Body wood affects tone

MartinB

Sassafras said:

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

You wouldn't let it lie!

ThorpyFX

I really don’t get the travel of this thread. Firstly it is so easy to hear the difference between different types of wood broadly speaking (body and neck easy but fretboard for me is hard to tell) both acoustically and amplified, how anyone can think this sonic evidence is a myth is beyond me.

however if you can’t hear the difference then basic physics can tell you why wood (or other material) sound different to each other. Firstly for every material there is a different speed of sound through that material (before we get to grain boundaries, inclusions etc).

Assuming wavelength of the note applied is the same then if the velocity changes, so will the frequency and therefore the tone, timbre etc whatever you want to call it. 

Also so in a closed system with connected parts (read strings and wood) the vibration of one part is affected by the vibration or resonance of another. We’ve all seen the balls swingng on a wire at different speeds all falling into sync. The same th8ng happens with an electric guitar. The vibration of the strings affect the wood which affects the string..... ergo the properties of the wood impact the string vibration and therefore the tone.

koneguitarist

ThorpyFX said:

I really don’t get the travel of this thread. Firstly it is so easy to hear the difference between different types of wood broadly speaking (body and neck easy but fretboard for me is hard to tell) both acoustically and amplified, how anyone can think this sonic evidence is a myth is beyond me.

firstly that is rubbish, no one can tell the difference between wood on a guitar, I agree you can hear the difference between two guitars but could you tell which wood was in which guitar listening? Not a chance in hell. 

however if you can’t hear the difference then basic physics can tell you why wood (or other material) sound different to each other. Firstly for every material there is a different speed of sound through that material (before we get to grain boundaries, inclusions etc).

Assuming wavelength of the note applied is the same then if the velocity changes, so will the frequency and therefore the tone, timbre etc whatever you want to call it.

ok saying all that is true, which makes a certain sense, how do you explain two pieces of Ash sounding different, two pieces of Alder etc etc, so in theorey depending on grain you could have a piece of Beech sounding like a piece of Ash or Alder sounding like mahogany? 

Also so in a closed system with connected parts (read strings and wood) the vibration of one part is affected by the vibration or resonance of another. We’ve all seen the balls swingng on a wire at different speeds all falling into sync. The same th8ng happens with an electric guitar. The vibration of the strings affect the wood which affects the string..... ergo the properties of the wood impact the string vibration and therefore the tone.

Agreed all parts have an impact, the neck, the body, the pickups, the B Bender in my tele, the bridge that is used, which part makes most impact? And how does that allow us to determine the difference the wood makes as no two pieces are the same. 
So sorry Thorpy you are so wrong. :-) 

NelsonP

Three-ColourSunburst

I think this graphic better reflects my motivation for taking part in this debate. Given human nature I am not naive enough to think that evidence and reason can sway the beliefs of the faithful, whatever the topic, let alone think that such debates have 'winners'. What is certain is that the many challenges and arguments raised have pushed me to research topics I almost certainly wouldn't have done otherwise, and helped me to understand why so many believe in 'tone wood', so as a learning exercise this has been very productive - at least for me!

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAUkAAAAJDQzYTMyODhlLTkxZDAtNGExMi05MmFhLWM5N2QwNzU4NTUzZg.png

octatonic

AustrianJohn

ThorpyFX said:

I really don’t get the travel of this thread. Firstly it is so easy to hear the difference between different types of wood broadly speaking (body and neck easy but fretboard for me is hard to tell) both acoustically and amplified, how anyone can think this sonic evidence is a myth is beyond me.

Most people are not arguing that wood doesn't impact the tone. The questions are - how much does it affect the tone (compared to pickups, pedals, amps, players fingers, etc.), and does the wood affect tone in a predictable way.

If I record three guitars straight into a desk (so no pedals or amp to worry about), would you be able to tell me what wood the guitars were made from?

By the way, I never play guitars without pedals, I would be lost without my Gunshot!

Rabs

AustrianJohn said:

ThorpyFX said:

I really don’t get the travel of this thread. Firstly it is so easy to hear the difference between different types of wood broadly speaking (body and neck easy but fretboard for me is hard to tell) both acoustically and amplified, how anyone can think this sonic evidence is a myth is beyond me.

Most people are not arguing that wood doesn't impact the tone. The questions are - how much does it affect the tone (compared to pickups, pedals, amps, players fingers, etc.), and does the wood affect tone in a predictable way.

If I record three guitars straight into a desk (so no pedals or amp to worry about), would you be able to tell me what wood the guitars were made from?

By the way, I never play guitars without pedals, I would be lost without my Gunshot!

Hmm interesting.. I wonder if that's a big thing in all this... Im not a pedal guy (I have a looper and a Wha, that's it), nearly always just the amp or I also do recording using a digital 4 track which is also a direct input..  So I am very used to hearing just the guitar without much else involved.

But then isn't that what this is really all about..  What we hear and like and what we expect to hear which is different for everyone.?

Three-ColourSunburst

    ThorpyFX said:
     The vibration of the strings affect the wood which affects the string.....

Sorry, but so much misunderstanding in one post. Have you actually read the thread?

Just to take this point. What do you mean by 'affects' here?  It seems you are suggesting that there is some sort of 2-way transmission of energy going on, which would run counter to the second law of thermodynamics. That is, the natural fact that when two systems with different energy states (typically different states of thermodynamic equilibrium) interact, the energy of the higher-state system will be dispersed, being transferred to the lower energy state system until the two are in equilibrium. This is a one-way, irreversible process that maximises the entropy (or, simply put, the degree of dispersal) of the energy in the whole system.

For example, the heat energy from a recently boiled kettle will spontaneously 'flow' into the air of a cooler room, so increasing the air's temperature until a state of equilibrium is reached. However, heat in that cooler room cannot 'flow' into the near-boiling water, thereby further increasing its temperature.

Similarly, a vibrating string is in a higher energy state than the body it is attached to. Hence some of that energy will spontaneously be transferred to the body, being dissipated via acoustic sound, heat and so on, but not visa-versa.

ThorpyFX

koneguitarist said:

Agreed all parts have an impact, the neck, the body, the pickups, the B Bender in my tele, the bridge that is used, which part makes most impact? And how does that allow us to determine the difference the wood makes as no two pieces are the same. 
So sorry Thorpy you are so wrong. :-) 

Wrong about what? I never said wood type was the most prevalent part, all I stated was that wood does have an affect on tone and why. Also as stated it does so because of the laws of physics.

Truthfully I couldn’t give a monkeys whether people believe wood type has an affect or not, if they can’t tell the difference than I feel they are missing out on something I enjoy immensely.

Aside from that, the physical characteristics of materials have been very important to me in my career. Studying these characteristics enables an individual to design warheads effectively, as such understanding the way a shockwave passes through a material is also vital in maximising performance. I have studied both at the highest level and using that knowledge I have applied the same theory to think about this little internet argument. 

This is because the  basic principles of physics for transference of vibration in wood is the same as the transference of shockwaves through explosives and metals.

so when I am told I am wrong for understanding the most basic principles of my education and career..... I’m incredulous to say the least.

honestly though this’ll never get answered unless somebody studies it at PhD level, the reason that hasn’t happened is because a) there is no need to prove basic principles of physics. b) there is zero money in it.

and even then, there will be those that won’t believe it anyway. 

dindude

ThorpyFX said:

I really don’t get the travel of this thread. Firstly it is so easy to hear the difference between different types of wood broadly speaking (body and neck easy but fretboard for me is hard to tell) both acoustically and amplified, how anyone can think this sonic evidence is a myth is beyond me.

Thank you, at last some sense! 

ThorpyFX

Three-ColourSunburst said:

    ThorpyFX said:
     The vibration of the strings affect the wood which affects the string.....

Sorry, but so much misunderstanding in one post. Have you actually read the thread?

Just to take this point. What do you mean by 'affects' here?  It seems you are suggesting that there is some sort of 2-way transmission of energy going on, which would run counter to the second law of thermodynamics. That is, the natural fact that when two systems with different energy states (typically different states of thermodynamic equilibrium) interact, the energy of the higher-state system will be dispersed, being transferred to the lower energy state system until the two are in equilibrium. This is a one-way, irreversible process that maximises the entropy (or, simply put, the homogeneity) of the energy state of the whole system.

For example, the heat energy from a recently boiled kettle will spontaneously 'flow' into the air of a cooler room, so increasing the air's temperature until a state of equilibrium is reached. However, heat in that cooler room cannot 'flow' into the near-boiling water, thereby further increasing its temperature.

Similarly, a vibrating string is in a higher energy state than the body it is attached to. Hence some of that energy will spontaneously be transferred to the body, being dissipated via acoustic sound, heat and so on, but not visa-versa.

I was talking about two things, sympathetic resonance and damping. But I’m trying to not get to technical for ease of reading.

Firstly the body wood vibrates due to sympathetic resonance from the strings being plucked. As such the wood draws energy from the strings effectively damping the strings (affecting the strings seemingly but yes actually just absorbing energy)

but telling me about the laws of entropy simplifies what is going on in an electric guitar. After the first string is plucked and the wood is set vibrating, every note plucked thereafter is affected by the continuing vibrations of the wood.... so when I say they affect each other, I am right. If there was only one string pluck then eventually they would both head to a resting energy state. 

ThorpyFX

dindude said:

ThorpyFX said:

I really don’t get the travel of this thread. Firstly it is so easy to hear the difference between different types of wood broadly speaking (body and neck easy but fretboard for me is hard to tell) both acoustically and amplified, how anyone can think this sonic evidence is a myth is beyond me.

Thank you, at last some sense! 

My pleasure...

The thing is, I design affects around the fact people have different guitars and different amps. I have to make sure that the pedals can cope with different levels of brightness, harmonic complexity etc.... it’s  bloody hard.

i wish all wood was the same, it’d make my life way easier lol. 

koneguitarist

You say wood has an effect on tone, and you can tell the difference between wood types, I say crap, no one can, as to why, every piece is different so will if your thinking is right sound different. 
This means you have no standard reference point as to Ash or Alder or Mahognay sounds.
so how can you tell? 
And forget all your training with explosives etc, these are guitars, use your ears and common sense. 

dindude

koneguitarist said:

You say wood has an effect on tone, and you can tell the difference between wood types, I say crap, no one can, as to why, every piece is different so will if your thinking is right sound different. 
This means you have no standard reference point as to Ash or Alder or Mahognay sounds.
so how can you tell? 
And forget all your training with explosives etc, these are guitars, use your ears and common sense. 

You keep on regurgitating the same old, yes we know two different bits of ash can sound different but there are characstics of certain wood types that are common and sometimes very obvious, at least to my ears. Mahogany is an example of one I could spot a mile off, it gets a little trickier with the difference between alder and ash etc, but it's still there.

ThorpyFX

koneguitarist said:

You say wood has an effect on tone, and you can tell the difference between wood types, I say crap, no one can, as to why, every piece is different so will if your thinking is right sound different. 
This means you have no standard reference point as to Ash or Alder or Mahognay sounds.
so how can you tell? 
And forget all your training with explosives etc, these are guitars, use your ears and common sense. 

How can you say no one can?  loads of people can! And if they couldn’t why would manufacturers not just build all guitars from the cheapest most prevalent wood available? It makes no business sense otherwise.


the easiest way to test this is to have two strats one with a rosewood neck and one with a maple neck. You’d have to be tone deaf not to hear the difference it’s dark vs bright.

koneguitarist

Years ago I had a guitar shop, we all talked about various types of strats and how they all sounded different. I had 5 strats in I think, a 70's with RW neck, a JV Squier 62 , a Squier silver series with maple neck, a 80's std and a tokai 57 reissue or something like that. 
After we had all played them and said which we preferred etc, I said ok, stand behind door and tell me which strat I am using? 4 experienced guitarists were standing behind door, only one said he didn't know, the others all picked different guitars, so someone was bound to be right, stands to reason. No one got it right as when they walked back in I was playing a Gibson Nighthawk.

a guitar with different material, different pickups, bridge and scale length, yet they all thought strat! 
Yet you can tell which wood! 

Three-ColourSunburst

ThorpyFX said:

Firstly the body wood vibrates due to sympathetic resonance from the strings being plucked. As such the wood draws energy from the strings effectively damping the strings (affecting the strings seemingly but yes actually just absorbing energy)

For almost all tuned notes the body of a solid-body guitar does not 'resonate'. It is in a state of forced vibration. When resonance does occur the usual result is a 'flat spot'. (I have posted links to several academic papers on this.) Resonance is also influenced by size, mass and shape, so if resonance played a significant role in the timbre of electric guitars, and all the other conditions needed for 'tone wood' to actually work were met,  each different guitar shape would also have a different sound as with a 'zoolophone'.

https://phys.org/news/2015-10-algorithm-d-vibrational.html

Also, in reality the bridge to body interface of an electric guitar has a very high impedance with little energy passing through to the body, which is what gives a solid body electric guitar better sustain than an acoustic. This means any interaction between the strings and the body is very low. (See the studies posted previously.)

As to the damping effect of a solid-wood body, the problem here is that wood inherently damps all the higher frequencies. I.e.  the very frequencies that determine the timbre of the instrument. As a result any signal mediated via the body will not only be very weak (possibly having only 1/100,000th the energy level of the signal coming directly from the pickups), it will be dominated by the bass frequencies and so cannot contribute to the timbre of the instrument. Acoustic instruments try to counter this damping of the higher frequencies by using a soundboard that is thin as is possible. In contrast the body of a solid-body electric guitar is just a big lump of wood, almost purpose-made for damping all the timbre-creating higher harmonics. Again all this has already been discussed and links to relevant academic papers posted.

Finally, seemingly the only academic study around that looked at the effect of body wood type on the harmonic spectra found no difference for 9 body wood types in an a study where even the moisture content of the woods was controlled. Again, this has already been posted and discussed. (Several times.)

ThorpyFX

koneguitarist said:

Yet you can tell which wood! 

I didn’t say that I could tell which wood type on a randomly selected batch of four Guitars. I said that the wood type makes a difference and i can hear the difference.

I personally cannot in a blind test differentiate what the type of wood is. But I’d be able to hear they are different. This is made easier with woods at the extreme ends of the tonal range. 

GSPBASSES

 You're wasting your time @ThorpyFX  as there are none so deaf as  those  who do not want to hear.