@@UphillGardener-ly5sh is the only difference between a lefty and right Steinberger where they put the control cavity and knobs, plus a reversed strap mount thingy?
@@BarefacedAudio no, it's a completely reversed TransTrem, even the thread for the arm is anticlockwise. Right handed faceplates will fit, the position for the battery compartment (on the back) is on the other side. I think there were only four lefty GLs made with lefty TransTrems 🙂
Is resonance something that you will test, or has already been tested, to confirm that the resonance of the wood makes a notable difference to the electric signal?
@@AbeldeBetancourt Right, like we know strings pulled to tension between two tables with a Tele bridge pickup still sounds like a Tele, so I'm not sure why the material of the guitar (or lack thereof) would make a difference to the "resonance". Just wanted to know if he was speaking from fact or personal opinion. :P
The key word is 'notable'. Will it make a measurable difference? Probably, but is it notable? Can we tell? That's the real question in all these debates.
@@mattfleming2287 Exactly. All of these things can and probably do make a difference, but does that difference matter enough to care about? For me, I do not care and couldn't tell my guitars apart in a mix if I tried. People who say they could tell a difference, I'd love to see them try. The results from blind tests are not in their favour. XD
I'm glad you cover the topic as an engineer, anyway best of luck entering this rabbit hole, haha! I've been explaining these same topics all over (basic concept: construction as a whole matters, isolated materials don't). Adding on top of that the only vibration the magnetic pickup gets is the string moving sideways on its plane, while the string moving back and forth (the main component of the acoustic sound) won't be sensed. It didn't matter: magic thinking always wins.
I remember 1982 ish, I was 17 and went to Denmark street playing new strats each week until i could afford to buy but i ended up with a The Strat... two strats I kept going back to.. the same batch, same colour, same everything, one had more tone mojo than the other....
I've maintained this perspective for some time now but you've managed to articulate the matter very eloquently. We've seen a number of instruments created entirely, or in part, from artificial composites and in many ways their material consistency is a superior alternative to traditional wooden instruments. Mass, density and resonance are the key factors......
I agree on the fact that the main factor between electric guitar sound variance on the same model is the density of the woods (and water content), not the species ( also wood density is the main factor in guitar sustain ). Having said that, regarding the theory of the pickups being imune to the electric guitar resonating frequencies, i have never seen a definite answer based on science ( or at least based on a scientist/engineer account of the laws of physics/acoustics), while it's true that the pickups only pickup the string movement vibration it's still unclear to me if the different woods in electric guitars generate a different string vibration pattern that is received by the pickups, my assumption is yes but never seen an explanation by someone who knows what they're talking about.
And... Taylor guitars made a huge "mic drop" on the whole balyhoo. They built an ACOUSTIC guitar out of pallet wood, and made it sing like it was nobodies business. Not any tonewood in sight (or hearing). Full of marks, and looked fugly, but it sure didn't come cheap. But neither does fancy schmancy tonewood. Since the advent of Steinberger headless basses made of Kevlar, On basses with SOLID BODY construction as well as neck construction the whole tonewood debate is kind of futile. As fast as you have chamebered, hollowbody, half acoustic, tone wood may very well have something to do with the resultant sound. I would say on any solidbody guitar or bass, definitely nil. German boutique luthier Teuffel made his birdfish guitar some 10-15 years ago with stainless steel "legs" and two wood CHAMBERS TUBES (hollow) that you could remove and change out. The only thing that was of wood was the neck laminated still. It was no difference between the wood chambers off and on. So subtle that it was neglible. Then lets not start on the Gittler guitar...:-)
Thank you Alex - as always your just on spot! Maybe people should just stop thinking of Tonewood as super-duper-fancy-magic-wood. For me Tonewood ist wood that has been selected with density and consistency in mind and then dried, cut and stored to be ready to use as material to build instruments.
As a luthiery teacher I agree with what you say. The key bit is how the resonant frequencies of the neck, body, and components interact. If they "cancel out" you have a dead sounding (and feeling) guitar. Players react to the feel of playing, not just the sound. Sound engineers tend to react exclusively to the sound. This stupid arguing about "tonewood" is simply a conflation of two related but separate issues...
Y⁶Just purchased another strat, because the Vintera model I trued was head and shoulders above any other strat in the shop I was in (yes they have loads). Dead spots at specific points on necks ocurr when the resonant neck frequency is excited, causing energy cancellation. There are published papers on this topic observing and measuring the neck being excited. If the same neck is put on another body, I have found that the same dead spot appears. Stiff necks would be a good thing. I know from experience and logically, rhat bodies can affect tone, harmonics and and resonance by their subtractive qualities. Recommend you include published papers iwithin your assessment on this interesting topic.
As someone else already have stated below, buying 2 strats of the same batch, colors, and setups, one got that mojo, and the other was dead as a doornail. The process, methods of getting it all together and the actual build, is way more important than any kind of wood. See the Taylor thing (and that was even on an acoustic). On solid body electrics. Period. I can attest to the strat thing. Back in the 80s one of my friends and I bought - independently of each other - brand new stock Squier strats. Years later we'd found out that our similar strats had serial number right after each other. Can't remember if mine had the "lower" serial number or not. But anyway, stock, from the shelves setup, NO mods at all, not the slightest. His had mojo, and was the better "player", but mine was dead as a doornail too. We used the same kind of strings 010-046 and yada yada. Later on I tried to mod it to the moon and back, changing out pickups, refret with thicker frets, and all that, refine the setups, but it just sounded different, not necessarily better. Here's the crux: Tonewood on solid body electrics? Which is your benchmark? Your yardstick to be measured and compared to relatively? It can't be any acoustic can it? The little (subtle) difference there is will not be better, it will just be different. People often mixes those two ones up, all of the time. Different is not the same as better. Better is not the same as different. There are several renowned luthiers both on bass and guitars, who still swears by tonewood properties on solid body instruments, bass luthier Sadowsky and a couple more. So while we are relying a bit too much on the guild, the cognoscenti of the world, the physical laws still applies. The ipse dixit runs galore in tonewood debate. Yes, now you have to google those ones up, people. Both the words cognoscenti and ipse dixit. Just because someone says it, it's true.
@@BarefacedAudio build, assembly, they had the exact same "tonewood" all across. Same exact dimensions, and we did even weigh them. Poor fitting of the frets can cause havoc too. Poor fitting of... neck, everything. Look, i've met numerous musicians, that when their electric solid bodies took a fall from a chair, couch onto a carpeted floor, without breaking any headstock or cracks in the neck, or anywhere else, the guitar never became the same, no matter that there was NO damage to it. It lost that mojo, and didn't breathe again.
@@henkehakansson2004 they’re very complex interconnected resonant systems with series and parallel connections and energy moving back and forth between components, so there are plenty of opportunities for energy to be lost in a bad way tonally - however it is important to note that it’s 100% impossible for two guitars to be made of identical pieces of wood, because wood is a very complex composite of natural origin. Before a guitar is built it is possible to test the individual wooden parts to get the acoustic behaviour as similar as possible but obviously you can’t do that with a guitar that’s already been built!
@@BarefacedAudio Yes, thank you. Then you have the boasting strutting Zacchary guitars of Canada who made a great sounding solid body electric guitar out of an Ikea kitchen table. No one wanted to review it. Carry on with the endangered species of wood, instead. Looked fugly, came cheap. I say any other material that has the exact same properties as any wood, will have the same results timbre-wise (ha!). There are plenty of them out there, not only graphite or composite materials. Now I am talking about solidbody electrics ONLY, not acoustic, half acoustic, or chambered.
It's very simple. It's just physics. It is the impulse energy that effect the complete system, the guitar with all parts of it. What matters is the material and its behavior. No matter if it is wood, glass, concrete, plastic, any type of metal. The combination between these materials resonating in a specific way and producing specific sounds. There are so many different ways to create good guitars and for any style of music. A guitar is just a very complex construction and you have to choose the guitar you like. It would be very boring if every guitar sounded the same.
The neck is the weak point and the part most directly connected to the strings, therefore it absorbs the most energy. The resonating of the components sucks energy out of the strings, causing dead spots all over the fretboard, wherever the string frequency matches the resonant frequency (or multiple) of other parts. I never see anyone talk about the "tone" of the neck woods even though its construction has more of an effect on the resonating than the body. An electric guitar is not an acoustic guitar, it does not resonate to produce sound out of a sound hole.
Somebody already proved that air provides the same tone as your typical woody neck (in copper coil magnetic pickup-based electric guitars). Thus, that point is also moot.
@@AbeldeBetancourt Not really.. what I was saying was resonance causes deadspots on the fret board. Resonance is not really desirable and it won't improve tone.
My triplet of 212's stuck in customs more than a week was just released, according to DHL. May they be outputting glorious sound fields sometime very soon. I admit the delay has given me pause in deciding the best use of real estate, swapping out three 412's. Q: In your opinion, how many hours before proper break-in for alnico cream 90's?
@@rogerdat7807 with break-in it really depends on how hard you’re pushing them, so the loudness and frequency content. Could be super fast or take ages depending on how they’re being used!
Next the Paul Reed guy will be trying to tell the world that he's releasing some new Horse-Feather effect pedal and it's vastly better because instead of it being in a metal casing he's going to avail it in some wooden case of his vivid wild imagining that makes it better because of the 'tonewood' it'll be mounted in.....hilarious stuff methinks!
@@LIKEFUNK except that’s a purely electrical signal chain, whilst an electric guitar or bass is a purely mechanical resonant system which then uses a mechanical-magneto-electrical pickup to create an electrical system. So your analogy suggests that if you’re interested and open minded then you might learn something from watching the rest of this series…
Sympathetic resonance is the thing. Any piece of a passive gear acts as a filter. What does a filter ? It absorbs/holds back something. In this case some of the strings frequencies. You have all sorts of materials in a guitar. Some at 100% will change the sound. Some will be unaudible. What make guitar wood change the sound ? It will hold back some frequencies, or boost others by sympathetic resonance. This is pure physics Do your homework before pretending to teach others. The pickup doesn't "ear" the wood, but how it reacts with the strings. How it filters or amplify some of the strings frequencies. This creates the harmonics complexity. Nut and saddles, bridge, frets, all they are very hard/dense in order not to stop/absorb the vibrations, but they also participate to the final result the same way the wood do. Everything sends back or hold back some frequencies at a variable percentage, and by the way contribute to hold or cancel sustain too. I constantly see videos that demonstrate one thing or its opposite depending on the author's point of view. Why that ? Because these people have a field of perception reduced by ignorance and their ego controls them. They need to feel important, and to make people react and generate views. This is not a sharing of information, nor a sharing of personal experience. This creates unnecessary controversy and confusion, as well as false beliefs.
The joke started and was missed at the inception of referring to a piece of timber in the first place as 'tonewood'...end of report! ..on an electric instrument it's not worth the chase quite frankly, it's more about the shape used and chambering if any incorporated in the build or non chambering etc, how the strings resonate depends on what's causing them to resonate and yes from that perspective it gets multi faceted ....strings used, gauge etc, pickups, nut, saddle/s, bridge type and materials used for such, electronics used in the instrument, tone and volume pots etc, capacitor type etc, cable attached, length etc, amp used, speaker/s in cab etc....fun stuff!
I'm back ... okay, so "tonewood" doesn't matter as a fancy schmantzy concept, but EVERYTHING used to make the instrument is part of the resonant system so all of it matters, be it wood or not. I thought you might have been going toward some DI recording argument or something like that. :)
Look up Jim lills videos on "tonewood" he does a really good job at giving data on the subject. He proves an electric guitar doesn't have to be made out of much if anything to sound like a guitar. And im not talking about some cheap vs expensive etc. He made a guitar out of a work bench and the difference between it and real guitars were enough to stop me from sniffing the tone glue. The biggest factor/tone changer overall is without a doubt speakers. Acoustic instruments on the other hand do matter for obvious reasons
@@SlyRyFry Saying the biggest difference maker is the speaker, while true, is irrelevant to the discussion though. Different pickups sound different, different pots sound different, different amp designs sound different, heck different cables sound different. It all comes down to what you, the player, care about, and what you can hear. Some players don't care at all between a $200 Squire with a poor setup and frets and a $20k Strat. Some people it's critically important. It's NOT that it makes NO difference, it's that it's not the biggest factor in the resulting sound.
@@Scoots1994 Just go watch Jim lills videos, the human ear/brain is so fallible it's disgusting. If you get your info from anything but eq graphs its pseudoscience. That whole "in the room, what the player hears" does not exist, it's absolutely fiction when we live in the era of digital recording. When I found this stuff out it didn't make me feel like my $2k+ guitars were scams or that I wasted money, it just is what it is. I got a ton of cables too and the only time it makes a difference is when it's a very cheap design (more noise) or literally broken. Pickups, pots, cables, and amp heads in terms of tone are some of the least consequential parts of a setup as long as they work properly. And yes it's not that it makes no difference but the difference it does make would be much more noticeably insignificant if you just did A/B comparisons
@@KeithJCarberry1 I can hear the difference between a cheap cable vs a decent cable. There are certainly insanely expensive cables that don't make a difference I can hear, but the difference between $10 and $20 I can hear. Particularly between my cab and amp.
"Tonewood" does not matter, because it's the "tonewood" that matters, it doesn't need to be lumber... Okay. Adolf Rickenbacher used aluminium for the commercial version of the 'frying pan', first electric pickup guitar. Lester Polsfuss a piece of railroad steel, later some railroad plank for 'The Log'... desperately asking for support of at least some form of intelligent people, laughed at... So it does not matter if you use some heavily decayed woodplank sounding already like wet cardboard, some 100 years dried castered barn-pieces, (like Jim's worbenches) sounding like ... SOUND tOCK TOCK or some vintage mahogany (real, auhentic/genuine- unobtainable, even illegal - is there any swamp ash still?), or fresh plywood from the diy... (the latter has a better sound than many midprice-ranged guitars... dare tap! just DARE TAP !) Sustain is one thing, loudness, but resonance is where the money goes, let's hope the pickups are microphonic as well. Needless to say those latter 'mahogany' guitars for many many, meanwhile bucks mostly ain't got more than some veneer that looks quite alike mahogany... (covering 6 unidentifyable glued tonepieces) That's some schmanz all (don't (wanna)) talk about. Exept maybe PRS... Oh, in "the mix" (distortedly heavy clipped) of course there's no difference, even between vintage singlecoils, or chin. humbuckers, you don't even hear how many years the strings got... If music is just 'the sound' (ie. speaker 'presence'-?) why don't we all use the same computer sampled /modelled signals? Oh, maybe there's a lot in the sound, my 2 ct. And YOU could rather go on showing quality content, instead of following some foolish bubbles, where one who doesn't show how smart he is by plappering after all the others is a
This was a great explanation for a debate spawned by new-gen intelligence. Prior to to the internet, there was no debate for a tree's contribution towards tone; just tree species, plank preparing process, and glue. Then came the bridges and the nuts....
Back then there wasn't any debate: guitar magazines and manufacturers promoting themselves through these magazines were just right, there wasn't any other option than believing in those concepts, because affordable instruments back then were unplayable junk and amps were out of reach for most, we couldn't really test stuff. The internet changed it all for good, suddenly we had access to knowledge, scientific papers, collaboration, and luthiers started sharing trade secrets that previously you could only acquire by being their apprentice for years. Usenet and later on forums were incredible, until every regular person had access and it became polluted with noise, later on people with magic beliefs developed a voice, and nowadays it seems «we all deserve to be listened». Since about the last 10 years we finally now know speaker + cab contribute the most to shaping our own guitar sound, while back then the amp was considered to be the holy grail and nobody cared about boring speakers, let alone cabs.
Question: If the resonant frequencies of "electric" instruments make such a difference, then why don't manufacturers make body sensors for the acoustic properties instead of using cruddy piezo sensors in the bridge? I have a hard time believing that this hasn't been researched before... Is there something wrong with the idea of a body sensor on a solid body electric?
@@BarefacedAudio Well, Taylor, Martin, LR Baggs, Fishman, they all have body sensors ( basically a microphone ) that picks up vibrations off of the top of an acoustic. They are usually more pleasant to listen to than a piezo. Why can't they do that with a solid body electric to allow for an acoustic tone instead of the piezo systems that are so common?
@@timbrooks521 for the same reason you can’t sing to an electric guitar around a campfire - the acoustic output is too low. You can mic an electric guitar (the intro of Funky Monks is this sound) but you won’t get it loud enough live without feedback.
@@BarefacedAudio Right, but we're not looking for an acoustic output, we're simply looking for vibration in the body, similar to the top of an acoustic. The sensor would then go into a preamp like any other piezo or body sensor. These body sensors are currently used in some hollow body electrics such as the Taylor T5z. So if the resonant frequencies of a solid body electric still make a difference the we should be able to amplify them.
@@timbrooks521 if a body sensor is a microphone then it requires acoustic output to be able to create an electrical signal, and the quieter the acoustic source, the bigger the problems of noise and feedback.
@@pd4165 " All tonewood deniers sound the same! " All 335s have a plywood top and back, and Holdsworth got a wonderful tone out of a graphite Steinberger
@@UphillGardener-ly5sh What are you saying here? That graphite is wood? It depends where they got the carbon from! Also - I think you might have been missing my point - 'tonewood deniers' being a class of person that is dogmatic and has had all the fun sucked out of them. I definitely believe that some guitars have 'magic' in them that makes them sound and/or play nicer than 'identical' models. If we could work out what makes this happen.............
@@pd4165 no, I was pointing out that some of the best guitar tones ever recorded came from guitars made from plywood and graphite, you get the "old wood" guys who swoon over Peter Green's tone saying "you only get that with 50yrs old wood" Peter Green's Les Paul was six years old when those tones were recorded. Acoustic instruments may be a different matter, but a two inch thick sold guitar, with two/three pickups, a bridge and a tail piece bolted on, and four pots may (may) sound a tad brighte/darker depending on the wood, but caps, pots and pickups affect the tone immeasurably more. Same with nitro/poly it's not going to affect how a 2" slab of wood vibrates
No one who has ever worked with wood as a vehicle for making sound would agree that tonewood does not matter. First of all, the term "tonewood" is grossly misunderstood. To the luthier, it simply means a species of wood which is recognized as usefully resonant for the purposes of making musical instruments. That's all. It does not imply beauty or any mystical qualities, or anything else. It just means a wood that resonates well. Balsa, for instance, is not considered to be a "tonewood", because it does not resonate well. Sitka spruce resonates very well. Paulownia has been prized for its resonant qualities for centuries in East Asia. Rosewoods and dalbergias resonate very well. Maples and mahoganies resonate very well. That is why these woods are called "tonewoods" and why they are commonly used to make musical instruments. The species of the wood absolutely affects the tone of an electric instrument. I do not make the laws of Physics, you will have to argue with the Creator of the Universe, whoever that may be. While it is true that there are may variables to each individual piece of wood, it is well-understood and well-recognized by people with ears that function and scientific instruments that measure that each species has certain general characteristics, and that is why they are chosen by discerning luthiers. The differences are often subtle, and they may not matter to a particular individual player, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that the differences don't matter to you, because there are so many other ways of affecting the ultimate tone of the end product, from pickups to cables to pedals to amps to cabinets to drivers. It is still a mistake to believe that the species of the wood or type of material of which the instrument or any component of it is made has zero effect on the tone of an electric instrument. If you prefer to persist in a mistaken belief, that is your business; there are, after all, still people who profess that the Earth is Flat, despite all evidence to the contrary. Even such a seemingly minor difference as the material of the frets on an electric guitar produces an obvious difference in tone.
It's funny because it's a known fact that Leo Fender's choice of "Tonewoods" were based on availability, cheapness and how easy the wood was to work on, not on species acoustic resonance, that's why 50/60's Fender bodies were made of various cheap woods like Pine, Ash, Alder and Poplar. Maple as a neck wood was chosen because it was cheap and high density as it makes a guitar neck more stable.
@@BarefacedAudio No, I assure you, I watched the entire video. I have over 45 years of experience working with wood and performing music live. I know exactly what I am talking about on this subject.
@@tiagoramalhais5493 Leo Fender didn't invent musical instruments, and you are entirely incorrect about why he chose the woods he chose. While it is true that some of his prototypes were made using Pine, none of the production instruments were, they were made of Ash and Sugar Maple. Maple has been in use for musical instruments for centuries. Do try to at least read up on the actual history.
first of all paul reed smith is a lunatic. if tonewood didn't matter than my maple board strat wouldn't sound brighter than rosewood and it does. if tonewood didn't matter les pauls and sg's would sound the same...tonewood matters.
There are more differences between Les Pauls and SGs than just the wood it's made from... which is mostly the same and identical in the case of Les Paul Customs without maple caps. I've not played a non-maple cap Les Paul Custom and an SG side by side, but my assumption is that they would still sound and feel different to play based on their construction despite the identical materials. I could be wrong though and generally don't really care what wood the guitar is made from.
All 335s have a plywood top and back, and Holdsworth got a wonderful tone out of a graphite Steinberger
@@UphillGardener-ly5sh and the tuning stability of a graphite headless guitar or bass is incredible!
@@BarefacedAudio I bought (and still have) a lefty Steinberger GL4TA because of Allan's tone
@@UphillGardener-ly5sh is the only difference between a lefty and right Steinberger where they put the control cavity and knobs, plus a reversed strap mount thingy?
@@BarefacedAudio no, it's a completely reversed TransTrem, even the thread for the arm is anticlockwise. Right handed faceplates will fit, the position for the battery compartment (on the back) is on the other side. I think there were only four lefty GLs made with lefty TransTrems 🙂
Every piece of wood is different. Including wood from the same plank! Very well said.
The video that demonstrates air has the same _tone_ as a wooden neck and body on electric guitars won't undo itself.
You can’t support the two witness points of a string with air - there has to be a structure!
There’s no such thing as “tone wood”. It’s just wood!
Is resonance something that you will test, or has already been tested, to confirm that the resonance of the wood makes a notable difference to the electric signal?
It has been demonstrated beyond doubt that it is not the case.
@@AbeldeBetancourt Right, like we know strings pulled to tension between two tables with a Tele bridge pickup still sounds like a Tele, so I'm not sure why the material of the guitar (or lack thereof) would make a difference to the "resonance". Just wanted to know if he was speaking from fact or personal opinion. :P
The key word is 'notable'. Will it make a measurable difference? Probably, but is it notable? Can we tell? That's the real question in all these debates.
@@mattfleming2287 Exactly. All of these things can and probably do make a difference, but does that difference matter enough to care about? For me, I do not care and couldn't tell my guitars apart in a mix if I tried. People who say they could tell a difference, I'd love to see them try. The results from blind tests are not in their favour. XD
I'm glad you cover the topic as an engineer, anyway best of luck entering this rabbit hole, haha!
I've been explaining these same topics all over (basic concept: construction as a whole matters, isolated materials don't). Adding on top of that the only vibration the magnetic pickup gets is the string moving sideways on its plane, while the string moving back and forth (the main component of the acoustic sound) won't be sensed. It didn't matter: magic thinking always wins.
I remember 1982 ish, I was 17 and went to Denmark street playing new strats each week until i could afford to buy but i ended up with a The Strat... two strats I kept going back to.. the same batch, same colour, same everything, one had more tone mojo than the other....
I've maintained this perspective for some time now but you've managed to articulate the matter very eloquently. We've seen a number of instruments created entirely, or in part, from artificial composites and in many ways their material consistency is a superior alternative to traditional wooden instruments.
Mass, density and resonance are the key factors......
I agree on the fact that the main factor between electric guitar sound variance on the same model is the density of the woods (and water content), not the species ( also wood density is the main factor in guitar sustain ). Having said that, regarding the theory of the pickups being imune to the electric guitar resonating frequencies, i have never seen a definite answer based on science ( or at least based on a scientist/engineer account of the laws of physics/acoustics), while it's true that the pickups only pickup the string movement vibration it's still unclear to me if the different woods in electric guitars generate a different string vibration pattern that is received by the pickups, my assumption is yes but never seen an explanation by someone who knows what they're talking about.
Science doesn’t matter, use your ears!
And... Taylor guitars made a huge "mic drop" on the whole balyhoo. They built an ACOUSTIC guitar out of pallet wood, and made it sing like it was nobodies business. Not any tonewood in sight (or hearing). Full of marks, and looked fugly, but it sure didn't come cheap. But neither does fancy schmancy tonewood. Since the advent of Steinberger headless basses made of Kevlar, On basses with SOLID BODY construction as well as neck construction the whole tonewood debate is kind of futile. As fast as you have chamebered, hollowbody, half acoustic, tone wood may very well have something to do with the resultant sound. I would say on any solidbody guitar or bass, definitely nil.
German boutique luthier Teuffel made his birdfish guitar some 10-15 years ago with stainless steel "legs" and two wood CHAMBERS TUBES (hollow) that you could remove and change out. The only thing that was of wood was the neck laminated still. It was no difference between the wood chambers off and on. So subtle that it was neglible. Then lets not start on the Gittler guitar...:-)
Thank you Alex - as always your just on spot!
Maybe people should just stop thinking of Tonewood as super-duper-fancy-magic-wood. For me Tonewood ist wood that has been selected with density and consistency in mind and then dried, cut and stored to be ready to use as material to build instruments.
For me, it matters but not for the sound. I'm more worried about the integrity, also I don't like heavy woods.
Finally a "tonewood is a lie" video I agree with.
As a luthiery teacher I agree with what you say. The key bit is how the resonant frequencies of the neck, body, and components interact. If they "cancel out" you have a dead sounding (and feeling) guitar. Players react to the feel of playing, not just the sound. Sound engineers tend to react exclusively to the sound. This stupid arguing about "tonewood" is simply a conflation of two related but separate issues...
Y⁶Just purchased another strat, because the Vintera model I trued was head and shoulders above any other strat in the shop I was in (yes they have loads).
Dead spots at specific points on necks ocurr when the resonant neck frequency is excited, causing energy cancellation. There are published papers on this topic observing and measuring the neck being excited. If the same neck is put on another body, I have found that the same dead spot appears. Stiff necks would be a good thing. I know from experience and logically, rhat bodies can affect tone, harmonics and and resonance by their subtractive qualities. Recommend you include published papers iwithin your assessment on this interesting topic.
As someone else already have stated below, buying 2 strats of the same batch, colors, and setups, one got that mojo, and the other was dead as a doornail. The process, methods of getting it all together and the actual build, is way more important than any kind of wood. See the Taylor thing (and that was even on an acoustic).
On solid body electrics. Period. I can attest to the strat thing. Back in the 80s one of my friends and I bought - independently of each other - brand new stock Squier strats. Years later we'd found out that our similar strats had serial number right after each other. Can't remember if mine had the "lower" serial number or not. But anyway, stock, from the shelves setup, NO mods at all, not the slightest. His had mojo, and was the better "player", but mine was dead as a doornail too. We used the same kind of strings 010-046 and yada yada. Later on I tried to mod it to the moon and back, changing out pickups, refret with thicker frets, and all that, refine the setups, but it just sounded different, not necessarily better.
Here's the crux: Tonewood on solid body electrics? Which is your benchmark? Your yardstick to be measured and compared to relatively? It can't be any acoustic can it? The little (subtle) difference there is will not be better, it will just be different. People often mixes those two ones up, all of the time. Different is not the same as better. Better is not the same as different.
There are several renowned luthiers both on bass and guitars, who still swears by tonewood properties on solid body instruments, bass luthier Sadowsky and a couple more. So while we are relying a bit too much on the guild, the cognoscenti of the world, the physical laws still applies. The ipse dixit runs galore in tonewood debate. Yes, now you have to google those ones up, people. Both the words cognoscenti and ipse dixit. Just because someone says it, it's true.
@@henkehakansson2004 why are you assuming that the wood isn’t the difference between those two guitars? If it sounds “dead”, what’s causing that?
@@BarefacedAudio build, assembly, they had the exact same "tonewood" all across. Same exact dimensions, and we did even weigh them. Poor fitting of the frets can cause havoc too. Poor fitting of... neck, everything.
Look, i've met numerous musicians, that when their electric solid bodies took a fall from a chair, couch onto a carpeted floor, without breaking any headstock or cracks in the neck, or anywhere else, the guitar never became the same, no matter that there was NO damage to it. It lost that mojo, and didn't breathe again.
@@henkehakansson2004 they’re very complex interconnected resonant systems with series and parallel connections and energy moving back and forth between components, so there are plenty of opportunities for energy to be lost in a bad way tonally - however it is important to note that it’s 100% impossible for two guitars to be made of identical pieces of wood, because wood is a very complex composite of natural origin. Before a guitar is built it is possible to test the individual wooden parts to get the acoustic behaviour as similar as possible but obviously you can’t do that with a guitar that’s already been built!
@@BarefacedAudio Yes, thank you. Then you have the boasting strutting Zacchary guitars of Canada who made a great sounding solid body electric guitar out of an Ikea kitchen table. No one wanted to review it. Carry on with the endangered species of wood, instead. Looked fugly, came cheap. I say any other material that has the exact same properties as any wood, will have the same results timbre-wise (ha!). There are plenty of them out there, not only graphite or composite materials. Now I am talking about solidbody electrics ONLY, not acoustic, half acoustic, or chambered.
It's very simple. It's just physics. It is the impulse energy that effect the complete system, the guitar with all parts of it. What matters is the material and its behavior. No matter if it is wood, glass, concrete, plastic, any type of metal. The combination between these materials resonating in a specific way and producing specific sounds. There are so many different ways to create good guitars and for any style of music. A guitar is just a very complex construction and you have to choose the guitar you like. It would be very boring if every guitar sounded the same.
The neck is the weak point and the part most directly connected to the strings, therefore it absorbs the most energy. The resonating of the components sucks energy out of the strings, causing dead spots all over the fretboard, wherever the string frequency matches the resonant frequency (or multiple) of other parts. I never see anyone talk about the "tone" of the neck woods even though its construction has more of an effect on the resonating than the body. An electric guitar is not an acoustic guitar, it does not resonate to produce sound out of a sound hole.
Somebody already proved that air provides the same tone as your typical woody neck (in copper coil magnetic pickup-based electric guitars). Thus, that point is also moot.
@@AbeldeBetancourt Not really.. what I was saying was resonance causes deadspots on the fret board. Resonance is not really desirable and it won't improve tone.
No, there is no "toanewood", there is an mounting platform.
My triplet of 212's stuck in customs more than a week was just released, according to DHL. May they be outputting glorious sound fields sometime very soon. I admit the delay has given me pause in deciding the best use of real estate, swapping out three 412's. Q: In your opinion, how many hours before proper break-in for alnico cream 90's?
@@rogerdat7807 with break-in it really depends on how hard you’re pushing them, so the loudness and frequency content. Could be super fast or take ages depending on how they’re being used!
@@BarefacedAudio Thank you. I suppose I'll be wearing my Minuendo's for the first handful of sessions then! Video with proper mic'd audio to follow.
Next the Paul Reed guy will be trying to tell the world that he's releasing some new Horse-Feather effect pedal and it's vastly better because instead of it being in a metal casing he's going to avail it in some wooden case of his vivid wild imagining that makes it better because of the 'tonewood' it'll be mounted in.....hilarious stuff methinks!
@@LIKEFUNK except that’s a purely electrical signal chain, whilst an electric guitar or bass is a purely mechanical resonant system which then uses a mechanical-magneto-electrical pickup to create an electrical system. So your analogy suggests that if you’re interested and open minded then you might learn something from watching the rest of this series…
Haven't watched the first 10 seconds yet, but there better be an "if" in the theory :)
Sympathetic resonance is the thing.
Any piece of a passive gear acts as a filter. What does a filter ? It absorbs/holds back something. In this case some of the strings frequencies.
You have all sorts of materials in a guitar. Some at 100% will change the sound. Some will be unaudible.
What make guitar wood change the sound ? It will hold back some frequencies, or boost others by sympathetic resonance.
This is pure physics
Do your homework before pretending to teach others.
The pickup doesn't "ear" the wood, but how it reacts with the strings. How it filters or amplify some of the strings frequencies. This creates the harmonics complexity. Nut and saddles, bridge, frets, all they are very hard/dense in order not to stop/absorb the vibrations, but they also participate to the final result the same way the wood do.
Everything sends back or hold back some frequencies at a variable percentage, and by the way contribute to hold or cancel sustain too.
I constantly see videos that demonstrate one thing or its opposite depending on the author's point of view. Why that ? Because these people have a field of perception reduced by ignorance and their ego controls them. They need to feel important, and to make people react and generate views. This is not a sharing of information, nor a sharing of personal experience. This creates unnecessary controversy and confusion, as well as false beliefs.
@@danielbarbieri8199 did you watch the whole video?
The joke started and was missed at the inception of referring to a piece of timber in the first place as 'tonewood'...end of report! ..on an electric instrument it's not worth the chase quite frankly, it's more about the shape used and chambering if any incorporated in the build or non chambering etc, how the strings resonate depends on what's causing them to resonate and yes from that perspective it gets multi faceted ....strings used, gauge etc, pickups, nut, saddle/s, bridge type and materials used for such, electronics used in the instrument, tone and volume pots etc, capacitor type etc, cable attached, length etc, amp used, speaker/s in cab etc....fun stuff!
@@LIKEFUNK yes, it’s a complex system!
@@BarefacedAudio I'm looking forward to vids about toneplastic any minute!!! 😂
I'm back ... okay, so "tonewood" doesn't matter as a fancy schmantzy concept, but EVERYTHING used to make the instrument is part of the resonant system so all of it matters, be it wood or not. I thought you might have been going toward some DI recording argument or something like that. :)
Look up Jim lills videos on "tonewood" he does a really good job at giving data on the subject. He proves an electric guitar doesn't have to be made out of much if anything to sound like a guitar. And im not talking about some cheap vs expensive etc. He made a guitar out of a work bench and the difference between it and real guitars were enough to stop me from sniffing the tone glue. The biggest factor/tone changer overall is without a doubt speakers. Acoustic instruments on the other hand do matter for obvious reasons
@@SlyRyFry Saying the biggest difference maker is the speaker, while true, is irrelevant to the discussion though. Different pickups sound different, different pots sound different, different amp designs sound different, heck different cables sound different. It all comes down to what you, the player, care about, and what you can hear.
Some players don't care at all between a $200 Squire with a poor setup and frets and a $20k Strat. Some people it's critically important.
It's NOT that it makes NO difference, it's that it's not the biggest factor in the resulting sound.
@@Scoots1994 Just go watch Jim lills videos, the human ear/brain is so fallible it's disgusting. If you get your info from anything but eq graphs its pseudoscience. That whole "in the room, what the player hears" does not exist, it's absolutely fiction when we live in the era of digital recording.
When I found this stuff out it didn't make me feel like my $2k+ guitars were scams or that I wasted money, it just is what it is. I got a ton of cables too and the only time it makes a difference is when it's a very cheap design (more noise) or literally broken.
Pickups, pots, cables, and amp heads in terms of tone are some of the least consequential parts of a setup as long as they work properly. And yes it's not that it makes no difference but the difference it does make would be much more noticeably insignificant if you just did A/B comparisons
@@Scoots1994 different cables do not sound different, unless you're taking about length
@@KeithJCarberry1 I can hear the difference between a cheap cable vs a decent cable. There are certainly insanely expensive cables that don't make a difference I can hear, but the difference between $10 and $20 I can hear. Particularly between my cab and amp.
What brand of guitar is that? Thanks.
@@DonHalli Reverend!
@@BarefacedAudio Thank you!
Jim Lill. Everyone go and watch Jim Lill.
@@t23c56 Jim Lil’s poor scientific method was one of the reasons for this video!
"Tonewood" does not matter,
because it's the "tonewood" that matters,
it doesn't need to be lumber...
Okay.
Adolf Rickenbacher used aluminium for the commercial version of the 'frying pan', first electric pickup guitar.
Lester Polsfuss a piece of railroad steel, later some railroad plank for 'The Log'... desperately asking for support of at least some form of intelligent people, laughed at...
So it does not matter if you use some heavily decayed woodplank sounding already like wet cardboard,
some 100 years dried castered barn-pieces, (like Jim's worbenches) sounding like ... SOUND tOCK TOCK
or some vintage mahogany (real, auhentic/genuine- unobtainable, even illegal - is there any swamp ash still?),
or fresh plywood from the diy...
(the latter has a better sound than many midprice-ranged guitars... dare tap! just DARE TAP !)
Sustain is one thing, loudness,
but resonance is where the money goes, let's hope the pickups are microphonic as well.
Needless to say those latter 'mahogany' guitars for many many, meanwhile bucks mostly ain't got more than some veneer that looks quite alike mahogany... (covering 6 unidentifyable glued tonepieces) That's some schmanz all (don't (wanna)) talk about.
Exept maybe PRS...
Oh, in "the mix" (distortedly heavy clipped) of course there's no difference, even between vintage singlecoils, or chin. humbuckers,
you don't even hear how many years the strings got...
If music is just 'the sound' (ie. speaker 'presence'-?)
why don't we all use the same computer sampled /modelled signals?
Oh, maybe there's a lot in the sound, my 2 ct.
And YOU could rather go on showing quality content,
instead of following some foolish bubbles,
where one who doesn't show how smart he is by plappering after all the others is a
@@marcherb276 watch the next video!
Depends on what you mean by matter. In the way you said things people are going to think all wood sounds the same, which is false.
@@Les537 I definitely woodn’t (sic) say that!
This was a great explanation for a debate spawned by new-gen intelligence. Prior to to the internet, there was no debate for a tree's contribution towards tone; just tree species, plank preparing process, and glue. Then came the bridges and the nuts....
Back then there wasn't any debate: guitar magazines and manufacturers promoting themselves through these magazines were just right, there wasn't any other option than believing in those concepts, because affordable instruments back then were unplayable junk and amps were out of reach for most, we couldn't really test stuff.
The internet changed it all for good, suddenly we had access to knowledge, scientific papers, collaboration, and luthiers started sharing trade secrets that previously you could only acquire by being their apprentice for years. Usenet and later on forums were incredible, until every regular person had access and it became polluted with noise, later on people with magic beliefs developed a voice, and nowadays it seems «we all deserve to be listened».
Since about the last 10 years we finally now know speaker + cab contribute the most to shaping our own guitar sound, while back then the amp was considered to be the holy grail and nobody cared about boring speakers, let alone cabs.
Question: If the resonant frequencies of "electric" instruments make such a difference, then why don't manufacturers make body sensors for the acoustic properties instead of using cruddy piezo sensors in the bridge? I have a hard time believing that this hasn't been researched before... Is there something wrong with the idea of a body sensor on a solid body electric?
@@timbrooks521 what would the “body sensor” be though?
@@BarefacedAudio Well, Taylor, Martin, LR Baggs, Fishman, they all have body sensors ( basically a microphone ) that picks up vibrations off of the top of an acoustic. They are usually more pleasant to listen to than a piezo. Why can't they do that with a solid body electric to allow for an acoustic tone instead of the piezo systems that are so common?
@@timbrooks521 for the same reason you can’t sing to an electric guitar around a campfire - the acoustic output is too low. You can mic an electric guitar (the intro of Funky Monks is this sound) but you won’t get it loud enough live without feedback.
@@BarefacedAudio Right, but we're not looking for an acoustic output, we're simply looking for vibration in the body, similar to the top of an acoustic. The sensor would then go into a preamp like any other piezo or body sensor. These body sensors are currently used in some hollow body electrics such as the Taylor T5z. So if the resonant frequencies of a solid body electric still make a difference the we should be able to amplify them.
@@timbrooks521 if a body sensor is a microphone then it requires acoustic output to be able to create an electrical signal, and the quieter the acoustic source, the bigger the problems of noise and feedback.
Tonewood does not exist!
All tonewood deniers sound the same!
@@pd4165 Not a cult!
@@pd4165 " All tonewood deniers sound the same! "
All 335s have a plywood top and back, and Holdsworth got a wonderful tone out of a graphite Steinberger
@@UphillGardener-ly5sh What are you saying here?
That graphite is wood?
It depends where they got the carbon from!
Also - I think you might have been missing my point - 'tonewood deniers' being a class of person that is dogmatic and has had all the fun sucked out of them.
I definitely believe that some guitars have 'magic' in them that makes them sound and/or play nicer than 'identical' models.
If we could work out what makes this happen.............
@@pd4165 no, I was pointing out that some of the best guitar tones ever recorded came from guitars made from plywood and graphite, you get the "old wood" guys who swoon over Peter Green's tone saying "you only get that with 50yrs old wood" Peter Green's Les Paul was six years old when those tones were recorded.
Acoustic instruments may be a different matter, but a two inch thick sold guitar, with two/three pickups, a bridge and a tail piece bolted on, and four pots may (may) sound a tad brighte/darker depending on the wood, but caps, pots and pickups affect the tone immeasurably more.
Same with nitro/poly it's not going to affect how a 2" slab of wood vibrates
No one who has ever worked with wood as a vehicle for making sound would agree that tonewood does not matter. First of all, the term "tonewood" is grossly misunderstood. To the luthier, it simply means a species of wood which is recognized as usefully resonant for the purposes of making musical instruments. That's all. It does not imply beauty or any mystical qualities, or anything else. It just means a wood that resonates well.
Balsa, for instance, is not considered to be a "tonewood", because it does not resonate well. Sitka spruce resonates very well. Paulownia has been prized for its resonant qualities for centuries in East Asia. Rosewoods and dalbergias resonate very well. Maples and mahoganies resonate very well. That is why these woods are called "tonewoods" and why they are commonly used to make musical instruments.
The species of the wood absolutely affects the tone of an electric instrument. I do not make the laws of Physics, you will have to argue with the Creator of the Universe, whoever that may be. While it is true that there are may variables to each individual piece of wood, it is well-understood and well-recognized by people with ears that function and scientific instruments that measure that each species has certain general characteristics, and that is why they are chosen by discerning luthiers.
The differences are often subtle, and they may not matter to a particular individual player, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that the differences don't matter to you, because there are so many other ways of affecting the ultimate tone of the end product, from pickups to cables to pedals to amps to cabinets to drivers. It is still a mistake to believe that the species of the wood or type of material of which the instrument or any component of it is made has zero effect on the tone of an electric instrument.
If you prefer to persist in a mistaken belief, that is your business; there are, after all, still people who profess that the Earth is Flat, despite all evidence to the contrary. Even such a seemingly minor difference as the material of the frets on an electric guitar produces an obvious difference in tone.
@@gcvrsa I presume you wrote this before watching the video?
It's funny because it's a known fact that Leo Fender's choice of "Tonewoods" were based on availability, cheapness and how easy the wood was to work on, not on species acoustic resonance, that's why 50/60's Fender bodies were made of various cheap woods like Pine, Ash, Alder and Poplar. Maple as a neck wood was chosen because it was cheap and high density as it makes a guitar neck more stable.
@@BarefacedAudio No, I assure you, I watched the entire video. I have over 45 years of experience working with wood and performing music live. I know exactly what I am talking about on this subject.
@@tiagoramalhais5493 Leo Fender didn't invent musical instruments, and you are entirely incorrect about why he chose the woods he chose. While it is true that some of his prototypes were made using Pine, none of the production instruments were, they were made of Ash and Sugar Maple. Maple has been in use for musical instruments for centuries. Do try to at least read up on the actual history.
@@gcvrsa I hope you like the next video then!
first of all paul reed smith is a lunatic. if tonewood didn't matter than my maple board strat wouldn't sound brighter than rosewood and it does. if tonewood didn't matter les pauls and sg's would sound the same...tonewood matters.
There are more differences between Les Pauls and SGs than just the wood it's made from... which is mostly the same and identical in the case of Les Paul Customs without maple caps.
I've not played a non-maple cap Les Paul Custom and an SG side by side, but my assumption is that they would still sound and feel different to play based on their construction despite the identical materials. I could be wrong though and generally don't really care what wood the guitar is made from.