Electromagnetic pickup and micro phonics, tone, wood, pick attack etc....

[Peteus]

Wow thanks for all the answers, I like it over here feels like there is some proper knowledge and reasoning rather than angry people shouting at each other.

[Peteus]

... and some experimental research on the effect of tone woods

http://www.stormriders.com/guitar/te...uitar_wood.pdf

Interesting paper, I'm presuming that they used the same neck and tuned to the correct pitch each time with the same set of strings with the same force but, I find it odd that the guys conclusion there in no difference in body wood type when using a pickup as output. I mean, look at the graphs from pickup frequency analysis. They don't overlap and in the higher frequencies range there is on most of the strings a higher reading for alder. I think a more scientific way would be to say there is minimal difference.

[Mark Hammer]

The writer is comparing an ash and an alder Telecaster body...period. I applaud his attempt to be systematic, but as a sampling of what wood contributes, it is very narrow in scope. One of the first rules of scientific research is that the nature of one's sample determines the nature of one's findings and conclusions.

Woods tend to be selected to complement string scale. You do tend to see certain hardwoods used for longer scale guitars, others for shorter scale guitars, and still others for bass.

I still maintain that the location of the bridge nearer the waist or the hips of the instrument plays a big role in the eventual tone; something which appears to be partially supported by the vibrational mode animations in the guitar acoustics links. And of course, bridge location is partly a function of where the neck joins the body, which is in turn, a function of the neck and body materials. You can't have a maple neck join a mahogany body at the 22nd fret, and plunk the bridge close to the waist, unless it is a long scale instrument, and the body is huge and thick. The physics would be simply awful.

[Mike Sulzer]

Interesting paper, I'm presuming that they used the same neck and tuned to the correct pitch each time with the same set of strings with the same force but, I find it odd that the guys conclusion there in no difference in body wood type when using a pickup as output. I mean, look at the graphs from pickup frequency analysis. They don't overlap and in the higher frequencies range there is on most of the strings a higher reading for alder. I think a more scientific way would be to say there is minimal difference.

I think it is appalling, not interesting. If you want to convince anyone that your spectral measurements have any meaning, you might at least do a good enough job to show that strings vibrate at a fundamental and harmonics. Even if your spectral measurements are as bad as these, is that any reason to claim that there are no significant differences when there are? (And I mean below 5 KHz where it matters.) Does anyone think that an almost 10 db difference in the upper harmonics of a G string is not audible? Not that I believe measurements this bad in any case.

[Mark Hammer]

"Appalling" is a little harsh, Mike, for what would appear to be an undergraduate project. It's about as sophisticated as I would expect from someone who wanted to combine their interest in guitars with something they had to do for course credit.

It's incomplete, I'll grant you, but was not intended to be a dissertation nor grant-worthy "life's work in physics".

[Mike Sulzer]

"

It's incomplete, I'll grant you,

There is nothing wrong with comparing just two of the most common woods in Fender guitars. The problems are low quality measurements and incorrect claims, and that is was presented as "some experimental research on the effect of tone woods."

[big_teee]

I always ask Strat players about the guitar.
if it's a ash/Maple, or a Alder/RoseWood?
They sure sound different to me!
T

[jason lollar]

I ask too about the guitar and the wood and ask what the amp is and how they set it and several other things but its only a general guideline to help suss out what the customer is really after and i will go alot farther than just assuming they will like what I like or that one pickup will be the right one for a particular type of wood or music style. It is amazing when someone says all guitars sound the same and or all pickups are the same- I wonder if they are just yanking everyones crank

[Bruce Johnson]

Yeah, that study is very limited in scope and precision......

But the real problem is that the WOOD DOESN'T MATTER crowd runs around waving it like a flag, as PROOF the we Luthiers are frauds......or something.....
All while ignoring about 400 years of accumulated knowledge about wooden instrument frames....

[Lyrebird Steve]

There is nothing wrong with comparing just two of the most common woods in Fender guitars. The problems are low quality measurements and incorrect claims, and that is was presented as "some experimental research on the effect of tone woods."

Mike, I agree (btw ... it's not my paper) ... what it does show, is that there are differences between the wood types.

What those differences are or there impact on the sound produced is not conclusive.

I disagree with the wording of the conclusion

[Lyrebird Steve]

One of the papers had this link to Wood analysis by type

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF COMMON WOODS

[David Schwab]

Woods tend to be selected to complement string scale. You do tend to see certain hardwoods used for longer scale guitars, others for shorter scale guitars, and still others for bass.

Do you? The way I see it, Fender used alder for painted guitars, and ask for natural finishes because the grain is better. The tended to pick lighter pieces of ash early on, but some mid 70s ash bodies are heavy as hell!

Gibson, and other companies used mahogany because it's easy to carve because of the way the grain is. Les Paul was the fist one to say he wanted a thick maple top for the tone. He wanted a maple body, but realized it would be heavy, so he figured a couple of inches of maple would suffice. Interestingly he also wanted a flat topped guitar, and didn't like the arch top on the LP. He also wanted the maple top on the Custom and no maple top on the gold top, but Gibson screwed that up.

Rickenbacker used maple, because Rickenbacker used maple. I remember Carvin used to say that they used hard rock maple because no one else could machine it! That's not true of course, but that's what they used to say.

In the 80s you had the whole basswood body thing. having worked at American Showster guitars at the time, I had never seen anyone using basswood on a guitar. They used it because it was easy to carve. Rick Excellente used to say he used it because they made duck decoys from basswood. It was actually chosen by the sculptor Mark Dornan that carved the first guitars. So after Showster started using basswood, so did Ibanez.

I think after a while some companies realized that light weight woods like basswood and poplar give you a warmer tone, and started using that in their designs. But for a long time it was just whatever wood they used.

Smaller builders certainly picked woods for the tone, but honestly also because of how they look. I do a little of both.

[Mark Hammer]

I'll defer to you. I'm just drawing inferences from what I see. Of course it is always risky to infer the motivation of the manufacturer from that.

I imagine, as well, that choice of woods is also dictated by whether a given wood can be consistently sourced so as to support an anticipated production volume.

[shawnl]

I'm not sure if I'm being redundant in suggesting that the finish of the wood is an often overlooked quality as well. I always felt like it was easy for a manufacturer to hide poor wood quality by burying it under an thick coating of resin. To me, it's like falsifying the hardness of the wood. I know most people probably just think of it terms of a protective coating not considering how it changes the way the strings vibrate against it.

This is just the way I try to think when designing a bass, but if I'm trying to get a warm sound by say using a mahogany body, I need to find a finish that doesn't defeat the purpose. I'd probably try to use an oil or light poly finish. I'm not saying people shouldn't use a resin finish, I just think really high end instruments were designed to take this balance of wood and finish into account.

Also, I think the people that are trying to make the accusations that wood doesn't matter, are probably basing their observations on all of the same types of instruments, the typical resin coated guitars with cheap wood somewhere underneath. With that in mind, would most players hear the difference between an alder, ash, or maple body if they were all given the same plastic coating?

[Mark Hammer]

Bingo.

It's not a matter of wood OR pickups OR finish OR scale OR tailpiece. One needs to think of the entire instrument as a system, and arrange for all the components to work collectively, and in complementary fashion, towards an acoustic/tonal goal.