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Dylan Talks Tone would probably argue wood has nothing to do with it. As a violinist, I believe the wood affects how you interact with the instrument and how it responds to you. It changes to your style over time. The varnish affects the instrument, affects how porous it is, how it resonates… everything affects the end product. It’s an organic material that creates vibrations - of course the ingredients affect the end product. That’s one of the magical, unknown things that makes wooden instruments wonderful. It wasn’t until I replaced my stock single coils with Yonderbosk Sovereign pickups that I finally understood HOW important pickups are in an electric guitar. Everything, even the minute details, affects the end product. Wood matters. Period.
@@twenty3electronics He installed a pickup in a standing fence, and it sounded like a guitar. It's the pickups. And your comment proves you are a moron.
Wood makes very little difference in electrics, maybe some dampening or resonance. It's 95-98% pups. In a blind test, most of us could not tell a difference. By far, most of it is confirmation bias, we swear it's so different because we *think* it is.
Awesome to find someone like Baxter who doesn’t like anything in front of an amp! We are a rare breed 😁 Tried pedals for a few years & they are cool but they change the feel & sound too much for me. Glad to know I’m not the only weirdo 😅
JUst to add . . . I'm new to eclectic but a trusted luthier said, #1 tone is is pick ups, #2 speaker, #3 amp. He said, wood has a role, but is a part of the many compromises of the equipment and building that makes up an electric guitar. At the same time, personally, I think wood plays more into the sub tones and harmonics that add to the vibrations picked by the pickups . . . there are people who can hear things that other can't. The Smashing Pumpkins dude said he could notice diff of white guitars vs others. ANd myself, I couldn't hear the beat of a song until I was in highschool . I remember as a kid my older cousins and sisters trying to teach me to dance, and keep a beat, I couldn't hear it. Then mid highschool, I suddenly began to hear beats in hip hop jams etc . . . 4 Torrefication, Martin, Taylor, Anderson and Suhr swear by it, and entire Finland Luthiery stands behind it, plus the Fins have science behind it (research and studies, white papers) from Finnish Universities. Those dudes know way more than I do regarding guitar building. I think the brittle thing or lack of tone diff from Torrefication is prob bad / wrong technique. The Finnish dudes who pioneered it, know how to do it, they have papers on how to do it, but alot of wood places torrefcation in the US don't differentiate what the end product of torreficaiton, like not for electric but for furniture and building structures, which is a different process then the ones pioneered . . . Gruhn hates it because Martin figured out if torrefication is done right it gets ball park vintage pre war Martin sounds , and Martin does own pre war guitars to compare 2 . .. and given how good relicing is and now the wood get same range of tones as 80 yr old electric guitars . . alot of dudes won't go for vintage when you can get it much cheaper with relic and proper torri wood. Think acoustics design plays a role as well, look @ mcpherson carbon fiber . . . wood affect the tones but if design takes into account the material (like mcpherson does with carbon fiber) after all Boeing engineers composites to reduce vibrations and certain frequencies coming from jet engines . . .
PRS is making ching now selling the PRS SE Silver Sky using poplar wood. Not the tone wood I look for in a guitar, and not something I am going to spend my money on.
I've built 2 tele style guitars using old growth reclaimed tulip poplar. They sounded fantastic. So I decided to build myself a Nashville tele with the poplar also. I can't say how other poplar species will sound. But I really like the tulip.
Before I finally made my way to my AVRI and CS basses I had owned a MIM Fender that I outfitted with a vintage correct tone circuit and SD Antiquity 57 style Raised A pickups. Sounded pretty darn close to my AVRI 57 P. The wood in terms of change of tone was probably something only P bass devotees would notice (poly vs nitro may add to that a hair, too. Though likely more now that the thick nitro is wearing through nicely). That said, the difference in quality of wood really seems to make the most difference in terms of playability. The acoustic tone of those quality ash body and maple neck basses just sing and they resonate like crazy without needing to be heavy to rely solely on mass alone. Moreover, both of those basses are insanely stable and resistant to temperature and humidity changes. They never need anything. Same old set of flats on each. Every MIM standard P with a modern neck I had owned were very temperamental. Might be younger wood, lack of wood due to the modern radius, the modern truss vs vintage. Could be a number of things. So, to me. The difference in wood for electrics comes into play most in terms of how it relates to playability. JMO, of course.
Stiff hard woods resonate less, and that's why there's more sustain, because the energy isn't being robed by softer more flexible materials. Les Pals have more sustain, because there's way less resonant neck, via its shorter scale length and the fingerboard extending way into the body, and not because its mahogany! It's all physics, but in short, you do not want a resonant electric guitar, as energy gets converted and dissipated: You want as much as possible to stay in the strings for the pickups to sense, and not lose it. Most finishes are hard enough to not make any difference at all, unless it has a very thick rubbery finish, and both poly and acrylic can be hard or soft, depending on who makes it and for what. Nitrocellulose gets quite soft when warm. Wood has near zero to do with playability: You need to think harder about it, as you are making a correlation fallacy: Corelation does not equal causation.
The top of my Silverangel mandolin was cut in a redwood forest, milled into post and beam lumber, shipped to the east coat to build a warehouse at the end of the nineteenth century, then reclaimed when the building was torn down. Some was suitable for mandolin tops for a mandolin built in Tennessee. Then the mandolin was shipped back to California for me to play. It is likely to have originated from as close as twenty miles to 200 from where I live. I call that a full circle.
All wood is tone wood. What sounds "good" is subjective. People listen with their eyes at least as much as with their ears. All marketers need to do is tell us it's made of "special" wood using a few magical words (i.e. "genuine", "traditional", "vintage", "bright", "airy", "focused", "warm", "sparkling", "resonant", et al. You know, words that don't really mean anything definable, but they make us feel good) in order to suck us in and convince us that we must have it. My mind could be changed if someone undertakes a well-designed, double blind study with listeners accurately identifying what kind of wood a guitar is made from based only on its sound.
@@flatstheflounder9874 The strings count too, but they do not vary much between brands. The amps design can make a big difference, especially the cab and speakers, as those have big acoustic properties. Yeah, these guy's have no clue!
With electric guitars it's the amp, then the pickups, then the strings, then the wiring, then the supporting hardware (bridge, pickup mount, nut...) and then maybe, just maybe the wood (and more in the sustain deprtment than anything else).
Ancient cultures would bind young trees when a child was born and when they reached a certain age they would harvest the tree and make a bow. Don't know why I'm telling you this. Lol
Great episode guys! Hey, I was wondering if you can do an episode on how regular players (like myself) can go about demoing top-shelf pro gear. My experience has been that 60%-70% of stock in both mid and large guitar stores consist of mainly low to mid priced guitar gear (
no need to be intimidated. in every good shop it should be possible. just ask if you could try em :) just one thing: dont wear a jacket with zippers, any huge belt or a watch on your strumming hand in order to reduce possibility of scratching the guitar. if it happens that the stuff will look at you and think who is this guy to play that pricy guitar then just leave the shop and never come back :)
I had the same anxiety early on, but at some point, I just got over it and politely asked if I could try out a LP or something. They had to move that big huge ladder (at GC) and they didn’t mind at all. It was quite amazing really. I have also found that they will sometimes actually appreciate hearing the rarely played stuff. Lastly, the strings are almost always better on the lesser played stuff.
Here’s the deal even Taylor uses impoverished nations to make profits. Old growth wood is not doing anyone any good in the forest the problem is replanting or the lack there of. Also using mahogany for electric guitars is the biggest waste of mahogany period. To think wood matters NOTICEABLY in a solid body guitar is not only anti-science it’s essentially denying 1 + 2 = 3.
I’ve seen a video where Paul Reed Smith talks about tone woods. And he picks up a piece and he taps on it and you can just hear that it’s musical. I absolutely think there’s something to it, I like it and I like that someday I’m going to be able to pass my guitars onto my children or grandchildren and that the world will continue to get better and better as it ages and relics naturally.
I agree, I've seen that video too. It makes sense that certain types of wood and even individual pieces of wood make a difference in terms of resonance. Paul's philosophy is that you want to build a guitar with parts that don't take away from the natural tone and resonance. I think that's why PRS guitars are so good. My Custom 24 Artist is amazing!
I agree with you about the wood. It changes everything. I have a very inexpensive electric guitar that resonates better than most of my much more expensive ones. It changes the way it sounds and plays and the way I play it. It still has stock pickups. I won't sell it and I won't change anything about the said guitar. It's a California guitar. A very old one.
@@tball5677 check out the tonewood comparisons Warmoth did on their RUclips channel. You might be surprised that you can hear the differences and they pretty much fall in line with the collective wisdom on electric guitar tonewood. Remember these tonewood “myths” arose from highly discerning players with amazing ears, not the casual listener. Maybe these old cats learned from experience?
I use reclaimed old growth woods whenever I can. I have several guitars built with old growth tulip poplar. I have old rosewood taken from an old library that was demolished. And other reclaimed tone woods. I'm always looking for reclaim to work with.
Sweet! I made a matching pair of guitars out of a big tulip poplar beam that came out of an old winery. So light and resonant. I also build a guitar out of chunk of hundred year old heart pine bowling alley floor. It was a pain in the ass dealing with all of the nails and turning it into useable wood but it turned out rather nicely
I think that so much of an acoustic guitar’s sound is about the construction and the finishing. The bracing, scalloping, the voicing can make or break the quality of the sound. It’s kinda like building a house, not all brick houses are equal.
I can't wait to get a couple guitars built and make a trip to come see you guys, I'm gonna be making multi laminate necks out of 200 year old oak that I milled about a year ago. I'm really gonna push the envelope for putting the most magic into an instrument, costs and labor be damned!
I play blues, wood is important to me in the construction of an instrument. If I played metal? Probably go with basswood. With all those pedals etc, It don't make a difference. But if playing straight into a tube amp, boosted mids, low/0 distortion...yeah, then it's important to me.
I don’t know about the wood, but there is something special about older guitars (if you like to play it). I have a Guild Starfire IV built in 1964. It’s not the one I play most, but sometimes when I pick it up I wonder about the first 25 years of it’s life. It was obviously played a lot. I bought it at a pawn shop, so I know nothing of the previous owner(s). Someone really enjoyed it.
I'm a big fan of Taylor guitars. I just bought a 317e, and I love it. But I had a 2005 814ce fall limited with cocobolo back and sides, and besides the absolute beauty of it, it had such a bright and distinct tone to it none of my other acoustics have ever had. Even to my untrained ears, tone woods make a huge difference. By the way, I did get to play a GT 811e a couple weeks ago. I absolutely loved it, but I just could not pay 3K for it. I do listen to what you guys say in your videos. It has helped me out a lot. Thanks for all of the info you give.
I'm a weirdo who plays his electrics unplugged a lot. Woods totally make a tonal difference in that aspect. Also, the SHAPE of the wood makes a difference. Fatter necks seem to resonate better than thinner shred necks. Wood definitely matters for acoustic. Whether or not this makes the biggest difference when the signal goes through a pickup and into an amp is a harder argument to make. But even if you can't HEAR the difference when played through the amp, I can FEEL the difference when the vibrations move up my arm from the neck, and I think that's important.
Yeah, I mean, an es and sg (57 classics) are very different animals when you play them unplugged. But once you plug them in...a lot of that goes away. A lot of us believe there's a difference. Whether that means anything? Whether we could tell in a blind sound test is another story. In an electric, wood only dampens or allows some resonance. EQ is maybe different in a light mahogany verses a dense maple. But 95% of the sound is pickups. 3% strings 2% wood, mostly resonance.
I play unplugged electrics all the time. Maybe more than anything else Bc I play when my kids go to bed. . Some ppl say it’s bad for feel etc but idk. What do you think?
@@84kjk Ummm... I think if you play your amp overdistorted it can actually be beneficial. But you should definitely know how to dial in your amp if your gonna play a gig.
Have to at least partially agree with Baxter. In the 70's and 80's only used a Crybaby. In the 90's I started adding pedals, year and a half ago I got rid of my huge pedal board and lots of pedals. Settled on 4 pedals including a Crybaby, Danecho, Flamma reverb, and TCE Mojo Mojo. Never been happier. And I do like playing without the pedal board also.
I met a pro bluegrass touring musician who had one of the smaller builders (collings?) dye his brazilian rosewood dreadnought to look like plain old regular rosewood. Traveling and touring with certain woods across borders is illegal. It was a class at bluegrass camp where he also commented something to the effect of seeing a lot of expensive guitars and calling into question our sanity if we werent professional musicians. I guess the whole torrefied process is to emulate years of playing vibrations to "open up" the guitar. Nothing like the give it to me now mindset to get the money out of your wallet. I agree with Baxter about being able to "hear" the difference and also that skillset not coming automatically with your new guitar. A big part of that could be a simplified clean signal chain and years of playing time with a preferred set up and settings on the amp. If you know the sound or tone you like and how different guitars effect that, you might have a bigger set of information to draw on
That's not technically true. You can get an instrument passport for an instrument that has either Brazilian rosewood or ivory in it, if you have the ability to show that they were legally obtained. Ask US Fish & Wildlife for more information.
Thanks for making this video. Every time I so much as mention "tonewood" there's at least 3 idiots saying stuff like "SUCKER! wood doesn't have any effect ur a sucker!!!!! hurrrrr" The dumbest thing about this argument is the idea that strings vibrate in a vacuum, which would have to be true if only the pickups mattered, but it's the exact opposite. The strings react to literally everything around them. The bridge break angle, the frets, the fretboard material, the pick, and yes the density of the material that they are mounted on. The effect wood has on the tone varies heavily on the tone stack (pickups, amp etc.) and other aspects of the guitar (floating bridges make it far less noticible), My RG471 and RG550 are made out of different woods but they sound identical because I have a Dimarzio Titan in the bridge and play them through a 6505. However my American strat sounds completely different from the Mahogany stratocasters I've played, and it's not due to pickups. The Mahogany strats have harmonics that are not audible on the Alder body strat. Playing a mahogany strat or tele through an amp on the edge of breakup will demonstrate clearly the effect that wood has on a guitar. Whether wood "matters" or not is completely subjective, but to say it has absolutely no effect is moronic.
Thank you for taking the time to share that loyd. We were just talking to day and had a simple thing to add there as well. I’m a capitalistic society, if there was something that the manufactures could make, that was cheaper than wood, and could have it molded precisely to a machined and stamped process for a guitar…it would have been done. The wood is real:) Thanks a ton again for your thoughts and best to you always!
Just started watching you guys. Great channel. You guys seem genuine and just love guitars. Wood maters. Hard agree that the Am Pro ii series are great. First new guitar I've bought outside of a JMJM, but I had to go with an Alder option body cuz it just seemed right over the roasted pine. As a rosewood only guy I have to say that I love the roasted maple necks though. Excited to see the builders come through and talk about the state of the industry and how they approach wood.
I discovered something interesting the other day. Last week I finished building a Tele style guitar with a Paulownia body and Maple neck, the fretboard is roasted. You can feel that body resonate as you play. Paulownia is sustainable and light but it's soft. It's twice as loud acoustically as my Ash body/Maple neck Fender Tele, and putting my ear up close, the neck puts out as much sound as the body, perhaps more, on both guitars. Maybe the neck is the tonewood we should be concerned about.
Great, but you are describing a loss of energy! Since when do record or play shows with an electric guitar that's not plugged in? Pickups get nothing from resonating wood, and neither do strings! You want to keep as much mechanical energy in the strings, so there's more for the pickups! These guy's have no clue, and neither of them seem to understand basic physics! Don't listen to them! Just do a search on "Tonewood debunked" and you will find everything from experienced players over instrument builders to physicists saying it's total BS! Your resonant body is the main drain, because its absorbing energy from the strings. Weight doesn't matter, stiffness is everything!
@@Bob-of-Zoid I used to agree with you completely. I come from a long history with high end stereo equipment. The main concern there is keeping spurious vibrations away from your equipment, especially your turntable, and primarily your cartridge. The difference here is that a turntable is trying to reproduce a sound, while a guitar is producing the sound in the first place. Vibrating strings on anything necessarily produce vibrations in whatever they are mounted on. A pickup, mounted on a surface that is vibrating, will also be vibrating, and the magnetic field in which the strings are vibrating will be vibrating, adding its vibration to the vibration of the strings. The only way you could be losing energy would be if the pickup was vibrating in same direction as the string. This apparently doesn't happen because all pickups do indeed create a current which we can amplify and convert into sound. And, if indeed any energy is "lost", it is easily made up for with a slight turn of the volume knob. Where "lost" energy would really be noticed is in sustain, but then again, the "lost" vibration in the wood has to either be dissipated as heat or go somewhere else, like back into the strings, which would then go back into the pickups. Do I think the wood in a solid body guitar is particularly important to the sound? No. I don't. The ash body on my Tele also sounds good, as does the plywood body on my archtop, as does the masonite and plywood body on my Danelectro, as does the fiberglass body on my Supro. The Supro has an aircraft grade aluminum beam for a neck, nearly indestructible, and it vibrates too. I would challenge you to make a completely stiff and inert guitar, and tell me if you prefer it to a lossy guitar. An electric guitar is not just a set of strings vibrating in a magnetic field. It is a complete mechanical system, and whether one likes that system or not, is purely up to the individual.
I don't think on a solid body electric wood makes a difference with any real distinction in terms of sound. That said wood makes a huge difference in very important properties of an instrument such as appearance, weight and feel. I mean I have an artist grade top / brazilian rosewood board 594 for a reason.
I had a doctor say to a kid who vaped that got Corona for the, no kidding, 3rd time and had the 3 vaccines. He said "You vape, don't you? I'd rather you smoked." How bad is vaping if a doctor tells you that.
I am getting ready to build a guitar from reclaimed wood that a friend was using for fire wood. Its from a construction site where they were building a bridge. I don't even know what kind of wood it is. I just remember watching some of it burn in the pit on one week end while having a few beers. I could see that the wood was quite dense by the way it was burning and it occurred to me it might make a nice guitar. So I asked my buddy for a few pieces to build with
The wood plays a huge part in it. The guys who say it doesnt dont factor in the age like you guys said nor the moisture content. If the guitar doesnt resonate due to water in it or just the fact the body and neck cancel each other out then of course youre not going to feel it impacts much as at that point youre hearing a lot of the pickups. Get something that vibrates and resonates really well and that all changes.
I'am not sure if YAMAHA still do this but they used to vibrate the wood hundreds of thousands of times in order to try & age the wood, they did this to solid bodys as well as acoustic woods. Either way they make fantastic guitars such as my 1984 yamaha SG & more people should try old japanese guitars they are fantastic.
I know for a fact that the build and the wood do make a difference. I know it because ive got 3 guitars from 3 different makers, that all have the same set of emg active 81/85s. And every one of those 3 guitars have their own distinct tone. I set up all my guitars the same and i also use the same strings on them all so i know the wood changes the tone. Not huge difference but its noticeable.
Also I find it's the finish that's applied to the wood that has the most impact on sound and resonance, I've stripped tons of poly guitars and refinished in nitro and yes they are much better in the tone spectrum,, apply this to sexy tone wood and bang😎 you can't polish a turd fellas
I agree it makes a difference. But the better the player you are, the more important it is. I’m a beginner and I struggle to play cleanly. A beautiful tone wood is wasted on me. But if you are a good player and can afford the finer tone woods, why wouldn’t you go for it? We only go around once, treat yourself.
As a wood worker myself here in North Idaho I run across old growth wood out of old barns and and homes the wood when turned into guitars sounds phenomenal when compared to newer woods for guitars that I build.
My uncle had been collecting wood mainly burl woods for 60 years he turns his stuff into bowls and gunstocks. He is out of Sacramento. He will go to farmers and offer money to them for trees that are old and need to come down. That's how he sources his woods.
We’ve all seen the videos of guitars made out of glass, aluminum, hell even a cardboard strat. They all sounded like a guitar. I’m of the belief the pickups, the amp, and the microphone on the speaker are the biggest contributors to the sound. Think about it, the strings are a fraction of an inch above the pickup, that’s what you’re hearing in my opinion.
@@twenty3electronics I don’t get the leap to imagining that wood information can be sent into a magnet and wire coil. I think the pickup is detecting the vibration of the metal string. We all know you can’t use catgut strings with a magnetic pickup. So, the only thing that I can imagine is that the wood type might make the sting vibrate longer or lesser. So maybe there is a such thing as sustain wood but not tone wood. The way an acoustic guitar produces sound has been superimposed to the solid body electric even though one has a pickup sending the sound though a wire and the other has a wood top that vibrates and does actually produce the sound and color of the note you hear.
The wood effects how much of the vibrational energy is retained by the string. The wood only takes away sound. Different woods absorb certain frequencies more than others. It acts like an EQ. Maple is bright because it is hard and doesn’t absorb high frequencies as readily. The harder the material, the less it absorbs vibration, so the more sustain it has. The wood also affects the attack characteristics of the notes, such as snappy or round etc...
@@twenty3electronics Interesting that it's said you can tell a good guitar by how it sounds when you play it unamplified. Seems like the resonance of the particular wood has to make a difference, even if the pickups are more important. Not agreeing or disagreeing, but it seems to make sense.
@@twenty3electronics ok, let’s say you’re right about wood eq’ing frequencies. Then why did that cardboard strat sound exactly like every other strat? On top of that, in the case of a regular wood strat, the pickups are mounted to a plastic pick guard. Does that mean Fender found the right tone plastic for the pick guard? I mean to me you’re position would maybe make sense for pickups mounted to the wood.
OK, wood is important (it has always been), but these days, we have guitars made of pretty much every material with more or less successful iterations like the LavaMe guitars (they sound incredible). Darrell Brown did an excellent experiment with his cut strat and other models, and Glen Fricker (from Spectre Sound Studios) also did a great video measuring the outputs. All in all, there are a lot of preferences, and as the new John Mayer PRS can show, a well-made guitar is a "Well Made Guitar" regardless of the wood. All in all, (from the experiments) what counts is your ability (practice, hands), pickups and amp. The rest add to the final tone but in smaller quantities/qualities. Now, if we are talking about acoustic guitars, then the whole conversation changes.
Wood is important if it looks good, and you want that (I do), otherwise it's actually irrelevant, and as you said, any suitable material can work, as it's physical properties are all that matter, not the vaporware these guy's are trying to sell. The more energy that stays in the strings for the pickups to sense, the better. Resonant electrics are energy drains, and cannot possibly add anything, only subtract! Good construction helps too. Glenn always yells at me, but I like it! (
I'm partial to solid Rosewood back & sides, with a spruce top. However, I needed a guitar to take to festivals, camping, etc., and bought an Emerald X-20 carbon fiber guitar. TONS better than any other carbon fiber guitar I have ever played. Check them out. Hand made in Ireland.
Stability is so important, even if you don’t think tone woods are a thing for electric guitars Will that guitar hold up to playing with normal maintenance? Will it last?
I believe guitars are greater than the sum of their parts. The more interesting the components, the more magic the finished product has. I love wood that has an interesting grain whether that's on the body, the neck or the fretboard. I also feel the older the guitar, the more magic it has. I have non-expensive, vintage guitars where the cheap pickups have mellowed and merged with the mojo of the guitar to create something really smooth and relaxed.
Nautral and property dried wood like mahogany is very hard to find these days. Notice I said property dried,they have ways to advance the process that's what we mostly see in high end guitars Now days because of the demand, martin noticed that years ago and preserve the property dried and aged wood for there high end guitars and you pay for it too. I think Martin started the laminated and richlite finger boards and some with solid tops.. I think it really matters in acoustic instruments and there construction more than say a vintage reissue les Paul's. Like you said supply and demand has led to hybrid trees that grow fast and woods that are similar to ash ,alder maple ,mahogany ect... Now that rosewood is regulated, you have pau faro, Indian laurel ,McCarty and so on... MFG's will continue to use what's available around the world to manufacture guitars . Finding a slab of mahogany sitting in a barn for 50 years air dried is almost impossible but people still do find old wood Custom builders look for it all the time.. But today we live in throwaway world everything a dime a dozen and quality is hocus pocus. But tone wood does matter especially in acoustic instruments. Electric guitars not so much nowdays with modern music and effect processors ,look how far the digital world has come with modeling Fender has just about made the tube amps a thing of the past with there tonemaster line Before you know it tube amp will go away.. That say tone is in your hands and I think that's still true to a point but let's face it we are in a digital world with such a fast advancement in processors ,you just need a playable guitar doesn't matter if it plywood pallet wood ,or high tech polymer And the processor will have any sound you want anyway you want it .
Sound is vibration whenever strings and wood are in tune and very clear its magic. Certain tones only dogs and sound engenar can hear because of their training. Players can feel it through practice . Without practice and training, it don't make no dang.just enjoy the instruments
I feel sorry for people who can't hear wood. Seriously. I went through a period of using pedals, but I've outgrown that now. so I'm stuck with a cabinet full of pedals. I could probably trade them to the right guy for a decent amp🤔. That reminds me, I spoke to you the other day on the phone for a few minutes, I forgot to ask about ordering a couple of decent guitar cables. You did a video on them a couple of months ago. I'll be in touch.
Electric guitars function by the pickups having the magnetic field altered by the vibration of the strings, output to an amplification device. Simple. The material the guitar is built out of also vibrates. It is easier to see and feel with an acoustic instrument, but it holds true for electrics as well. Different wood types vibrate differently. I still have yet to have someone provide an argument that changes my mind and make be a believer that the wood vibration will not affect the vibration of the strings. String contact points of the nut and saddle are also crucial. Anything that vibrates is crucial. Shoot, even pickup covers that are not potted and are loose can cause a microphonic squeal when they vibrate. It is all connected. Tonewood in electric guitars is certainly a thing, and a major one at that.
I do like wood with a story. I have a OO made from sinker mahogany from Belize and a torrified spruce top. I am not sure if the top is much different but the old wood body is fantastic.
Paul Reed Smith,I read at one of his annual meet and greet, supposedly had like a display of tonewoods like a small marimba.He struck them and each one sounded different.Which means ?I don’t know 🤣🤣🤣
IMO the only time wood matters on an electric is when you want a fancy quilt,burl or flame top. other than that, it doesnt matter much, if any, as long as quality woods are use to keep the body and neck from warping. SMG did a comparison of 2 identical guitars built by the same maker with different woods but the same electronics and pretty soundly showed that the wood didnt matter much. I get it though. guitar players are a superstitious type. if boiling your strings, only cleaning it with a certain kind of overpriced polish, mushroom stamping your headstock every 3rd thursday and thinking you have the "special" wood gets you off, then who am i to piss in your coco puffs? keep on believing what you wanna believe. In the end, if the wood truly made a difference in the tone, then builders would never commit the sacrilege of painting the holy wood, effectively deadening the mythical resonance... its all dripping with a healthy dose of bullshit Geraldo...
yes I believe the level of density makes a difference in resonance. I have a poplar body which is light and seems to feel more alive in the hands than my mahogany with maple top. But does that mean you are loosing sustain ? Maybe if its soaked up by the wood it does not come through on the strings and thereby the pickups. I am not sure. But it is very exciting to pick up a guitar and feel it resonate more than another one. I think its mostly a feel thing just like nostalgia. But if it makes you think it sounds better then it is a positive thing. Don't knock it. Its like telling someone they should not dream about something they can't have. If they are dreaming about it they feel good. Let them have it.
Half the time on an electric guitar the pickups are mounted to a plastic pick guard. Nobody ever talks about tone plastic. I’m very much in the camp of electric guitars’ wood not really mattering enough for tone to spend any time on. Sure, weight or aesthetics or feel or whatever but electric guitar manufacturers should really be focused on sustainability in materials.
Regardless of opinions about tone... wood quality makes a big difference in build quality. If the builder has good tooling, good materials make better guitars. Low grade and low quality requires more work to appear as quality work.
Why the hate for Ovation? It's obvious they've fallen out of favor, because I've never seen a video about Ovation, haha! They have a specific sound, but it can be kind of cool. Guess I can forget about ever selling mine!
Everything Matters and Wood matters even more for acoustics then Electric guitars where impact of pickup choice has more influence on overall tone. Just play 2 or 3 neck with maple .rosewood or Ebony boards to ones made of carbon fiber or aluminum and will get Different tones, sustain and Resistance to weather from each one. Play a Mahogany Guitar vs same version in Maple one is more mellow and the other a touch brighter. Best advice is Cheap parts equal cheap guitar, inexpensive wood means inexpensive guitar, Before Political Correctness, when Nothing but Craftmanship matter most, The Woods were all manufacturers talked about when professing how much better their Instruments were over their competitors
At one point I thought tone wood was BS with electric guitars, but after countless guitars nothing sounds like my Les Paul, and my solid Les Paul sounds better then my chambered Les Paul and they have the same pickups, maybe it’s just me?
I like a mix of wood and electronics. But I also think you don’t necessarily need to redesign the wheel. For me A Fender American Original series instrument is as perfect as a custom shop. Someday I’ll get that Custom Shop…
I've heard people talking about acoustics say that back and sides wood doesn't matter. I'd consider myself one of those people who doesn't really believe in tonewood, but I do lie to tap on the wood and feel how it rings out because it doesn't matter if I believe in it.
If guitar shops were like car dealerships, then Sweetwater would be Carvana that actually works and has actual customer service . . . Guitar Center is like mega car dealership towns that's 8 miles square that has every car dealership and every road within 15 miles have some car or auto related name, AND the fringes all have every fast food chain like in and out, hardees/ carls jr etc . . . ( that they have in So Calif, like shopping outlets, like a mega mall in the middle of desert land with every brand store, but all the food places are in the center in a giant a food court). funniest thing is cybertuck, is that meme where people posted current Tombraider game Lara (or movie Tombraiders) with current model pick up truck. And then cyber truck had the block and angle 90's computer graphics of the first or second Tombraider's Lara. The peavey logo was lolz too . . .
In an electric there are so many variables that make subtle differences in the sound both as it’s made and how and where it lives it’s hard to be certain how much any one thing effects the tone. With all the variables why would you compromise on anything you can control that you can afford? Unless you’re playing thrash metal then you don’t need wood, well except…….
I think that wood does affect electric guitar tone, just not sure that it matters so much what kind of wood as it does the quality of the tree the wood came from. And it probably doesn’t affect tone as much as other variables that aren’t nearly as fun to argue about on the internet That said, I usually prefer to look at a guitar with some visible wood grain over fully painted solid color guitars
torification seems cool but I doubt its all the same, drying wood is so fickle and most of these people roasting wood are doing it super fast at super high temps... something tells me low and slow is the way to go for reasons we will discover later. Wood doesn't often like to make changes very fast, I think there's a lot of variety to torified wood because of the differences in how everyone is doing it, but its become so trendy that manufacturers are just pumping this stuff out as fast as possible to fit demand.
Wood absolutely makes a difference in acoustic guitars - I didn’t think anybody was arguing against that. The sound comes directly from the vibration of the top, with the back and sides also contributing to the quality of the sound… And of course, construction / bracing is just as important as wood. This is why Taylors and Martins of the same wood type and body shape can sound completely different! It’s also why Fender can’t slap a few pieces of timber together and make a decent-sounding acoustic. Imo “tone wood” in electric guitars is a dogmatic, almost religious belief within the guitar community. I’ve seen folks go as far as claiming that the Strat shape inherently bestows “snappiness” upon the instrument, and the Tele shape provides a “twang” enchantment… It’s silly, but at least it gets people talking about something I love!
For solid body electrics, I don't think the wood is that important beyond it being stable and its weight. I do think it matters for acoustic instruments but I don't think you have to spend financially crippling amounts of cash obtaining a nice sounding guitar like my bluegrass playing friends do.
Million dollar question? What’s under the paint of these high end guitars? Sure they say we are getting nice wood in our custom shop guitars but would have no idea until you strip off paint… but yes better wood in theory should have better sound but each piece of wood has a different sound due to density and makeup in every type of wood. I honestly tend to think nice wood in necks of electrics and of course the whole thing in acoustics… we are moving away from hard woods. Fenders pine guitars, Taylor’s sustainable series fast growing trees
I know for sure that wood matters in electrics. While it might be hard to hear if good wood enhances the tone, bad wood definitely detracts from the tone. Had a 78 P bass... ash body... pretty groovy. No G note on the guitar would resonate very long. It had to go. Had a 98 J bass... ash body... pretty groovy. No C note on the guitar would resonate very long. It had to go. In both cases you can feel the body "steal the vibrational energy" from the string and it would just die in your hand. Its like the wood becomes wet balsa at that frequency. I just bought a PRS CE24 brand new (made in Oct 2021) and no E note on the guitar would sustain for more than a fraction of a second and it would disappear as if it was never played. Sent it back. Same thing. You can FEEEL the body steal string energy which leads to a dead guitar. New strings, new pickups, new setup would never change it. It's the damn wood people! Hahaha.
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You have summoned something no one can control. RIP to this comment section.
Dylan Talks Tone would probably argue wood has nothing to do with it.
As a violinist, I believe the wood affects how you interact with the instrument and how it responds to you. It changes to your style over time. The varnish affects the instrument, affects how porous it is, how it resonates… everything affects the end product.
It’s an organic material that creates vibrations - of course the ingredients affect the end product. That’s one of the magical, unknown things that makes wooden instruments wonderful.
It wasn’t until I replaced my stock single coils with Yonderbosk Sovereign pickups that I finally understood HOW important pickups are in an electric guitar.
Everything, even the minute details, affects the end product. Wood matters. Period.
Dylan is ignorant af
@@twenty3electronics He installed a pickup in a standing fence, and it sounded like a guitar. It's the pickups. And your comment proves you are a moron.
His playing explains it’s all…
would certainly agree for acoustic instruments and violins it matters, but for electric guitars its pretty much %99 dictated by the actual pickups
Wood makes very little difference in electrics, maybe some dampening or resonance.
It's 95-98% pups.
In a blind test, most of us could not tell a difference.
By far, most of it is confirmation bias, we swear it's so different because we *think* it is.
Awesome to find someone like Baxter who doesn’t like anything in front of an amp! We are a rare breed 😁 Tried pedals for a few years & they are cool but they change the feel & sound too much for me.
Glad to know I’m not the only weirdo 😅
Me too brother 😎✌🏼❤️💯🎸👑🏴
no fuzz?????????????????????????????????
I know…I for sure need help:)
If I win that silver sky, I will name my first grandchild Baxster Jonathan Holley.
JUst to add . . . I'm new to eclectic but a trusted luthier said, #1 tone is is pick ups, #2 speaker, #3 amp. He said, wood has a role, but is a part of the many compromises of the equipment and building that makes up an electric guitar. At the same time, personally, I think wood plays more into the sub tones and harmonics that add to the vibrations picked by the pickups . . . there are people who can hear things that other can't. The Smashing Pumpkins dude said he could notice diff of white guitars vs others. ANd myself, I couldn't hear the beat of a song until I was in highschool . I remember as a kid my older cousins and sisters trying to teach me to dance, and keep a beat, I couldn't hear it. Then mid highschool, I suddenly began to hear beats in hip hop jams etc . . .
4 Torrefication, Martin, Taylor, Anderson and Suhr swear by it, and entire Finland Luthiery stands behind it, plus the Fins have science behind it (research and studies, white papers) from Finnish Universities. Those dudes know way more than I do regarding guitar building. I think the brittle thing or lack of tone diff from Torrefication is prob bad / wrong technique. The Finnish dudes who pioneered it, know how to do it, they have papers on how to do it, but alot of wood places torrefcation in the US don't differentiate what the end product of torreficaiton, like not for electric but for furniture and building structures, which is a different process then the ones pioneered . . . Gruhn hates it because Martin figured out if torrefication is done right it gets ball park vintage pre war Martin sounds , and Martin does own pre war guitars to compare 2 . .. and given how good relicing is and now the wood get same range of tones as 80 yr old electric guitars . . alot of dudes won't go for vintage when you can get it much cheaper with relic and proper torri wood.
Think acoustics design plays a role as well, look @ mcpherson carbon fiber . . . wood affect the tones but if design takes into account the material (like mcpherson does with carbon fiber) after all Boeing engineers composites to reduce vibrations and certain frequencies coming from jet engines . . .
PRS is making ching now selling the PRS SE Silver Sky using poplar wood. Not the tone wood I look for in a guitar, and not something I am going to spend my money on.
I've built 2 tele style guitars using old growth reclaimed tulip poplar. They sounded fantastic. So I decided to build myself a Nashville tele with the poplar also. I can't say how other poplar species will sound. But I really like the tulip.
Before I finally made my way to my AVRI and CS basses I had owned a MIM Fender that I outfitted with a vintage correct tone circuit and SD Antiquity 57 style Raised A pickups. Sounded pretty darn close to my AVRI 57 P. The wood in terms of change of tone was probably something only P bass devotees would notice (poly vs nitro may add to that a hair, too. Though likely more now that the thick nitro is wearing through nicely). That said, the difference in quality of wood really seems to make the most difference in terms of playability. The acoustic tone of those quality ash body and maple neck basses just sing and they resonate like crazy without needing to be heavy to rely solely on mass alone. Moreover, both of those basses are insanely stable and resistant to temperature and humidity changes. They never need anything. Same old set of flats on each. Every MIM standard P with a modern neck I had owned were very temperamental. Might be younger wood, lack of wood due to the modern radius, the modern truss vs vintage. Could be a number of things. So, to me. The difference in wood for electrics comes into play most in terms of how it relates to playability. JMO, of course.
Stiff hard woods resonate less, and that's why there's more sustain, because the energy isn't being robed by softer more flexible materials. Les Pals have more sustain, because there's way less resonant neck, via its shorter scale length and the fingerboard extending way into the body, and not because its mahogany! It's all physics, but in short, you do not want a resonant electric guitar, as energy gets converted and dissipated: You want as much as possible to stay in the strings for the pickups to sense, and not lose it. Most finishes are hard enough to not make any difference at all, unless it has a very thick rubbery finish, and both poly and acrylic can be hard or soft, depending on who makes it and for what. Nitrocellulose gets quite soft when warm.
Wood has near zero to do with playability: You need to think harder about it, as you are making a correlation fallacy: Corelation does not equal causation.
The top of my Silverangel mandolin was cut in a redwood forest, milled into post and beam lumber, shipped to the east coat to build a warehouse at the end of the nineteenth century, then reclaimed when the building was torn down. Some was suitable for mandolin tops for a mandolin built in Tennessee. Then the mandolin was shipped back to California for me to play. It is likely to have originated from as close as twenty miles to 200 from where I live. I call that a full circle.
All wood is tone wood. What sounds "good" is subjective. People listen with their eyes at least as much as with their ears. All marketers need to do is tell us it's made of "special" wood using a few magical words (i.e. "genuine", "traditional", "vintage", "bright", "airy", "focused", "warm", "sparkling", "resonant", et al. You know, words that don't really mean anything definable, but they make us feel good) in order to suck us in and convince us that we must have it.
My mind could be changed if someone undertakes a well-designed, double blind study with listeners accurately identifying what kind of wood a guitar is made from based only on its sound.
Electric guitars it doesn't matter the tone is in the pickups
@@flatstheflounder9874 The strings count too, but they do not vary much between brands. The amps design can make a big difference, especially the cab and speakers, as those have big acoustic properties. Yeah, these guy's have no clue!
With electric guitars it's the amp, then the pickups, then the strings, then the wiring, then the supporting hardware (bridge, pickup mount, nut...) and then maybe, just maybe the wood (and more in the sustain deprtment than anything else).
Ancient cultures would bind young trees when a child was born and when they reached a certain age they would harvest the tree and make a bow. Don't know why I'm telling you this. Lol
Great episode guys! Hey, I was wondering if you can do an episode on how regular players (like myself) can go about demoing top-shelf pro gear. My experience has been that 60%-70% of stock in both mid and large guitar stores consist of mainly low to mid priced guitar gear (
no need to be intimidated. in every good shop it should be possible. just ask if you could try em :) just one thing: dont wear a jacket with zippers, any huge belt or a watch on your strumming hand in order to reduce possibility of scratching the guitar. if it happens that the stuff will look at you and think who is this guy to play that pricy guitar then just leave the shop and never
come back :)
I had the same anxiety early on, but at some point, I just got over it and politely asked if I could try out a LP or something. They had to move that big huge ladder (at GC) and they didn’t mind at all. It was quite amazing really. I have also found that they will sometimes actually appreciate hearing the rarely played stuff. Lastly, the strings are almost always better on the lesser played stuff.
@@janeandthecoolcats5033 Good Advice thanks!
Here’s the deal even Taylor uses impoverished nations to make profits. Old growth wood is not doing anyone any good in the forest the problem is replanting or the lack there of.
Also using mahogany for electric guitars is the biggest waste of mahogany period. To think wood matters NOTICEABLY in a solid body guitar is not only anti-science it’s essentially denying 1 + 2 = 3.
I’ve seen a video where Paul Reed Smith talks about tone woods. And he picks up a piece and he taps on it and you can just hear that it’s musical. I absolutely think there’s something to it, I like it and I like that someday I’m going to be able to pass my guitars onto my children or grandchildren and that the world will continue to get better and better as it ages and relics naturally.
I agree, I've seen that video too. It makes sense that certain types of wood and even individual pieces of wood make a difference in terms of resonance. Paul's philosophy is that you want to build a guitar with parts that don't take away from the natural tone and resonance. I think that's why PRS guitars are so good. My Custom 24 Artist is amazing!
I agree with you about the wood. It changes everything. I have a very inexpensive electric guitar that resonates better than most of my much more expensive ones. It changes the way it sounds and plays and the way I play it. It still has stock pickups. I won't sell it and I won't change anything about the said guitar. It's a California guitar. A very old one.
Tone wood matters when it comes to acoustic guitars. Electric guitars it matters very little. Dont buy into the marketing BS.
It absolutely does matter, a lot
Bet it wouldn't pass a blindfold test
@@tball5677 check out the tonewood comparisons Warmoth did on their RUclips channel. You might be surprised that you can hear the differences and they pretty much fall in line with the collective wisdom on electric guitar tonewood. Remember these tonewood “myths” arose from highly discerning players with amazing ears, not the casual listener. Maybe these old cats learned from experience?
I use reclaimed old growth woods whenever I can. I have several guitars built with old growth tulip poplar. I have old rosewood taken from an old library that was demolished. And other reclaimed tone woods. I'm always looking for reclaim to work with.
Sweet! I made a matching pair of guitars out of a big tulip poplar beam that came out of an old winery. So light and resonant. I also build a guitar out of chunk of hundred year old heart pine bowling alley floor. It was a pain in the ass dealing with all of the nails and turning it into useable wood but it turned out rather nicely
That automatically makes whatever you make begin it’s life with a cool story!
Made a one piece 51 P body out of a 100 y/o poplar shelf. Kills. Even nailed down a country audition with it.
I think that so much of an acoustic guitar’s sound is about the construction and the finishing. The bracing, scalloping, the voicing can make or break the quality of the sound. It’s kinda like building a house, not all brick houses are equal.
I can't wait to get a couple guitars built and make a trip to come see you guys, I'm gonna be making multi laminate necks out of 200 year old oak that I milled about a year ago. I'm really gonna push the envelope for putting the most magic into an instrument, costs and labor be damned!
If 100+ year old sunken logs from the great lakes are lusted after by violin makers you know wood maters in acoustic instruments.
I play blues, wood is important to me in the construction of an instrument.
If I played metal?
Probably go with basswood.
With all those pedals etc, It don't make a difference.
But if playing straight into a tube amp, boosted mids, low/0 distortion...yeah, then it's important to me.
I don’t know about the wood, but there is something special about older guitars (if you like to play it). I have a Guild Starfire IV built in 1964. It’s not the one I play most, but sometimes when I pick it up I wonder about the first 25 years of it’s life. It was obviously played a lot. I bought it at a pawn shop, so I know nothing of the previous owner(s). Someone really enjoyed it.
I'm a big fan of Taylor guitars. I just bought a 317e, and I love it. But I had a 2005 814ce fall limited with cocobolo back and sides, and besides the absolute beauty of it, it had such a bright and distinct tone to it none of my other acoustics have ever had. Even to my untrained ears, tone woods make a huge difference. By the way, I did get to play a GT 811e a couple weeks ago. I absolutely loved it, but I just could not pay 3K for it. I do listen to what you guys say in your videos. It has helped me out a lot. Thanks for all of the info you give.
I'm a weirdo who plays his electrics unplugged a lot.
Woods totally make a tonal difference in that aspect. Also, the SHAPE of the wood makes a difference. Fatter necks seem to resonate better than thinner shred necks. Wood definitely matters for acoustic.
Whether or not this makes the biggest difference when the signal goes through a pickup and into an amp is a harder argument to make. But even if you can't HEAR the difference when played through the amp, I can FEEL the difference when the vibrations move up my arm from the neck, and I think that's important.
Yeah, I mean, an es and sg
(57 classics) are very different animals when you play them unplugged.
But once you plug them in...a lot of that goes away.
A lot of us believe there's a difference.
Whether that means anything? Whether we could tell in a blind sound test is another story.
In an electric, wood only dampens or allows some resonance. EQ is maybe different in a light mahogany verses a dense maple.
But 95% of the sound is pickups.
3% strings
2% wood, mostly resonance.
I play unplugged electrics all the time. Maybe more than anything else Bc I play when my kids go to bed. . Some ppl say it’s bad for feel etc but idk. What do you think?
@@84kjk Ummm... I think if you play your amp overdistorted it can actually be beneficial. But you should definitely know how to dial in your amp if your gonna play a gig.
Have to at least partially agree with Baxter. In the 70's and 80's only used a Crybaby. In the 90's I started adding pedals, year and a half ago I got rid of my huge pedal board and lots of pedals. Settled on 4 pedals including a Crybaby, Danecho, Flamma reverb, and TCE Mojo Mojo. Never been happier. And I do like playing without the pedal board also.
I met a pro bluegrass touring musician who had one of the smaller builders (collings?) dye his brazilian rosewood dreadnought to look like plain old regular rosewood. Traveling and touring with certain woods across borders is illegal. It was a class at bluegrass camp where he also commented something to the effect of seeing a lot of expensive guitars and calling into question our sanity if we werent professional musicians.
I guess the whole torrefied process is to emulate years of playing vibrations to "open up" the guitar. Nothing like the give it to me now mindset to get the money out of your wallet.
I agree with Baxter about being able to "hear" the difference and also that skillset not coming automatically with your new guitar. A big part of that could be a simplified clean signal chain and years of playing time with a preferred set up and settings on the amp. If you know the sound or tone you like and how different guitars effect that, you might have a bigger set of information to draw on
That's not technically true. You can get an instrument passport for an instrument that has either Brazilian rosewood or ivory in it, if you have the ability to show that they were legally obtained. Ask US Fish & Wildlife for more information.
Thanks for making this video. Every time I so much as mention "tonewood" there's at least 3 idiots saying stuff like "SUCKER! wood doesn't have any effect ur a sucker!!!!! hurrrrr" The dumbest thing about this argument is the idea that strings vibrate in a vacuum, which would have to be true if only the pickups mattered, but it's the exact opposite. The strings react to literally everything around them. The bridge break angle, the frets, the fretboard material, the pick, and yes the density of the material that they are mounted on. The effect wood has on the tone varies heavily on the tone stack (pickups, amp etc.) and other aspects of the guitar (floating bridges make it far less noticible), My RG471 and RG550 are made out of different woods but they sound identical because I have a Dimarzio Titan in the bridge and play them through a 6505. However my American strat sounds completely different from the Mahogany stratocasters I've played, and it's not due to pickups. The Mahogany strats have harmonics that are not audible on the Alder body strat. Playing a mahogany strat or tele through an amp on the edge of breakup will demonstrate clearly the effect that wood has on a guitar. Whether wood "matters" or not is completely subjective, but to say it has absolutely no effect is moronic.
Thank you for taking the time to share that loyd. We were just talking to day and had a simple thing to add there as well.
I’m a capitalistic society, if there was something that the manufactures could make, that was cheaper than wood, and could have it molded precisely to a machined and stamped process for a guitar…it would have been done.
The wood is real:)
Thanks a ton again for your thoughts and best to you always!
Just started watching you guys. Great channel. You guys seem genuine and just love guitars. Wood maters. Hard agree that the Am Pro ii series are great. First new guitar I've bought outside of a JMJM, but I had to go with an Alder option body cuz it just seemed right over the roasted pine. As a rosewood only guy I have to say that I love the roasted maple necks though. Excited to see the builders come through and talk about the state of the industry and how they approach wood.
I discovered something interesting the other day. Last week I finished building a Tele style guitar with a Paulownia body and Maple neck, the fretboard is roasted. You can feel that body resonate as you play. Paulownia is sustainable and light but it's soft. It's twice as loud acoustically as my Ash body/Maple neck Fender Tele, and putting my ear up close, the neck puts out as much sound as the body, perhaps more, on both guitars. Maybe the neck is the tonewood we should be concerned about.
Great, but you are describing a loss of energy! Since when do record or play shows with an electric guitar that's not plugged in? Pickups get nothing from resonating wood, and neither do strings! You want to keep as much mechanical energy in the strings, so there's more for the pickups!
These guy's have no clue, and neither of them seem to understand basic physics! Don't listen to them!
Just do a search on "Tonewood debunked" and you will find everything from experienced players over instrument builders to physicists saying it's total BS!
Your resonant body is the main drain, because its absorbing energy from the strings. Weight doesn't matter, stiffness is everything!
@@Bob-of-Zoid I used to agree with you completely. I come from a long history with high end stereo equipment. The main concern there is keeping spurious vibrations away from your equipment, especially your turntable, and primarily your cartridge. The difference here is that a turntable is trying to reproduce a sound, while a guitar is producing the sound in the first place.
Vibrating strings on anything necessarily produce vibrations in whatever they are mounted on. A pickup, mounted on a surface that is vibrating, will also be vibrating, and the magnetic field in which the strings are vibrating will be vibrating, adding its vibration to the vibration of the strings. The only way you could be losing energy would be if the pickup was vibrating in same direction as the string. This apparently doesn't happen because all pickups do indeed create a current which we can amplify and convert into sound. And, if indeed any energy is "lost", it is easily made up for with a slight turn of the volume knob. Where "lost" energy would really be noticed is in sustain, but then again, the "lost" vibration in the wood has to either be dissipated as heat or go somewhere else, like back into the strings, which would then go back into the pickups.
Do I think the wood in a solid body guitar is particularly important to the sound? No. I don't. The ash body on my Tele also sounds good, as does the plywood body on my archtop, as does the masonite and plywood body on my Danelectro, as does the fiberglass body on my Supro. The Supro has an aircraft grade aluminum beam for a neck, nearly indestructible, and it vibrates too. I would challenge you to make a completely stiff and inert guitar, and tell me if you prefer it to a lossy guitar. An electric guitar is not just a set of strings vibrating in a magnetic field. It is a complete mechanical system, and whether one likes that system or not, is purely up to the individual.
Agreed. Wood is going to control the way the guitar responds to vibration.
I don't think on a solid body electric wood makes a difference with any real distinction in terms of sound. That said wood makes a huge difference in very important properties of an instrument such as appearance, weight and feel. I mean I have an artist grade top / brazilian rosewood board 594 for a reason.
Great episode! Can’t wait to hear about the boutique builders!
I had a doctor say to a kid who vaped that got Corona for the, no kidding, 3rd time and had the 3 vaccines. He said "You vape, don't you? I'd rather you smoked." How bad is vaping if a doctor tells you that.
Holy cow! That’s a nutty and funny story. Thanks for sharing that:)
I am getting ready to build a guitar from reclaimed wood that a friend was using for fire wood. Its from a construction site where they were building a bridge. I don't even know what kind of wood it is. I just remember watching some of it burn in the pit on one week end while having a few beers. I could see that the wood was quite dense by the way it was burning and it occurred to me it might make a nice guitar. So I asked my buddy for a few pieces to build with
The wood plays a huge part in it. The guys who say it doesnt dont factor in the age like you guys said nor the moisture content. If the guitar doesnt resonate due to water in it or just the fact the body and neck cancel each other out then of course youre not going to feel it impacts much as at that point youre hearing a lot of the pickups. Get something that vibrates and resonates really well and that all changes.
I'am not sure if YAMAHA still do this but they used to vibrate the wood hundreds of thousands of times in order to try & age the wood, they did this to solid bodys as well as acoustic woods. Either way they make fantastic guitars such as my 1984 yamaha SG & more people should try old japanese guitars they are fantastic.
I know for a fact that the build and the wood do make a difference. I know it because ive got 3 guitars from 3 different makers, that all have the same set of emg active 81/85s. And every one of those 3 guitars have their own distinct tone. I set up all my guitars the same and i also use the same strings on them all so i know the wood changes the tone. Not huge difference but its noticeable.
Is there any variation on bridge/nut between the three?
Also I find it's the finish that's applied to the wood that has the most impact on sound and resonance, I've stripped tons of poly guitars and refinished in nitro and yes they are much better in the tone spectrum,, apply this to sexy tone wood and bang😎 you can't polish a turd fellas
I agree it makes a difference. But the better the player you are, the more important it is. I’m a beginner and I struggle to play cleanly. A beautiful tone wood is wasted on me. But if you are a good player and can afford the finer tone woods, why wouldn’t you go for it? We only go around once, treat yourself.
As a wood worker myself here in North Idaho I run across old growth wood out of old barns and and homes the wood when turned into guitars sounds phenomenal when compared to newer woods for guitars that I build.
My uncle had been collecting wood mainly burl woods for 60 years he turns his stuff into bowls and gunstocks. He is out of Sacramento. He will go to farmers and offer money to them for trees that are old and need to come down. That's how he sources his woods.
Pickups, string brand size and type, and then the wood, and last but not least the type and amount of lacquer.
We’ve all seen the videos of guitars made out of glass, aluminum, hell even a cardboard strat. They all sounded like a guitar. I’m of the belief the pickups, the amp, and the microphone on the speaker are the biggest contributors to the sound. Think about it, the strings are a fraction of an inch above the pickup, that’s what you’re hearing in my opinion.
Wood is the most important factor in a guitar because you can change everything except the wood, and wood does affect tone
@@twenty3electronics I don’t get the leap to imagining that wood information can be sent into a magnet and wire coil. I think the pickup is detecting the vibration of the metal string. We all know you can’t use catgut strings with a magnetic pickup. So, the only thing that I can imagine is that the wood type might make the sting vibrate longer or lesser. So maybe there is a such thing as sustain wood but not tone wood.
The way an acoustic guitar produces sound has been superimposed to the solid body electric even though one has a pickup sending the sound though a wire and the other has a wood top that vibrates and does actually produce the sound and color of the note you hear.
The wood effects how much of the vibrational energy is retained by the string. The wood only takes away sound. Different woods absorb certain frequencies more than others. It acts like an EQ. Maple is bright because it is hard and doesn’t absorb high frequencies as readily. The harder the material, the less it absorbs vibration, so the more sustain it has. The wood also affects the attack characteristics of the notes, such as snappy or round etc...
@@twenty3electronics Interesting that it's said you can tell a good guitar by how it sounds when you play it unamplified. Seems like the resonance of the particular wood has to make a difference, even if the pickups are more important. Not agreeing or disagreeing, but it seems to make sense.
@@twenty3electronics ok, let’s say you’re right about wood eq’ing frequencies. Then why did that cardboard strat sound exactly like every other strat? On top of that, in the case of a regular wood strat, the pickups are mounted to a plastic pick guard. Does that mean Fender found the right tone plastic for the pick guard? I mean to me you’re position would maybe make sense for pickups mounted to the wood.
OK, wood is important (it has always been), but these days, we have guitars made of pretty much every material with more or less successful iterations like the LavaMe guitars (they sound incredible). Darrell Brown did an excellent experiment with his cut strat and other models, and Glen Fricker (from Spectre Sound Studios) also did a great video measuring the outputs. All in all, there are a lot of preferences, and as the new John Mayer PRS can show, a well-made guitar is a "Well Made Guitar" regardless of the wood.
All in all, (from the experiments) what counts is your ability (practice, hands), pickups and amp. The rest add to the final tone but in smaller quantities/qualities.
Now, if we are talking about acoustic guitars, then the whole conversation changes.
Wood is important if it looks good, and you want that (I do), otherwise it's actually irrelevant, and as you said, any suitable material can work, as it's physical properties are all that matter, not the vaporware these guy's are trying to sell. The more energy that stays in the strings for the pickups to sense, the better. Resonant electrics are energy drains, and cannot possibly add anything, only subtract! Good construction helps too.
Glenn always yells at me, but I like it! (
@@Bob-of-Zoid LOL Glenn usually screams at a lot of things . But the guy is great.
All of my guitars are made of reclaimed beaver dam wood. They really slap.
I'm partial to solid Rosewood back & sides, with a spruce top. However, I needed a guitar to take to festivals, camping, etc., and bought an Emerald X-20 carbon fiber guitar. TONS better than any other carbon fiber guitar I have ever played. Check them out. Hand made in Ireland.
Stability is so important, even if you don’t think tone woods are a thing for electric guitars
Will that guitar hold up to playing with normal maintenance?
Will it last?
Great video guys. Urban Ash, huh... could be the future of guitars in our resource-depleted planet
I believe guitars are greater than the sum of their parts. The more interesting the components, the more magic the finished product has. I love wood that has an interesting grain whether that's on the body, the neck or the fretboard. I also feel the older the guitar, the more magic it has. I have non-expensive, vintage guitars where the cheap pickups have mellowed and merged with the mojo of the guitar to create something really smooth and relaxed.
Nautral and property dried wood like mahogany is very hard to find these days.
Notice I said property dried,they have ways to advance the process that's what we mostly see in high end guitars
Now days because of the demand, martin noticed that years ago and preserve the property dried and aged wood for there high end guitars and you pay for it too.
I think Martin started the laminated and richlite finger boards and some with solid tops..
I think it really matters in acoustic instruments and there construction more than say a vintage reissue les Paul's.
Like you said supply and demand has led to hybrid trees that grow fast and woods that are similar to ash ,alder maple ,mahogany ect...
Now that rosewood is regulated, you have pau faro, Indian laurel ,McCarty and so on...
MFG's will continue to use what's available around the world to manufacture guitars .
Finding a slab of mahogany sitting in a barn for 50 years air dried is almost impossible but people still do find old wood
Custom builders look for it all the time..
But today we live in throwaway world everything a dime a dozen and quality is hocus pocus.
But tone wood does matter especially in acoustic instruments.
Electric guitars not so much nowdays with modern music and effect processors ,look how far the digital world has come with modeling
Fender has just about made the tube amps a thing of the past with there tonemaster line
Before you know it tube amp will go away..
That say tone is in your hands and I think that's still true to a point but let's face it we are in a digital world with such a fast advancement in processors ,you just need a playable guitar doesn't matter if it plywood pallet wood ,or high tech polymer
And the processor will have any sound you want anyway you want it .
Quite possibly one of my top 5 post from Casino. So much Real discussion here. I’m in total agreement on pedals.
My 324 Builder's Edition is amazing and my favorite girl.
Do you guys know about Larrivee Guitars? if you do, could you do a show on them? Seems like they search for old lumber in Canada. thanks.
Gotta love a good wood conversation.
Sound is vibration whenever strings and wood are in tune and very clear its magic. Certain tones only dogs and sound engenar can hear because of their training. Players can feel it through practice . Without practice and training, it don't make no dang.just enjoy the instruments
Richard Hoover at Santa Cruz is all about old growth wood, and will find it in various forms and contexts to make amazing guitars with.
I feel sorry for people who can't hear wood. Seriously. I went through a period of using pedals, but I've outgrown that now. so I'm stuck with a cabinet full of pedals. I could probably trade them to the right guy for a decent amp🤔. That reminds me, I spoke to you the other day on the phone for a few minutes, I forgot to ask about ordering a couple of decent guitar cables. You did a video on them a couple of months ago. I'll be in touch.
PRS going with poplar on the SE was weird to me at the price.
The tone plastic in my Fender Telecoustic is outstanding.
Pick ups pick up the string vibrations, that depends on materials used, design and set up.
Electric guitars function by the pickups having the magnetic field altered by the vibration of the strings, output to an amplification device. Simple. The material the guitar is built out of also vibrates. It is easier to see and feel with an acoustic instrument, but it holds true for electrics as well. Different wood types vibrate differently. I still have yet to have someone provide an argument that changes my mind and make be a believer that the wood vibration will not affect the vibration of the strings. String contact points of the nut and saddle are also crucial. Anything that vibrates is crucial. Shoot, even pickup covers that are not potted and are loose can cause a microphonic squeal when they vibrate. It is all connected. Tonewood in electric guitars is certainly a thing, and a major one at that.
I do like wood with a story. I have a OO made from sinker mahogany from Belize and a torrified spruce top. I am not sure if the top is much different but the old wood body is fantastic.
Paul Reed Smith,I read at one of his annual meet and greet, supposedly had like a display of tonewoods like a small marimba.He struck them and each one sounded different.Which means ?I don’t know 🤣🤣🤣
Baxter and Jonathan, wood must matter, just like the wood that makes that bottle of bourbon over Baxter's right shoulder! It's all about the WOOD!
IMO the only time wood matters on an electric is when you want a fancy quilt,burl or flame top. other than that, it doesnt matter much, if any, as long as quality woods are use to keep the body and neck from warping. SMG did a comparison of 2 identical guitars built by the same maker with different woods but the same electronics and pretty soundly showed that the wood didnt matter much.
I get it though. guitar players are a superstitious type. if boiling your strings, only cleaning it with a certain kind of overpriced polish, mushroom stamping your headstock every 3rd thursday and thinking you have the "special" wood gets you off, then who am i to piss in your coco puffs? keep on believing what you wanna believe.
In the end, if the wood truly made a difference in the tone, then builders would never commit the sacrilege of painting the holy wood, effectively deadening the mythical resonance... its all dripping with a healthy dose of bullshit Geraldo...
What I love about the 2021 Epiphone les Paul Custom Koa it's all era correct
yes I believe the level of density makes a difference in resonance. I have a poplar body which is light and seems to feel more alive in the hands than my mahogany with maple top. But does that mean you are loosing sustain ? Maybe if its soaked up by the wood it does not come through on the strings and thereby the pickups. I am not sure. But it is very exciting to pick up a guitar and feel it resonate more than another one. I think its mostly a feel thing just like nostalgia. But if it makes you think it sounds better then it is a positive thing. Don't knock it. Its like telling someone they should not dream about something they can't have. If they are dreaming about it they feel good. Let them have it.
Half the time on an electric guitar the pickups are mounted to a plastic pick guard. Nobody ever talks about tone plastic. I’m very much in the camp of electric guitars’ wood not really mattering enough for tone to spend any time on. Sure, weight or aesthetics or feel or whatever but electric guitar manufacturers should really be focused on sustainability in materials.
Regardless of opinions about tone... wood quality makes a big difference in build quality. If the builder has good tooling, good materials make better guitars. Low grade and low quality requires more work to appear as quality work.
The way this video started. Can’t be talking wood this early on the morning. 😂
What do you think of NATO wood? That is quite old growthy, and mahogany like?
Did you guys watch the Spectra Sound Studios video with Glenn Fricker.
Why the hate for Ovation? It's obvious they've fallen out of favor, because I've never seen a video about Ovation, haha! They have a specific sound, but it can be kind of cool. Guess I can forget about ever selling mine!
Everything Matters and Wood matters even more for acoustics then Electric guitars where impact of pickup choice has more influence on overall tone. Just play 2 or 3 neck with maple .rosewood or Ebony boards to ones made of carbon fiber or aluminum and will get Different tones, sustain and Resistance to weather from each one. Play a Mahogany Guitar vs same version in Maple one is more mellow and the other a touch brighter. Best advice is Cheap parts equal cheap guitar, inexpensive wood means inexpensive guitar, Before Political Correctness, when Nothing but Craftmanship matter most, The Woods were all manufacturers talked about when professing how much better their Instruments were over their competitors
were you guys extras on Eastbound and Down?
I made an acoustic out of corn tortillas and pine tar. Super organic sound. 😁
At one point I thought tone wood was BS with electric guitars, but after countless guitars nothing sounds like my Les Paul, and my solid Les Paul sounds better then my chambered Les Paul and they have the same pickups, maybe it’s just me?
I like a mix of wood and electronics. But I also think you don’t necessarily need to redesign the wheel. For me A Fender American Original series instrument is as perfect as a custom shop. Someday I’ll get that Custom Shop…
Step 1 . Collect old growth underpants
Step 2 . ❓
Step 3 . Profit
I'm willing to bet if you add the Mayer SE pickups to a player strat, there'd be little difference in sound.
I've heard people talking about acoustics say that back and sides wood doesn't matter. I'd consider myself one of those people who doesn't really believe in tonewood, but I do lie to tap on the wood and feel how it rings out because it doesn't matter if I believe in it.
If guitar shops were like car dealerships, then Sweetwater would be Carvana that actually works and has actual customer service . . . Guitar Center is like mega car dealership towns that's 8 miles square that has every car dealership and every road within 15 miles have some car or auto related name, AND the fringes all have every fast food chain like in and out, hardees/ carls jr etc . . . ( that they have in So Calif, like shopping outlets, like a mega mall in the middle of desert land with every brand store, but all the food places are in the center in a giant a food court).
funniest thing is cybertuck, is that meme where people posted current Tombraider game Lara (or movie Tombraiders) with current model pick up truck. And then cyber truck had the block and angle 90's computer graphics of the first or second Tombraider's Lara. The peavey logo was lolz too . . .
In an electric there are so many variables that make subtle differences in the sound both as it’s made and how and where it lives it’s hard to be certain how much any one thing effects the tone. With all the variables why would you compromise on anything you can control that you can afford? Unless you’re playing thrash metal then you don’t need wood, well except…….
⚓️ Thanks Casino 😎
I think that wood does affect electric guitar tone, just not sure that it matters so much what kind of wood as it does the quality of the tree the wood came from. And it probably doesn’t affect tone as much as other variables that aren’t nearly as fun to argue about on the internet
That said, I usually prefer to look at a guitar with some visible wood grain over fully painted solid color guitars
How much does the Emerald Ash Borer plague play into the sudden appearance of urban ash?
i play a taylor 414 w/ ovankol back and sides. sounds wonderful. not the 000 28 i was looking for but a great guitar.
torification seems cool but I doubt its all the same, drying wood is so fickle and most of these people roasting wood are doing it super fast at super high temps... something tells me low and slow is the way to go for reasons we will discover later. Wood doesn't often like to make changes very fast, I think there's a lot of variety to torified wood because of the differences in how everyone is doing it, but its become so trendy that manufacturers are just pumping this stuff out as fast as possible to fit demand.
Wood absolutely makes a difference in acoustic guitars - I didn’t think anybody was arguing against that. The sound comes directly from the vibration of the top, with the back and sides also contributing to the quality of the sound… And of course, construction / bracing is just as important as wood. This is why Taylors and Martins of the same wood type and body shape can sound completely different! It’s also why Fender can’t slap a few pieces of timber together and make a decent-sounding acoustic.
Imo “tone wood” in electric guitars is a dogmatic, almost religious belief within the guitar community. I’ve seen folks go as far as claiming that the Strat shape inherently bestows “snappiness” upon the instrument, and the Tele shape provides a “twang” enchantment… It’s silly, but at least it gets people talking about something I love!
I would love an 'ancient' wood acoustic...What would the top 3 or so oldest makes/models out there?
Better wood gets better Taco's.
For solid body electrics, I don't think the wood is that important beyond it being stable and its weight. I do think it matters for acoustic instruments but I don't think you have to spend financially crippling amounts of cash obtaining a nice sounding guitar like my bluegrass playing friends do.
Should we uncover Noah's ark and make guitars out of it?
Million dollar question? What’s under the paint of these high end guitars? Sure they say we are getting nice wood in our custom shop guitars but would have no idea until you strip off paint… but yes better wood in theory should have better sound but each piece of wood has a different sound due to density and makeup in every type of wood. I honestly tend to think nice wood in necks of electrics and of course the whole thing in acoustics… we are moving away from hard woods. Fenders pine guitars, Taylor’s sustainable series fast growing trees
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate softer wood. Magic can still happen with soft wood.
balsawood guitars for all! 😁
Basswood has a great tone too, Evh never had any complaints, neither did his fans👍
@@zoomzoom3950 Balsa is a hardwood, not softwood.
@@karlj.shields7645 technically correct hardwood. but in reality not a hard wood
I know for sure that wood matters in electrics. While it might be hard to hear if good wood enhances the tone, bad wood definitely detracts from the tone. Had a 78 P bass... ash body... pretty groovy. No G note on the guitar would resonate very long. It had to go. Had a 98 J bass... ash body... pretty groovy. No C note on the guitar would resonate very long. It had to go. In both cases you can feel the body "steal the vibrational energy" from the string and it would just die in your hand. Its like the wood becomes wet balsa at that frequency. I just bought a PRS CE24 brand new (made in Oct 2021) and no E note on the guitar would sustain for more than a fraction of a second and it would disappear as if it was never played. Sent it back. Same thing. You can FEEEL the body steal string energy which leads to a dead guitar. New strings, new pickups, new setup would never change it. It's the damn wood people! Hahaha.
The guitar in my thumbnail is made of old woods from the heights of the Himalayan mountains.
link to podcast? where can I find it?
10:00 I need one 😂
Olá vc tem um Martin dc 16rgte aura pra vender ???
I hope I get the prs
And every piece of material that constitutes a guitar either ads or detracts from vibration.