Does the wood make a difference in an electric guitar?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 27 дек 2014
- Here is a short presentation of the results of my son's school project on this topic. For a more complete description, visit the website guitarworks.thestrandbergs.com
Видеоклипы
Hey guys, keep things civil. Please don't make me disable comments on this channel, since sometimes there are useful discussions to be had.
I really don't have the time to spend to delete/ban/report, but starting now, I will do my best to do so. Not sure why anyone would get worked up like this on any topic.
+Strandberg Guitars because people dislike to change their beliefs. They believe wood does not affect tone. And beliefs as a force to recon with. Great video btw, thanks a lot to you and your son.
It's the internet my friend. People turn into crazy beasts when anonymity is available. From my experience, density effects tone. Woods have different density, changing the size and mass changes the characteristics of the same type of wood. That said, a speaker change does far more ti change the sound than wood. I have alder, swamp ash and koa guitars, and your test reflects what I hear between my guitars. I'm a fan of the sound of alder, but it's heavy and hurts my back.
+Strandberg Guitars the subject is sort of controversial. people get heated about this kinda stuff sometimes. also, no one knows how to behave themselves on the internet anymore. :(
+Guitar Whores
i agree, but keep in mind elasticity
people get worked up about this topic for a very simple reason: money. because the difference between one guitar body and another is the difference between $ 20 and $ 2000 . And those guys with $ 2000 guitar bodies, dont ever want to find out they could have spent $ 20.
I have been a wood worker for around 20 years. I worked for a stair company that used around 15 different species of wood (Alder, Ash, Maple, Murado, Mohogany, Walnut, Zebra, etc.) and I worked there for around 10 years before working on my own. I routered, by hand, around 100 lineal feet of hand rail per day. I know 100% for a fact that within inches wood "can" drastically change densities throughout. You could feel it as you were routering and how fast the router bits would take away the material you were carving. That's why sometimes even a cheap guitar can sound good because they can get lucky with a section of wood resonating correctly. We all have played a $2k guitar that just didn't feel right, and we've all picked up a cheaper one that sounded pretty darn good. You can take a thick board that is 4 feet long of what ever species of wood you want, make 3 guitar bodies, and get 3 that may sound the same, or 3 that could sound quite a bit different. It boils down to whether you like it or not!!
Randy Cavanaugh From a professional ,not many replies because you are right.Who too know better than someone who handles and works with it all day every day.
i agree with randy, therefore its the density of the wood that makes the sound different, i have made my own guitars 1LP, 3Tele, 1JB, 1PB all from the maple and mahogany, the grain and density has influence on the tone.
Right you are. That's why 2 guitars, each made of the same kind of wood, can weigh so much different.
Norm Macdonald true, and the the vibrating string reflects the resonances in the wood
My Dad always said he became a metal worker because Metal didn't have any opinion on what was being built. Wood always had it's own ideas about how things would go.
He's now retired and has got into woodworking and produces amazing laminated boat parts in homemade marine ply that look amazing.
I guess retirement allows the patience his younger self couldn't afford.
Luv and Peace.
This is a really nice science experiment. Some suggestions:
1. Use many woods of the same type and see the consistency of the timbre.
2. do FFT on audible range only. Use spectrum analyzer for more accurate result.
3. Video capture the frequency response to see how the overtones decaying.
@audiosamples Calm down pumpkin pie.
fast Fourier transforms might be outside the experience of some of this cohort of commenters.
I've only read about that after seeing it referenced in Cubase Plugins doing frequency graphs.
Perhaps it's something you could pursue?
If you get the perfect wood for a guitar that would be a winner and make you a very rich man...
Good luck.
Luv and Peace.
@user Agreed.
@@ianedmonds9191 I wish more commenters understood this. I have had deniers ask me to show them the physics, only to find out that they don't have a fundamental understanding of physics. Then I refer them to an experiment where they can hear for themselves in a real world comparison. They will usually dismiss all and any evidence contrary to whatever preconceived belief they have. These types seem to like being disruptive of any discussion on the topic of tonewood. Usually by their own admission, never having had any first hand experience comparing various materials.
That's why guitar players should stick to playing and leave physics to engineers. Guitar players are too much voodoo driven to believe facts.
Honestly, FFT analysis and transient capture are the proper ways to "solve" this problem scientifically. The real test is - can you even slightly hear the difference in a mix?? (You probably can, only after drinking a shot of snake oil)
to do an actual test you'd have to get tons of readings from each wood, and compare the averaged ranges.
True...
And build a consistent strummer
Thought the same thing
It might be useful to see the variance within the same species.
I know a popular luthier (built a beautiful sounding classical for me) that took this principle derived from the Janka scale and built a classical back/side made from hardened pine of an very old barn. I never got a chance to see or hear it unfortunately. Something I've not seen in any of the comments is the effect of aging on wood. Classical luthiers who are lucky are n generation family luthiers with a passed down surplus of very old woods.
Wow, congrats to all the effort and work your son put into it! Very interessting sounds and results and everyone can take away from it what they want when buying or building their guitars!
Thanks! That was very useful. All are usable tones, and it's early in the chain (fingers,strings,bridge,nut etc) so things you have to eq later (but later in the chain, you can't eq in top end if you never had it). Helps you for example to figure out which pickup you want in your guitar. Thanks!
I agree with someone else who wrote this: the guitar is a system: pickups, electronic circuit, strings, hardware, wood. Also wood itself has different characteristics, even parts from the same tree or plank!
That's why some low cost guitars sound good when you change pups and the bridge/nut and you perform a good isolation over the circuit (for example using fender pups, a Wilkinson bridge and a bone nut on a basic Squier strat turning it into a very playable guitar with low effort - even if the overall quality is very low compared to a Standard USA, the tests over youtube show that you can obtain a pretty good sound).
Wood is important for tone, sustain, "playability", just like any other part of the system, but IMO it's not the most important aspect for tone: the player is the final equation!
Tonewood is only important for acoustic guitars because the color of the tone is affected by the air that is moved inside it. That's not the case for an electric guitar. There's a quite interesting video about it from a luthier for anyone interested: ruclips.net/video/V76yWZ3-OuM/видео.html
@@EbonyPope AGREED!
small margins make great gains
Kerry King from Slayer said years ago that he had five of the same guitar because they all sounded different. It’s like some of these critics of tonewood ignore the real possibility of variation in raw materials.
@@thisguy2973 Or the slight differences in the resistance of the pots. Even modern electronics have tolerances. You only knew if you put the exact same electronics in the other identical guitar.
This is a damned good project to be doing at school. A range of skills being learned. As others have said, I'd like to see the experiment expanded to see the variability of tone from a number of pieces of the same species. And then perhaps make the different pieces different shapes.
Wood definitely affects the tone. However the difference is so minimal, that wood should be the last thing to worry about. Good pickups and strings are much much more important.
And the pick!
haha made my day.
Donald Trump Rastafaris add good vibrations.
Quite right. I'd add that the amp/speaker combination makes even more difference. In fact, I suspect a lot of people are really into the sound of a particular amp/speaker, even if they think they are into the sound of specific guitars.
Strings, pickups, nut, frets, bridge, picks, and anything else that touches the signal are infinitely more important to tone than wood.
I've been asking for this for years. Thank You!
I think any Tone changes are purely to do with the solidity of the material used, and which frequencies they absorb. think of it in terms of a car and suspension. the material absorbs certain frequencies when the string is vibrating.
This is actually the most scientific approach I have seen to analyzing the differences in guitar woods. It is not perfect but a great starting point.
Yes, also the shape change the tone. Thanks for sharing
Excellent video. Very clear differences made even clearer by the graphic output. Zebrano wins on tone and sustain (to my ear anyway). Many thanks!
A guitar is not only a wood. It’s also strings, pickups, cables, processors, amplifiers, etc. Any of these can change a tone and dynamic. A wood selection makes an aesthetic mostly (and a price of course). But it’s important to know how the chosen wood affects a tone and sustain in order to suggest an appropriate pickup for a customer for instance.
I believe this whole tone wood thing is being approached the wrong way. The guitar must be seen as a system. The pickups will only capture magnetic field changes made by the strings, but the stings are coupled to the wood, so any vibration of the wood will be transmited to the strings. So in a way, yes wood affects tone, but even then it is more dependant on density wich could be emulated by man made materials. The point is this, the cuestion isn't if wood affects tone, but in what %. For a hollow body it would be more relevant, but on a hard body guitar, would it actually be noticable compared to the effects of changing a pickup, changing pots, pickup position or strings?
Nems271 You make a reeeeaaallly good point. It also depends on the player's taste. But I for one stopped the whole obsession over the tone wood war. For me, I just grab a guitar. If I like how it looks and sounds, that's it. No more fighting over cut wood.
On a lot of hollowbody guitars, it has a lot to do with the bridge. The higher and more wobbly make it, the more you'll loose. That's one of the main reasons for the sound difference. Another one is the long string length behind the bridge if the strings run all the way across the huge body.If you want to hear more of the wood...add a mic in a cavity and adjust the mix with the rest. The best way to improve ones sound is skill.
A big part is I’ve found is the quality of the woods matched together. The luthier I apprentice under takes a lot of time picking from his stash of wood and they way his strats resonate is amazing. The sustain acoustically translates to the sustain through the amp and it takes longer to go into harmonic feedback because the note lasts much longer than a typical strat.
The strings are coupled to the hardware which is connected to the wood. The bridge and saddles on one side, the nut and tuners on the other. The hardware can affect sustain and vibration just as the wood affects it and alters energy (absorbing, vibrating, releasing other energy).
So it's a system: pickups, electronic circuit, strings, hardware, wood. Also wood itself has different characteristics, even parts from the same tree or plank! That's why some low cost guitars sound good when you change pups and the bridge/nut and you perform a good isolation over the circuit (for example using fender pups, a Wilkinson bridge and a bone nut on a basic Squier strat turning it into a very playable guitar with low effort - even if the overall quality is very low compared to a Standard USA, the tests over youtube show that you can obtain a pretty good sound).
RedCanvas05 he’s wrong. Waves transferred to the body are transverse vs longitudinal which won’t impact the string. Anything transferred to the body is essentially a loss, it’s being attenuated. Magnets don’t respond to sound waves anyway only to disturbances in the magnetic field.
Wow. Cool! I liked all of them. Alder is so well balanced. The Zebrano is so interestingly piano like. The differences make them all cool. Well done! Cheers.
Excellent work. Even though the methodology is simplistic, it is effective. Were the pieces randomly-selected or chosen for specific quality prior to the test? I'm currently comparing the different Alders; American Alder (A. rubra) and the Alder we get around here (A. glutinosa). The 5-string bass I made from local Alder is surprisingly vocal and lively. Moreso than I actually expected from it!
you should have include cheap wood like Agathis and plywood as a comparison
best test ive seen kid. outstanding job
Love this comparsion....also makes it a bit clearer which wood one would like :D
Thank you for the test. I can hear subtle differences for sure .
The only thing I noticed: the alder high “e” sample went to some upper harmonics rather quickly ( when left to ring after a single strike ). Could be any number of reasons for that.
Building on this, I was thinking on the relative contribution of all the "small pieces" of a guitar. Could plastic cavity covers impact the sound differently as compared to wooden cavity covers?
and various densities of metal et al....
Great work. Thank you.
Is there any way I can get the uncompressed files please?
Id really love to see this "rig" of yours you used for plucking...
There is a clear difference in the woods tone wise , I think that some people simply don't have the ears to tell the difference . It's not that they are puposely being stupid or anything they are just simply tone deaf . Scott Groves for instance thinks that elixir polyweb strings are as bright as standard strings . I use polywebs and think they are great , but they definitely don't ring like uncoated strings .
So, it's hard to tell how it sounds because there's a trimming problem with the audio samples that creates a pop right when the attack of the ruler should occur. It's like 5 years too late to ask, but could I hear the guitars with more space before the string is struck?
So I read the blog for this, and though it does "apparently" show a difference, there are too many details left out to PROVE that there is a difference, and to submit this as proof does nothing but hurt the facts. Though it was approached as science, there are too many things that were left up to chance.
So, things done right:
Identical sizes of wood, same bridge, same strings, same pickup, and using something mechanical to strike the strings in an effort to remove the human factor.
Things that need to be verified:
1.) How was the recording made? Plugged into a DI box and recorded straight? Was it plugged into an amplifier? If so, was mic placement the same? Those sorts of things need to be addressed.
2.) Where was the ruler placed? Was it the same for each wood? Did you verify that the ruler was striking at the same force each time by using a mechanical release or was it "pushed" over by hand? What stopped the ruler from hitting the string again, or was it allowed to rest on the string? Any human part of the ruler would invalidate it as scientific, and without verifying that it was striking the string at the same spot on each wood would rule that out, too. And if you have the ruler sitting on the string after striking it, then there's no way to know that it's not going to do something as well. I am digging on this one particularly hard because you can make a Les Paul sound bright and thinner, like a Strat, by plucking closer to the bridge and you can make a Strat sound thicker and warmer by picking closer to the neck, etc. Where you pick and how you pick have the most to do with what a guitar sounds like, in my opinion.
Things done wrong:
1.) You put the name of the wood on there. Saying that different woods will sound different is something that could be verified by the nuances verified by spectrometers, simply due to the differences in how the waves are reflected due to different densities that are enhanced by the construction. But the "tonewood" debate is purely the idea that Mahogany is going to sound a specific way from Alder which sounds specific from Basswood, etc. If the species of the wood made such a difference, you should be able to tell which wood it is by hearing it with no knowledge of it. So by telling everyone what it is, you feed the psychosomatic notions.
2.) You neglected to include a material that isn't wood, so that you could hear the difference between wood and something else. If wood is the be-all end-all, and the species matters, then you should also be proving that alternative materials are so bad/different at maintaining overtones that we should ignore them as possibilities.
Thanks for reading!
+Dlognar
"Things done wrong - You put the name of the wood on there"
Clearly not a valid argument, this video is an attempt to document the differences of each wood type.
Also, to use a material other than wood, would have been an interesting addition to this test, although not necessary given the agenda.
Bugenhagen How is it not valid? The psychosomatic effect/placebo effect/whatever else you want to call it, the fact that the brain "fills in" whatever it wants or expects, is the most solid and reasonable argument AGAINST tonewood, so why would it not be a valid point? For tonewood to exist for electric guitars. it needs to be something that is so pronounced, that people can listen to a sample and know immediately what wood they are listening to. Anything less than that, and it's completely invalid. Also, the video is clearly trying to demonstrate whether or not the wood makes a difference in tone, not what those differences are, as stated by the title of the video.
In addition, given that the agenda was to prove that wood makes a difference in the way the instrument sounds, a solid proof to that would be to document the difference between a wooden and a carbon fiber instrument, for example. If the intention was to document the differences, the person might have titled the video "tone differences among different types of wood in electric guitar" instead of "does the wood make a difference in an electric guitar".
+Dlognar The scientific question is: DOES IT or DOES IT NOT EXIST. It's a YES or NO answer. Being able to define a species has absolutely NOTHING to do with it.
+Andro Ernst , +Bugenhagen , You both are getting so worked up trying to tell me that my opinion about what the scientific question is is awesome. So let me try this using an analogy. Let's do the same sort of experiment, but a medium that I'm sure we are familiar with. Here it is:
"Does the sweetener in coffee make a difference to how it tastes?" So, without doing any actual science or experiments, the answer is a fundamental yes. There is no way to argue that whatever you use to sweeten it will change the taste. So just asking a yes or no question isn't scientifically valid, because that is a qualitative question and has its roots in reporting, not in scientific discovery. Science wants quantitative results such that it can measure them, define them, and prove them one way or another with more information than "it's different." So let's go back to the coffee, I left the language intentionally vague so that I could split it up into multiple tests. First, I could be testing whether different amounts of the same sweetener changes the taste. Or I could be testing whether different types of sweetener changes the taste. So this would be comparing sugar to various artificial sweeteners. Finally, I could test whether different cultivars of sugar cane, planted and grown in different parts of the world change the taste or even if differently processed sugar (brown vs cane vs powdered, etc). And this last one is most closely related to the guitar test we're doing. So, given that we're testing the same thing (wood or sugar) versus other species of that same thing grown in different parts of the world, it makes sense that we aren't just asking if it's different as a whole, the information isn't valid unless we can measure and define the differences such that we can conclude an answer as to which has what characteristics. Otherwise our test is useless.
In addition, the test with wood is quantitatively useless, since there is no way to ignore the fact that electric pickups do one thing: convert the relative motion between the string and the coils into voltage. Unless you are changing the relative motion of components or changing the properties of the conductive/magnetic items, there is no way that the acoustic properties of anything else is going to change the way the pickup induces the voltage to be amplified. And that's the bottom line. Pick apart my statements again-but until you can form a complete argument against the entirety of my statement, you're just fooling yourselves.
+Bugenhagen I just mean that nitpicking the words I write instead of the ideas I present is not useful to proving one way or the other. If I made a mistake in the idea, that's something I can look at and take in. But not whether or not I used perfect grammatical sense. And as for sugarcane, substitute tobacco grown in different places or grapes or whatever you're familiar with.
My very warm congrats!! This is one of the very few scientific studies on the ever hot topic of whether wood type affects tone or not. Your work appears to be one of the first approach to the subject; it could possibly be followed up by testing several bodies of each wood, though this obviously would substantially complicate the work: in fact, it should be defined whether if the same pickups would be used for different bodies or not; and, if using the same, whether if (manual) pick up mounting could be excluded as a variable or not, whereas if different pick ups (one for each body) would be used -the same brand, of course-, could we ensure that they behave the same??...and so on and so forth. The number of parameters involved makes this research fundamentally complex and would explains why the topic has remained 'obscure' through decades. So, great work, warm congratulations!!
i would love to see this experiment again with documented video proof of the rig used and in action
There was a whole write up. Look it up.
When it comes to wood and a specific sound, we sometimes hear people talk about that specific mahagony break up from a les Paul. However, I use a Howard Roberts Fusion that has that same break up, but it has a balsa tone wood in the middle. Balsa and Mahagony are both somewhat softer woods compared to alder and maple, so probably it gives that same strange breakup?
The Koa seems to have more of a piano type quality to the tone than the alder, swamp ash and zebrano.
はほ
Yep..I loved koa too..
It's like mahogany but maybe a bit brighter. Smooth aint it!
I have a question. Why did the koa wood sound both very bright and very dark at around 1:52?
Good Day, are there any plans to release the Strandberg boden prog 6 Neck-Thru ?
Very good video. I would like more information but I didn’t find any in the website mentioned in the video. Does anyone knows the values of xy axis in this chart?
thank you looked interesting . did he do good on his school project ? hope so
What pick up did you use for this ?
Good experiment👍😀 thanks for sharing
Great comparison!!!
can I make a body out of red oak but with a koa top?
All sounds different and all sounds good in a way. My last custom shop guitar I chose mahogany body for the extra weight and maple neck/board to balance the warmth from the mahogany a bit. But seriously, mostly for the weight and looks.
What are the axis values here?
Great work! I read the full write up. I've always assumed that wood mattered, but not nearly as much as people often imply. Thanks for your scientific approach.
The closer the two compared materials are in similarity, the less difference can exist. If really similar, then the differences could be hidden behind all the imperfections and layers of complexity in the system. I'll focus more on quality construction than wood type, but it's nice to know that technically there is an effect.
was the same set of hardware and electronics used in all guitars?
I would say yes, especially for the high string. What about the flamey maple you see used? Do the grain stripe orientation play a role?
All of the frequencies are well within the margin of error lmao.
After listening , I like the bass on the swamp ash but the ash for the high tone . Is there a swamp ash / alder hybrid ? lol
What are you testing frequency or top wood vibration they all are so close wth
I think it's a pretty notisable difference, but maybe not only in freq but also in dynamics.
Great test! Congrats!
Nice test! Wood definitely effects, but i think player can fill those "holes" in tone with right pickup. Like darker sounding wood - Brighter pickup. I think there's right pickup that works best for any wood.
As I've always suspected, the biggest differences between tonewoods are in the higher frequencies. That would be because a thicker string, or a string fretted in a lower position has more moving mass so it will remain more constant and a less "powerful" frequency, such as your high E string vibrating, will be more readily absorbed as the wood gets softer. Muting your strings with your palm is an extreme version of this phenomenon.
when it says "each string struck twice with a ruler set up on a rig" what exactly do you mean by that?
"we didn't control for consistent string plucking energy very well at all".
As Nems271 mentioned, a guitar is a system. What we're doing here is listening to the output of a magnetic pickup that is affected by the strings stretched over it and attempting to quantify whether the materials have any effect on the output over time. As I always do, I take things to the extremes first; a guitar made entirely out of tyre rubber versus one made from marble would have different output qualities. This underlines that the answer does not solely lay within the pickup which should be enough to prove that there's a case to be made about different woods, however small their contribution may be. My personal take is that the materials over which the strings are stretched interact with the strings through damping, resonance or whatever, and hence vibrate differently, with the notes evolving compounding this. The short answer to the question stated in the video title must absolutely be a "yes". A larger point to raise must be one of the pickup itself; one that is isolated from the body may produce a different output to one direct mounted, especially if that pickup has microphonic tendencies and is affected by transmitted vibrations. As stated, the answer must be a "yes", however there are greater questions to be asked once one accepts this.
About twenty five years ago I played a rosewood bodied Telecaster - completely different attack and sustain from alder? bodied Telecasters. Softer attack, more full bodied (and longer) sustain. Also, if my memory serves me, a lot heavier than any other Tele. I always wonder why this question arises.
What about grain? Fast growth wood vs slow growth. Tighter grain have an affect? I don't know but this could also be debated as having tonal influence. To many variables in wood to nail it down easily with one example/test. Just my thoughts but what do I know, I'm a metals guy (welder/metallurgist).
Thanks for uploading. Leaving the curves and graphics alone, they all do sound different. Just a bit, but still there...
Good job!
Did you use the same pickups (not different ones of the same kind) set the strings at exactly same height from the pickups, use the the same strings and the same hardware, essentially just changing the wood with all else unchanged? If not, then you introduced variables that compromise this test.
imagine how cool it wood be to have ola strandberg as your dad
Thanks very much for making this video. Please put maple and walnut too! cheers
I’m happy to see this experiment. Now all those who say tone is in the hands. Can see that it’s the ideas of your lines that’s in your hands & from your brain.
1) First off, this is a really cool science project! Congratulations!
2) A lot of people need to chill.
3) If there is one thing I've learned after watching a myriad of RUclips videos (Warmoth immediately springs to mind), is that alder sounds like alder, swamp ash sounds like swamp ash, and mahogany sounds like mahogany. It doesn't matter if the bodies they are testing are shaped like Strats, Teles, a box, or in this case, planks: in every instance, alder (for example) has the same relative tonal differences compared to swamp ash, and so on. Heck, there was even one video where particleboard made a pretty good tonewood!
4) I've seen long-held truisms fall apart, and others buttressed. For example, rosewood fingerboards do not sound darker than maple, instead, they actually sound brighter. On the other hand, stainless steel frets do sound brighter than nickel silver (which is some advice I should have listened to when making my first Warmoth Strat).
BTW: My highschool science project compared the tuning stability of a Floyd Rose, a Fender trem, and a Washburn Wonderbar (this was back in the 80s). The Wonderbar won by a hair over the Floyd Rose. In case you are wondering, I grew up to be a professor (one of my specialities is psychophysics).
Really? In my opinion nickel definitely sounds brighter than stainless steel. As for the rosewood fretboard, when I listened to comparison videos I knew the rosewood sounded different than the maple and hearing that rosewood was darker all my life might have influenced my opinion, im gonna rewatch the video and get back to you
Excellent work! Whoa!
Zebrano it is. Loved it! Totally new for me. What a sound!
Can I make a request, please? Brazil Wood. How does it sound?
Thanks.
Thanks so cool video 👍🤘
this is a great step toward a characterisation of what actually happens. I think these graphs would be better with axes. but this topic really needs some science based studies behind it.
I'd love to see some Fourier Transforms of this so we could see what the constituent frequencies are, and their contribution to the waveform.
Sorry I'm not following you -- they're showing spectra, which are Fourier transforms.
Wow lol throwback. This comment was followed by another. This is very clearly frequency on the horizontal. I think my problem was just the lack of labels
@@Ryan_Perrin Ah, got it. :)
super cool! Always wanted to se that.
Excellent (and important) project by the way - I think it puts the controversy to rest.
***** Did you paint and lacquer the instruments, or play them with unfinished wood exposed? Thanks for the cool vid.
Curious to know how many samples of each species were used. Without demonstrable consistency among species, this is simply a random test of 4 pieces of wood.
it's funny to see people get triggered about tonewood lmao
It's funny to see beotian not understanding tonewood impact on sound, lmao
They all sound very different in my opinion,great video.
I thought I would like swamp ash the most as a biased opinion as that is my favourite to look at,but surprisingly I thought koa sounded the best overall :)
I always was sure that wood makes a big difference, this video proofs is to me, thank you, great job!
It proved nothing of the sort. It proved egs pickups vary from one to the other, as all pickups do.
@@halcooper3070 It proofs that you should check your hearing, ask your local doctor :-)
@@mymixture965 that's an inane answer. They sounded different, not from the things that make the sound, but from something gbthat doesn't. And my hearing is the cause? When I recognize they sound different? But, I know how electricity works, so, well....
Get yourself over to Jim Lill's channel, blindfold, and tell me which one is which. Then we can talk
@@halcooper3070 I mada a joke....I know that wood makes a BIG difference, I am a pro guitar player all my live. All the good players I know agree to that. There are only some RUclips losers who came up with the theory, that woods makes no difference and this is poor nonsense. I had some heavy arguments, people believe what they believe, that's ok. As I KNOW what I am talking about, as I play for 40 years now, as I KNOW what ALL the good players say, there is nothing more to discover here. In the end i regretted the time I wasted with this. And I changed pickups a lot, changed hardware, changed bodys, changed necks, I did my homework.
@@mymixture965 I agree with you wood makes difference a lot I almost got in heavy argument with person that think wood on electric guitar doesn’t matter at all. I hear differences between woods. Thanks 🙏
Sounds like they’re being picked at different volume and adjusted to be the same volume?
Here’s what I don’t understand, if a piece of woods resonance means that it has a different tone then what happens the second you put it on your lap or put a strap on it and it rests against your body and all of the resonance is dampened against your body? If I get a nice piece of wood and knock it and it has a lovely tone, the second I put it on my lap and knock it that entire tone gets dampened and muted.
Duncan (DKG Custom) created a guitar with attached sand and water, and showed it removed the resonance. But his output is difficult to read and he had no picking machine.
Did you use the exact same pickups and strings on each test? Not the same kind but actually the same strings moved from one guitar to the other.
Difference? Yes.
Night and day? Not really.
What did you expect it? to sound like a piano just because he changed woods?
Agus Gonzalez well obviously not. I don't find it beyond the realm of possibly for it to sound rather noticably brighter, or darker, or less attack between woods, not a whole different instrument. Overdramatic exaggeration much?
Terran MacKay Not trying too sound rude sorry ;)
I don't agree. The difference between swamp ash and koa is huge.
I agree that it was a much more noticeable difference than the others, but not only were specifically looking for that difference,these sounds were also isolated. In a mix, with distortion no lees, I think Youd hear an even smaller difference.
The differences are wider than I though it would be. I believe of course that wood is extremely important but mostly for acoustic guitars tops (cedar, spruce, mahogany etc..) back and sides, combined with different bracing (lattice, traditional fan, double top) you can really hear different types of tones, sustain, brightness... In terms of electric instruments, I was rather sure that the sound/timbre came from the electronics, scale length, string material and of course the player's technique (which is the most important part for every instrument) but here, the computer is reflecting various "fingerprints" of each material. Although they are really not far from each other, there's a difference, but to me once again not enough to brag about the wood tones for electric guitars.
Thanks for this... If any test will show something worth, it is this one with consistency in the setup and a graphic presentation that also shows it what areas to listen. I know not to buy swamp ash, but that's still a personal taste .. ;-)
Well done..
I can hear the difference. I played it through my JVC stereo, the best audio I have. Although it is slight difference, it is noticable
.Good Post
Nice job 2:28 with studio speakers
There’s really a difference I can believe it. 👍
also... how many seams in your guitar ? Fender USA is 3 pieces of Kiln Dried alder. Fender Mex was 4 pcs of air dried alder... Seam right down the middle of the pocket instead of a wide slab down middle... surrounding the pickups.
the biggest difference in tone for me is what plectrum i use to be honest! nobody mentions plectrum type? it hugely affects tone and so do strings! i have an SRV brass plectrum, my strat sounds like a completely different guitar when i use that, same with nylon or plastic.....
Good point, although using the same method for plucking the strings is necessary for a test of the frequency or tone.
Love the Swamp Ash!!!! I have "perfect pitch" hearing.
Great project. For me, this proves there is a subtle but noticeable difference in tone wood. It isn't huge but I could hear and see the difference for each wood type. It would be interesting to see research on why difference wood has different tone. My guess is it would be the density of the wood that impacts tone. Maybe a softer wood absorbs vibration and passes the vibration to the pickups while a dense heavy wood reflects vibration more. Possibly the vibrations at the bridge, stop tail piece and into the neck could be impacted by wood density too. Anyhow, for me, I believe there is a subtle difference due to wood type but pickups, strings, guitar setup and amp type and amp settings make the big differences.
They all sound quite different to my ears.
More so in the upper registers. Makes sense since bass is your strongest frequency and treble gets absorbed by soft materials. This is the very basis of palm muting.
It does sound a bit scooped. Wood is funny stuff and I'll never pretend to understand exactly why it does what it does but I'm glad it doesn't all sound the same!
michael mclaughlin There is little to no difference. The pick attack is effecting it more than the wood.
LOL there is a huge difference, that is not attributable to pick attack (or puck attack in you're words ;) )... Pick attack cannot modulate the tone so drastically in terms of timbre, brightness, roundness, depth etc...
Alexander Joshua Davis Have you never used a spectrum analyzer? It makes a significant difference. Especially when the pickups sole job is to detect vibrations in a magnetic field! That is all they can do.
i always loved swamp ash and alder. very soul wood...
it does matter with microfonic pickups, becouse if you hit the body, or talk in them, that fibration will also pick up sound, but if you have good pickups and you slice pieces off your body,it will sound the same
I can hear a difference, even if it is small. Some players feel the material the nut is made from makes is important. And I can hear a difference from that as well. So if the nut material makes a difference then wood should also be a consideration as well for anyone who feels all the small things add up.
tahts a myth. nut offers nothing to tone. only playability(tuning) sustain on higher break angles.
@@jojojojojojojojojojojojob no, nut is definitely matter, as well as bridge!
It the most resonation part which directly changes the vibration of string into different response.
@@DN-wb2gy no it doesn't change anything significantly.. there will be a very very small change in tone and sustain but its so small that its insignificant..
All I know, is that putting my Strat pickups in my Les Paul didn't make my Les Paul sound like a Strat. It sounded like a strange Les Paul...
You put single coils where humbuckers go?!.....bet it looked like sh**
Pickup height? Scale length? There are many differences between les paul and strat besides pickups and wood.
Local idiot doesn’t understand meaning of variables - gets mad about it. Weather at 11.
Not sure if it's about sound, maybe it's more about feel... When i play i can feel the guitar personality i know what is capable to do but i don't think that's about the wood type.
It seems like a lot of people can't hear very good. There are differences in the sound of each wood, it is subtle but they all sound a little different in the higher pitched tone, but not much difference with the lower note.
is this an amplitude v time, or amplitude v frequency graph? that is important to note because if it has already been put through an FFT this is enough to settle the debate, imo.
Complete description of the experiment is at guitarworks.thestrandbergs.com/2014/12/28/the-impact-of-wood-choice-in-an-electric-guitar
When Epiphone first dropped the new '59 Les Paul standard outfit in colaboration with the Gibson custonshop, I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a few of them from the first couple batches. Not only did the weights vary drastically, but more importantly, the inconsistency of the various pieces of mahogany throughout the guitar. Getting one with a light body and dense neck can be a crap shoot. When you play one with a dense heavy body and comparitively light neck, in my experience it'll most likely be a dog.
Actually the waveforms are almost identical. They don't line up perfectly because of overtones(harmonics) but if you adjust the peaks to match they are almost identical wave forms. What varies is the amplitude and that goes to how the strings are struck with the "ruler" which is by no means consistent. The variation in "tone" seems to be really a difference in how the string is stuck much the same way you can get different "tones" with different picking techniques. If we did the same test with a consistent picking device such as a spring loaded pick on an arm this would be a more accurate comparison. While the waveforms are overlaid on each other it would be interesting to align the harmonics and compare them. I have done tens of thousands of voice prompts for telephone systems so I look at these kinds of waveforms all the time and while my musician's bias is looking for tonal differences, my computer programmer/ voice engineer bias is seeing very little difference in the actual waveforms. Not to mention the compression of the original recording and how lossy compression algorithms is inconsistent depending on the algorithm and what its compressing. I tend to lean toward the tonewood doesn't matter side because I understand the science but I am open to more accurate empirical testing that may prove me wrong. Still undecided but leaning.
That's exactly what I was thinking...
I guess for you a bird sounds like a dog like a semi hollow body like a stratocaster, right? :)
On a double blind audio test, 99% of the commenters here wouldn't be able to tell one piece of wood from the next.
The sound is maonly affected by the Pick ups, amplifier, speaker, strings and lastly wood.
I'm a guitar player not a builder. Some have suggested that if I don't agree with their philosophy, I shouldn't have guitars. I spent my money not theirs and I have opinions that I will keep despite the guitar police.