The tone wood myth?

[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.

[GCKelloch]

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.

Seems the case with DTT of a little knowledge being "dangerous".

Yes, most people don't do comparisons so the brain can register differences somewhat accurately. I think the brain also needs a few seconds to adjust between each clip. I don't know the specifics, but I think ~7 secs clips is good: 2~3 secs to adjust, 2 more to focus on a freq range, and 2 more to "confirm" what you've heard. Lotta players also repeat the same phrase in a clip, stretching the clips too long.

[Wonks]

You actually need two sounds to be played almost back to back if the sounds are very similar, which is what you’d expect from most ‘spot the difference’ type tests. No problem telling a trumpet from a flute, but the smaller the difference, the closer together the sounds need to be played for the brain to tell them apart.

If you’ve ever been a subject in certain types of audio tests, you’ll know that if you are played two tones and you are supposed to say if they are the same note or slightly detuned, the tones are almost one after another. If you waited a couple of seconds between tones, the correct rate of telling them apart falls dramatically.

I don’t mind the same phrase being played, as long as at the point the examples change you are hearing a similar sound e.g. single notes from the same general fretboard position or the same chords being played, but not single notes on one example and straight into chords on the next.

[GCKelloch]

I didn't mean to imply waiting a few seconds between clips. I meant to wait a few seconds while listening to make judgements, but that may depend on how different are the two sounds. Makes sense that quicker switching between clips would be required to delineate between more similar sounds.

[Wonks]

Indeed. I think we’re getting there together!