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What Influences The Tone In A Solid Body Guitar?
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- Опубликовано: 12 дек 2022
- What influences the tone of an electric guitar? The wood? The pickups? Or something else?
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This subject has been thoroughly debated on the Internet for years, and was debated in bar rooms and tour busses before the Internet existed. I have been playing guitar for 53 years, and have been building and repairing electric guitars for at least 40 years. This by no means makes me an expert, but I have observed a few things. First, the wood that an electric guitar is made from has virtually no effect on the tone that come out of the amplifier. Second, the neck joint type, unless damaged or faulty has little or no impact on the tone or sustain of the electric guitar when amplified, although the bridge and nut materials can have a marginal impact, it is very small. Third, the finish that is applied to an electric guitar has no effect on it's tone. *Forth, the pickups chosen for the guitar and how they are wired has a HUGE impact on the sound that comes from the amplifier* . I have found, and have proven that a Squire Strat with a plywood body will sound just as good as, and identical to an American Standard, and sorry to burst a few bubbles, an Epi Les Paul, and the "real" les Paul sound exactly the same, if you use the same pickups, strings, bridge and saddle. In essence, from a technical standpoint there is no difference introduced by the wood or other material from which the guitar is made. *BUT!* !, Those same factors have a HUGE impact on the player. A very significant part of the tone is the way that the player interacts with the guitar. I have witnessed players completely change their attack and finesse based on a perception. This process is entirely subconscious and I have even found myself doing it. I have found that if I want to sell the most guitars, I let the player decide on the materials to use. If the player believes that a Korina body with a maple cap and an ebony fretboard on a guitar finished in nitro sounds better than a chambered basswood body, with a maple fretboard and spray-painted with krylon. I'm not going to argue with him. My job is to make the guitar that the player is interested in buying. So that is what I do. I have become very good at nodding along as the customer pontificates on the virtues of various woods. I just tell him how much it will cost and take it from there. Answer to the other question: We play both the guitar and the amp, but the amp has a march larger impact.
I very much agree with your statement. For the most part, many "tone wood" proponents will often give you statements along the lines that wood species are the main drivers of the tone of a particular guitar, but when you parse what they are actually describing, you find that they are expressing how the guitar "feels". That response and resonance is not impactful enough to actually get recorded. How a guitar "feels" has more impact on the player, rather than the recording. Whether this impact is positive or not, will reflect more on inspiring the player or not. If that makes any sense...
I am solidly in the camp that believes tone in an electric guitar comes from the pickups, electronics, and amps....just as you said. Tonewood is a topic that will likely never die , but every time I hear someone say something about wood in an electric guitar sounding "warm" or "snappy" I instantly think of a wine nerd talking about hints of this or that.....fruity notes....etc. Just drink the wine and enjoy it.
I think the important thing about how an electric guitar sounds ACOUSTICALLY is that it makes it more pleasant to play when you are unplugged, therefore making you want to play it more often (even, say, late at night when it wouldn't be considerate to power up your marshall half-stack, haha!). I'm of the opinion that aside from things like tuning stability and intonation, the pickups are going to be what you hear the most from your guitar when it is plugged in. An electric guitar that sounds good unplugged is a "nice to have" but is not necessarily indicative of a poor-sounding electrified sound. And, as I'm sure most people will point out, how your hands move on the guitar will be so much more important in your acoustic sound AND electric sound than what species of wood or what shape the horns are on the guitar.
Well said
When I play an electrical guitar unplugged it’s while watching and listening to something else, so could not care less about the unplugged sound, what matters is how it drives my gain stages when plugged in and if tuning stability holds up between songs.
I don’t play at bedroom volume when going through the setlist, so won’t even hear the accoustic side of things.
I can see that it might be important to some people, but if they had to be honest it does not really matter unless they are in some way forced to play unplugged or at really low volume levels a lot.
For recording and live performance it won’t mean anything.
I agree with you. Pickups make a big difference....
Thank you for the honest answer.
For a solid body guitar The string vibrates with different overtones at different points along it’s length, that’s basic physics. A pickup samples the region it’s nearest to, the width of the sample area depends on the construction of the pickup but it’s probably an inch or two, but mainly focused at a specific point. The pickup applies a filter, (essentially a resonant low pass) removing predominantly the highest frequencies but also giving a midrange emphasis at a specific frequency again depending on the construction of the pickup, which changes its inductance. Then the remaining electronics will filter more frequencies. Then as you state, there’s the impedance matching of the cable, amp and cabinet. And finally if you are recording it, the muc placement and the room acoustics. That’s 99.9% of the tone. The wood and all that lives in the.1%.
Things get a tad complex when there is more than one coil involved. Since two coils sample the vibrating string’s harmonics at different places (how different depends on the distance between the coils), certain harmonics will cancel each out due to opposite phasing, while others will amplify. And this has nothing to do with th series/parallel wiring of these coils (that only affects the roll off and aplification of the overall spectrum).
Also each coil “samples” a continuous sections of a string, not an infinitelly small point - this is why the aperture of the coil could matter. But this is already getting into the calculus territory - one has to solve a double integral to calculate the effect.
@@Eugensson yes. Also there’s the thickness and tension of the string which moves the harmonics about. Plus you have the same interactions if more than one string is involved. Or multiple pickups. It’s not a simple system. But it’s definitely not about the wood.
@@seanhayes2998 now i am thinking, the wood might play a factor there, if the distance between the nut and the bridge shows minute variations due to the resonances within the guitar material, that might affect the sounds in the way the harmonics fade out (specifically which harmonics and how fast).
@@Eugensson It might, also the pickup mounts. On a strat for example the plastic would vibrate some, and LP pickups typically wobble all over the place. But I maintain that those effects are not really going to be audible. You might detect them with sensitive tests but IMO the outline I gave above is the main order of effects.
Spot on.
Very interesting video. I did a bunch of experiments as part of my degree many years ago, involving the analysis of the frequency output of guitar string mounted on a rig that allowed me to swap the "body" of the guitar for different materials. It provided some interested results, which I'll waffle about a bit below.
The first point I wanted to make was that I simply don't agree with the statement that pickups reproduce the sound of the unplugged guitar. The reason for this is that the sound of an unplugged guitar is coming from more "places" than the pickups are designed to take their input. When you play a guitar unplugged what you hear is the sound of the strings vibrating, the body vibrating, the neck vibrating (all by different degrees of course) and so on. When you listen to the sound of the pickup, you are hearing the strings vibrate which of course are affected by the presence of the guitar structure supporting those strings, but you're hearing only the strings nonetheless (a magnetic pickup is not really capable of detecting the vibration of wood... I mean it slightly is as vibration of the pickup can affect its output, but barely and less so if it is well made).
So the experiments I did. I used a steel "neck", supporting two open strings (no frets), those strings were both plucked in two consistent places using a mechanism I made to pluck them in as consistently reproduceable manner as possible. The sound of the strings was recorded using a fairly basic pickup, and the "sound" of the body was also recorded using a piezo bug. I used different guitar bodies, made from balsa, mahogany, maple, perspex and concrete. I then performed some frequency analysis on all of the recordings to see what was going on.
What I found was that the denser the body, the greater the range of frequencies detected on the string (not the amplitude or volume particularly, but the frequency range) and the less vibration I detected in the body recording. What was interesting was that with the softer bodies (where I also saw more vibration in the body itself), the frequencies that started dying off quicker on the strings tended to be at the higher end of the range. This will be no surprise to most guitarists, as we're familiar with soft body wood producing a "warmer" sound. My not-very-profound theory on this was that the less dense body material would more readily absorb energy from the string (because there was less body mass and therefore less energy required to make it vibrate, and the higher frequencies on the string being the result of less motion on the string were proportionally reduced more significantly by that same energy loss, because the higher frequency harmonics had the least movement in the first place (bit of a clunky way to describe it, but I hope it makes sense).
It is worth saying in all of this, that overall the effect was somewhat subtle. The difference between balsa and concrete was audible, but the difference between perspex and concrete could barely be heard and could only really be seen in the frequency analysis charts.
Now knowing a little bit about audio equalization, I would say that cutting frequencies that exist is better than boosting frequencies that are already weak. So although it might be challenging, a guitar string that is carrying a broader range of frequencies can be made to sound like a string supported by a less dense body material with careful cutting of certain frequency ranges. The short version is - denser body material equals more frequencies on the string equals more options for shaping the sound (and with that greater range of frequencies on the string, the pickup and everything that follows it makes WAY more difference to the sound heard than the guitar body).
Anyway, this was 20+ years ago, so I may be forgetting some details, but keen to hear anyone's thoughts.
It's always good to hear from someone who has real experience of properly conducted tests. There's actually very little energy in the small mass of a vibrating guitar string and how quickly that energy gets dissipated into the material of the body is bound to be relevant, But perhaps only if the string is not plucked again too soon for this decay in the vibrations to be significant.
Whilst all these tests and discussions are very interesting, the only differences that really matter are the ones that have an audible effect on the sound of the guitar in amongst the rest of the band. As you say, the difference between perspex and concrete was barely audible during your tests and so probably irrelevant for a working musician. The effect of the different weight of the instrument and it's influence on the ability to play it standing up on stage for an hour would certainly have a much greater effect on the quality of the music produced.
In spite of all the science, which I love dearly and am actively studying, some guitars just feel right and sound right when you pick them up and play them and that's going to make you play better and sound better regardless of any amount of technical analysis.
@@KitWN 100%, all very good points. As you say, if a difference is not audible then musically speaking there IS no difference, and I agree that comfort (as well as robustness and cost) is an important factor - outside of experimentation, concrete is a very terrible choice :D
I personally like the denser woods, with a slightly reduced body thickness, for a bright sound that can be EQd as your taste prefers. European Ash is my favourite body wood as it has a nice broad grain (and I prefer clear or semi-clear finishes), but I’d go with maple if I was putting a solid colour finish on it. For a neck I’d go with plain maple if it was functional, but if looks were important I’d go with whatever looks nice (so long as the grain is straight, I’ve found most dense woods work pretty consistently).
I should add that I’m not a pro-builder, just an amateur with some academic tinkering behind me. Never take my words over a proper pro such as Chris :)
Agreed Pickups are the diffrence
Hi Chris,
I don't have the same experience as you in the field (I'm currently building my first guitar having a lot of fun) but I've been playing electric guitar for about 40 years and I totally agree with all your considerations.
For what I read, this is also what Les Paul said about resonance and the interaction between the vibration of the string and the guitar structure: in an electric instrument the resonance does not matter (unless you play disconnected from the amp but who does it?) and the "only" thing we want from the wood is not to absorb the string vibration. As you say, when the wood has a certain quality, the difference becomes too subtle to be effective. Obviously if we use balsa wood to build an electric guitar we can't expect a great outcome, but this is a boundary case.
I recently saw a video where Paul Reed Smith talked about the tonewood topic and he totally disagreed but, to support his opinion, he gave the example of a violin, which is a totally different context, since it is an acoustic instrument. However PRS puts a lot of effort in R&D to develop his own pickups in many different flavours, so I guess they also agree with the importance of the pickup in the electric guitar sound.
And this is just the guitar, then we have all the signal chain up to the speaker. It's true: are we playing the guitar or the amplifier? I think we are somehow playing all our equipment because every piece contributes more or less to the final sound, even the environment we are in. But don't forget that the guitar is an instrument, thus a tool we use to express ourselves. A superb instrument may sound terrible in the wrong hands.
I find very interesting this resource I'm currently reading on the topic: www.gitec-forum-eng.de/the-book/.
Bang on.
Thank you for inviting me/us to comment. I agree with you.
Have you noticed how there is a bunch of videos and info out there on how to make your own pickups and there is detailed scientific, mathematical reason why pickups have different tone and how to control those factors to get the tone you’re looking for? But when it comes to the wood. No one can give you a methodical process to do to the wood to get an electric guitar the tone one is looking for. If no one has figured out the process to tweak the tone on the wood by now, then there’s no tone to tweak.
Someone should put a pickup on the back of the guitar, plug in the guitar, crank it up and see if you can hear the wood at all. Then measure the sound from the amp. Then play a regular guitar in the that same amp and measure it at the same volume. Which would sound louder.
If there is ANY tone coming from the wood on an electric guitar, it would be so insignificant that it wouldn’t mater if it’s there or not. In fact, I saw a video where a guy connected the nut on a metal bench table and the bridge on another work table and strung it up. Put a pickup under the strings, not attach to either table and strummed the strings. Sounded just as full bodied as it did when it was in a guitar.
The pickup, guitar tone nob, amp tone controls have a ridiculous wider rang on tones that overcome any guitar tone. Look at Eddie’s frankenstrat. Trash. Off course the tone is in Eddie’s finger but he always said he was tweaking his amp to get his signature sound. His incessant pursuit of tone never had him tweaking the guitar, except for using a humbucker. But never the wood.
If wood tone was real, there would be mathematical figures that prove it and bright people that have took advantage of it. But there’s not.
Wood tone on an electric guitar is a myth.
Hi Chris! I totally agree with you. Passive pickups do not generate signal on their own - their signal comes from the vibrating strings, however the frequency response of different pickups can vary a lot, which means different pickups emphasize different frequencies (and attenuate other frequencies), thus the guitar tone is greatly influenced by the pickups.
I would love to see screen shots of a spectrum analyzer with different pickups.
Real good explanation. I agree, the tone, sound call it what you may has much to do with the pickups!!
Estoy de acuerdo con tus palabras, la madera, la forma del cuerpo y como esta construida, dan la tonalidad. Los micros leen los impulsos, pero de toda la vibración que reciben, no solamente de las cuerdas. El instrumento entero vibra y resuena. Gracias por tu trabajo, y tu tiempo. Saludos de Uruguay.
I've had guitars in my hands for the better part of 50 years or so, and have swapped around so many necks, string types, pickups, and everything else that I lost track long ago. The one thing I've come to realize is that I've never found a single thing that has much impact (other than the obvious humbucker vs single coil, and frequency response of different pups, etc).
BUT... every one of my guitars, or any other one that I try, has it's one personality, feel, and "sound", as subtle as it may be. I usually know what fretwire I prefer, which strings I prefer, which fretboard wood with a certain body wood, etc.... and I can't explain why as to any of it. LOL
IMHO, it's a combination of 1000 different (and mostly unidentifiable) little things that make a guitar either magical, or a piece of expensive furniture. :)
Hi Chris - regaring the question guitar or amp players: I would say electric guitarists are finger, string, pickup and amp players. The body and neck have mainly practical, optical and haptic effects.
Your ideas makes lots of sense. I defintely need better quality cables. Could you recommend one? Thank you!
I distinguish between "sonic" tone and the human organically derived tone.
Sonic tone is related to the electronics and pickups as well as the Amplifier and speaker. Within the amplifier the pre-amp section is the most important as it is here where the weak pickup signal is amplified in voltage and electronic colour is imparted upon the signal. The power amplifier section simply increases the current of the signal so that the speakers can be effectively driven.
The organically derived tone component is largely player driven. Finger and pick, plucking action, playing technique, emotional expression etc. This is the main reason why a Jeff Beck for example would be instantly recognisable irrespective of what type or cost of guitar he has in his hands.
So overall, I place the organic components of the tone at the top of the list followed by the pre-amp, pickups, string gauge, guitar action/settings, speaker quality etc.
(Issues such as feedback, effects pedals etc are another kettle of fish to boil for another day)
I once had the chance to play Roger Water's bass and that thing growled like a lion. I asked him about it, and he attributed it to the pickups.
good point, you choose wood for stability and play-ability, esthetics etc. a guitar player unhappy with his sound usually changes pick up. they're the guitar microphone and have more impact on the finally sound. Magnet choices, wire winding, wax potting etc. All these have measurable frequency responses/ charectaristics and we adjust with tone circuits , pre amps, eq's etc. Like a singer finding the best microphone for his voice. Look at all the Gibson variables with a relatively consistent mahogany body and maple top. Do you choose p90's or humbuckers and which kind of humbucker.
I think people forget that the sound out of an electric guitar is due to a *complete circuit*, which includes pickups, pots, cable, and the input impedance of the first pedal or amp that guitar sees. The pickups are of large importance because their inductance (in conjunction with the resistance and capacitance of other components in the circuit) is frequency selective. Use a humbucker and then a single coil - big difference in inductance and resistance, big difference in tone. Use a 10ft Planet Waves cable and then 25ft Ernie Ball cable, big change to the tone (both are high quality but also very different capacitance per foot). Plug into a vintage fuzz pedal and then a modern Boss pedal - big difference in tone due to input impedance. Tone wood has a small but real influence with clean tones, small enough not everyone will hear it or care, but it's there. See Warmoth's series of video testing that... ruclips.net/video/7k_A8GhN0L8/видео.html
Great video. I love this topic. I am mainly a bass player but also play guitar too. I've been playing since 81 or 82 and have also built many instruments over the years. And I am a passive pickup person (I don't need a battery in my instrument). I have gone back and forth on this and don't think there is a solid absolute. From my experience, I believe that the same pickup will have the same over character in any instrument it is put in, assuming same scale length, placement and height. If any difference is noticed it is probably extremely minimal most times. I think it's how the pickup reacts to the subtle differences is where things get complicated.
Most of the time if I put the same pickup in different instruments there is no perceivable difference or so little difference it doesn't matter. But there are exceptions. The most extreme was putting identical pickups in a Hofner style hollow body Beatle bass and a solid body bass of the same shape. That was a huge difference in sound. And sometimes 2 identical instruments where all is equal do sound somewhat different when using the same pickups.
As a general rule I do believe that the pickups are the most important difference as far as how a guitar sounds, but there are those times where there is an exception. I love the topic but won't lose sleep over it. I just play, build and be happy.
A hollow body bass becomes at least partially an acoustic instrument - meaning a major portion of the vibration energy of the strings is transfered to the body material. This in effect generates additional vibrations of the bridge and from there to the strings, which means that the pickup becomes some kind of an indirect "microphone" picking up the heavy vibrations of the semi-acoustic body. This is certainly audible, not just acoustically, but also through the pickup signal. With a solid body body instrument (which is discussed in this video) this effect is however minimal and basically unnoticable.
@@Andreas_Straub like i said the holfner style is an extreme example. But I used to do a lot of experimentation on Steinberger basses with the graphite necks and maple bodies. I've put the special designed EMG pickups with the HAZ labs preamp into a couple import Steinberger Spirit all wood instruments. Pickup placement was identical but the all wood Spirit never sounded like the graphite neck Steinbergers thru an amp. Its a less extreme example but noticeable.
Exceptions exist, even in all wood instruments. Kind of like picking up 5 strats that in everyway are set up identical with identical specs. Yet one just plays better and one is a dog.
Generally, I like I originally said i think the pickups are the main difference in sound, but exceptions happen. I don't worry about the exceptions and when they happen its usually a good thing. All part of the journey.
Most of my perspective is as a bass player of 40 years and a builder on the side. I do think that with the longer neck the the minor variations combined with the lower resonance frequencies makes it more noticeable than a traditional 6 string. Sort of like the infamous dead spot on some basses. Guitars don't see these differences as noticeable as there is physically less material there.
The placement of the string in the magnetic field and shape of the field is the first factor, how that field observes the string affects tone greatly. Take for example adjusting the pickup height, it changes tone dramatically just by moving that magnetic field. I've played with converting humbuckers to use alnico rod magnets in one coil, nothing in the other. It provides a much nicer single coil sound vs the typical coil split humbucker tone and sounds genuinely different. The next piece is the inductance, capacitance, and impedance of both the pickup windings and how they interact with the wiring. Those are the factors that determine tone. That's why a strat pickup sounds so radically different from a humbucker, even in coil split modes. Different coil shapes and magnet orientations affect the field and how it picks up the string.
Assuming that there is a propper signal path speaker units have the biggest influence on the tonal frequencies beside choice and placement of microphone when such is used.
My hope is that we would be neither and just musicians 😂 but I do have a strong connection to the instrument. One could say we’re pickup players lol. Honestly I think if pickups were just reproducing the sound of the guitar then pickup demos using the same guitar, same strings and height, and same player and riff/chords all comparisons would sound exactly the same… that’s simply not the case. Output and timber also play a role in how the player plays in terms of dynamics (how hard or how soft… etc). It’s more complicated than just sound reproduction. A musician would find ways to create regardless and most people listening to a song in a full mix wouldn’t know the difference
The statement of the pickup representing the sound of the unplugged guitar is imho wrong and you explained it very well: Even though many guitarists might be upset by that fact, the tone of an electric(!) solidbody(!) guitar is not really influenced by the wood. The wood must be strong and stable, also long term for a good instrument, and if it looks good, it's cool too. But it was proven multiple times that tonewood is not really an important thing in solidbody electric guitars. Unplugged however, guitars made from different woods do sound different. But through the pickups, there's barely if any difference. So it's the other way round. And for the other question: I'd say when it comes to solidbody guitars and especially with distortion we are guitar players but we are amp (and speaker, effects, all that stuff) listeners.
There's a saying I've heard for people that like to brag about how long they say they've been doing something: "That doesn't make you good, it just makes you old."
I have played consecutively numbered Les Pauls off the rack ... They were different. not much .but they were .Everything has a effect on the sound they produce.
Especially the age of the strings ....
I think that in the end the amp is more important. Let’s put it this way: a bad amp can do more damage to the sound than a bad guitar.
The biggest influence in the tone of a solid body guitar is the cost of the guitar, amp, and speakers. The more expensive the equipment is, the better the tone.
I agree with your statement that the body shape /volume/wood etc has limited effect on the final sound of the guitar >>> there have been a few tests and vids from Darrell Braun and some other youtubers who have done experiments starting with a solid body strat and incrementally chopping it down to 50% or less of the actual body size and tested the tones and sounds both through amps and through more precise frequency recordings and proved your statement. I bought 2 identical cheap tele style guitars and I have cut down one to make it more travel friendly and can confidently say that there is little difference between them sound wise after an extensively cutting down the body that I can tell , except if you change an element like the string thicknesses. I do also believe there can be a mental or emotional link between the guitar and some players so in some ways maybe that element may be contributing to impressions given by different instruments regardless of their output. My favorite goto guitar is the chopped down tele which I vintage finished and scuffed up / stripped down / rebuilt so that just feels more comfortable which I prefer to I play more but this has less to to with difference in sound and it has more to do with comfort /emotional investment and history.
Amp players vs guitar players - neither I think its an art and your really creating something on the spot so whether that is a recording /video or performance whatever that is the combination of those elements and more. The more advances on the computer daw front with lots of easy and cheap access to effects and tones is a big plus for me - I tend to use that as my pedal board replacement - I have few dialed in effects that I like to use and then I tune it in for the right sound that I play over backing tracks. As far as amps the computer has made those almost a luxury /uneeded except for a performance - as you can get lots of sounds through the daw and then just plug in headphones ... no waking the kids or disturbing the neighbours. Of course if you have a tool / sound not suited to your objective thats going to make the job harder so for me that would be the interest of understanding someones rig and setup and taking some notes or tips so you can reproduce that sound again.
I have had a p90 and quarter pounder in a cedar tele body and those pickups sounded noticeably different in a 2 1/8 pine body JM-ish shape. Playing through a 10 band eq pedal the settings were different to get the best/similar sound as well out of same two pickups w same wiring etc…
Pickup’s & the amp make the biggest difference in tone. Wood probably makes almost no difference if the pickups & the amp are the same. Tone wood is for acoustic guitars only. I prefer to build with the prettiest wood I can find. I never consider the tone of the wood for an electric. Chris you are spot on with your statement.👍👏👏👏👏
You need to watch the Jim Lill video where he puts this to the test, 90% atleast of the tone comes the pickups
An electric guitar pickup is not an acoustic amplifier like a microphone, so I don't think it's correct to say it reproduces the sound of the guitar. The guitar is the user interface so I think you are playing the guitar, not the amp. Even though the amp is a huge part of the sound and experience. Is a violinist playing the violin or the PA at a large venue? If it's the PA, then everyone is playing the same instrument at a concert!
Yep. There are a number of commonly overlooked and yet hugely impactful parameters on tone/volume/sound. One is what you pick your strings with. Your fingers. A hard pick. A thin pick. Nylon pick. Wood pick. Stainless Steel pick. HUGE difference. Where you pick your strings. Close to the bridge, close to the neck ... HUGE difference. How hard you pick. HUGE difference. Woods can affect vibration, but for most normal choices, you would never hear it. I guess if you try to make a body out of balsa wood and compare that to one made of titanium you will note differences is sustain and overtones. But in general, alder vs ash vs mahogany vs pine vs maple is not going be as impactful a choice on sound as your guitar pick. All things being equal. But there is a subjective element to consider. A guitar that feels different, has different weight, is a different shape, can inspire you to change your style. This isn't so much about the physics of vibration and electronics - its about emotion. And they way you play is affected by that A LOT. So you may get very different sounds/tones that you might think are coming from the body shape or neck woods but in fact are coming from the way you play. And there is a subjective emotional feedback thing happening too - what you hear always impacts the way you play (and the way you play always impacts what you hear).
Signal is generated by the magnetic field of the string (the correct physics model is the string itself is magnetic) in relation to the movement of the copper coil. The strings vibrations are translated into the surface of the body via the bridge. If the guitar has a floating bridge like a Floyd Rose, this is going to be very limited. If the guitar has a hard tail bridge, more string movement will be translated to the body's surface. The pickups are isolated from the majority of the body surface's vibration either via mounting rings, or because they are mounted deeper in the body. However, our ears aren't isolated from the sound of a guitar's body while playing. Guitarists hear both the amp, and the body. The audience however, only hears the amp.
The FEEL of a guitar is something really important to me, and how resonant it feels in my hands is very pleasurable.
For sure the pickups design and placement is going to be 99.9% of the sound, but the feel? That's got nothing to do with pickups.
The feel, for me also very important, has everything to do with the shape and woods
@@marcneeleman7404 Even though you are right, I would say, this is off-topic?
In 60 years onstage I have played a wide variety of guitars, some mine, some belonging to others, a couple were rented for the occasion. LIkewise with amps. Many facets, wood density, string guage and type, etc. plus amp types, brands and settings all affect tone to varying degrees. However, after hearing those same instruments and combinations in the hands of others I have found that a large part of the sound of an instrument emanates/exudes from the fingers, body and soul of the guitarist. The same is true of every form of instrument ever made. Not every violinist with a Stradavari in his hands in Pagani. LIkewise, I was not Chet nor Wes Montgomery but they, too, were not me.
Always fascinating! The string gets energy from being plucked. That energy is in the form of complex waveforms, whether harmonics, interaction of those harmonics and so on. The moment the string is plucked it has maximum energy. The most fundamental thing that affects what we hear, given the same electrics, is how the string is plucked and so how it obtains its waveforms. Ie. Brian May vs Steve Vai whatever. Most notes are short so what we recognize is the pluck. After the pluck, if the note is not enhanced with vibrato, then the player has no further affect. The string starts to lose energy to it surroundings, and materials can then affect it. Different materials absorb different frequencies at different rates. The waveforms in the string then change as the note decays, the sound changes. This is not noticeable in short notes where the full energy of the pluck is still in the string. A rubber guitar note decays differently from one made of granite. Most good tone woods will be similar, but then a hollow body absorbs less/differently to a solid body. Resonances can add vibrations back in, we all go for infinite sustain from our amps, we all know that is way easier with a hollow body. If they waveforms changes, then the pickup produces different sounds. So I would argue that materials will have more influence in the decay of longer notes, pick attack is way more crucial as most notes are short - again Brian May sounds like him through anything, of course vibrato, phrasing and so on are always there. Electrics are by a distance the overarching controller of 'tone', but not necessarily 'sound'
nicely put
i agree..as a engineer, and as person who tested alot. Now I have Gibson, and Greco LP with same pickups..sounds the same, or cant tell the difference after recording. Then have another Gibson, and Epiphone ZW, with same kind of pickups....too..sounds the same.
Referring to the 5 guitars you built that sounded the same: Did you compare the sound of each guitar unplugged? That would've answered the initial question of pickups amplifying the tone of the unplugged guitar. Good videos! I always watch!
No. Why would I ? I would never play up on stage with my guitar unplugged.
You never hear about a guitarist changing the body to get a different tone. It's the pickups and every guitarist knows it.
nice video, all logical stuff :)
i though about the physics of it after reading a comment mentioning the interaction between a vibrating solid body and a vibrating string.
given:
the mass of an electric guitar body is significantly higher than the string's mass.
in theory:
a string doesn't have enough energy to overcome the body's inertia in any meaningful way, it simply can';t make it ring (and that is why it's so quiet compared to an acoustic... not even a heavy bass string can make it ring to a meaningful acoustical level).
in practice:
but the body does vibrate, one can even hear it if one touches the guitar body with the forehead or teeth :). so how much of that body vibration interferes w/ the string's vibration (either constructively or destructively)?
it's inaudible, as it requires at least 75% of the initial sting energy to be transmitted back into the string to barely make an audible difference (since our hearing can barely detect a -1dB difference in a best case scenario). due to the difference in mass it's impossible to make a body vibrate that much. so the string more than masks the body so to speak, with or without amplification.
experiment:
pluck the open low E of the guitar with the amp ON. with the eye closed try to listen to all entire range of the harmonics. focus on the higher frequencies real hard. now mute the high E string as you continue plucking the low E. the difference you can detect is how much energy gets transferred from a heavy string (large inertia) to the guitar body (even larger inertia) and back to the high E string (smallest inertia, easiest to excite).
Bingo on every point!
When someone claims something about physics, they must prove it with some experiment. In the ecuation of a vibrating string, only appears the tension , the length and the density of the string, nothing more, no mystic and no magic. The only thing needed for this is the two points where the string leans remains without movement, this is the saddle and the bridge must be well fixed and hard enough. After the string is vibrating freely, the pickup is the first part in the sound chain. Then we have the cable and the amplifier. So, if you want change the tone of your guitar start with the pickup.
Totally agree with Highline Guitars, as almost always. Thanks Chris for a new chapter.
Yes interesting. I think if you installed piezo pickups in guitars made up of different shapes and materials then you would notice a difference in the output. Not so sure if this would be the case for magnetic pickups alone though.
Piezo pickups pick up the vibration of the instruments body, magnetic pickups will only pickup the vibrations of the metal strings.
It's strange how nut and bridge are hardly ever talked about, since they have direct influence on how the string acts. But when it comes to tonewood, I think it's a feellingt-thing. When a guitar really resonates (acoustically), it just feels good in your hands, which makes you play better. And when you play better, it sounds better.
I totally agree.
Maybe you can go so far, that the vibration of the wood moves your fretting fingers, thus influencing the tone. I do believe wood makes a difference, just maybe not in the romanticized (to be honest, totally) illogical way.
@@kapellekonig6512 Also, the vibration of the wood is transmitted to the pickups, which will affect the tone. However, if you don't like the tone, what are you going to do? Change the wood? Of course not. You'll change the pickups.
I kinda get what you mean about cables but here is something similar(ish) that happened a while ago.
I used to work in a computer shop where we also sold high end audio equipment. I happened to make a comment about the cables inside the speaker cabinets being of low to mid quality on the whole and this got the shop owner thinking so he carried out an experiment. He had a guy in the shop who was an "expert" on high end audio. He got the guy to listen to 2 sets of speaker cables and say which sounded better. He liked the sound of the second cables.
The first cable set were a set of quite expensive QED cables. The second cable set was a pair of standard UK 240 volt mains cables.
Makes you think for sure.
So it must have been mains cable made from oxygen-free copper.🤪
@@KitWN Nope, just standard everyday mains cable.
In a solid body guitar I believe it maybe a difference in tone from different species of woods, how joints are constructed and maybe even finish that are applied.
I would also agree that to a naked human ear it’s too subtle to notice.
The sounds we hear is entirely electronic and nothing more.
I have an Epiphone LP with Gibson branded guts.
Their maybe subtle differences in finish from the G and the E brands that you can see or feel in your hand but I would like to see anyone really be able to hear the difference from am amplified or acoustically played tone between the two. The differences are so subtle a machine can pick up the difference but not a human ear.
In either case the pickups are only amplifying the vibrations or sound waves from the strings.
I agree. Wood species and body shape have minimal effect on tone. Very interesting video on You tube where an electric guitar with no body was able to produce strat like tones.
what do you mean by body shape? because if you put a gibson lespaul humbucker into a lespaul body shape guitar and neck construction of set neck with LP style headstock then put that humbucker into a Strat and expect them to both sound the same and play the same response feel and sustain wise it will not happen.
I have two thoughts on this topic:
1. The strings vibrate and excite the electrons in the magnetic field of the wound wire of the pickup. The electrons then flow through the circut creating a signal that goes out to the amp. At what point does the wood affect the signal? If the wood somehow transfers the string's vibration to the pickup, I would think you could tap the wood of your plugged in guitar with your fingers and get a signal to the amp. But this does not work.
2. My ears cannot tell the difference between two types of wood. However, I can clearly hear the difference between two different styles of pickups.
And just to keep the thoughts going; Perhaps its the nut and saddle that affect tone the most, they are actually touching the string!
Listened to a guitar with an aluminium neck now that had an huge effect on the sound!
It may have a negative effect, if it resonates with the string frequencies. In that case it will pull a lot of the strings vibration energy and thus reduce the sustain and in extreme cases have even other negative effects on the sound. At some frequeny points it may begin self oscillation and the whole system may easily begin generating own (over-)tones. Wood has a very low resonance frequency, so such effects are not of practical relevance.
I'll just drop the name 'Jim Lill' in here. Everyone who is interested in electric guitars should take a closer look at this video:
'Tested: Where Does The Tone Come From In An Electric Guitar?' by @JimLill
Hey Chris,
First...love your channel! Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge and experience with the world!
To the topic at hand...
First...I think it is very important to define "tone" as I have been hearing different "experts" elude to either frequency response, or to sustain. (i.e. knocking on a plank to hear it ring to determine sustain but calling it "tone").
Second...to the tweet, if pickups just amplify the string sound, then why do we dispose of low-cost pickups for higher cost, name brand pickups? Wouldn't they both perform the same? So why spend the money on "better pickups"? (leading question ;D )
My personal thoughts on this topic is:
IF (and I have yet to witness any tests that have employed the scientific method to support this idea) wood species/grade affects frequency response (i.e. tone), then the influence is minimal...but have yet to see/hear anything that is truly definitive or documented using the scientific method.
Pickup type, placement, height, materials, wind gauge/number, magnet type/gauss, and the connecting circuit have a greater impact on frequency response and sustain.
Playing style, string type/gauge, string age, pick material/thickness, bridge and nut material/type and connection to the wood for frequency response and sustain.
I really start to question this when pickups are installed in different manners like direct to the body, floating in a ring, or floating on a plastic sheet...yet the concept of "tonewood" is being applied. Are these pickups semi-microphonic or not? In a solid body I would question why...hollow-body I could see a benefit.
All this...and we haven't left the guitar output. Cables, amps, effects are all another factor in this story.
Bottom line though...play what you like and if the instrument resonates with you (not literal vibrational effect) and your playing sounds better with that specific guitar...then it has the right "tone" and is right for you.
FWIW
To follow up...
If there is solid objective data using the scientific method in a controlled environment that demonstrates the percentage and impact wood species, mass, and resonance has on a solid body guitar sound, I am more that willing (interested even) to witness and ingest. I will change my position immediately if this can be demonstrated and is reproducible.
The point I keep trying to make in this and other videos is that it doesn't matter. Wood affects tone. But its impact isn't significant enough to bother with. What if you build a guitar and decide the tone isn't what you wanted. What are you going to do, change the wood? No. You'll change the components that are easy to switch out and have a more impactful affect on tone. Like the pickups. Or the output cable. Or the speaker in your amp.
@@HighlineGuitars ...I still would want to see how much of an impact wood species makes on overall sound quality. There's a lot that can be accomplished with pickup and circuit manipulation to improve what is heard. There are too many factors that can influence sound quality...but in the end we make adjustments at the amp and compensate, or enjoy what we hear as that instruments unique "flavor".
One question I have that applies is the adage, "is the juice worth the squeeze?". If two instruments are crafted using the same hardware and set up exactly the same, but one is built from $50 in big box lumber (pine box and a maple neck), but the other is built from $350 in sawmill premium lumber, what is the delta in sound quality??? 2%? 5%? Can't that be easily compensated electronically? Where does the line get drawn? What happens when you change strings and it sounds slightly different?
I'd love to see that data.
Again, love the channel and the work you do. I've learned a great deal and applied those lessons to my own crafting. Thank you!
@@eskrimadorchris You can't judge tone by species. 5 slabs of Mahogany cut to the exact same dimensions will each sound totally different than the others. It's not about the species, it's about the individual boards. Oh, and once you cut, carve, and sand the board, the tone changes in ways you can't predict. Fortunately, the impact wood has on tone is too small to worry about.
@@HighlineGuitars okay...so yes there are differences, but those differences are so small it won't have a substantial or possibly noticeable impact on sound quality. That about summarizes it?
Chris I know this video is old but wood does have an effect on tone even with solid bodies.
But here is the thing that's because different types of wood absorb frequencies differently. As I am learning. So I think everyone treating it so black and white is so wrong headed. And I think we have to remember certain so called tonewoods that sound great I thin layers on acoustic guitars will sound like crap on am electric guitar like spruce wood or cedar wood. Or pine wood.
But you also have a point too that pickups and nuts and saddles and what the neck is made of and fretboard materials and fret type effect the tone. Too.
And that's because different types of wood pick up and absorb frequencies differently.
Which can effect what pickups are going to sound good in a particular guitar.
Me for electrics I am leaning more towards mahagony. But see there are diferent types there is American Hondaran mahogany but there is also African mahogany too
And basswood and maple and perhaps poplar for necks I am leaning towards maple and mahogany necks depending on application.
For fretboard I am in the gaboon ebony camp and bubinga and maple camp.
And by the way people confuse bubinga with rosewood but bubinga is a brighter tone and a prettier wood.
And I am leaning towards stainless steel now for frets because I am sick of uneven fretwire effecting intonation which I can Pick up and why I saying this because I am sick of people saying it has no effecty view is everything when combined together has a effect on tone. But if you pick the wrong wood type for the type of pickup and electronics than that most certainly will effect tone. Which explains why my trusty emg 81 and 85 pickup combination responds better to wood types like I described VS Indian cedarwood but my test to prove it will be coming soon.
Now VS versa a 1980s passive pickup that's not wound as hot in a 1980s basswood body is going to sound diferent in a basswood body than my trusty emgs.
But like I said I now understand why my trusty emgs have never sounded as good In my Jackson made in India body because the body was made of cedarwood or Indian cedro or Indian cedarwood and while that wood is great for acoustics its not great for electric guitars with high gain pickups or active pickups because of how the wood absorbs the frequencies.
So I think you do have a point to about change the pickups if it is not sounding so great.
But that does not negate the fact that the wood type still has an effect to a degree on tone even with an electric.
Along with everything else. so the lesson here is know your wood types eights what you like and don't like and actaully think about what types of sounds you like what type of pickups are you using what type of bridge are you using frets ect neck woods fret types.
So that's where Paul Reed Smith does have a point as does eddie van Halen. Or yngwie malmsteen
I guess I am one of the few rare people that has that kind of ear but even I can tell when someone is bieng absurd like the thickness of the neck wood effecting tone when the type of fretboard material on top of the neck along with the fret type used and everutjkbf else including the electronics.
Or and one other thing the comments about pine wood and leo fender.
I can explain that too because I saw a guy awhile ago build a strat type guitar out of pinewood for the body and used a single coil configuration and yes that might sound good for a three single coil stock standard strat type pickup which is not a high output type pickup but I can tell you right now.
if I built a guitar body out of pinewood or pressure treated Douglas fir from Lowes or Birchwood and, stuck a, Seymour duncan jb pickup in there or the hot rod set or a dimarzio super distortion in there or the hot rod pickup set in those woods or my trusty ekgs or high output pickups they would sound awful in those body types I hope finally my point is made and people stop seeing things so black and white and keep saying they are right when they aren't.
The problem is, you can’t predict how wood will affect the tone of an electric guitar until it is completely finished. Therefore, the only way you can dial in the tone is to modify or change the pickups and/or the controls. You can’t change the wood because the guitar is finished!
@@HighlineGuitars that's true too I was just saying that because I am seeing the comments where everyone is seeing things so one sided. Where I am saying everything is a factor but with wood moisture content plays a factor too that's, why I like seasoning the wood with linseed oil or something like tung oil first because that can have an effect on tone. Too but yes you can change electronics as the other stuff but at the end of the day it still comes down to the same thing know what woods and combos you like first and plan your builds. Heck I am learning more from your channel. Heck last night I figured out something from testing my Jackson neck and wondering why the neck felt odd at the precut Chinese neck pocket so I measured the thickness at the back of the neck pocket. First on the junky king v body measured an inch and 3 quarters. The Chinese body measured almost 2 inches or something like an inch and 9 sevenths or seventeenths which explains why I could feel the neck plate pulsing against my hand uncomfortably, when I was using one of my extreme eddie van halen type of fret access tests. Now that's something a Chinese factory cnc machine can't predict they can copy and try and counterfieght a body te best they can but they will never get the thickness right unless you have a good starting point.
In the 80s I owned a Gibson E2 Explorer, one of those walnut/maple sandwich guitars. That guitar had an inherent sound that I was never crazy about and I tried and tried to “cure” the guitar (which was otherwise wonderful) with pickup swaps. Nothing worked and I eventually sold the guitar. It was then that I knew it wasn’t “all about the pickups”. Obviously pickups are massive and can change a guitar dramatically. But in my 60 years of playing guitar, much of it professionally, it’s been my experience electric guitars have an inherent, fundamental sound which comes through the pickups. Ever play a fiberglass National? An extreme example but illustrative of the point.
I don’t think what you are saying here is off base from what Chris said. As he mentioned, placement of the pickups relative to the scale can have a substantive impact on sound. I suggest bridge type and placement or even body shape that changes how you might place your hand more comfortably or where you pick can cause some of these effects you mention about your gibby. I have this same issue with one of mine, but I can get a much better tone with different hand placement … it’s just not natural on that guitar. Just a thought and not saying you’re wrong.
a Fender with a Gibson pickup Ive found sounds slightly different. I tend to think the head to neck angle plays most of the difference.
I agree, in a solid body, pickups, strings and pick material makes more difference than woods and guitar shape.
I always believe beside the player, the pickup is major component affecting your guitar sound. You have significant different pickup sound from strat, tele, PAF, Duncan distortion, Jeff Beck, TV Jones .........
The fact the only really terrible pickups behave like microphones strongly indicates that the sound of the unplugged guitar has minimal to no effect on the electronic signal produced by decent quality pickups. A pickups is not an amplifier of sound, it converts electromagnetic oscillation into electrical signal, the wood or shape of a guitar has nothing to do with that string-pickup interaction. You can suspend strings across open air without any solidly connected bracing between the nut and bridge ends with the string tensioned by weights hanging on them and if you position a pickup in the right spot it sounds just like a Les Paul.
Just a name.
Jim Lill.
Let's not forget that the magnetic field from the pickup also affects the steel strings. As a guess, a pickup with stronger magnets will pull at the strings more? Also, as the distance between the pickup and strings change, the force of the magnets on the strings will change.
So, the diameter and mass of the strings themselves, coupled with the pickups (pun intended) all come into play.
Pickups an playing style in my opinion. My old guitar was born a turd but you wouldn't think so when you hear it now. Although, I still want good solid wood when I build one because of potential subtleties, durability, etc
I'm not one to believe much in tonewood as i have an engineering background, but i have 2 Gibson Les pauls, same layout, "same" wood species, same pickups, only relevant differences are the nut (bone vs titanium) and finish (gloss nitro VS thin satin nitro) and with the same setup they are quite different sounding, one is my brightest guitar and the other one of the more mellow. Acoustically the difference is also in line with the amplified signal.
I'm not sure why but if i was to give a scientific guess, i would say that due to the different nut/finish the strings vibration is different (as observed in the acoustic differences) and that vibration difference is picked up by the pickups. I can also trace a parallel between my conclusion and the new vs old strings sound difference, if string vibration differences translate to pickups, then guitar materials might somewhat impact the string vibration, how much and which component/material impacts the sound is highly debatable/would require a bunch of scientific tests to assess.
There is simple truth mixed with a whole lot of distortion in the statement, "pickups just reproduce how the unplugged guitar sounds".
At a very fundamental level, yes. Every pickup is simply reproducing the unplugged guitar.
*HOW* it reproduces the unplugged guitar is where the flaw lies in this statement since the quality of wiring, the number of turns, whether or not you add resistors in the circuit will have a distinct effect on the output.
The statement is a lot like saying humans are all basically the same -- a head and brain, two eyes, two arms and legs, and so on. It falls severely short of painting the picture even close to correctly.
And I think, perhaps more importantly, it fails to take into consideration player technique.
Does the orchestra play the music or does the conductor play the orchestra?
I think most seasoned guitar players know that a Fender Stratocaster sounds quite different from a Gibson SG. They are both solid body so why is that? Some so called Fat Strats have a humbucker style pickup in the treble position and the difference is not so much. However the traditional Strat has single coils and sounds much brighter and some may notice that it cuts through the sound of other instruments. Is the Strat louder? No. Its bright treble tone is different than a bass/drums/organ and it is easier to distinguish. On that note the SG has more output from its double coils and overdrives the front end of a say Marshall more easily which results in a fatter and perhaps more sustain sound. The bridge and nut as well as frets have a huge effect on tone as well and again the SG may have an advantage here with the tun-o-matic bridge. The idea that pickups just pass along what they hear without affecting the tone just doesn't stand up to the test. However imagine a guitar made from Balsa wood. I don't think it would have much sustain.
I guess if there is a difference in tone in various sorts of wood or body shapes, one should be able to distinguish them in a sound test. Either recorded or live. I don't hear this difference, but hey may be someone does. I do hear difference between a single and a humbucker though.
What I'd say about wood is that the signal chain starts with a physical process and the physics of strings are very sensitive to the environment around them. Yes the pickup is electromagnetic, but it's interpreting a delicate physical process, so yes I think the density and sonic properties of whatever the strings are mounted on definitely makes a difference. Whether it "Matters".........it depends.
As far as tone is concerned, wood doesn't matter because even the most skilled and experienced luthiers have no idea what impact the choice of wood will have on the tone of an electric guitar until AFTER the guitar is done. They can speculate, but they honestly don't know with any certainty. When the guitar is finished, there is nothing they can do concerning the wood to change the tone of the guitar if it's not what they or their customer desires. All they can do is change the components (pickups, electronics, etc). Therefore, the tonewood debate is a total waste of time.
@@HighlineGuitarsYeah but can't you at least somewhat accurately predict that certain species of ash produce frequency spikes in the 2100-2300hz range? That's kind of been my experience at least. Guitars made of ash have a certain focus on frequencies vs. mahogany which makes them sound "brighter" than the latter. I'm only speaking from experience having played guitars with identical pickups and hardware. Sure there are other factors, but the difference between these two seems pretty consistent. I've yet to play an ash and mahogany guitar with the same pickups where the ash one sounds darker, has more lower mids and less "twang" (which I again define as 2100hz-2300hz)
@@loydthabartender5794 I’ve had Ash that sounded like Mahogany and Mahogany that sounds like Ash and it’s happened enough times to convince me that selecting wood for its alleged impact on tone is a fool’s errand.
@@HighlineGuitarsI've never experienced a piece of ash that was warmer than a piece of mahogany when controlled for pickups/hardware, but in my experience It comes down to density. Woods or any materials, wood or other wise, that is less dense colors the tone a certain way, wood that is denser colors the tone a different way. I've almost always noticed that denser materials produce brighter sounds and less dense materials produce less bright sounds but I don't build guitars, only play them. My issue with people who say "tonewood doesn't matter on electric guitars, only pickups" is that they draw this sharp distinction between electric guitars and acoustics that's not as clear as they think. String vibrations are a phsyical, acoustic process point blank period. Anything that picks up those vibrations, even using an electromagnetic process, is still amplifying something that is deeply affected by physics. There are a lot of ways you can get an electric guitar to make noise without touching the strings, hell without even touching it at all. If the strings can reflect things going on near them, then I think they probably react in some way to the density of the object their soundwaves are bouncing off of.
@@loydthabartender5794 okay, so let’s pretend that wood matters. Now what?
Scale length,placement of the pickup cavities,type of pickups etc etc etc will have an effect on the end result but how much is actually the question....i have found that the big changing factor over anything else are...the speakers... speakers 75% amp 20% and all the rest 5%(and even 5 sounds like a lot).
10 Different guitars all with humbuckers but amp/speakers/mics the same ll yield virtually no difference
10 Different guitars all with single coils but amp/speakers/mics the same ll yield virtually no difference
10 Different guitars half single coils half humbuckers ll yield some differences mostly in the cleans but not much
Any of the above combos but different speakers and mic setups ll yield dramatically different results....
Hi Chris, i made a guitar that the tone is to bassy. I don't know if it has to do with the fact that the scale is short (24 inches), the bridge or the wood (granadilla which is quite hard). But its a strange thing because the tone is felt with the guitar disconnected or rather it resonates less than my other guitars. Sorry for my bad English
Then get a single coil pickup with a low inductance and make sure that the pots used are at least 250kOhms. Further make sure that your guitar cable has a low capacitance (and is not too long). Finally do not forget to tune the distance of the bass and treble side of the pickup to the strings to balance the tone sprectrum.
@@Andreas_Straub i have PAFs with coil splits, and no pots (no tone control and bypassed volume control). The PAFs in coil split (single coil) still bassy
@@julianosorio818 A split humbucker can sound a bit like single coil, but in most cases will not quite reach it. If you really want more treble go single coil.
@@julianosorio818 my friend PAFs are naturally very bassy/muddy. don't forget EQ the amp is a huge part of the tone.
As in all things "acoustic", resonance seems to be the influencer. That would be a combination of all the parts and construction and how those parts react to create a "Feel"
The Tonewood Debate Can A Fence Post Sound Like a Tele Part 2 (tonewood is dead) Episode 303 ruclips.net/video/S3vbK2GRKtY/видео.html
Where Does The Tone Come From In An Electric Guitar - Reaction Video ruclips.net/video/L9weUo7rP3s/видео.html
Tonewood In Acoustic Guitars Vs Electric Guitars
ruclips.net/video/QwyksQqppas/видео.html
The comment you were discussing was of course an oversimplification. There's more to what the pickup is doing than just amplifying the sound of the unplugged guitar. It's as too far in a direction as are claims that the guitar itself has no impact on sound.
Personally, I've noticed that characteristics of the sound of the unplugged guitar come through, no matter what pickup changes are made. I had a Carvin guitar in the 80's that was constructed of hardrock maple. Acoustically it was almost silent, but what little sound it did produce (a pretty bad sound to me) came through in each change of pickups. There was no pickup change that was ever going to fix the sound of that guitar. It was devoid of resonance. It was shrill. A mahogany body SG had a very different sound, no matter what pickups went in that one. Sometimes I moved the bridge pickup from the Carvin to the SG. The pickup sounded different in one guitar than in the other. Additionally, I could get the SG into acoustic feedback with relative ease. The Carvin would only attain acoustic feedback when placed very close to the speaker, at high volume, and high gain. That wasn't a difference in pickups.
You have it a more fair treatment than I've seen sellers of pickups give it. One in particular seems to claim that the only factors are pickups and brand of tone and volume pots. (Yes, he sells those too). Someday I'm going to do a video with a rotary switch and various brands of pots, dating viewers to hear a difference in the carbon of one vs the carbon of another. Though yes, I realize taper and reliability could be a factor, especially for someone who uses them heavily to do volume swells. I'm talking about any alleged difference in tone from one brands of pot to another. I'm convinced that the carbon formulation has no effect on tone.
I have an Epiphone guitar that was maybe $150 new. It's very loud acoustically. And sounds radically different than the Carvin, whether plugged or unplugged. The Carvin is very well constructed, in fact better than the Epiphone. And it was several hundred dollars new, in 1980. Vs an Epiphone that costs a fraction of that, now, more than forty years later.
All of my guitars sound different from one another, though sometimes the difference is subtle. I don't even have to plug them in to hear the difference.
Of course we all know that tapping on the body, while muting the strings, while plugged in, produces sound. And the thud of different guitars is different. Independent of pickups. Some pickups you can even speak into, and get sound.
The pickups are neither a microphone, nor an idealized device that only reacts to the vibrations of strings, and the vibrations of the strings having no effect from the wood or anything else that suspends them. Additionally, different bodies sustain different, mostly independent of pickups. Though one could say that the Carvin has quite good sustain, no matter how bad the sound it makes. It taught me to give far less thought to sustain. I mention sustain only because that too varies from one body to another. Though yes, I do realize that bridge, and to an extent the nut, are factors in that too.
Overall I think you have it a pretty honest and fair assessment, from your own perspective. It seems to me that attack, resonance, and other factors are too often left out of these types of discussions. We all have different ears, and we're all affected differently by different factors.
If I were to nitpick something, it would be a fine detail regarding cables. There are high quality (and expensive) cables that are very unimpressive with regard to capacitance. Some strikingly high. I took too using a capacitance meter to measure capacitance when I get cables, to find out what their capacitance is (divide by length). Some sold as "low capacitance" aren't low capacitance at all. The cost and quality of construction won't tell you the capacitance.
Your experience is interesting. I don't own any Fender guitars, but I've constructed various strat and tele style guitars. My mahogany strat like guitar plays and sounds different than ones constructed of other woods, such as alder and ash. From before it's even plugged in. I wonder if you would hear a difference.
I've seen videos wherein changing the pickguard from plastic to aluminum makes a difference I wouldn't have imagined. I don't mean that one is better than the other, only different. And opinions on which sounds better varies from person to person. With some of course arguing that there is no difference. Additionally a strat from which sound clips were made. Then the body professionally stripped of the poly finish and then redone in nitro. There was a surprising difference. And some who didn't think there should be a difference pressed to know how they could claim that nitro sounded better than poly. The response? We didn't claim that one sounds better than the other. Only different. It varies from individual to individual as far as which they prefer. Another on differences with stainless steel frets. A quite subtle difference, but a difference. So subtle, that although I prefer the sound of regular feet wire, I prefer the feel of stainless steel, so don't mind overlooking the subtle difference.
On one video, someone on the wood doesn't make a difference side chimed in with Danelectro doesn't use a tone wood, and it sounds good! Yes, exactly, different, and yet the difference is still good. Your case isn't supported by saying that this guitar not made of wood still sounds good, even though different. Exactly. Different.
In the modern era, the tone and sustain of an electric guitar can be massively altered using pedals and software.
@HighlineGuitars Yes, I know. But it isn't the guitars sustain that's being increased, but rather amplified as it drops in level. I was speaking of the string's vibration. Also, we had distortion, overdrive, fuzz, and compressor pedals back in the 80's. The Carvin was long on sustain, and short on tone. They probably went with constructing the whole thing out of hardrock maple partly to add natural sustain, which was one of their bragging points.
Every guitarist who tried playing it hated it right away. Including some recording artists. It didn't matter which pickups I had in it at the time.
Around 2001, I started playing again. I was drawn to the Carvin Holdsworth Fat Boy. My wife at the time wanted to get me one, because of the Ensemble I was playing in, and she didn't think that mahogany strat style guitar, finished with tung oil, cut it looks wise in front of an audience. I told her just one rule. No maple. She got the neck in mahogany, rather than maple, and the top in koa, rather than maple. It looked beautiful. It played beautiful. It sounded beautiful. I got a lot of positive comments about the tone I got with it. Even before I changed pickups. Rich, resonant, and woody. Sweet. It was the opposite of the DC150 I got in 1980. And not remotely as heavy.
But, for all I know, there might be guitarists who would insist there's no difference in how the two sound. It's hard to imagine. But I suppose it's possible. For all of us, our ears tune into different things.
I saw Warmoth use a guitar wherein they changed between different necks, made of different woods. The subtle differences were obvious to me. But some claimed there was no difference between them. It was baffling. I found that the ones I liked best turned out to be woods I didn't expect to like the sound of better. But in another guitar body, who knows, it might have changed which ones I preferred. And of course others listening to the clips preferred others. But again, some claimed to hear no difference at all, and that thus none of the rest of us heard any difference. Even in my sixties I can hear the difference. The senses differ, from individual to individual.
I think perhaps the species of wood is less important than the quality of the wood. My point is that if you take a look at mid-range guitars by big companies like Gibson or Fender, there is going to be a range of wood quality that is used on the same models. These guitars will also sound different.
I think that in your example of building 5 guitars with different woods for the same customer that are otherwise identical, one factor to keep in mind is that you are building 5 of the best guitars this customer could ever dream of buying. You are hand-selecting the woods, hardware, and pickups, and doing all the finish/setup work yourself. Because you’re are undoubtedly using the finest woods you can get your hands on, your guitars are pretty much always going to be great and probably have a consistent sound.
I would be surprised if 5 run of the mill guitars of the same model would show as much consistency, and how much of the inconsistency could be chocked up to wood.
I agree, i have bright "mahogany" and mellow alder guitars, wood species is meaningless to me, it all comes down to the quality of the wood blanks used.
One of the big factor is "who is the judge". Everyone has different hearing capability and especially if focusing on certain frequency. So when some people said they can't hear any difference and it is also true there are another group of folks who can really tell the wood types, pickups, amps, etc.
I tend to agree and I have had similar results myself with different body woods. However I have a good example of tonewood demonstrated, 1958 ES 335 versus a 1958 Les Paul standard.....same hardware, pickups and wiring, same neck. The only difference is the body itself and we all agree (I hope) that they sound different.
No the same nut, bridge - the other main contributors to the specific sound of a guitar.
@@Andreas_Straub yeah they have the same bridge and nut yet sound different. The body is the only difference
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 Well, the the 335 is a semi-acoustic instrument. What I said, was about solid body guitars. As the name implies - a semi acoustic guitar is a different instrument.
@@Andreas_Straub the pickups aren't acoustic, they only generate a signal based on the vibration of the strings. What they're mounted to will allow a certain amount of vibration of the pickup itself and these frequencies phase out or add to certain frequencies of the strings. Thats why body material is so important the ES has a very light tonewood compared to a Les Pauls dense tonewood hence a different tone. There is no acoustic signal there at all.
@@murrayguitarpickups9545 Nearly correct. The difference with a semi-acoutic instrument is that the string mounting points - especially the bridge - will get into resonance with the thin wood of the semi-acoustic instrument. So indirectly the electric pickups will also pick of vibrations of the body. This is practically not happening with a solid body guitar, which was discussed in this video.
Hi
My belief is that wood that a guitar is a pure question of looks, l love building with ash love the look , the weight and even the smell of it as I cut and sand it. However that is just my opinion! The woods that are used make so little difference that it's undetectable in the end . Except Pine anyone who builds a guitar out of pine was raised by wolves! Just saying. 😂 It is just for the effect bass wood sounds the same as alder in the end .
I could write for hours about what you said in this video! But will stick to two points:
1) You don't play a guitar or an amplifier, you play a complex system which includes the wood the body is made of, the strings, the pickups, the tone and volume circuit plus the cable, the amplifier (with all it's internal complexities), the loudspeaker and it's enclosure plus the listening environment. Lots of contributing components each affecting the final sound to a greater or lesser extent.
2) To suggest that a pickup simply outputs the sound of the unamplified guitar is to completely misunderstand how a pickup works. Place a microphone in front of the guitar and this is what you'll get, but a magnetic pickup (plus control, plus cable, plus amplifier input impedance) has it's own non-flat frequency response and also has a very non-linear amplitude response to the vibration of the strings, adding overtones and intermodulation products of it's own. Listen to the sound of an acoustic guitar with a microphone in front of it and then with a magnetic pickup fixed in the soundhole. Very different physics giving very different sounds.
OK, Three! Not many of us get the chance to put the same pickups into 5 completely different solid bodies and compare the sound. Great to have the results of your experience.
Anyone who has played a solid body electric guitar for any length of time will gravitate towards a guitar that feels right in their hands and appeals to them visually. Brand loyalty may play into it, also. At that point, you can "buy" your sound if there's a need to make tonal changes.
Pickups, amp, and the player have the bggest effects on tone.
So does the commenter think that a single coil and humbucker sound the same in the same guitar? I think he may have been thinking about something but just didn't explain it.
About that viewer comment, if the pickups just reproduce the sound and doesnt have any effect on the tone why are there so many different brands and models. And a lot of people keeps saying tonewood is the most important thing and then use a 2000$ amp. I think what makes a guitar good is the playibility and the quality of the hardwares used like pickups bridge etc.
Tonewood is a myth created by the industry to justify the prices of the instruments. The wood has only optical, haptic and cost effects.
To me, an electric guitar or bass is basically still an acoustic(!) instrument. The only difference is the way the string vibrations get amplified to an audible level - mechanically vs. electrically.
If you hear something in an electric guitar's "acoustic" tone that's not present in the "electric" tone, and you want it so badly to be present, you might experiment with different pickups, PU positions, amps, speakers, cables, dynamic processors etc. - that's cool. But don't expect any of these changes to produce something that's not already there.
PUs are all about *re* -production. Not production...
I recently saw a video that demonstrated the effect of Pickguard Mounting vs Direct Screw Mounting inside the pickup cavity of the Neck location: ruclips.net/video/NRAgvxPs7QI/видео.html
Direct Mounting reduced/smoothed out the high treble frequencies and the attack. I haven't tried that on my Strat, but probably will at some point for the Bridge pickup.
Only the amp is being heard in a recording or on stage. While the vibration of the wood may have a slight impact, I’m convinced that everything being equal the pickups and their placement is the most important factor. Other factors do matter but nowhere near as impactful.
Have you seen Tylers video trying to find out, if the actual electric guitar body has an influence on the sound? I believe this is a wonderful proof, that the body has nearly no influence on the sound. The solid body electric guitar is NO ACOUSTICAL INTRUMENT. Actually a resonating body will negatively affect the guitars sustain, as energy is moved from the string vibration into the body, which changes it into thermal energy. So the wood has only optical, haptic and cost related effects.
It doesn't appear links are allowed with Highline guitars so I copied and will paste direct evidence and this comes from the classic (ARCHIVES OF GUITAR ACOUSTICS) website .
IF THIS POST IS DELETED BY CHRIS IT MEANS HE IS NOT AN HONEST INDIVIDUAL AND DOESN'T WANT TO BE PROVEN INCORRECT.
"The tonewood used in the construction of an electric guitar can have an impact on the sound produced by the instrument. Changes are observed in both spectral envelope and the produced signal levels, and their magnitude exceeds just noticeable differences found in the literature. Most listeners, despite the lack of a professional listening environment, could distinguish between the recordings made with different woods regardless of the played pitch and the pickup used"
we arent talking about acoustic guitars
Do we play Guitars or Amps? Well the answer is yes we do. Both
Pickups aren't microphones.
All wood is tone wood.
I've built myself 3 guitars so far.
All 3 bolt neck and 25 1/2" scale.
One is swamp ash with a walnut fretboard and maple neck. One is cherry with a rosewood fretboard and maple neck. The 3rd is a one-piece African mahogany strat with a pau ferro fretboard and a 5 piece maple and walnut neck. I put the same pickups in the same locations, with the exception of the strat having single coils in the neck and middle positions.
With the exception of the single coils, I can't tell them apart through an amp.
I'll say it again.
Pickups are not microphones.
All wood is tone wood.
I would like a list of the worst possible woods to build a guitar out of, from the tonewood crowd. I'll build my next guitar out of those woods and see how it sounds.
No ill will intended.
Former tonewood believer.
I'm an electrical engineer in the world of control systems so I know a little bit about how frequency response curves work (though generally in a different context than they are seen in musical instruments).
Pickups can have a pretty dramatic "shaping" influence depending on what frequencies they attenuate (and in the case of having resonant peaks above 0 dB, amplify).In all cases, pickups can only modify the source frequencies that are input into them, so to a certain extent the frequency response of the unplugged guitar will matter in that way.
With that being said, generally speaking pickups that are lower output tend to have more of an attenuation effect, meaning they diminish the amplitude of certain signals they are exposed to rather than amplify them. In cases like this where the pickups aren't actively amplifying specific resonant frequency bands, the "natural sound" of the guitar will matter more.
In higher output pickups where you have certain areas with a frequency response above 0 dB (and this is especially true in active pickups which sometimes even have direct digital equalization via an onboard pre-amp like the Fishman Moderns), you will see a much more "pickup" focused tone and less of the frequency response of the acoustic portion of the instrument will matter in terms of the received signal.
At least, this is the best I understand the issue right now. In any case, you can do direct inductance frequency response curves on pickups if you want to get really down in the weeds for what specific frequency response characteristics the pickups have. People don't do that generally because it's expensive and not really necessary, but you can get as arbitrarily precise with the frequency response curves as your manufacturing capacity and budget allows.
Everything changes when you crank up the volume.
I'll take it out a step further... to an extent, does the instrument play the player? Did you know that in horror movies, they often use sound frequencies that humans can't hear, but yet we still feel them and they cause us anxiety? So could sonic qualities that aren't necessarily so obvious to our ears still influencing how we play? Could two guitars sound the same but feel different, and could those vibrations influence the player and also perhaps the audience? Causing anxiety the same as in those movies, or perhaps the opposite, swaying them towards ecstasy... can we ever truly know...
You know that video where the dude stretched a bunch of strings across two work benches and threw a pickup underneath and then played some slide? And then he tried to prove that the tone is all in the pickup?
And then everyone ate it up, without noticing that his strings-stretched-across-two-workbenches sounded like crap?
Everything: Floyd vs. Vintage, Maple vs Rosewood, Pickup type and brand, and body wood, all affect the tone. If not, then my poplar tele with a chopper T would sound like my ash tele with a chopper T. They are different.
A pickup is not a mic, so the guy who said it just reproduces how the unplugged guitar sounds, is objectively wrong. But wood and build has significant leverage on tone. At least, it's significant to me. Not everyone will hear it, or care.
Two solid body guitars of the same model can sound different right off of the rack. Nut and bridge material and setup influence tone more than body or neck wood. Slight changes in pickup height influences tone more than body wood.
"sounded like crap" :)) that's bs. It sounded the same for 98% of the people who watched that video. but than again, one must listen with the ears, not the eyes.
Justin johnson can make a shovel sound great, like Gilmour says "you can buy my old guitars but you don't get my hands" we can make lovely instruments and put in the best of hardware, even make them easier to play and sound nice, you unfortunately have to give it over to a musician to play it 🤣
what do you mean by body shape? because if you put a gibson lespaul humbucker into a lespaul body shape guitar and neck construction of set neck with LP style headstock then put that humbucker into a Strat and expect them to both sound the same and play the same response feel and sustain wise it will not happen.
ALSO
if you have a ash hard wood body that is very well kiln dried to 5% then a wet piece from green lumber just off the sawmill at around 50% moisture or even 30%. the 30% moisture body will likely sound very very wooly fluffy and lacking clarity and sustain and volume compared to the kiln dried 5% piece.
you can do this experiement your self with a wet piece of timber firewood and a dry piece. bang them with a hard stick or metal and here which sound is more responsive and loud for the energy hammered on the wood. the wet wood vibration travels slower through it because the liquid in the wood absorbing the vibration energy
I agree with pickups being the biggest single variable in the ELECTRIC guitar as a whole.
BUT
if you start with a very wet and poorly assembled 'electric guitar' body and neck and fretwork and put gr8 pickups in it , it will just be a GREAT reproduction sound of a beaten up poorly made instrument!!!
this can be good for low fi rock guitar sounds and one off tones for a track, but the instrument for 'general' use or will stand out like a bad apple or broken if that makes sense?
although for that lo fi sound the best way to get that sound would be to make a good quality well made electric guitar with minor built in flaws like certain frets intonated sharp or flat or buzzing in certain frets to a certain amount or other usually undesirable extra noises to be used for effect
@@ukguitaryogi2888 major effects on the sound can be expected from the pickups, the strings and all parts directly in contact with the strings like the bridge and the nut. Some effects can be added by the electronics used. The guitar body material and shape are irrelevant in a solid body electric guitar.
@@Andreas_Straub explain how a lespaul sounds so different to a strat in the above scenario then? you didnt answer my point and if you dont know the difference in sound and playing response then you need to play more guitar
@@ukguitaryogi2888 scale Length?? Pickups Position?? Different Bridgestone?? Tremolo vs tune-o-matic?
It baffles me the pseudo-science that permeates the guitar community. There are so many well documented, controlled experiments that all say that pickups are the overwhelming decider of a guitar's tone when it comes to the components of the guitar, itself. To quote the poster you referenced, though, "...believe what you wish."
A solid body instrument is firstly an acoustic device with a transducer connected to an amplification device. The same things that affect its un-amplified tone will also have a varying degree of effect on its amplified tone. Woods, finishes, colors, and shapes all affect the aesthetic and the feel of the instrument and those will also affect how the instrument is played and by extension, its tone.
Sorry, this is just a myth. Did you see Tylers video? Do you need any more proof? Why are there guitars with practically no wood body (like Relish guitars) and they sound the same as any othe guitar using the same pickup and pickup position?
What about harmonics, a non potted pickup will produce more harmonics than a potted pickup. Number of windings and wire gage will also change the signal produced by the pickup. Finally, the amp will take that signal and process it through analog, digital or both and then send it to a speaker. The output from the speaker is what is heard by humans. In general, I think that your example only proves that the same pickup in the same location, relative to scale length will sound the same in a solid body guitar.