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Body wood affects tone

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  • Rabs said:

    It all make so much sense... Just like this.. Its on the internet, it must be true..

    The ex-Fender 'tone wood is 80% of the sound' guy is a lot madder, and so even funnier. =)
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  • SassafrasSassafras Frets: 30273

     

    I have 'made up' nothing I have written here, simply drawing on the research of others, and it does amaze me that, despite all the debate, so few seem to actually want to understand better whether or not 'tone wood' does have an effect, exactly how it work if it does, and exactly why it does not work if it doesn't.
    I can't speak for others on The Fretboard but it's because I no longer care and I've got a life to live.
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  • Three-ColourSunburstThree-ColourSunburst Frets: 1139
    edited September 2017
    Sassafras said:
    I can't speak for others on The Fretboard but it's because I no longer care and I've got a life to live.
    I guess that means you won't be wasting any more time posting on the subject then. Bye and enjoy that life you've got to live!

    Edit. Just seen that you are up to almost 10,000 'frets'. 'I've got a life to live'. Gotta love the irony!
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  • RoxRox Frets: 2147
    Seeing as the paper seems to suggest that there's not enough contact between the strings and body to have an effect, how come I can physically feel the body vibrate when I'm playing?

    The pickups are screwed to the thing that's vibrating whilst the strings are vibrating too.

    Also the difference in density of the wood - especially in the neck, altering the tension when a string is strummed must make a difference too.  There's a significant difference between mahogany and maple there.
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  • guitars4youguitars4you Frets: 14029
    tFB Trader
    Rox said:
    Seeing as the paper seems to suggest that there's not enough contact between the strings and body to have an effect, how come I can physically feel the body vibrate when I'm playing?

    The pickups are screwed to the thing that's vibrating whilst the strings are vibrating too.

    Also the difference in density of the wood - especially in the neck, altering the tension when a string is strummed must make a difference too.  There's a significant difference between mahogany and maple there.
    Even the size of the neck has an impact on the voice - try a Nocaster with  a big maple neck and a slimmer 60's maple neck and you can hear the difference in the voice when played unplugged and as you mention you can feel it as well - more mass/density certainly assists in the voice - this is my test carried out with my ears and not some scientific report via NASA
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    edited September 2017
    Rox said:
    Seeing as the paper seems to suggest that there's not enough contact between the strings and body to have an effect, how come I can physically feel the body vibrate when I'm playing?

    The pickups are screwed to the thing that's vibrating whilst the strings are vibrating too.

    Also the difference in density of the wood - especially in the neck, altering the tension when a string is strummed must make a difference too.  There's a significant difference between mahogany and maple there.
    Even the size of the neck has an impact on the voice - try a Nocaster with  a big maple neck and a slimmer 60's maple neck and you can hear the difference in the voice when played unplugged and as you mention you can feel it as well - more mass/density certainly assists in the voice - this is my test carried out with my ears and not some scientific report via NASA
    ... and then, once they has been filtered through an amp, some effects and a guitar speaker- then perhaps a microphone a preamp, a compressor, some outboard EQ, in amongst other instruments that are smashed with bus compression  and a multi band compressor- there is virtually zero-to-fuck-all difference between the two.

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  • impmannimpmann Frets: 12641
    Round and round and round it goes.
    Where it stops nobody knows.


    Quasi-science bullshit will always beat those dare to have opinions that don't tow the line. I tend to let my ears tell me if something sounds nice, not a lab report.


    Never Ever Bloody Anything Ever.

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  • NelsonPNelsonP Frets: 3347
    edited September 2017
    NelsonP said:
    Have you ever put your ear on the guitar body and plucked a string. You can hear the vibration through the body.

    Sure, it is less resonant than a hollow body or acoustic guitar but a solid body electric guitar still vibrates and will do so with greater amplitude at certain frequencies.

    This may affect the 'tone of the guitar
    Saying something 'may' have an effect is a long, long way from actually explaining how that effect would work, and not a single person on here has yet come up with any scientifically credible explanation of how 'tone wood' affects the sound of a solid body electric guitar to a degree that can be reliably perceived. Nor has anyone been able to provide any academic references for research demonstrating 'tone wood' has a real effect in electric guitars.

    Instead we are expected to believe that such an explanation is beyond the realms of science, is something 'spiritual', or can only be understood if you tap and sniff raw wood, and that academic papers on the web undermining the myth of 'tone wood' (and I guess the people who wrote them, the universities they work in and so on) are all an elaborate fabrication.

    On the other hand there is a whole raft of evidence showing why tone wood does not have an perceptible effect, ranging from the simple physics of a guitar body as a forced vibration system, through to the fact the 'tone wood' cannot be reliably identified even in acoustic instruments where any effect can be expected to be some magnitudes larger, through to rigorous experimental studies that have showed no 'tone wood' effect exists.

    Sure, a guitar might vibrate slightly as a result of absorbing energy from the strings, but it is a massive leap to assume that this loss of energy in turn causes a consistent, perceptible change in the harmonics sounding on the string as sensed by the pickups, let alone that such a change is wood species dependent!

    I have 'made up' nothing I have written here, simply drawing on the research of others, and it does amaze me that, despite all the debate, so few seem to actually want to understand better whether or not 'tone wood' does have an effect, exactly how it works if it does, and exactly why it does not work if it doesn't.
    The reason I say 'may' is because I've not thought too hard about this before and I see no reason to discount it as a hypothesis.

    I'm sure that science can go a long way to explain the overall system and how this is affected by the material that the guitar is made from.

    My argument above is simply that there is a coupling between the vibration of the string and the vibration of the guitar body.
    And this can be proven by a simple experiment - placing your ear on the guitar when plucking the string.

    Therefore the reverse is also true - i.e. that any vibration in the body of the guitar will be passed back to the string (including vibration caused by the sound generated by the amp and speaker).

    It is also highly likely that guitars made from different materials will generate different resonant frequencies, depending on the density and stiffness of the materials used and the specific construction. This could be proven fairly easily, with the right experiment.

    My hypothesis would be that these different construction materials allow different harmonics and overtones to be produced, via resonance. In some cases those resonant frequencies will correspond to the most 'popular' frequencies used in modern music - whether by luck or design, art or science.....and that those different resonant frequencies probably have a different impact on the subjective assessment of 'tone'.

    All of this could be tested quite easily using a scientific approach. I suspect the overall system is somewhat more complex than what I have described above, but the basics are there. I don't know why there aren't many academic references. Maybe it hasn't been studied enough (unlikely) or maybe they are harder to find than you would assume. Or maybe its hard to get funding to mess around with guitars ;-)

    Of course, the extent to which the overall tone is driven by the materials that the instrument if made of vs other things (e.g. pickups etc) is a different question. But I see no reason to believe that the body materials have no effect on the overall tone.


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  • impmann said:
    Round and round and round it goes.
    Where it stops nobody knows.


    Quasi-science bullshit will always beat those dare to have opinions that don't tow the line. I tend to let my ears tell me if something sounds nice, not a lab report.


    It's not about whether something sounds nice or not. 
    Its about the overall influence a specific wood type has on the overall tone, when measuring against, construction, pickups, bridge type, nut material etc.

    I dont think anyone would expect two strats rolling off the production line next to each other to sound identical, there are differences between two guitars of exactly the same materials, what I think is laughable  are the claims that body wood can affect up to 50% of the tone. 

    There are hundreds of thousands of variables at play which create each instruments 'voice' and that before we even start to consider player technique and perception. 


    " Why does it smell of bum?" Mrs Professorben.
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  • octatonicoctatonic Frets: 33725
    impmann said:
    Round and round and round it goes.
    Where it stops nobody knows.

    Quasi-science bullshit will always beat those dare to have opinions that don't tow the line. I tend to let my ears tell me if something sounds nice, not a lab report.

    I don't know if your reply is a direct response to my comment above but assuming it is- do you dispute the existence of confirmation bias?
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  • impmannimpmann Frets: 12641
    octatonic said:
    impmann said:
    Round and round and round it goes.
    Where it stops nobody knows.

    Quasi-science bullshit will always beat those dare to have opinions that don't tow the line. I tend to let my ears tell me if something sounds nice, not a lab report.

    I don't know if your reply is a direct response to my comment above but assuming it is- do you dispute the existence of confirmation bias?
    Not aimed at you at all, chap. No I don't dispute the existence of confirmation bias at all, either - there have been many psychological studies into that effect over the years. I think it all started with trying to understand what the Nazis did, IIRC but I'm hazy... its been many years since Uni! :-)
    Never Ever Bloody Anything Ever.

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  • Three-ColourSunburstThree-ColourSunburst Frets: 1139
    edited September 2017
    NelsonP said:

    It is also highly likely that guitars made from different materials will generate different resonant frequencies, depending on the density and stiffness of the materials used and the specific construction. This could be proven fairly easily, with the right experiment.

    My hypothesis would be that these different construction materials allow different harmonics and overtones to be produced, via resonance. In some cases those resonant frequencies will correspond to the most 'popular' frequencies used in modern music - whether by luck or design, art or science.....and that those different resonant frequencies probably have a different impact on the subjective assessment of 'tone'.
    Exactly such a rigorous academic study has been done, and it found that body wood has no effect on the tone of an electric guitar. As I posted on page 11...


    OK, I have found some real academic research on this topic, overseen by a Professor of physics and acoustics. I have also found a TV clip about their research, a full text copy of their paper and also some discussion by the leading author of other research they have done into this topic, including some blind listening tests. This will do for now. It's in Portuguese, probably because any English speaking academic putting a research proposal forward to study such a topic would risk becoming the next Eric Braithwaite! Looks pretty rigorous, using a mechanical picking device to avoid the problem of human players 'unconsciously' altering their picking technique in order to get the tone they expect.

    Sobre o acoplamento corda-corpo em guitarras elétricas e sua relação com o timbre do instrumento. Physicæ 9, 2010, pp. 24 - 29

    'String-body coupling on electric guitars and its relation with the timbre of the instrument.'

    Rodrigo Mateus Pereira(1), Albary Laibida Junior, Thiago Corrêa de Freitas.

    (1) Tecnologia em Luteria, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil.

    Abstract.

    Nine electric guitar bodies were built in the form of the Telecaster model by the author RMP. These were assembled using the same neck and pickup assembly. Once each body was assembled two strings of the electric guitar were mechanically excited and the sound, obtained directly from the instrument, was recorded for later analysis. Also recorded was a musical piece played with each electric guitar. These sounds were analysed via a Fourier transform in order to obtain the component harmonics of the sound, these harmonics are responsible for the timbre of the instrument. The harmonic spectra of each electric guitar were compared to each other and there were no significant differences between them. Thus the variations of timbre of electric guitars, according to the results obtained here, depend on other factors than the wood of the body itself, a fact that arises from the absence of a significant coupling between the string and the body of the instrument. Also proposed is a modelling of the string-body coupling, which shows that only a negligible amount of energy from the vibrating string reaches the body of the instrument and that a smaller amount still returns up the string.

    http://physicae.ifi.unicamp.br/index.php/physicae/article/view/physicae.9.5/116    

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=AuIqNmVNNuA



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  • NelsonPNelsonP Frets: 3347
    edited September 2017
    I did have a look at that. I can't read Portuguese but I don't think they had an amplifier/speaker in that experiment?
    So it was just guitar / string interaction, right?

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  • NelsonP said:
    I can't read Portuguese. Did they have an amplifier/speaker in that experiment? Or was it just guitar / string interaction?
    They put the signal from the pickup (same one used with all bodies) straight into a spectrum analyser in order to compare the harmonics of the signal. A mechanical picking device was used in order to ensure the original harmonics on the string were the same for each test. No significant differences were found between each body.
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  • NelsonPNelsonP Frets: 3347
    edited September 2017
    OK, but no speaker was used. I would imagine that there would be some impact from that.

    i.e.
    i) string vibrates
    ii) pickup turns vibration into electrical oscillation
    iii) amplfier / speaker reproduces this
    iv) some of the energy from the speaker is transferred back to the guitar body
    v) guitar body resonates at certain frequencies and returns these to the string
    vi) pickup turns these new vibrations into electrical oscillation

    The guitar body material may be important is stages iv/v

    I say may because its just a theory. Anyone looking to do a PhD on this?
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  • Three-ColourSunburstThree-ColourSunburst Frets: 1139
    edited September 2017
    NelsonP said:
    OK, but no speaker was used. I would imagine that there would be some impact from that.

    I have already mentioned this point in the summary I did of what I have read so far about impedance and conductance, forced vibration and so on in guitar bodies. (See page 12.) Whilst this would give a means of adding the energy needed to set up a 'resonant' system, there are still numerous problems for those hoping that introducing an amplifier will allow the claims of the 'tone wood' believers to be salvaged.

    For example, one of the main claims of those who believe in 'tone wood' is that the quality of an amplified guitar's sound can be deduced from what it sounds like when played acoustically, with maple being 'bright' and so on.

    Secondly, if a mahogany guitar only sounds like a mahogany guitar when the amp is 'turned up to 11', what does it sound like when played more quietly, Maple? Basswood?

    Volume certainly affects tone as the amp is driven harder, but I have yet to hear of anyone setting their volume whist listening to their guitar going "No, still bass wood, a bit louder. No, now it sounds like alder, louder still. Yes that's it, now we have the 'mahogany tone'." 

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  • NelsonPNelsonP Frets: 3347
    For example, one of the main claims of those who believe in 'tone wood' is that the quality of an amplified guitar's sound can be deduced from what it sounds like when played acoustically, with maple being 'bright' and so on.

    Not sure about this. The Brazilian study appears to negate this. there is some psychology there too.
    The more you pay for wine, the better you think it is. Even if it isn't.
    http://freakonomics.com/podcast/freakonomics-radio-do-more-expensive-wines-taste-better/?c_page=7

    I'd like to see a repeat of the Brazilian study, using an amp / speaker this time.
    In theory it would be quite easy - just run the signal from the guitar jack through a splitter - one split goes to the amp, the other to the spectrum analyser. Keep the amp cranked and near the guitar to maximise the chances of observing the interaction.

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  • NelsonP said:
    OK, but no speaker was used. I would imagine that there would be some impact from that.

    i.e.
    i) string vibrates
    ii) pickup turns vibration into electrical oscillation
    iii) amplfier / speaker reproduces this
    iv) some of the energy from the speaker is transferred back to the guitar body
    v) guitar body resonates at certain frequencies and returns these to the string
    vi) pickup turns these new vibrations into electrical oscillation

    The guitar body material may be important is stages iv/v

    I say may because its just a theory. Anyone looking to do a PhD on this?
    I think that's clutching mate. 
    If what you said is a factor, most recordings would miss these 'sympathetic resonances' as most guitars are recorded in the control room separate from the amp/cab. 
    " Why does it smell of bum?" Mrs Professorben.
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  • NelsonPNelsonP Frets: 3347
    edited September 2017
    NelsonP said:
    OK, but no speaker was used. I would imagine that there would be some impact from that.

    i.e.
    i) string vibrates
    ii) pickup turns vibration into electrical oscillation
    iii) amplfier / speaker reproduces this
    iv) some of the energy from the speaker is transferred back to the guitar body
    v) guitar body resonates at certain frequencies and returns these to the string
    vi) pickup turns these new vibrations into electrical oscillation

    The guitar body material may be important is stages iv/v

    I say may because its just a theory. Anyone looking to do a PhD on this?
    I think that's clutching mate. 
    If what you said is a factor, most recordings would miss these 'sympathetic resonances' as most guitars are recorded in the control room separate from the amp/cab. 
    Possibly but I'm just saying it could have an impact. That's all.

    From here:
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-causes-feedback-in-a/
    "Unlike microphones, guitars (both acoustic and electric) can vibrate and these vibrations occur at particular frequencies. In fact, the structural vibrations of an acoustic guitar and the acoustic resonances of the guitar enclosure are coupled and serve to "color" the sound of the guitar. These harmonics are what distinguish the sound of a particular guitar. The top surface of more expensive acoustic guitars is typically made from solid woods such as sitka spruce, whereas less expensive guitars are frequently constructed from laminated wood. The surface vibrations of laminate guitars die out more quickly than those of solid surface guitars. "

    and this....

    "...when amplifying the output of an electric guitar. Structural vibrations induced by acoustic feedback can magnify the signal generated by the sensors embedded in the guitar to "pick up" its sound, which leads to instability"

    Isolated recordings, silent stages etc all would have prevent this. But it's only a small proportion of the guitar playing population who find themselves sitting in a control room with an isolated cab in another room.

    PS Thinking about it this might be one of the reasons why I much prefer playing through a speaker, rather than headphones.
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  • GassageGassage Frets: 30826
    Gas is a big con.
    Reported for libel; solicitors instructed.

    *An Official Foo-Approved guitarist since Sept 2023.

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