The tone wood myth?

[merlyn]

You're kidding? The torque myth isn't real is it? LMFAO

By a coincidence I moved some palettes earlier and looked at the wood thinking if it would make a good guitar. It wouldn't. It was a softwood, pine maybe, it was full of knots and had an open grain. Where there were screws in it some of the wood had split. Good luck with a guitar made out of that.

A lot of species of tree are out for making guitars. Guitar made out of yew = bow (the archery kind, not the violin kind).

I think some good points are :

-- players notice subtleties that listeners don't
-- every guitar is different
-- the proof of the pudding is in the playing. A guitar has to be tried out

Reframing the original question as "does a £2k guitar sound better?" the answer has to be it might, it might not, you'd have to try it, unless you're set on a toasted flamed maple AAA neck.

[Guest]

...
All my guitars and basses have been selected first and foremost for their looks, secondly for their feel and playability and a very distant third for their sound. By the time they have been passed through my Helix multi-effects unit they all sound much the same and any noticeable variances can be compensated for by playing technique.
...

I absolutely agree with you. I'm exactly the same here.

[Sam Spoons]

My priority is feel, all mine have been chosen or designed to feel right in my hands. Then they have to look right and sound right but looks are at least as important as sound in that I wouldn't buy or play a guitar that sounded great if it didn't look and feel good too.

[ManFromGlass]

[BigRedX]

I currently own a guitar and two basses that are made from cedar - technically a softwood. Admittedly they also have a carbon fibre shell, but the main body and neck core is cedar.

I've also owned a bass that was entirely aluminium except for two softwood fillets that were used to turn the T-profile beam used for the neck/fingerboard into something that had a similar profile to a typical guitar neck.

IMO so long as the wood has sufficient structural integrity to withstand the tensions of the strings (with any inclusions if necessary - aluminium/carbon fibre/resin) then it is suitable for making guitars.

[merlyn]

As tonewoods go cedar, along with spruce is up there. They're both softwoods and are used for the tops of acoustic guitars.

The 'making a guitar out of a wardrobe' quote earlier may have been a reference to the nineteenth century guitar maker Torres who made classical guitars. His designs are the first examples of the classical guitar as we recognise it today. As with many mavericks his finances did not benefit from his contribution to the field, and he made guitars out of anything that was lying around. Except the tops.

His idea was that the back and sides don't really matter -- the sound (or this mystical term 'tone') came from the top and to demonstrate this made a guitar with papier-mâché back and sides, which apparently sounded great. This would suggest the Taylor blog linked earlier is at least in part exaggerating the importance of the back and sides.

So why aren't electric guitars made with spruce bodies? I imagine guitar makers think it's a waste of spruce.

[SecretSam]

Spruce would be a good choice, but I believe Fender's original choice back in the fifties was based on price and availability. And guitarists do love 'vintage', whatever that means.

If I was going to try to prove that wood affected electric guitar tone, I would set up an experiment to prove or disprove the hypothesis that the duration of a string's vibration (maybe its half life), and its harmonic content, could be correlated with measurable mechanical properties of a beam of standardised size used to hold two standard hard edges across which the string was stretched. Weights on each end of the string provide standardised tension, and the beams would be of materials other than wood, so that mechanical properties are consistent throughout the beam.

If I could demonstrate correlation with properties such as hardness, coefficient of restitution, elasticity, and stiffness, then the concept could be held to be true for less consistent materials such as wood.

I'd still buy the guitars that just felt right, but the experiment should be worth a few YouTube views, for people who like that sort of thing.

[Murray B]

My priority is feel, all mine have been chosen or designed to feel right in my hands. Then they have to look right and sound right but looks are at least as important as sound in that I wouldn't buy or play a guitar that sounded great if it didn't look and feel good too.

With you on this one Sam, for me it actually comes down to the neck profile, and the sound. So long as it isn't broken or twisted most guitars can be coaxed into playing well. Although I do discount some guitars on aesthetics as I couldn't see myself playing something pointy, with perhaps the exception of an Musicman Albert Lee. I really don't mind what wood it's made out of.

[Sam Spoons]

Yes, neck profile is the most important to me too, slim C profile for preference. My main gig guitar is a bitsa Strat with a Korean Squire neck that is just sublime.

[Johnsy]

In Europe at least, spruce is just about the least rare and least expensive wood available. You can go into B&Q and buy as much as you like right now (current supply issues notwithstanding). As dimensional timber, hundreds of thousands of cubic metres are used every year in the UK to frame houses. It's also the most commonly used pulpwood for paper making.

Spruce is not an especially good wood for solid guitar bodies since a) it's rather soft (dings easily), b) it doesn't machine terribly well (prone to tearout), and c) it's very 'thirsty' (worse still, it's unevenly thirsty, leading to a blotchy finish unless sealed very well). It's not unique in possessing any or all of these drawbacks, so it's not the worst wood you could use, but it's not especially good either.

The single characteristic that makes it great for acoustic tops - its exceptional stiffness-to-weight ratio - is irrelevant in a solid body.

[Wonks]

If you look at the spruce available though, you'll find like pine, that it has an abundance of knots in it, which you really don't want in a guitar body.

So finding a knot-free piece of spruce with nice straight grain takes some doing. And which puts the price up considerably compared to the run-of-the-mill builder's spruce.

A piece of master quality European spruce for an acoustic top can easily cost £200 or so, though lesser quality grades are significantly less. But if you want to make something of the body wood, rather than use a solid finish, then you'll need to pay. And as you could get 4 or 5 tops from the thickness required for a solid body electric, you'll pay a lot for that in top quality timber.

Not all woods are suitable for guitar manufacture. Some are far too heavy, some too soft (though even balsa has been used as a lightweight core filler by companies like Gibson), and has been mentioned, some are too difficult to machine on a large scale.

There have been electric guitars made from spruce, though there is no real benefit to it, and other woods are more cost-effective and less ding-prone.

[N i g e l]

...... exceptional stiffness-to-weight ratio ......

sounds like a cue for carbon fibre !

Now that time has passed -are the original Steinberger bass guitars considered as having a good tone ?

E&MM review from 1982:
https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/stei ... -bass/4301

balsa has been used as a lightweight core filler by companies like Gibson

Factoid: Even though you can poke your finger through it, Balsa is technically a hardwood !

[Johnsy]

Factoid: Even though you can poke your finger through it, Balsa is technically a hardwood !

While Yew, a softwood, is harder than hard/rock maple!

[Sam Spoons]

The difference, I believe, is how fast it grows.

[merlyn]

It's simpler than that.

Coniferous or evergreen (like a christmas tree) -- softwood
Deciduous (trees whose leaves fall off in autumn) -- hardwood

[Music Wolf]

This is the stuff that you need to make a decent guitar!

[Johnsy]

Remember Angie and Jim...

Hardwood = Angiosperms ('enclosed' or 'encased' seeds)

Softwood = Gymnosperms ('bare' or 'exposed' seeds)

[Martin Walker]

This is the stuff that you need to make a decent guitar!

5000-year old oak - wow!

[Wonks]

This is the stuff that you need to make a decent guitar!

5000-year old oak - wow!

Can you remember planting the acorn?

[SecretSam]

...... exceptional stiffness-to-weight ratio ......

sounds like a cue for carbon fibre !

Now that time has passed -are the original Steinberger bass guitars considered as having a good tone ?

I only ever tried them in shops, but it seemed to me that you had to play them quite aggressively. There was a threshold of effort to put into the string, beyond which they sounded great. But they didn't do light and shade, and had a very specific sound. Good for funk and fusion, would probably work for a lot of rock.

Status Graphite, on the other hand, made fantastic basses that work for pretty much anything. Probably still do, but I can't afford them these days.

Modulus were well regarded as well, but I never got to try one.

[Sam Spoons]

I always wanted a headless trans green Status carbon through neck 5 string bass Never been able to justify the expense though

I do have a carbon fibre parlour guitar, an Emerald X7, which is wonderful. Good job I bought it when I did as they have gone up in price/value exponentially* since.

* I paid £850 for mine about 5 years ago, the current equivalent costs nearly twice that.

[BigRedX]

I have two Gus G3 5-string basses and a Gus G1 guitar which are a 2mm carbon fibre skin over a cedar neck and body core. TBH they were bought primarily because I liked the design rather than for their construction. I also play an Eastwood Bass VI which is made out of conventional materials, but it would be replaced by an equivalent Gus in a heartbeat if I had the funds.

[N i g e l]

interesting observations guys, thanks

[GCKelloch]

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.

By low output SC's, I assume you mean low inductance, but magnetic power can affect natural vibrations as well. That and a low capacitance cable will give the most high freq extension. Without which, it's impossible to tell how much high end is really being absorbed. The is FB also a critical link in the chain, but it matters much less if the circuitry rolls off the highs. Neck wood is also very important. Maple generally damps less upper-midrange than Mahogany, assuming it's a decent piece of wood. Yes, the body wood makes more difference than one might expect. The wood from the neck joint to the bridge should matter most. I think it's better to have harder FB and neck wood than body wood, rather than the other way around because the neck is normally much thinner than the body.

I notice that most guitar players show the waveform display when comparing note sustain. A spectrogram will show what's happening in the freq, power and time domains.

Funny that the Steel saddle clip in the video had less high end than the Brass. Either the Steel is really just "pot metal", and/or the Ni coating damps the highs. It also seemed to have less lows. Perhaps the saddle heights were different? I tried to communicate some things about pickup technology I've learned in the last 15+ years from experts that understand all the physics (not the mainstream winders) with that guy, and he was dismissive and sarcastic. Arrogance is the enemy of progress.

[Wonks]

Yes, I gave up on DTT as well. He started out well, by actually making things like pickups to demonstrate principles, which was great, but then as his channel got more popular he felt he had to increase his output, so it became mostly talking, and not 100% correct.

One of his sound demos had three different setups - I forget what it was now - and he was switching between bridge, both and neck pickups - and then moving to the next situation. I commented that the brain has a very short sound memory for comparisons, so he really needed to go bridge 1/bridge 2/bridge 3 and then bridge 1 again, etc. so that you could clearly hear any differences. Only required a minimum of video editing. But he went off on one, so I unsubscribed.