Body wood affects tone

Three-ColourSunburst

NelsonP said:

I'll just leave this here......

Arthur Pate. Lutherie de la guitare electrique solid body : aspects mecaniques et perceptifs.
Acoustique [physics.class-ph]. Universite Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris VI, 2014. Francais. <
NNT : 2014PA066461
https://hal.inria.fr/tel-01127562/document

p144
Recent studies showed that the sound of the instrument also depends on its mechanical behaviour. As a matter of fact, the pickup converts the string velocity into a voltage supplying the electronic chain. Just like in purely acoustic string instruments [Gough 1981; Woodhouse 2004a], the string couples with the structure of the instrument. The lutherie quality therefore alters the sound of the instrument. A way to describe this coupling is to study the vibratory behaviour of the structure [Fleischer & Zwicker 1998 1999; Paté et al. 2014c]. In these latter articles, the input admittance of the structure is used to predict and characterise the string vibration. In particular, the modal frequencies, damping ratios, and effective masses of the structure are directly related to the output sound of the electric guitar.

Again, these studies by Fleischer & Zwicker, and Pate et al. (which I linked to earlier) had nothing to do with the tone or they timbre of the instrument. Rather those studies looked at what factors precipitated dead spots due to various characteristics of the neck. For example,

The experiments revealed a clear inverse relation between the decay time of the string vibrations and the magnitude of the neck conductance. A local high neck conductance indicates a dead spot. In conclusion, the driving-point conductance, measured on the neck perpendicular to the fretboard, promises to be a key parameter for the diagnosis of dead spots.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282789912_Fleischer_H_und_Zwicker_T_Investigating_dead_spots_of_electric_guitars_Acustica_united_with_acta_acustica_85_1999_128_-135

Pate's thesis once again looks at the topic of dead spots, not changes in the timbre of the instrument due to the wood used. Here is his conclusion, directly from the link you gave. Note that the conclusion makes no reference to tone or timbre at all, only dead spots!

Conclusion.

Previous results on the influence of the structure on the vibration of the string have been confirmed. Because the vibrational behaviour of the electric guitar is highly dependent on the lutherie parts, which are numerous, it was decided to focus on the influence of a single lutherie parameter: the most prominent difference between the two guitars of the study was the wood of the fingerboard (ebony or rosewood). Comparative study of sound and driving-point conductance on these two guitars indicate that the wood of the fingerboard may have an influence upon the:

 - dead spot location: the spatial and frequency coincidence of string and guitar resonances happens at different places depending on the fingerboard wood

 - dead spot dangerousness: when this coincidence happens, the string damping may be bigger for rosewood-fingerboard guitar

https://hal.inria.fr/tel-01127562/document

Skipped

Three-ColourSunburst said:

 They then suggest that differences in modal frequency and damping ratio found might affect the sound, but this was not tested.

This is very rude. The report is worth reading and the authors appear to be 100% sane.

There is no evidence of any of the following:
1. Confusion
2. Paranoia
3. False Accusation
4. Presumption
5. Psychosis

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/1630772/#Comment_1630772

Three-ColourSunburst

Skipped said:

Rodrigo: So are we going to listen to the 9 Telecasters?

Thiago: "No. We will use a Fourier to determine if the harmonic spectra is consistent."

Rodrigo: Okey Dokey. Can he get my wife a Mink coat? And also.....what will happen if I like one of the Telecasters much more than the others?

Thiago: "We will retire you from the project. It will be just like that double-blind test when you failed to differentiate between Chicken Curry and Tofu Curry but then refused to stop buying Chicken. We will have a vote and decide that you are an idiot."

Essentially racist and showing a total ignorance of the academic process.

Doubtless had it confirmed the 'tone wood' hypothesis you would have hailed the researchers as geniuses whose credibility was beyond reproach, not foreigners motivated only by corruption.

Skipped

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Essentially racist

Only if you can explain.
(Hint......You can't)

Three-ColourSunburst said:

 not foreigners motivated only by corruption.

I think you finally tipped over the edge.

NelsonP

So now I have to find a reference to the impact on timbre. Ok...

Lutherie de la guitare ´electrique solid body : aspects mecaniques et perceptifs Arthur Pate P110

Each string mode is potentially affected by the coupling with the structure. The elements of lutherie and their declensions modify the vibratory properties of the structure. Different guitars thus moderate the spectrum of the string in various ways. Therefore, divergences (homogeneity) of timbre are to be expected. We are in possession of a mechanical frame of thought to explain the sound divergences between instruments perceived by the musicians.

NelsonP

Three-ColourSunburst said:

NelsonP said:

I'll just leave this here......

Arthur Pate. Lutherie de la guitare electrique solid body : aspects mecaniques et perceptifs.
Acoustique [physics.class-ph]. Universite Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris VI, 2014. Francais. <
NNT : 2014PA066461
https://hal.inria.fr/tel-01127562/document

p144
Recent studies showed that the sound of the instrument also depends on its mechanical behaviour. As a matter of fact, the pickup converts the string velocity into a voltage supplying the electronic chain. Just like in purely acoustic string instruments [Gough 1981; Woodhouse 2004a], the string couples with the structure of the instrument. The lutherie quality therefore alters the sound of the instrument. A way to describe this coupling is to study the vibratory behaviour of the structure [Fleischer & Zwicker 1998 1999; Paté et al. 2014c]. In these latter articles, the input admittance of the structure is used to predict and characterise the string vibration. In particular, the modal frequencies, damping ratios, and effective masses of the structure are directly related to the output sound of the electric guitar.

Again, these studies by Fleischer & Zwicker, and Pate et al. (which I linked to earlier) had nothing to do with the tone or they timbre of the instrument. Rather those studies looked at what factors precipitated dead spots due to various characteristics of the neck. For example,

The experiments revealed a clear inverse relation between the decay time of the string vibrations and the magnitude of the neck conductance. A local high neck conductance indicates a dead spot. In conclusion, the driving-point conductance, measured on the neck perpendicular to the fretboard, promises to be a key parameter for the diagnosis of dead spots.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282789912_Fleischer_H_und_Zwicker_T_Investigating_dead_spots_of_electric_guitars_Acustica_united_with_acta_acustica_85_1999_128_-135

Pate's thesis once again looks at the topic of dead spots, not changes in the timbre of the instrument due to the wood used. Here is his conclusion, directly from the link you gave. Note that the conclusion makes no reference to tone or timbre at all, only dead spots!

Conclusion.

Previous results on the influence of the structure on the vibration of the string have been confirmed. Because the vibrational behaviour of the electric guitar is highly dependent on the lutherie parts, which are numerous, it was decided to focus on the influence of a single lutherie parameter: the most prominent difference between the two guitars of the study was the wood of the fingerboard (ebony or rosewood). Comparative study of sound and driving-point conductance on these two guitars indicate that the wood of the fingerboard may have an influence upon the:

 - dead spot location: the spatial and frequency coincidence of string and guitar resonances happens at different places depending on the fingerboard wood

 - dead spot dangerousness: when this coincidence happens, the string damping may be bigger for rosewood-fingerboard guitar

Luthier changes wood for a 'better one', avoids dead spots, improves 'tone'.

Three-ColourSunburst

Skipped said:

Three-ColourSunburst said:

 They then suggest that differences in modal frequency and damping ratio found might affect the sound, but this was not tested.

This is very rude. The report is worth reading and the authors appear to be 100% sane.

I never implied they weren't sane.

Bottom line is that their study did not consider how variations in modal damping might be reflected in any change in the tone / timbre of the instrument.

Their study did not compare the signals produced by the pickups of the guitars studied.

The paper, and the works they referenced within it (including their own) only considered the role of modal damping in relation to dead spots.

One thing worth noting is that they note the 'tapping' study they did only had relevance to the vibratory response of the guitars to the bass part of the spectrum.

This study has focused on modal parameters, so has been restricted to the modal domain, that only covers the frequency range called bass of low-mids by the players.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277567065_Modal_parameter_variability_in_industrial_electric_guitar_manufacturing

As with the 'bassy' response Cirrus found when considering the transmission of vibration through the body of his twin neck from one set of pickups to the other, it could be that the transmission of mid and high frequencies through a guitar body is much more limited than it is for bass frequencies, so undermining the idea that vibration of the body could equally colour the timbre of all the notes played on a given instrument.

WezV

bobliefeld said:

To the wood tappers, flickers, etc..  

Have you ever tapped a bit of wood, not got the kind of sound/response you associate with a good bit of wood and then went on to build a guitar with it that sounded crap ?

Not trollin' , genuinely curious.  I'd have thought wood tappers wouldn't bother building with wood they think is crap so we really don't know if that wood would make a good guitar or not or if the wood they think is good really is good ?

I have certainly been surprised by some, the other way round too.  Its one of the reasons i believe psychoacoustics are not as important as some claim in this topic.   Unless its Freudian Psychoacoustics and i am unconsciously persecuting myself because i fancy my mum.

The most surprising was some expensive guitar wood with a terrible tap tone that happened to sound pretty damn good when finished - some of the lightest swamp ash i have ever had the pleasure to work with.  Its tap tone was a dull thunk but it was actually incredibly resonant with strings attached.

Generally though i am in the right ball park and I know if i want to build with a piece of wood pretty damn quickly.

Skipped

NelsonP said:

So now I have to find a reference to the impact on timbre. Ok...

Lutherie de la guitare ´electrique solid body : aspects mecaniques et perceptifs Arthur Pate P110

Each string mode is potentially affected by the coupling with the structure. The elements of lutherie and their declensions modify the vibratory properties of the structure. Different guitars thus moderate the spectrum of the string in various ways. Therefore, divergences (homogeneity) of timbre are to be expected. We are in possession of a mechanical frame of thought to explain the sound divergences between instruments perceived by the musicians.

 What I like about Arthur is that he doesn't suffer from sudden mood swings........ from winking/smiling (at everybody)........ to unexpected anger.

Three-ColourSunburst

NelsonP said:

Luthier changes wood for a 'better one', avoids dead spots, improves 'tone'.

Improves sustain for certain notes, maybe, but not the overall timbre / tone of the instrument.

Nice use of scare quotes there. I guess the believers in tone wood could still be proved correct if we all agree to define 'tone' as not actually meaning tone / timbre, but something else altogether!

Three-ColourSunburst

.

NelsonP said:

So now I have to find a reference to the impact on timbre. Ok...

Lutherie de la guitare ´electrique solid body : aspects mecaniques et perceptifs Arthur Pate P110

Each string mode is potentially affected by the coupling with the structure....

Known in the academic world as 'hedging'. The word 'potentially' being a very weak hedge!

I have a feeling that Pate is actually one of the tone wood faithful, so he keeps making allusions to 'sound' when he means dead spots and so on, but he doesn't have the nerve to state in plain terms that variations in wood species affects the timbre of the instrument, let alone put that supposition to the test.

Three-ColourSunburst

Duplicate post due to delay in posts appearing.

richardhomer

Three-ColourSunburst said:

Duplicate post 

There have been about 25 pages of these....

Sassafras

The patient seems to be slipping away this morning.
A 1000cc of adrenaline, stat. Someone get the defibrillator, CLEAR! 

AustrianJohn

Sassafras said:

The patient seems to be slipping away this morning.
A 1000cc of adrenaline, stat. Someone get the defibrillator, CLEAR! 

I think it would be kind to let him go.

GSPBASSES

Sassafras said:

The patient seems to be slipping away this morning.
A 1000cc of adrenaline, stat. Someone get the defibrillator, CLEAR! 

No!!! Let it pass away peacefully.

Philly_Q

Can't this be allowed to "sink" like the flat earth thread?  

It's every bit as repetitive and pointless but a whole fuck of a lot more boring.

NelsonP

Philly_Q said:

Can't this be allowed to "sink" like the flat earth thread?  

Wait. The earth is what?

GSPBASSES

NelsonP said:

Philly_Q said:

Can't this be allowed to "sink" like the flat earth thread?  

Wait. The earth is what?

Flat if you get too close to the edge you fall off, I think one of the worst places falling off is the Bermuda Triangle.

Three-ColourSunburst

As if the physics and experimental evidence weren’t enough, I think that it is possible to bang yet another nail into the idea that 'tone wood' significantly determines the timbre of a solid body electric guitar.

Ok, so the claim is that 'tone wood' significantly determines the timbre of the instrument, whatever note is being played, with this being due to the vibration of the body preferentially supporting and / or damping certain higher harmonics on the string.

Yet another problem with this claim is that the inherent damping qualities of the wood used in a solid body guitar actually tends to absorb and dampen the timbre-colouring higher harmonics, leaving the bass part of the spectrum dominant. (This bass-response being what the 'wood tappers' make so much of.) Hence, any signal that is created via the vibration of the body will be bass-dominant and lacking the very harmonics that would be needed to colour the timbre.

For example, earlier in the thread it was noted that if you fit a Piezo pickup to the body of a solid-body guitar, the resultant signal is 'not that musically useful', being 'nasal or boxy' in response as though you 'were listening through a bandpass filter'. Cirrus' experiment with his double neck guitar showed that any signal produced by a pickup vibrating in the body had - 'at best' - only 100,000th the power of a directly generated signal. What's more the resultant signal was 'bassy'. The 'Modal parameter variability' paper - which basically tapped guitars with a hammer and compared they way they vibrated as a result - also noted that the 'modal parameters' that can be measured by such tapping  'only covers the frequency range called bass or low-mids by the players'.

This tendency of wood absorb higher frequencies more effectively than low ones is well known in building design. It is also the reason why acoustic guitars are made with such a thin, light soundboard, which helps preserve the higher frequencies. The same applies to the construction of pianos, which also have a sound board reinforced with cross-members. These cross members give the strength needed to resist the huge pull of all the strings, whilst the thinner continuous board is freer to vibrate, so preserving more of the upper harmonics. Nonetheless, the robust construction needed to support the strings still significantly damps the higher harmonics. In a piano, with its numerous resonant strings, this actually enhances the timbre of the instrument. As Yamaha note

why is the soundboard made from wood? The answer is that, unlike metal, which amplifies both low and high frequency sounds in the same way, wood amplifies only the lower-frequency sounds. For the higher frequencies, it does the opposite: it cuts them off.

If you listen closely and focus only on the sound the struck strings make, you would find that it is full of metallic jangling noises. If this sound were to be amplified as is, the piano would end up being a giant noise generator. The reason why this does not occur is because wood, the material from which the soundboard is made, cuts off the higher harmonic components (overtones), leaving only those components of the sound that are musical, that sound good to our ears, transforming them into a richer, more resonant tone.

https://au.yamaha.com/en/products/contents/musical_instrument_guide/piano/trivia/trivia006.html

Here is a paper that experimentally measures the damping characteristics of various woods. Take a look at the illustration on page 7, which clearly shows the natural tendency of solid wood to absorb the higher frequencies.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261324486_Experimental_study_of_wood_acoustic_absorption_characteristics

OK, so acoustic guitars and pianos are designed to minimize the damping of the higher frequency harmonics by using a sound board that is as thin as is possible, with added reinforcement for strength. In comparison a solid-body guitar is just a big, thick lump of wood that will inherently dampen exactly those higher-frequency harmonics that are responsible for creating the timbre of an instrument.