average and an individual thing.
On average, the generally acceptable wisdom is that mahogany is more mid-rangey and maple is brighter. That's what SD uses to ballpark* things. And sure, that's fine - for a ballpark idea. You take 100 maple and 100 mahogany necks, and most of the time I bet that the maple ones will be brighter. But you and I don't play guitars 'on average'. There are individual pieces of wood at different ends of the range and they get made into guitars.
I've got a hardtail, maple neck guitar with a solid mahogany body. It's the brightest guitar I own. Really spanky tone.
I've also got a hardtail, maple neck guitar with a solid ash body. It's got a very mellow tone. Noticeably more low mids than even my semi-hollow.
According to conventional wisdom, the mahogany body should be the mid-rangey one and the ash body should be brighter/snappier . . . but it's not that way in reality. Because we don't play instruments on average. We play individual instruments. Individual variation in wood can be pretty significant and make things not follow the conventional wisdom.
* And I'm very willing to bet that if you phoned up Seymour Duncan and told 'em you had a really bright sounding Mahogany guitar (or a really dark sounding maple one) they would give you very different suggestions than if you used their tone wizard thingie. Because what really matters is how the guitar really sounds, not slavish devotion to what the wood it's made of is supposed to sound like.
What part of "enough to alter the tone" do you not understand?
I guess the part that says that all woods (even though they may wildly vary by density) are gonna sound the same as long as they come from the same genus of plant . . . while at the same time are arguing that switching pickguard material from plastic to wood has a noticeable effect on the amplified sound of a guitar. That's a little kooky man.
Like, if you're going to go the extreme 'everything has an impact on the sound' it's really weird that you're going to be arguing that there's no real difference in . . . say . . . mahogany . . . where a given piece of wood might come from one of the multiple species of tree that we happen to call mahogany with different density depending on growth conditions.
The density varying was never in question and you'll notice I did start off that last comment specifically by saying—and I quote—"Yes, wood varies."
You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. You said:
There are limits to how much the density varies with any given species; basswood doesn't turn into walnut because it grew on the other side of a hill.
The density in question was a comparison of:
Mahogany - 0.5 to 0.85 kg/m^2
Maple - 0.6 to 0.75 kg/m^2
The possible density of a piece of maple overlaps
completely with the possible density of mahogany.
Now, if you want to argue that there's another property besides density that makes a piece of wood sound different there's probably a valid argument to be made (something about the pore structure and resonances perhaps). But what you wrote (and what I was responding to) is just wrong. The density of mahogany varies a shit-ton.
Even the very softest maple (which is not used in guitar manufacturing) and the very hardest mahogany (which sometimes is used by real cheap companies, but even the likes of Epiphone avoid it) do not cross over in terms of their tone.
If the softest maple is
never used in guitar manufacturing . . . how are you so certain what it sounds like? Kinda sounds like you're mistaken here.
even the densest maple still needs a thick finish to prevent warping in the application of a musical instrument; you don't want to ever try making a neck out of soft maple unless you're down for multiple reinforcement rods and a double truss.
Weird that Charvel and MusicMan have been building their maple necks into musical instruments with only an oil finish for decades now . . . given how a thick finish is necessary to prevent warping. Most of 'em have single acting truss rods too. I guess there must be a recall on those zillion guitars floating out there? It kinda sounds like you're mistaken again.
mahogany is a warm-toned wood, alder is balanced, ash is a little snappier
See, this is really where your argument really fails a basic smell test.
Alder has a ridiculously huge range of density. Almost as much as the multiple species of mahogany. It goes from 0.4 – 0.7 kg/m^2. That means that one piece of alder could be just a hair under twice the weight of another piece. Two pieces of wood coming from the same tree . . . one weighs almost twice what the other does . . . and you're telling me that they all sound pretty much the same?
What kind of ash? Ash wildly varies in structural properties depending on where the tree grew. It can be extremely hard and dense, or extremely soft and light. There's just no uniformity at all to the material. How could they all sound the same?
What kind of mahogany? Swietenia macrophylla, Swietenia mahagoni, Swietenia humilis, Khaya Ivorensis, Khaya Anthetheca, Khaya Grandifolio, Ngollon, Acajou . . . ? All of them can be used to make an electric guitar . . . and they're all considered mahogany. There are variations between the different species as well as between the different boards taken from a tree (based on cut, growing condition, etc). How are you gonna guarantee they're all going to sound pretty much the same?
