Tone wood debate (yet again, I know, I know, I know), and musical perception

crunchman

zedhex said:

gringopig said:

If I attach a guitar string suspended between a composite material with certain resonant frequencies, that guitar string will be louder at those resonant frequencies, and may contain many harmonic resonances. This is perceived by the human ear as a difference in timbre and volume. This is the major error that many people make when they think about how a guitar string vibrates. The vibration is not independent of the material that the string is suspended over. It's actually in a feedback loop where the vibrations pass through the suspending material, and then feedback to the vibrating string. 

You need to consider the wood of an electric guitar as subtractive only. It can only attenuate and the perfect material for mounting a string will be a rigid, dense and non yielding substance. 
There is no additive resonance, only selective attenuation.

Interesting idea - to test this, I took two guitars, held them together so that the wooden bodies were touching. I then plucked the string of one of the guitars. The strings of the other guitar started vibrating. How did that happen if the wood has only a subtractive effect?

@gringopig has got this wrong.  The energy from the strings makes the wood vibrate.  If the wood is vibrating, then it will put a force back onto the strings and affect their vibration - as you have shown.  3CS would argue that that effect is negligible, which is a more coherent position - although he's still wrong.

The other thing to bear in mind is the pickups.  They are attached to body, and they will be caused to vibrate.  As well as the strings vibrating relative to the pickups, the pickups will be vibrating relative to the strings.  The effect won't be large, and may well be negligible.  More importantly, Ash from Oil City pickups stated in a previous thread on this that good sounding pickups are all slightly microphonic.  He said that perfect pickups without any microphonics tend to sound dead - or something along those lines.  In that case, the pickups are affected by the body vibrations, are affected by the piece of wood and its characteristics.

You can debate the mechanism, but the wood and construction do affect the tone and response of the guitar.  Anyone who has played a Les Paul, SG, and 335 can tell you that.  They all have the same scale length, same wiring etc but sound very different.  At some point, I believe they have all been made with 57 Classic pickups if you want to eliminate pickups as a variable.  Find one of each, with 57 Classics, and they definitely won't sound the same.  They might sound similar on a recording with all the processing and eq applied, but they won't sound the same in a room through an amp.

Litterick

Do electric guitars made from unconventional materials, such as acrylic, sound noticeably different from those made of wood?

Kittyfrisk

Litterick said:

Do electric guitars made from unconventional materials, such as acrylic, sound noticeably different from those made of wood?

It seems not as much as some might expect, although this is still technically a type of reconstituted wood 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oo2H-W7d6A

prlgmnr

crunchman said:

@gringopig has got this wrong.  The energy from the strings makes the wood vibrate.  If the wood is vibrating, then it will put a force back onto the strings and affect their vibration 

Why are we arguing about this on here and not exploiting this phenomenon to produce limitless clean energy?

richardhomer

prlgmnr said:

crunchman said:

@gringopig has got this wrong.  The energy from the strings makes the wood vibrate.  If the wood is vibrating, then it will put a force back onto the strings and affect their vibration 

Why are we arguing about this on here and not exploiting this phenomenon to produce limitless clean energy?

Correct - energy can be neither created nor destroyed....

zedhex

Because the amount of energy fed back into the string is a lot less than the energy that went into the wood. If it wasn't, the string would never stop vibrating.

soma1975

zedhex said:

Because the amount of energy fed back into the string is a lot less than the energy that went into the wood. If it wasn't, the string would never stop vibrating.

randella

^^ needs more lols.

"You could go away, have a bite.  Still be hearing that one."

abw1989

Hang on now, the original post mentioned Rob Chapman and three pages in we don't have an argument about him yet?!

For shame Fretboard, for shame.

Fez

Litterick said:

Do electric guitars made from unconventional materials, such as acrylic, sound noticeably different from those made of wood?

Well there was a guy at the Kempton park show the year before last with guitars machined from aluminium and he claimed that they sounded just like a traditional Les Paul. I didn't get to hear one though.

koneguitarist

Point 1 species of wood makes a difference to sound.
  Point 2 two peices of same species sound different. 
  Point 3 two strats made with same species will sound different.
  Point 4 two strats made from different species of wood can sound the same. 

Main point, all guitars sound different and some sound very similar, which is better is subjective. 
A strat can be made from Ash with maple fretboard, staggered pickups and bent steel saddles and still sounds like a strat. 
A strat can be made with Alder body, rosewood fretboard, active pickups and solid saddles and still sounds like a strat. 
Last but not least two players can play same strat and the guitar will sound different. 
And people worry about "tonewood" 

soma1975

Agree with all that ^^ but in fairness there's shades of Strattiness. 

zedhex

koneguitarist said:

Point 1 species of wood makes a difference to sound.
  Point 2 two peices of same species sound different. 
  Point 3 two strats made with same species will sound different.
  Point 4 two strats made from different species of wood can sound the same. 

Main point, all guitars sound different and some sound very similar, which is better is subjective. 
A strat can be made from Ash with maple fretboard, staggered pickups and bent steel saddles and still sounds like a strat. 
A strat can be made with Alder body, rosewood fretboard, active pickups and solid saddles and still sounds like a strat. 
Last but not least two players can play same strat and the guitar will sound different. 
And people worry about "tonewood" 

I probably shouldn't have said the magic word tonewood - just "wood". The point still remains that guitars sound different with different woods. 

crunchman

soma1975 said:

Agree with all that ^^ but in fairness there's shades of Strattiness. 

I have two Strats and they do sound different.  One is a lot darker sounding than the other - both plugged in and unplugged.

The darker sounding one is a rosewood board, and snappier sounding one is maple.  This may or may not be coincidence.  There are more differences than just the wood.  The maple board is 50s construction with a skunk stripe, so there is more going on than just the material.

randella

crunchman said:

soma1975 said:

Agree with all that ^^ but in fairness there's shades of Strattiness. 

I have two Strats and they do sound different.  One is a lot darker sounding than the other - both plugged in and unplugged.

The darker sounding one is a rosewood board, and snappier sounding one is maple.  This may or may not be coincidence.  There are more differences than just the wood.  The maple board is 50s construction with a skunk stripe, so there is more going on than just the material.

Yeah I always maintained that maple boards give the guitar more spank.  My Japanese '68 reissue deffo had some twang, but now it's 30 years old (goddamit where does time go) the pickups have mellowed.  My newer USA with a rosewood board and Texas Specials now sounds sharper.

Maybe my dad was right and the 1/4" of wood on the face of the neck makes the square root of naff-all difference.

Either way, it's a smaller change than that made by a fresh packet of strings on my guitars at least.

DrJazzTap

Could be worse, could be a flat earther

Ddigger

Could be a lot worse.

You could be stuck next to him on a long, slow train journey while he gives you the benefit of his superior knowledge. 

gringopig

.

koneguitarist

zedhex said:

I probably shouldn't have said the magic word tonewood - just "wood". The point still remains that guitars sound different with different woods. 

Maybe you shouldn't have come across all those not agreeing with your thoughts are just a thick non musical ignoramus. 
I have been playing guitar for best part of 50 years, 40 of that gigging, had about a 100 guitars, vintage and non vintage, loads of strats and tele's, after all that experience I realise the differences are just that, we hear differences. 
Not what's better, just what sound we prefer, and that's only at that particular moment, next night in a different venue we prefer a different guitar. 

guitars4you

crunchman said:

soma1975 said:

Agree with all that ^^ but in fairness there's shades of Strattiness. 

I have two Strats and they do sound different.  One is a lot darker sounding than the other - both plugged in and unplugged.

The darker sounding one is a rosewood board, and snappier sounding one is maple.  This may or may not be coincidence.  There are more differences than just the wood.  The maple board is 50s construction with a skunk stripe, so there is more going on than just the material.

I bet if you hang both up, just tap the body of each guitar with your finger and listen to the pitch/note, I bet the darker of the 2 guitars has the lower pitch - Maybe not gospel, but often is 

But yes a maple board will generally sound different to rosewood board - Are both yours alder bodies or is one ash