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i don't think he did enough to ensure the pickup/action heights were consistent... and you really need to remove the player from the equation.
I have never been bothered enough to try similar. I trust my experience and ears through the build process
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Interesting video. The maple vs mahogany kind of sounded the way I expected to be honest.
Like so many things I believe it does make a difference, but would anyone on stage tell the difference between tone woods, probably not. But the guitar is a tactile instrument, so feel will always influence how it's played and feel it imparts
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I've played enough guitars to know there's a difference, but also that there are many many ways to make a difference.
Try a Mahogany J45 and then try a Rosewood J45...
If you can't tell the difference, then we can start discussing whether or not you're denser than Ebony.
Some bloke on YouTube 'proved' tonewood on solid body electrics makes no difference.
I'm ambivalent, but Trussarts and such would seem to support his assertion. I dunno.
If body wood and construction didn't make a difference then a laminate maple semi like a 335 would sound the same as and SG which would sound the same as a Les Paul. They all have the same scale length, and I'm sure you could find a variant of all three with the same pickups. They don't sound the same though.
Even with the alleged worst offender for making guitars sound the same, the EMG 81, I've had different results with 2 different alder bodied, rosewood board strats. Also with two different PRS' which are really the same spec except the body shape and thickness. I try to set all my guitars up the same way, give or take the limitations of the instrument itself.
The problem with the test above is it is very ad hoc.
To do it properly you need many more examples of each wood type, because you get variation within each species.
Saying all rosewoods sound x and all maples sound y is demonstrably not true- it is a range of qualities.
I am building two rosewood bodied acoustic guitars at the moment- the backs and sides are the same thickness but tapping them shows they will end up sounding quite different when they are finished.
I'm just going to take that stuff into account when making decisions with the rest of the build.
For the electric test, I'd want to use a computer or an analog machine to pluck the strings- so you can be sure that the pressure is the same, not to mention the same setup etc- all these things matter.
I know someone who did this- he was on my degree and it was his dissertation.
His results were inconclusive and he also suggested that more research was required because even though he used many more examples than in the video he also saw a range of tonal qualities within some species of wood.
So, to conclude, it isn't a case of wood not mattering, it is just that coming up with a control for this sort of test is very difficult, and you would need a much larger number of data points in order to draw a proper conclusion.
Certainly the industry has a vested interest in not doing this and maintaining the status quo.
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Those are acoustic guitars.
Again, I'm not saying it doesn't matter with an electric either, but once you throw on loads of gain and put it through a massive filter (i.e. a guitar speaker) then it matters less than some other factors in the build, especially when you are playing with a full band.
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They all sound like electric guitars. None of them sound like bassoons or snare drums or waterfalls. Different bits of wood may well sound different, but it's last 2% stuff, not first 98%.
also the weather, the density of the air.
The reflective surfaces in the room, the huge leather couch/ heavy curtains/ deep pile carpeting in your room as opposed to bare walls and floorboards
plus a million other things.
There is a Chapman video where he compares two of his own design guitars. All components are identical except the wood. The tonal difference is noticeable, but small.
As soon as you start with all the distortion it doesn't matter that much to me anyway, most of his stuff sounds very similar regardless of guitar played
I know i'll stick to the wood and various combinations to get the tone I'm looking for
I don't fancy a plank burst much tbh
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There's a comparison vid out there where someone builds identical guitars in mahogany and something else, swaps the same hardware onto each, clear difference in sound. Most of which you could handle with EQ really but the difference is there.
Other differences matter too like attack, the note formation, etc etc which to me matter more than more/less bass or whatever. Don't think those really translate into YT vids though but can certainly be felt by the player.
If you stick a lipstick pickup on a trad Tele bridge, it still has the Tele clang. Stick a lipstick pickup on a resonator, and it sounds like a resonator. Put a Tele pickup on an acoustic and it doesn't sound like a Tele. Some extreme differences in construction & wood etc but the pickup is only part of the total result.