The tone wood myth?

[MarkOne]

Disclaimer: Not a guitarist.

I have often thought, given the physical relationship between the strings and pickups in an electric guitar, that the body and neck construction were largely a matter of comfort playability and fashion.

I remember a luthier making a comment somewhere, that the materials were largely irrelevant and he (and I quote) "Could make an awesome sounding guitar from an old wardrobe"

I came across this video today that did some quite scientific tests on these premises and thought it worth sharing.

Link

So perhaps spending a couple of grand on a guitar is more about the object itself and it's desirability and perhaps the well finished nature of the product and the effect on playability, but in the final analysis not really about 'tone'?

[zenguitar]

Of course that "old wardrobe" could well be made of some very nice mahogany that has seasoned nicely over many decades.

Andy

[Drew Stephenson]

My tuppence-worth (and that's over-priced) is that 90% of 'tone' comes from the guitarist's fingers. The other 10% is spread over everything in the chain.
My completely unscientific background for this hypothesis is that if you give a decent guitarist any guitar they will still sound like them and 99% of the audience will have no idea of the value or quality of whichever guitar they pick up.

[Random Guitarist]

My entirely worthless opinion is that guitar tone is like a school French essay.

You start with a perfect score appropriate for the Platonic ideal guitar (ideal for a particular genre/player), and each thing you don't get right loses marks. Construction setup and pickups are areas you can lose big marks in quickly.

Also, (two worthless opinions for the price of one) I think it also depends on whether we are looking at the perspective of the player or listener. As a player I strongly prefer ebony fretboards. they may not sound better to the outside world, but they make a difference to me. Probably none of the guitarists I listen to, use an ebony board.

[Wonks]

I've said it before about that video and I'll say it again. I think it was done very badly with an overdriving amp that's inherently going to mask a lot of subtle differences between set-ups. Also, the more powerful the pickups, the more they dominate the sound. I'd have used very low output single coils (no hum cancelling coils like the set fitted in that video) which will pick up more of any changes in sound.

I'd also have recorded the sounds, run a frequency analysis on them to see if there were measurable changes and look at the waveforms to compare any differences in sustain/decay.

And if the chap can't hear any differences between steel and brass saddles on a Tele, he's doing something very wrong. Ably demonstrated here:

https://youtu.be/9GOSVu-NeAQ

And with the strings strung between two benches, you may not have a fretboard or conventional neck, but the two benches and the floor make up the body of the guitar, it's not that there's no body at all, it's just 'different' and very stable.

Certainly with an electric guitar, most of the sound comes from the pickups. The main thing about guitar woods/materials is what they take away from the basic vibrating string, rather than what they add. No, you don't have to have very expensive rare woods to get an electric to sound nice, and hard compounds such as resin (or items encased in resin) make very good (if very heavy) electric guitar bodies, but the wrong piece of wood can really absorb higher frequencies and reduce sustain. It also needs to be stable and reasonably hard.

We know tone woods do exist because of acoustic guitars; the wood choice can make a big difference to the sound. But they make a far, far smaller difference to the sound on an electric than an acoustic, so it's probably best not to get too wound up about them. But the wrong piece of wood can really wreck an electric guitar's sound. I swapped the alder body on a dull-sounding Strat that really didn't sustain, for a swamp ash one that did sustain and sounded so much brighter. All the hardware and neck was exactly the same; the difference was the body wood.

[Gus784]

Taylor recently published a good article on this subject:

https://woodandsteel.taylorguitars.com/ ... tonewoods/

While this is oriented mainly to acoustic guitars, the principles also apply to electrics - even solid bodies - although the differences will be more subtle and most pronounced when playing clean tones.

[BigRedX]

The problem with all these solid electric instrument "tone wood" videos is that they have a sample size that in scientific terms is insignificant and they all fail to properly isolate any single variable, in order to show any meaningful results. That's before you consider the fact that every single piece of wood is different even two cut from the same log.

For acoustic instruments these kinds of comparisons have a place since everything is done in the design and construction to allow the properties of the chosen woods to present where appropriate. For a solid electric instrument where the foremost function of the wood is to provide a suitably strong mounting for all the other components it's essentially meaningless.

[MarkOne]

OK, again, as a non guitarist...

I completely understand the rationale of different woods making a fundamental difference in acoustic instruments, you only have to tap a nice acoustic to hear its properties, similarly a violin, or any orchestral stringed instrument.

But in electric land with a solid body the major actors are the energy imparted into the string and the amount of energy picked up by the pickup. Acoustically the impulse response of the body, is surely a tiny weeny factor in comparison to the other factors, given that for all intents and purposes that is a critically damped component.

Are you sure there isn't a little bit of Russ Andrewsness involved here?

[Martin Walker]

And if the chap can't hear any differences between steel and brass saddles on a Tele, he's doing something very wrong. Ably demonstrated here:

https://youtu.be/9GOSVu-NeAQ

Woo - that's most convincing Wonks!

[Drew Stephenson]

Being as Wonks has actually done the whole 'keep everything exactly the same apart from the body' experiment then I'm inclined to go with his conclusions.

[Folderol]

Being as Wonks has actually done the whole 'keep everything exactly the same apart from the body' experiment then I'm inclined to go with his conclusions.

Ditto!

[Wonks]

Acoustically the impulse response of the body, is surely a tiny weeny factor in comparison to the other factors, given that for all intents and purposes that is a critically damped component.

The acoustic impulse imparted to the body is pretty strong. You can hold an unplugged electric guitar to your body and you can feel the body vibrating. Guitarist generally prefer an electric guitar where they can feel the body resonating as it does tend to sound better than one that feels dead.

You'll often see well known guitarists saying they will choose a guitar from the way it plays and feels unplugged given the basic sound can then be pretty much altered to what you want from that style of guitar by changing the pickups. Though on a more limited budget, the pickups will also have a part in the decision.

What I don't know is exactly how much of the body resonance is imparted back to the strings, and that may depend a lot on the bridge design. But some energy must do, and depending on the body wood used and the speed of sound in the wood (which to confuse matters is faster going with the grain compared to going across the grain), you may get a level of constructive or destructive interference feeding back to the strings (probably varying with frequency as well), and which may partially account for how lively a guitar feels and how well it sustains.

But as Big Red X says, to do a true scientific study you need to use a much larger number of samples, and you'll need to know all about the woods used e.g. density and moisture content, so different results from different samples can be compared. Ideally the same electrics would be used in all the sample guitars, so variations in say pot resistance, capacitor values, pickup winding count and magnet strength don't affect the results.

[S2]

Of course that "old wardrobe" could well be made of some very nice mahogany that has seasoned nicely over many decades.

Andy

Or a mantlepiece!!

[rockydennis]

Play a Gibson Les Paul next to a semi-hollow ES-335 - same pickups, scale length, bridge - and you can easily hear a very different sound.

[Guest]

So, I have been reading this thread, and thinking basically the whole setup of the physical guitar effects sustain (tone ?), this may be the body wood, size of body, the shape of the body, the cavities in the body, how the neck interacts with the body, the neck wood, the neck profile, the nut and the bridge, blah blah blah.

I thought I wouldn't post anything though cos I don't know what the hell I am talking about.

But I have had some beer.

[S2]

So, I have been reading this thread, and thinking basically the whole setup of the physical guitar effects sustain (tone ?), this may be the body wood, size of body, the shape of the body, the cavities in the body, how the neck interacts with the body, the neck wood, the neck profile, the nut and the bridge, blah blah blah.

I thought I wouldn't post anything though cos I don't know what the hell I am talking about.

But I have had some beer.

They are always the best posts.

[Wonks]

But I have had some beer.

Hopefully you have now had some more beer and can go to bed happy and content.

[arkieboy]

Acoustically the impulse response of the body, is surely a tiny weeny factor in comparison to the other factors, given that for all intents and purposes that is a critically damped component.

Are you sure there isn't a little bit of Russ Andrewsness involved here?

No. Absolutely certain. So far as woods in electric guitars are concerned anyway.

Wonks is spot on with his observation that good guitars feel alive and resonant without being plugged in. Whenever I've tried a guitar that feels like it has promise acoustically but under-delivers when plugged in, I've found a change of pickups makes the rescue. Putting expensive pickups on a dead guitar just leaves you with a dead guitar and a hole in your bank account.

I would also suggest fretboard wood is a similarly easily demonstrated point of difference. Ebony boards sound more 'hifi' than ones with rosewood boards: I have two guitars with the same kind of construction and woods with identically branded pickups, and the one with the ebony board is subtly but noticeably brighter - more hifi - than the one with the rosewood board. I also have other guitars with more diverging construction and pickups, but its still noticeable that the ebony boarded ones are brighter than the rosewood boarded ones.

But are there cork sniffers in the guitar community who claim to hear the inaudible? You bet! Ironically this is most obvious with effect pedals. But let's not go down the rabbit hole of clipping diodes in the Centaur circuit. 'Tis a silly place.

[BigRedX]

Play a Gibson Les Paul next to a semi-hollow ES-335 - same pickups, scale length, bridge - and you can easily hear a very different sound.

Ignoring the fact that you don't know for sure that the pickups and electrics are exactly identical between the two instruments, I would say that the differences are down to the construction rather than the wood.

Also were both necks absolutely identical? IME, after the electronic components, the neck makes the biggest difference to the sound of a solid electronic instrument, but it is almost entirely down to the construction rather than the actual woods used.

[BigRedX]

But as Big Red X says, to do a true scientific study you need to use a much larger number of samples, and you'll need to know all about the woods used e.g. density and moisture content, so different results from different samples can be compared. Ideally the same electrics would be used in all the sample guitars, so variations in say pot resistance, capacitor values, pickup winding count and magnet strength don't affect the results.

And there's problems with the (lack of) description of the woods used. For instance "Ash" includes over 40 different species, and to make matters even more complicated "Swamp Ash" isn't a separate species but simply a tree that falls within the "Ash" bracket that has been grown in swampy conditions. And no-one is going to convince me that an "Ash" grown in the US is going to have the same density and grain structure as one grown in Europe or Asia.

There also a YouTube video which shows that at appears the biggest difference to the sound of a solid electric guitar is the position of the pickup relative to the strings. In this one the guitars with different body woods sound very different until the pickup (it's a single pickup used in all the tests) is placed in exactly the same position with regard to the strings, at which point there is next to no difference between the various examples.

[Sam Spoons]

Play a Gibson Les Paul next to a semi-hollow ES-335 - same pickups, scale length, bridge - and you can easily hear a very different sound.

Ignoring the fact that you don't know for sure that the pickups and electrics are exactly identical between the two instruments, I would say that the differences are down to the construction rather than the wood.

Also were both necks absolutely identical? IME, after the electronic components, the neck makes the biggest difference to the sound of a solid electronic instrument, but it is almost entirely down to the construction rather than the actual woods used.

I'd say construction is definitely a major factor, hollow bodied guitars sound in a certain ballpark and that ballpark is different from otherwise similar solid guitars (say an ES175 and a Les Paul). IME pickups make the biggest single difference followed by construction with everything else making only relatively subtle differences. As everybody has said it's nearly impossible to make two guitars that are identical so there are always going to be unknowns in the experiment.

Even the Lancaster Uni/Fylde Guitars experiment was flawed in so much as they were testing back/sides tonewoods with supposedly identical tops...

[Gus784]

My friend and neighbor across the street is a master woodworker and part-time luthier who builds electric guitars out of an amazing variety of hardwoods, not just for aesthetics but for tonal qualities. (https://www.facebook.com/zozoguitars).

His designs have slight variations but they are all set necks with the same scale. He has built single-piece solid bodies but most often uses different woods for the backs and tops, which are usually book matched. Some designs are chambered, although none are true hollow bodies.

He has discovered that there is indeed variation of tonal quality between guitars, which is undoubtedly a function of the tonewoods used for the bodies, necks and fingerboards. All of the guitars sound great but they are different, each with its own unique voicing. Of course, different pickups, bridges, nuts and strings will alter the tone as well, but the woods definitely impact the tone significantly.

One thing I've been able to do is hear the different "tap tones" of the woods he has stockpiled. Pick up a piece of wood and tap it sharply so that you can listen to the resonant tone it imparts. The differences are obvious.

I have been playing guitar for about 50 years, and when I'm buying an electric I always play it unplugged in a quiet setting to hear what the instrument sounds like before I ever plug it into an amp. Years ago I played a Stingray 5-string bass at Guitar Center for about 45 minutes before ever plugging it in, much to the consternation of the sales person, who was happy that I eventually did try it through an amp. The body imparted such a rich tone to the bass it was mesmerizing. Of course, I bought it!

[SecretSam]

A tangent: the amount of 'exoticness' of a wood doesn't necessarily make it a lot more expensive.

My wife's business uses timber in fair quantities. The difference in price between pine and tonewoods such as cedar and spruce is maybe US$300 to 400 per cubic metre (although we pay a lot for all commercial timbers here, because South Africa is not known for its abundant forests). A solid guitar body uses (gets calculator out) probably about 0.01 cubic metres, so the difference in cost between a fairly nice piece of wood and a nasty one probably isn't much ...

The economics for very fancy cabinet-maker-sort-of woods may well be different, of course. Our wood supplier's most expensive material is an ebony, which was about US$17,000 per cubic metre last time I looked, and is probably a lot more than that by now.

[BigRedX]

Making guitars sound different is easy. Even something as simple as a different set up will have a significant effect on the amplified sound of the guitar. That's why I'm never impressed with any of these demonstrations of the differences in "tone woods" for solid electric instruments. Most will sound different without any fiddling at all.

This should be common knowledge. After all if you could predict the sound of a solid electric instrument simply from the written spec there would be no need to go an check out every example in the shop first to find the best one, as baring any manufacturing mishaps they should all be the same.

What I'd be more impressed by is if a luthier was able to make two identical spec solid electric instruments and get them to sound EXACTLY the same.

[Martin Walker]

My friend and neighbor across the street is a master woodworker and part-time luthier who builds electric guitars out of an amazing variety of hardwoods, not just for aesthetics but for tonal qualities. (https://www.facebook.com/zozoguitars).

Wow - those Zozo guitars look absolutely GORGEOUS Gus!

Thanks for the link!

Martin