TONEWOOD IS REAL - But does it sound any good?
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- Опубликовано: 15 июл 2024
- Check out ML Sound Lab: ml-sound-lab.com/
0:00 Intro
1:12 Explaining the test
1:48 Strings vs wood resonance
3:14 Analyzing the data
4:00 Resonance sounds bad?!
6:06 Conclusion 
Видеоклипы
At least your experiment makes more sense than when Paul Reed Smith was banging on a bunch of wooden blocks like he's playing a f----ing xylophone and saying "don't tell me tonewood isn't a thing" lol
I love PRS guitars and I think Paul knows the truth. When it comes to this topic he could easily prove his point with an A/B test of having a replaceable body or something. What he's been saying has been so weird.
@@mlsoundlab Paul claims that his new tuning keys greatly affect the tone. He's an eccentric nut and a salesman. Don't buy it all.
@@iancurrie8844 I think what he's saying is that Paul has all the means to easily prove if it was the truth, but he doesn't do it because he himself know all too well, that tonewood is a lie.
So I agree - he's a salesman whose lies have been exposed but he needs to keep telling them to sell his guitars.
If your pickups are outputting resonant signal from the body vibrations, or your voice when you scream into them, or anything other than metal string vibration, it's because your pickups have gone microphonic and probably need to be wax potted.
Both guitars in this test have unpotted Gibson pickups! This should emphasize things even more.
Do you get the same resonance if the guitars are about as close to each other, but not touching? The strings would still vibrate from sympathetic resonance, and that might make a bigger difference than whatever vibrations the wood is carrying.
So, I do experiments as well. The tone of the wood can be heard the same way the tone of a drum shell is tested by drummers before putting heads on and tuning the drum. Hold the guitar by the neck around the 5-7th fret. Makes sure to hold the strings so they don't vibrate. Use a knuckle or a soft mallet, and tap around the bottom of the body. You will hear a frequency come from the wood. That is the woods tone. Maple tops will be resonant and have lots of attack for example. Birch sounds darker with a focus on attack as well. I've picked up some cheap guitars and performed this test and they didn't resonate very well. They didn't sound as good to me as the next one that did have a nice vibration and "tone" when struck freely. That resonance build up can effect the sound of an electric guitar about .01%. Changing a speaker and moving the mic will produce the biggest result, hands down. Great video as always Mikko!
I have 90's plywood strat w/Bill Lawrence 80's lead humbucker pickup hss favorite one.❤
Inspired by this I did some testing too, I noticed that just moving the guitar around without plucking can get similar sounds as the resonance of tonewood. In my tests I put the guitar body against acoustic to get stronger resonance but I got the feeling that it might be more sympathetic resonance as certain notes made more noise. I also tried putting the electric guitar facedown on a soft surface to mute all the string noise to eliminate the strings ringing out of a sympathetic resonance and acoustic guitar on top (I don't spoil the results in case you want to try it yourself). The tonewood is mostly placebo atleast in recordings and actually the sound is from different things like you have said in previous videos but maybe the vibration of different woods and cuts have a different feel for the player or maybe there is some sympathetic response in the body in response to those, idk im just stretching here
This is all hype for a new ML Sound Lab tonewood undampening t-shirts. We all know that if your tummy is soft it kills the tonewood resonance. You need rock hard abs to maintain good tonewood and we all know that. This new t-shirt reflects tonewood back into the guitar and you no longer need a six pack. You need a six pack of beer!
@@mlsoundlab Damn that's genious, I have a good old soft belly and a six pack of cold beer in the fridge, if you need some product testers. Remember to capture the other side of the market too, the guitar players with the rock hard abs if they happen to want some "soft belly tonewood" -guitar tones
That Pedal Show actually did something akin to what you do here but to create a custom IR reverb effect from a mic'd up acoustic guitar resting on a stand.
Yet you bring up an important point that the strings can vibrate even when not plucked & those notes including any overtones so long as they are audible will contribute to the guitar's overall sound. But I would instead argue that vibrations felt by the player not just heard are what is the more important issue as they provide additional feedback to help the player express his or her musicality.
Felt not just heard vibrations are a big if perhaps bespoke subject that violin family instrument players exploit for optimal bow control, and the thumb especially but the entire hand is packed with nerves to sense vibrations from nevermind textures, rigidness, et al of what is being grasped or held. Those experiences IMHO both can be and are exploited whenever & wherever they can be reliably associated with the music being performed.
So yes as you conclude & I agree, the tone of the wood itself may not be entirely pleasing at all times. But if it is comfortable to hold & can transmit physical vibrations to the player in a pleasing & useful way then yes it can nevertheless be good tonewood IMHO.
You measured string sympathetic resonance, not body resonance.
Maybe there's a way to measure body with piezo mics on the body. Take in account piezo mic frequency response. In parallel record pickups, but also taking in account their frequency response.
Do more than notes to not bias toward note frequency resonance and somehow cancel signals to leave only body resonance.
There's plenty of holes to fill with measurement.
Jim Lil did a pretty clear demonstration by eliminating elements to conclude - there's no tone wood with electric guitars, and if there is something, it's laughably low and immeasurable influence.
I just find it funny that we have to prove something to not be real when no one has proven it to be real in the first place. If anything I hope this video is a reality check to people... it's not scientific and there are a million things wrong with this test. We already did a video on pickups not being microphones - so the only thing left is the resonance.
I love Jim's videos and he covers a thousand things in a short time which is super entertaining.
As a bassist i can say the wood choices in the neck and body greatly effect tone idk about guitars theres so many effects on a signal chain it really doesnt matter usually.
All this proves is holding two guitars together and strumming one will transfer vibrations from one to the other which slightly rattles the strings. Concrete would do it, perspex would do it. The resonance will effect any dampening of the strings effecting sustain, but not tone. No piece of timber is the same as another, simply because it came from the same species of tree, every tree will have different densities, different growth rates, different cuts etc. A species name is not a control measure.
I also play the violin and most all electric violin manufacturers make them without a body at all. These manufacturers seem to understand that the wood doesn't make much of a difference (at least with a piezo-type pickup).
I think deep down we all know how little it matters but "we want to believe" in magic and tales. We did a video not so long ago proving that guitar pickups only hear METAL. Drum stick vs metal bar in front of an unpotted Gibson humbucker. People watching this video need to watch that other video first. 😮
@@mlsoundlab yes excellent video. Thank you for the work you are doing.
I wanted you to compare the sound of the 1st guitar with the other pressed into it, against the second test with just the 1st guitar (solo). Then we would hear if the change in the body would change the sound of the 1st guitar whatsoever. Nonetheless, good vid, thanks got bringing this up 😊
That's actually a good point! The guitars were tuned to the same pitch by the way. 😊
I can honestly say. I have a very rare smauraii guitar made in korea from 1988 with all plywood construction,. The tone is the loudest of all guitars i ever had. The sustain is very strong 20 seconds on the headstock. NEVER had a guitar this good sounding.
And i meant acoustically. Not with amp.its also the heaviest of the bunch of all floyd equip guitar i have. At 3.9kg plus almost 4kg. Most super strats only weigh between 3.5- 3.4 kg.
cool
What if you did this without strings and knocked on the guitar or used a tunning fork on one of them?
There would be no sound because guitar pickups only hear the strings. We did this test in a video a while back. Drum stick vs metal block in from of unpotted humbuckers. Check it! So what's left to compare is what is wood resonance doing to the strings.
@mlsoundlab there is sound if a mic is used. Similar to when PRS / Keisel selects wood for an instruments. Calling those brands out because there are videos as examples.
@@woodward_alan you don't plug a mic into guitar amps though, do you? The argument here is whether or tonewood makes a difference in a recording of the speaker / sound coming from an amp. The acoustic sound of wood doesn't prove anything in this matter because pickups are just magnets
@oskarwroniewicz sure. Then it would only influence which frequencies resonate best. For example. A notes on my PRS feedback fast and sustain longer. On my acoustic, the G notes die more quickly.
Very interesting, but we’re hearing the resonance of the unplugged guitar getting filtered by the rudimentary guitar-to-guitar interface you created and then again filtered by the resonance of the plugged guitar… that’s why it is (obviously) a low volume and weird tone!
Nevertheless you showed how the wood surely resonates and therefore transmits frequencies back to the strings, which are pickup up by the pickups.
The ideal experiment would be to be able to eliminate the woods from an electric guitar, then add it back and compare. Joan Segehorn progressively cut big chunks of wood from a LP body and showed how it cut low frequencies, but it still is an imperfect experiment as in my experience the neck has a big influence in the harmonic content of a solidbody guitar tone. We should find a hard but unresonating material to build a guitar with, then transplant the hardware and electronics to a real guitar and hear the differences. That guy who wanted to fight the tone wood supporters and ended his video strumming a chord with a “bench guitar” (strings held between two wooden benchs) only confirmed how two big pieces of furniture obviously resonate quite well, by the way.
You have electric guitars made of acrylic out there to verify it.
What would actually have been interesting is if you had tuned those guitars differently to each other. One to, say, A-minor and the other in E-major! :) We would've known if the receiving guitar mostly played its own tuning and if the chord from the other cuitar would've carried over at all. Just an idea.
My opinion is that for electric guitars, tone wood makes no difference. It's just the pickups catching vibrations of strings. On acoustic instruments it's different. I even notice how sound changes if I listen to music through a JBL Flip 4 speaker in my hand, or put it on a wooden surface. Much fuller sound when placed on a wooden surface, or on a furniture shelf.
I used to turn on all distortion on pedaloard with a delay on and speak through the pickup, my voice came through the speaker , so I think the pickup should be able to pick up the tone from the wood also, may be subtle but still there.
This is typically an undesirable attribute known as a "microphonic" pickup - normally, pickups will be wax-potted to prevent this (outside of very rare cases with vintage pickups). With microphonic pickups though, I could see the wood playing more of a part in the overall tone of the instrument.
-Kai
@@mlsoundlab Pickups are actually wax-potted but I use a lot of distortion/overdrive/boost though ,in extreme way ,to see if my voice go through or not but it still managed to went through , with the delay on , i heard my voice echoeing.
You have a metal guitar string, stretched between a metal bridge saddle, and a hard brittle nut, the pick up requires magnetism to make sound. I have always been of the mind that the acoustical qualities of the guitar is meaningless on an electric guitar and is nearly everything on an acoustic guitar. I just don’t see how scientifically it can make a difference in the sound of the pick up. Take the strings off your guitar and knock on the wood and see if the pick ups make noise. If they make almost no noise it can’t possible have a great effect on the tone coming through the amplifier. Maybe I’m wrong.
100% agree with all you said here. I did this test in a video not so long ago. Drum stick vs metal bar in front of guitar pickups. 🎉
If someone made a guitar out of MDF, particle board, or plywood and an identical one out of tone wood we could know for sure.
There's a warmoth video
a guitar made from the best wood in the world with perfect resonance and uncomfortable to play, worse than a guitar made from standard wood without outstanding resonance but very comfortable. at least that's the case for me)
If magnetic pickups do actually pick up the tone of the body it wouldn’t be hard to prove. Grab an electric, string it up with nylon strings and plug it into an interface
Its subtle... but is there, just like pick materials and hardware, and even pickups. If people wanna hate about it its their problem. Though comparing myself real shitty guitars with decent ones and good hardware its more noticeable.
How do you know the pickups in the plugged-in guitar aren't simply picking up the vibrating strings of the other guitar at a very low volume Also, physically clamping the two guitars together with your hands could be dampening whatever resonation you're intending to capture, if it exists at all.
It just like room mic. I think its not worth to buy exotic wood for that sound. Just like room mic.
Tonewood: Se ääni kun Paul Reed Smith hieroo käsiään yhteen... :P
I fail to see the point of this experiment. We all DO know that wood vibrates, less in electrics than in acoustic, when you pluck the strings and putting two guitars together will make the other string vibrate very little as the vibrations to travel between the guitars. But that wasn't the main point of the experiment. So what ever symphatetic vibrations we do hear in this test, we will NOT hear them as is when playing one guitar regularly as the strings are vibrating already.
I really wish tone wood wasn't real. I have an EII guitar I love, but has zero mids, jusy some nice treble and MASSIVE, overpowering bass. Seriously, it sounds like there is another acoustic signal, detached from the rest of the spectrum, thag contains bass. I have tried all kinds of pickups and amps and cabs and while there is a difference (especially with cabs), the basic to al characteristics are the same. I have honestly given up now and jusy use it with Empress ParaEQ before the amp/pedal - i boost the mids, cut the bass and add a bit of treble. It sort of works, but this will never sound as good as my other guitars...
Remember that your strings are always resting on your bridge saddles and frets. Such a simple and cheap upgrade is replacing cheapo bridge saddles and I promise you the change can be way bigger than a pickup switch. Try it if you can!
Everybodys talking about wood sounds but on an eletric guitar its more about tactile feedback and feel. We've all played cheap guitars that felt spongy at one point.
BUT!! Why do guitars player jump into conclusions that it's because of "bad tonewood" rather than strings and hardware etc. Cheap guitars have super cheap alloy metal parts that sound really bad.
@@mlsoundlab Could very well be. Cheap alloy is still hard tho. A soft plastic nut could be the murderer of tone here.
@@mlsoundlab THIS! And in the end, you can have a guitar made of the finest tonewood and all... and then it's shitty to play. I'm pretty sure that some of the best guitars out there have much less to do with tonewood than playability.
Resonance does not equal “tone”. The pickup is still only transmitting the sound of the strings. Also based on your judgement about the frequencies that resulted from this test, they will have likely been EQ’ed out my the mixer of any of the famous records with the tones people are trying to emulate.
The pickups surely transmits the sound of the strings. If you alter the harmonic content of the strings via the wood resonance, you alter the tone.
This is not tonewood, this call sympathetic resonance, the strings tuning is the same in the booth, terrible experiment? i dont know
This is sort of a conversation starter rather than anything else. We already did the test proving that pickups are not microphones.
Don't you have better things to do?
dont you?
@jeffallen3382 that`s exactly what I was going to ask lol
guess he just realized he loses in the plugin`s competition, so now this
@@insertanynameyouwant5311 He isnt losing anything. obviously his business is profitable.
@@escapegulag4317 move on troll, go back to playing your video games. ML Sound is not going to sleep with you. You can go simp some other place...
What a silly empty video. Devoid of reasoning and full of erronious conclusions.
Mikko leader of instrument flat earth society.
talk too much
use timestamps duh
Ha!