No it isn't 🤣 this dude doesn't even know the basics about guitars. He ain't in ANY position to be tryi g to teach or prove anything to anyone until he learns quite a bit more. He doesn't even know basic information that I knew before I even owned a guitar.
Its hilarious seeing comments like these that act like this video "empirically" proves/disproves anything significant. World renowned players that have created worthwhile, unique musical art throughout human history believe things about their guitars and music that you might call think they treat as "magic", that's only because our primitive science can't explain it, or does a comically insufficient job of trying.
@@disco4535 you're right, that's why we need to only buy $5,000 guitars so that we can have T O A N maybe things like the type of wood or the way the neck is attached to the body make a difference in music, but an artist can make art with anything. that's what the comment you replied to is saying. the artist makes it sound good, not the density of the finish or how much money you dropped on your new guitar. also, it's helping people not get sucked into the thought process of "i need to buy this ridiculously expensive piece of wood with magnets and strings to be as good as my heroes"... and as someone who has built their own guitar, i can tell you that many people actually do believe it is magic...
Seems like a lot of these myths about tone and sustain relate to acoustic guitar, but don't really carry over to electric in reality, yet have been perpetuated for decades in the musical community. Brilliant, enlightening video, as always!
Yes ... this is it ... electrical guitarists have yet to truly embrace the electrical nature of their instrument, even going so far as applying acoustic thinking to electrical components in thinking larger components (eg capacitors) are better than modern smaller ones etc. It's a little sad I think because I think it has kept the industry back and made us all more beholden to the guitar manufacturers as the culture helps perpetuate an illusory magic in any one guitar when really it's mostly about pickups and whether the guitar feels good in your own hands. It should be more normal to get a guitar based just on build quality, shape and neck profile and to then install whatever pickups you like, and, even better, have common guitar designs that allow you to easily change the pickups.
@@errollloyd6721 perfect realization of how one product for life (guitar in this instance) results in the manufacturer not making additional sales off buyers. The only way to ensure sales is to either A "improve upon inferiority" or B offer an "alternative" features list or whole product. Ironically guitarists be big suckers to the corporate man they supposedly despise 😅
@@williambartholomew5680 Guitar culture could be a bit more open to the idea of owning, say, a bass, baritone, standard, and a ukelele, or putting value on the cosmetic look of a guitar (we already do that) above what the acoustic qualities of the instrument are, but the first thing requires learning, which is why guitarists don't like the idea of picking up a bass (and vice versa) and the second thing is rooted in hundreds of years of culture and things that are true of acoustics. On the other hand, upgrading your guitar for better pickups is something we already do, so there's that.
this is a HUGE part of the source of even well-intentioned guitar industry BS!!! I think there is a lot of conflation of "sound" with "player experience", too. We might perceive that a guitar "resonates" more based on its vibrational characteristics, while in fact there's no audibly perceptible difference to a listener. That doesn't mean we should disregard player experience as an important factor influencing design characteristics- something like neck radius might not influence the sound but it sure feels different to a player! But, it is important to disambiguate the two if we're trying to understand the mechanisms of electric guitar sound generation and reproduction in a scientific way.
That's the thing! Most, if not all, guitar myths DO apply to an acoustic. Yet next to none have any bearing on an electric, becoming pseudoscience in the process.
i like that he doesn't outwardly put his interpretation of the data into the video. music is so subjective it's hard to say what is better in a lot of situations.
I think the point is that they're not even consensus, right there they're done that think that light finish is better and others that say the exact opposite... Lighter gauges and actions are more determinative in conjunction with good left hands technique but maybe aside the "it's in the fingers" crowd, nobody cares so passionately about gauge and action... We all do, because we need them to pay comfortably, but nobody is so passionate about it as the flight between a vintage SG or the latest fluence...
Hah! I also was waiting for the "So, I had to find a plan B". Man, this guy is dedicated. And while it appears he's not a technical guy ("never took a stats class"), these experiments are quite well conceived and implemented, which is not as easy as many would think. I especially liked the wooden dowel saddle - that eliminated any nuances of different alloys in one fell swoop. Well done!
The combination of these 2 videos really makes me think that practically the only things that truly matter to a great sounding guitar are a good pickup and a good setup. And a great player of course!
Speakers as well, They all do put a unique twist on your sound. Glenn at SMG did a great video about it called what matters most about guitar tone. I really love seeing people get to the bottom of what matters in regards to tone and well made guitars , There is way too much made up stuff floating around.
the thing is, a cheap and not very well constructed guitar (bad mechanics, poor maintenance of the tuning, bad ergonomics (neck not well finished, frets coming out) might sound great with a set up and some expensive pickups, but if it doesn't hold the tuning well and doesn't feel great to play than it's not fullfilling its purpouse.
Changing amp/speakers has long been the most drastic tonal quality changer. I've long believed a cheap (yet adequately built) guitar with a good setup and a decent pup into a nice rig will get you much further than a $3000 dollar custom guitar into a cheap practice amp. There are good practice amps these days, but comparatively speaking.
The science seems fairly clear relating to tone. I'm not discounting the other factors that affect the player though ... neck shape and feel, fret size, tuning stability (set up is part of that but not the only thing), body ergonomics ... and aesthetics. I certainly wouldn't discount all of those things when selecting a guitar.
These make me so happy because it just confirms that as long as a guitar is built properly and the pickups are ok, there’s no reason it can’t be a usable sound
@@flachmann161 nah they are really old bad pickups from the 90s and 2000s era when there was no middle ground just great expensive guitars and cheap crap, but true, mostly all the new cheap guitars and all the epi and squiers come with ok, usable Pickups.
@@ot4kon Yes I have pickups like that, they truly suck. It doesn't mean you need Aeymour Duncans or original PAFs you stole from Joe Bonamassa but just decently made pickups. Epiphones from the early 2000s had pretty sucky ones. Alnico Classic. I ordered some Tonerider Alnico 2 Classics, with high hopes. In demos they sound as nice as original PAFs at half the cost of name brand stuff (still a lot of money for two magnets wrapped in copper wire).
This is going to turn into a series called “everything you know about guitar is wrong” and we’ll all be playing the Jim Lill signature squier bullet telecaster with Seymour Duncan pickups that only costs 249.99…
Makes me think of JHS pedal channel with a video talking about solid state amps and how "bad sounding" they are/were, but the video ironically shows how well sounding they can be, despite their supposed "bad reputation".
I'm holding out for the channel to promote with a guitar giveaway. Imagine owning your own Jim Lill Signature chopper Strat with custom finish that uses Jim's secret formula for improved tone and sustain.
Interesting. Makes me think that perhaps the higher perceived sustain on a Les Paul vs a Tele might be the fact that the Les Pauls will tend to have higher output pickups, causing the amp to break up more easily.
This has always been at least part of the puzzle. Back before we had such a plethora of pedals, people liked using les Paul’s to drive their Marshall’s for exactly this reason.
Well, you can test this by using similar pickups. There are humbucker T-style guitars but dunno if there's an LP with T-style pickups (that would be interesting). I would guess the LP-style guitars are usually more expensive (glued on neck, carved top etc.) and therefore probably better made because why waste the extra effort (well, there are bolt-on LPs with flat top too). Might be something as simple as sloppily filed nut (why bother if it's a cheap guitar, right). I actually have a T-style guitar (RRP around $1000) with a humbucker and with simple ear test there's no difference to my LP-style guitar (RRP $2000). Fine, it has '59 while the LP has Pearly Gates and they have a bit different pots and caps. Didn't set up a DAW for this. Noo, I didn't pay the full price, both guitars were on some crazy summer sale and are awesome. I hope I could play to be worthy to them. Cheers.
The longest sustained note I’ve ever heard was in the song “Machine Gun” by Hendrix. And that was a strat with a bolt-on neck. Oh yeah, fully cooking Plexi too.
@@TheMaxKids I can hold a note for a couple minutes. Just get a good comp, high gain and especially an early Muff Style or Swollen Pickle and keep the note trilling slowly
@@KelticKabukiGirl if you keep trilling the note slowly, you're changing the pitch (slightly) and constantly adding/releasing tension, meaning you basically add new vibrations. Point of sustain is that you aren't manipulating the strings. But in a practical sense, this doesn't really matter: you got some long notes in your sleeve and that's all that matters in a musical sense
It's always struck me that keeping the energy of a vibrating string in the string is the best way to sustain the vibration. Taking a significant part of that energy and using it to make other things vibrate means the string doesn't have that energy any more. But then I'm just another person with a half-baked understanding of physics having an opinion. What we need is tests. Thanks Jim Lill for providing them.
Your point of view makes sense. When people go on about having a resonant electric guitar, they are saying that losing string energy to the guitar body is a good thing. That doesn’t make sense, especially if you are looking for good sustain. The whole thing about how if an electric guitar sounds good acoustically it will sound good plugged in is ridiculous. That’s an Eric Johnsonism that gets repeated endlessly. It’s nonsense.
@@mark78750 With acoustic guitars, you want to transfer that vibration into the body and for the body to resonate, because the body is doing the amplifying. But with electric guitar you don't use the body to amplify. You're using the amplifier for that!
I think that’s right for an electric guitar. Acoustic guitars have to transform the vibration into air movement, so that’s a completely different situation.
I literally had the same epiphany while watching the video. Seems to me the more insulated the string the more vibration it would keep. I also understand the quiet resonance test winning out. Works the same way as cold water heating faster than hot. The string warbling heavily causes it to loose it's vibration quicker than say a medium to light stroke. So while you would see a louder sound from a heavier stroke it would also suffer the most sustain loss of volume.
*Love* your methodical approach! Hope you keep doing tests like this. "I've never taken a statistics class..." I took _one_ in college, got a C. I'm no expert either. Later as a practicing engineer, when I wanted to understand the statistics to analyze experiments, specifically, I was recommended a textbook called "Statistics for Experimenters" (by Box, Hunter and Hunter) and I _highly_ recommend it. The fact that you made that spreadsheet makes it pretty clear to me that you'd appreciate the contents. The fundamental idea is to design the experiment around the data you're hoping to extract, and the book provides the (fairly minimal) math & statistics required to get the most data out of the smallest number of data points. So you either save yourself time doing the tests, or you get more data for the same effort (compared to doing an off-the-cuff experimental design). Now, the method does rely on quantifying results, which won't always be possible in an obvious way. (Exactly how similar or different, as a number, are any two tone samples, for example?) But when it is possible (e.g. how long is the sustain?), it's quite beautiful. If you're curious, but not quite curious enough to buy a textbook, you might look up "factorial design," which is one of the methods taught in the book. There's not a huge amount of RUclips content on the subject, but this short video discusses the basic idea: ruclips.net/video/GGvuacZb-AQ/видео.html I would also be happy to help you design an experiment to get a feel for the method.
I still remember my first electric guitar, and I was a beginner player. It was a red Lotus strat copy, with a beginner Crate amp. I never thought it sounded very good. I could play chords and stuff, but not much else at that time. Then my friend's older brother's bands lead guitar player picked it up once. It was amazing how good the guitar sounded. How the notes rang out. That changed my perspective on instruments that day. A great player can make most anything sound good. Don't buy in to the mystery bull. Buy and use guitars that you like, and that sound good to you. Simple as that. Jim proves this whole story IMO at the end of the video, taking that glued up drilled strat copy, and making it sound good. Great work on this video, and the last.
Exactly.. took me awhile to learn this... i started with a cheap $99 guitar given to me, I stunk on, eventually I bought a $1,000 strat and left the cheap guitar for years... one day I decided to sell that guitar for $50, and the guy that bought it, well he played it amazing when testing it out and I was like... wow it's actually a decent guitar.
90% of the guitars sound comes from the pickups. Most of the other differences come down to looks and playability, with expensive guitars having smoother, more playable necks that generally can tolerate lower actions better. I mainly play a Les Paul, but the string tension is lower than a lot of other guitars due to the shorter scale length, which can cause some issues with more complicated passages that employ tremolo picking. It feels like when I play my strat or Ibanez guitars, I can more easily play complex riffs, while the Les Paul feels a bit more effortless in note fretting and bluesy styles of music that aren't as technically demanding. There have been occasions where I've used friends very expensive and well set up guitars, and it instantly feels like I've gained a year of experience and everything becomes easier to play. Any guitar can sound decent, but there can also be a pretty clear contrast between them, especially comparing beginner sub 200 dollar guitars to guitars in the 500+ range. After 1000 dollars there really isn't much to gain from spending more other than frills
Jim Lill - The Electric Guitar Scientist - love it. Keep em coming. Intelligent debate supported by test data is always welcomed. Just downloaded the spreadsheet and will be looking at it. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
Always love hearing the old sustain comments! I’ve got 12 guitars from different brands ranging from $50 to $1700. Never once have I said I love this guitar it just doesn’t have sustain! Great video look forward to more!
Because the number of songs with over 10,000 views on RUclips that have a guitar note hold for 8+ seconds is probably zero. Even four second notes are rare. However, many players don't like sustain and palm mute their guitar.
He put his own guitars through so much for science. The real research nobody was ready to do. Thank you. Now I'm sure I don't need a heavy guitar for it to sustain good
Actually this guy does this for quite some time. There are even videos with "tonewoods" and other tests. Quite popular as well. ruclips.net/channel/UCyaStghQb7_e51PgH8bUkzg
Your videos are really great and have inspired me with my own guitar choices. Forget buying highly expensive guitars I have bought a budget one, got it set up well, changed the pick-up and had them set to a hight of my preference. Personally think I now have a guitar that sounds like one double the cost and with the tone and playability I really like. Thanks so much
Word. Just bought a Indo Retro that I'm gonna upgrade the electronics on, give it a set up overhaul and refinish refinish the wood and trim the headstock to look just like a vintage Telecaster and and save 10k.
These videos are amazing Jim. Through pure experimentation alone (not withstanding your own insane knowledge of craftsmanship and musical ability) you're discounting all this marketing we're fed as to what makes a great player. The attention to detail in your videos is insane and will save a lot of people like myself a lot of money when they realise tone is (mostly) in the fingers. You're a world class player but it's also really cool that you don't use these videos to showcase that, just to demo the gear. The air gtr vid blew my mind.
YOU ARE SOOOO CRAZY!!! And I am so glad you are and are running this tests. I've learn more about tone in the couple of hours I have watching your videos, than in my 30 years as a guitar player and musician. Thanx, man!
Love it! Disproves every one of those "golden ear" guys that claim this or that feature of their favorite boutique guitar has the magic sustain. Keep up the good work!
The golden ears have often proven, that they cannot distinguish the „things that control a guitars tone“ in a blind test. A German university professor, who owns a collection of guitars of original brands wrote a book about all aspects of the system „electrical guitar&“. He occasionally added quotes from „expert magazines“, often contrary quotes, even from the same author, just based on what they tested. The result was: there are design aspects, some designs are just better solutions, but these are not the ones normally seen. E.g. the tone on a old LP was very dull and he found that the short cable from pick to pot was isolated with cotton, which collected moisture from the environment and that changed it‘s capacity to 10x the capacity of a standard guitar cable. So playing in the dessert sounded much better than playing in the Mississippi delta. Or he found that even modern Gibsons used an old approximation for the 12th root of 2 spacing of threads, whereas the cheap Epiphone’s used the correct values.
@@mathkrGames Manfred Zollner, Physik der Elektrogitarre. Leider vergriffen, aber in Teilen als PDF runterladbar. Edit: er hat die einzelnen Kapitel als YT-Videos verfügbar gemacht. Lesen fände ich besser.
As a kid when I wanted more sustain with an electric guitar, I upgraded to a better pickup and amp. I’d love to see these tone and sustain videos with acoustic guitars.
Most of the tone wood mythology and all the other magic stuff that people believe does apply to acustica instruments, so I'm guessing that it will be the opposite of this videos.
@@briansanchez9899 yep, acoustic guitar actually uses the guitar itself to make sound, whereas the heavy lifting comes from the amp with electric guitar
@@Ottophil yeah, i never really understood the whole sustain thing. LIke, why lol. Maybe i just dont play the right style, but sustain has never had any effect on anything ive played on an electric guitar through a hi gain tube amp
I have a PhD in physics and would very much endorse you adding "guitar scientist" to your Wikipedia description. You really have the mind of a scientist. Rock on.
Next video should be about how a hollow body sounds different than a solid body. If the wood and finish has nothing to do with the tone / sustain, why do hollow-bodies have those hollow sounding overtones?
Sustain is just one aspect of performance. Tone is a very different thing. There are very good reasons why guitar makers use certain tone woods. If it made no difference, why use some expensive wood? I know from personal experience that wood type and construction make a huge difference in tone. I’ve got two Fender basses. One is a Squire P bass, with what amounts to a plywood body. The American P Bass is the exact same size and shape, but is made of Adler. Both necks are identical, rock maple with maple fretboard, and they have both been hot rodded with Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder pickups, their electronics are identical, I did the work myself. The result is, they are both fine guitars, but the Adler body is head and shoulders above the Squire, it has a beefier tone, a longer sustain, and a quality to the notes that the Squire doesn’t have.
@@joshuarichard2509 all he has done is measure volume, he has in no way measured tone. Some people just don’t want to realize that they are tone deaf. If they can’t hear it, they don’t believe it exists, simple as that.
I like how he entertains each idea without implying that the idea is stupid and then proceeds to give it a try. There doesn’t seem to be a hint of prejudice against the idea or even stupider ideas.
I’ve always wondered if how I hold and move the guitar affects the sustain. It would make sense that how you move the guitar after picking a note could effect how the string vibrates, and how long it vibrates. And also any airflow/wind could also make a difference in certain settings.
From what I’ve gathered (and assumed) the most significant factors that effect the overall sound of a guitar are pickup type, pickup position, and player.
Guitar players have a hard-on for words like "sustain" and "tonewood". Like you showed, the fact of the matter is, when it comes to electric guitars, the type of wood, its thickness, body size and shape, etc., etc., etc., have little to nothing to do with these mythical words. Electric guitars and the sounds they make are determined by the player and their amp. Thats it.
Pmuch this. I remember almost getting caught up in the specifics of the tone wood and all of that nonsense when I was younger. And then I used my brain and started doing some testing LOL The way I look at it, those "mythical words" you mentioned definitely can matter, but not for the actual quality of the sound being produced. If you're buying a Mahogany guitar because it's supposed to magically sound better, you're being scammed. BUT if you're buying a specific guitar because the neck is proportioned better for your hands or the body is a better size or the wood is a better quality that will make it durable to warping and other defects over time then you're using those buzz words for the right reasons. I think a lot of people are trying to hype up these expensive guitars and market them to new players who are likely to not stick with the hobby for a long time. Buzzwords are super effective when targeted towards 16 year olds who are just trying to impress their girlfriends with a guitar. You shouldn't throw all merit in those qualities completely, but you need to choose a guitar for the right reasons and not because some dude said mahogany is better for tone LOL
It's funny when he reads unsubstantiated, contradictory hypothesizing by people on forums. When presented with evidence that their beliefs are incorrect, though, they will claim to have magical ears that can detect sublime differences in tone, and if we were lucky enough to have extra super special hearing, too, then we would realize they are right. They must think they are Ferengi from Star Trek and play a dog whistle like it's a harmonica.
You also have to keep in mind that a few decibels of difference is a massive difference in loudness, since decibels are a logarithmic scale, not a linear one like meters.
It's a logarithmic scale because even if the sound is x10 times louder, our ears only percibe an small increase in volume. So a difference of 3-5db is not that much.
"Loudness" is not a physical quantity but a quality of human perception. Pressure is a physical quantity. Decibels ARE the measure of loudness, i.e. our perception of the (difference in) pressure coming from different sound waves on our ears. So a few decibels of difference is a small difference in loudness, by definition. They may represent a major difference in the pressure on our ears, but we appear to "sense" this pressure difference in a logarithmic way.
Your findings (and methodology) create a whole new foundation for guitarists. These pieces of information should be taught in guitar classes. Huge respect
MAN YOU ARE EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT! and you're videos are beyond intelligently made. You get everything down to a science. You will excell in life if you are focused. I wish you worked for me in my Mortgage company
These vids are amazing. And the best takeaway lesson I'm getting, is quit cork sniffing and just pick up your guitar and practice/play/make music. And yes, pickups, setup, and strings probably matter the most. Love it, thanks for all your hard work putting these together!
I really enjoy the posts I've seen so far. You are like a " Musical Mythbuster" Taking a scientific approach to answering a question. The fact that more questions arise, is secondary to the fact that much of what I've heard, doesn't seem to live up to the results. I don't have any answers, I simply try things and settle for what I like best, and not what others tell me.
Some of the tests, like the mattress one, were surprising. A few dB is a big deal. Every raise of 6dB is effectively twice the perceived volume. So if a test does say 18dB in test A and 21dB in test B... That’s pretty major. Example - 42dB isn’t twice as loud as 21dB - It’s closer to 4 1/2 times louder.
To be fair, the matress/dresser test, was the worst one design wise. There's no pressure applied on the matress, there is a lot of pressure applied on the dresser.
I personally feel like to make real difference with a single guitar, you could change the strings, pickups, and amp. But I also feel like sustain is too variable dependent. Like, any small shift in a test could have a significant impact on the outcome.
It just confirms my experience. The important factors of an electric guitar are its playability and its pickup and electronics. The rest is pedals and amps. The most overall important factor is the player.
Thanks for making the video Jim. I would bet the things that dampen a guitar's vibrations the most are the player's arms, hands and body contacting the guitar's body and neck. It would be interesting to see a test where the guitar was hanging from some thin wire or fishing line and then strummed.
I built my first form scratch solid body electric guitar a while back and found something interesting. I put on the neck and strung up the guitar before I had drilled the cavities for pickups, and the sustain (just acoustically of course) was insane! It was so much it was unpleasant, and I thought I had surely messed something up. Once I had routed the cavities and installed pickups, the guitar behaved much more like others I've played. So something in there made a huge difference! I'm not sure what it was though, and I really don't care too much, just thought it was interesting! Throughout the whole process I learned that a lot of the things we think make such significant differences really don't at the end of the day, very similar to your findings. Thanks so much for your great videos, keep it up!
I find your test videos very interesting. One thing comes to my mind regarding the sustain: new strings vs aged strings. aged strings loose their sustain over time I would assume. (Your strings look new)
I went back to Santana’s Europa as soon as I saw your list and relistened. I counted out the note at around 3:00 as 11 seconds and another later at 17 seconds. I was blown away by it when I heard it as a kid. A musician adult explained it as big gain then a compressor before the amp to level out the volume from pluck to decay. It’s the only reason I knew what a compressor was when I was microcasting FM to my yard and realized I needed a pawnshop 3630. Now I’ll watch this video.
My first 'nice' guitar was a neck thru body Charvel in the 80's. Typical hair metal type guitar, black with the shark-tooth inlays. \m/ One thing I loved about this guitar was that I could very clearly feel the strings vibrating the whole guitar. I could tune the guitar just from the vibrations. I used to say I love the sustain on this guitar. Other people would say the same thing. I have no idea how many db it would drop after 4 seconds, but I wonder if other guitarists mistakenly refer to that wonderful resonance you can physically feel throughout the whole guitar as 'sustain'? Maybe 8 years ago I bought a PRS SE guitar ($700), much cheaper than that old Charvel ($2500), with a neck thru body and the resonance feeling is very good, but not quite as responsive in the higher frequencies. Just a thought. It doesn't make me play any better or worse, but it makes me so happy when I play it. Those subtle vibrations give me the sensation of 'feeling' my guitar and the music. Even when I'm noodling around with no amp.
so many guitar myths busted and confirmed, but generally speaking, most people are just making stuff up with absolutely zero data to back up their pet theories. But this guy. Jim. He's gone way beyond anything anyone's done out there studying guitars.
You already have your answer in this video. He compares a high E and a low E. How much more difference do you want in string gauge. Heavier strings sustained longer by a bit, but considering how minimal the difference was between that big a swing, going from 9s to 10s won't have a huge impact on sustain. (Though it will affect the balance of your tone in my experience.)
@@Dartheomus That's not a good comparison, since there is a difference in string tension between the high and low E. Plus there might be a difference in wound vs unwound. What's more relevant to the discussion is the test he does when tuning the guitar up or down. It seems that more string tension decreases sustain, thus thicker strings, which require more tension to reach the same pitch, likely have less sustain. EDIT: Actually watching the video he seems to get mixed results with pitching up or down... strumming all the strings results in considerably less loss in db when tuned down; whereas on individual strings the opposite it appears to be true.
@@jasperdgg You hit the nail on the head. The results were inconsistent. That means the slight effects of string gauge will be negligible. Playing style will matter far more.
@@Dartheomus Agreed. I think there was also that Beato video a while back that concluded that lighter gauges may sound better, or at the very least don't sound worse. I might have to re-watch that one though to be sure. There doesn't seem to be a reason to torture ourselves playing thick strings in search of that elusive tone or sustain, that's for sure. I enjoy the fact that all these myths are getting busted; it's liberating to not care so much about gear and just focus on playing. Get the cheapest guitar that is playable, put some nice pickups in, learn to do a good setup and play the hell out of it.
The string length and gauge certainly do make a difference in sustain. This is very easy to prove on any guitar by shortening the length by fretting, etc.
I know this about resonance; the resonant frequency of a material is the frequency that it vibrates at most freely. That means as the frequency of the notes change, it will affect the sustainability of the guitar. There also seems to be some effect on the amount of energy that is making the sound and how much that gets absorbed, before it is transferred into sound output into the pickups and amplifier. That is why when you pressed the guitar into the dresser, it lost more db. The dresser was absorbing the sound energy. So, there is a tradeoff between the amount of mass of the guitar body and neck and the frequency of the notes being played. Some tones will bounce off of materials, while others are absorbed or vibrated by those materials.
A nice thing to consider would be to analyze the harmonic content of the sustain (think a waterfall graph like the ones on acoustic room measurements). Probably woods and construction may have some influence there.
I appreciate the amount of work that yo put ito your experiment on sustain. The neck can have a lot of difference in sustain. I haven't played around much with metal neck 6 string guitars, but basses show a huge difference between wood and aluminum necks. Carbon fiber necks also have longer sustain. With a Fender bass (either Precision or Jazz) , a C note played on the G string (fifth fret) dies very quickly and produces a strange overtone. This does not happen on an Aluminum or Carbon fiber neck. If I have this problem during recording of a Fender style bass, I just add a C clamp to the headstock. This changes the neck resonance and the C note plays cleanly.
Another eye opening voodoo dispelling series of tests! Great work, keep it up, we'll soon be strumming stick necked cigar boxes.....think that's been done, hmm.
Knocked it out of the park again, Jim. In the words of Mrs. Goose in Top Gun, "Unless you are a fool, hearts (lovers of idea of 'tonewoods' in electric guitars) are breaking all over the world toooo nite!" You've crushed their love affair with the idea that "tonewoods" make a difference in electric guitars🤣🤣🤣
@@TheMemagNeman That video is manipulated. He uses an eq in order to mislead. Using high end audio it can be heard very clearly. There is a complete switchoff in certain bands.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 And here I though people wanted to approach the matter open minded , yet it turns out when you have no other means to accept the reality, you evoke conspiracy. There are plenty of Johan's videos that are interesting. Isn't using a compressor a change in perceived sound? You should tell that to Jim.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 If you believe nothing matters in guitar but strings and pickups, please go buy a gibson humbucker , stick it on a strat and tell people it's just like an SG. I have seen someone suggesting this in the comments. This is plain nonsense. This is not science, these are entertainment videos.
@@TheMemagNeman Making shit up doesn't help your case. Tonality of a guitar is primarily determined by its geometry, secondarily by the pickup. That is not only scale length but also the ratio between the distances from pickup to and pickup to saddle. That's why you can emulate BB King's hollowbody tone using a Telecaster, which is a very different guitar.
Whilst I agree that the difference is minimal, dB is a logarithmic scale. So a 3dB difference is actually a factor of 2 i.e. half the power/twice the power. Still agree the difference is negligible to us heating, but the numbers suggest that there's potentially significant amounts of power drop on the higher attenuating results. Also would need to rewatch but I think some results showed the higher frequencies being damped by some situations and the lower frequencies damped by others?
A tenfold change in wave amplitude is only a doubling/halving of perceived loudness, all else being equal. 3db is the smallest change we can hear under typical conditions.
I think the Quality of Sustain is the most important thing regarding this topic. Interesting stuff dude. I've really enjoyed these videos about what makes electric guitar sound the way it does.
Sustain is the quality factor (Q) of the mechanical oscillating system. It depends of construction and materials of the parts of that system. The Q is different at different frequencies, so material affects frequency spectrum, i.e. tone.
As a guitar builder myself i am so tired of all the BS around wood tone, finish, guitare construction ect. Mate you're videos are gems but try to make the "believers" change there mind is like trying to demonstrate that Earth is a sphere to a flat earther. Keep doing it tho for Science (and our entertainment)
So these tests now make me beg the question: how much does guitar construction have an influence on the sound? Will putting an electric pickup on an acoustic sound just like a traditional solid guitar? How much difference is there between solid, semi-hollow, and fully hollow guitars?
That answer is a lot more complicated since acoustic properties of the body’s cavity begin to matter. It’s why semi hollows sound different, or different acoustic body shapes have different characteristics. You can put an electric pickup in an acoustic with a little bit of work, but most of the time you’ll see a piezo pickup instead, which measures vibration off of the bridge. That’s what makes piezo so bright in comparison, but also relatively quiet. There are some arguments over bolt on necks vs neck through vs set in, but in practice it’s a balance between practicality, playability at upper frets, how easy it is to repair and price. People will argue back and forth which one sounds better but honestly there isn’t much of a difference. Neck through is hands down the easiest to play since upper fret access is unlimited, but is definitely the most expensive to make and the hardest to repair. Bolt on is practical, easy to repair, simple and very easy to replace, but often times the joint doesn’t give good upper fret access, although that has gotten better over the years. Set in necks are the original design, and sit somewhere between the two. The main enemy of these hollowbody guitars is simply feedback. The bodies of these guitars are specifically built to be a resonance chamber, so if your guitar is reflecting the amp sound back into the guitar it will do the same thing as a solid body. It is just much more prone to it due to that. For tonal characteristics between each type i think it’s easier heard than explained. Solid bodies are very recognizable as the electric guitar tone, hollow bodies are often used in jazz and sometimes country, and semi hollow bodies are just hollow bodies with a solid block through the middle. Reduces feedback dramatically but doesn’t sound entirely like either, ends up being just as flexible as a solid body.
@@solkvist8668 I guess the ideal way to test this would be to get a Les Paul, 335/333, and 330 and swap the same electronics out. In my experience, semi-hollows are a little smoother on the initial attack of the note, while solid-bodies have a bit more "snappiness." The only fully hollow guitar I've owned was a bass, and it was more difficult to mute when playing quick patterns compared to my solid basses.
The sustain noted in Cemetery Gates is Dimebag doing a pig squeal with his Dean guitar which featured a recess in the body behind the bridge to allow the Floyd Rose to have a greater pig squeal.
I adore these videos absolutely destroying the stubborn mythology around guitar. Just goes to show it really doesn’t matter what and electric guitar is made of. If it sounds good and plays good, it is good. End of story.
Hi Jim. I'm a guitar lover too, and in a quest for debunking some guitar marketing myths. I found your last videos very clinical and with impressive results. But, to complement your experiences, I have to put in the table two more factors that might greatly influence the tone of a guitar... What about the STRINGS and FRETWIRE materials? Thank for your incredible job!
I have always wondered how much of my love or dislike for an instrument is objective or me making wishes. I myself, find it very hard to be objective, especially if im a tad disapointed.... Good film. Great work.
Awesome video. Nut material is a real one that I've noticed on upgrading cheap guitars. Cheap plastic vs bone. However the truth could be (after watching this video) that I'm replacing a poorly cut nut with a properly cut one
It's a little known fact that standing on top of your guitar while playing it makes it sustain better. Of course thats only if its also on top of a dresser. Epic video.
it'd be really interesting to see the sustain difference between a wooden neck guitar & an aluminum neck guitar like an EGC or a travis bean since it's such a wildly different material than wood it would most likely sustain differently than a wooden neck
![Yailin La Mas Viral, @kreizyk.official - Dale 2 (Remix) [Video Oficial]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/JaYHBzgqz94/mqdefault.jpg)
This was a good video on sustain. It could have been longer though.
you cheeky bahstahd lol!
Yes. Don’t want to dampen the enthusiasm
🙈
Hah, or should I say, haaaaaaaaaaasaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........
Bwaahahahahahahhaa good one!
This is like "Mythbusters" for guitar, and I am loving it.
No it isn't 🤣 this dude doesn't even know the basics about guitars. He ain't in ANY position to be tryi g to teach or prove anything to anyone until he learns quite a bit more. He doesn't even know basic information that I knew before I even owned a guitar.
@@JC-11111 troll
@@foxredt2 Nope, it's a good effort but his doesn't aren't really accurate nor representative.
This video is crap which only vaguely resembles science. His over-earnest chip-on-the-shoulder attitude ain't making up for its serious shortcomings.
@@richsackett3423 what are the shortcomings, exactly?
It's really a pleasure to see an empirical approach to what so many people treat like magic.
I love your phrasing.
If not for the Internet and awesome RUclipsrs like Jim, guitar manufacturers would be selling Tone Air in cans by now
Gearslutz is in shambles right now.
Its hilarious seeing comments like these that act like this video "empirically" proves/disproves anything significant. World renowned players that have created worthwhile, unique musical art throughout human history believe things about their guitars and music that you might call think they treat as "magic", that's only because our primitive science can't explain it, or does a comically insufficient job of trying.
@@disco4535 you're right, that's why we need to only buy $5,000 guitars so that we can have T O A N
maybe things like the type of wood or the way the neck is attached to the body make a difference in music, but an artist can make art with anything. that's what the comment you replied to is saying. the artist makes it sound good, not the density of the finish or how much money you dropped on your new guitar. also, it's helping people not get sucked into the thought process of "i need to buy this ridiculously expensive piece of wood with magnets and strings to be as good as my heroes"... and as someone who has built their own guitar, i can tell you that many people actually do believe it is magic...
Seems like a lot of these myths about tone and sustain relate to acoustic guitar, but don't really carry over to electric in reality, yet have been perpetuated for decades in the musical community. Brilliant, enlightening video, as always!
Yes ... this is it ... electrical guitarists have yet to truly embrace the electrical nature of their instrument, even going so far as applying acoustic thinking to electrical components in thinking larger components (eg capacitors) are better than modern smaller ones etc. It's a little sad I think because I think it has kept the industry back and made us all more beholden to the guitar manufacturers as the culture helps perpetuate an illusory magic in any one guitar when really it's mostly about pickups and whether the guitar feels good in your own hands. It should be more normal to get a guitar based just on build quality, shape and neck profile and to then install whatever pickups you like, and, even better, have common guitar designs that allow you to easily change the pickups.
@@errollloyd6721 perfect realization of how one product for life (guitar in this instance) results in the manufacturer not making additional sales off buyers. The only way to ensure sales is to either A "improve upon inferiority" or B offer an "alternative" features list or whole product.
Ironically guitarists be big suckers to the corporate man they supposedly despise 😅
@@williambartholomew5680 Guitar culture could be a bit more open to the idea of owning, say, a bass, baritone, standard, and a ukelele, or putting value on the cosmetic look of a guitar (we already do that) above what the acoustic qualities of the instrument are, but the first thing requires learning, which is why guitarists don't like the idea of picking up a bass (and vice versa) and the second thing is rooted in hundreds of years of culture and things that are true of acoustics.
On the other hand, upgrading your guitar for better pickups is something we already do, so there's that.
this is a HUGE part of the source of even well-intentioned guitar industry BS!!! I think there is a lot of conflation of "sound" with "player experience", too. We might perceive that a guitar "resonates" more based on its vibrational characteristics, while in fact there's no audibly perceptible difference to a listener. That doesn't mean we should disregard player experience as an important factor influencing design characteristics- something like neck radius might not influence the sound but it sure feels different to a player! But, it is important to disambiguate the two if we're trying to understand the mechanisms of electric guitar sound generation and reproduction in a scientific way.
That's the thing! Most, if not all, guitar myths DO apply to an acoustic. Yet next to none have any bearing on an electric, becoming pseudoscience in the process.
This guy's dry humor combined with total willingness to shatter most guitar players' concensuses without even saying a word about it is amazing.
This video triggers the tonewood boomers in the comments lol!
i like that he doesn't outwardly put his interpretation of the data into the video. music is so subjective it's hard to say what is better in a lot of situations.
I think the point is that they're not even consensus, right there they're done that think that light finish is better and others that say the exact opposite... Lighter gauges and actions are more determinative in conjunction with good left hands technique but maybe aside the "it's in the fingers" crowd, nobody cares so passionately about gauge and action... We all do, because we need them to pay comfortably, but nobody is so passionate about it as the flight between a vintage SG or the latest fluence...
“…so I did that” 😂 I agree, the humor is as important as the information in these videos.
"So I did that!" Hats off for thoroughness and commitment. Love these videos.
Yeah, almost spit my coffee on my screen!
@@PS-fg3hp Same here!
Hah! I also was waiting for the "So, I had to find a plan B". Man, this guy is dedicated. And while it appears he's not a technical guy ("never took a stats class"), these experiments are quite well conceived and implemented, which is not as easy as many would think. I especially liked the wooden dowel saddle - that eliminated any nuances of different alloys in one fell swoop. Well done!
This is the point that got my like…
Never did I think that would be the next statement.
what a Chad
The combination of these 2 videos really makes me think that practically the only things that truly matter to a great sounding guitar are a good pickup and a good setup. And a great player of course!
Speakers as well, They all do put a unique twist on your sound. Glenn at SMG did a great video about it called what matters most about guitar tone. I really love seeing people get to the bottom of what matters in regards to tone and well made guitars , There is way too much made up stuff floating around.
the thing is, a cheap and not very well constructed guitar (bad mechanics, poor maintenance of the tuning, bad ergonomics (neck not well finished, frets coming out) might sound great with a set up and some expensive pickups, but if it doesn't hold the tuning well and doesn't feel great to play than it's not fullfilling its purpouse.
@@Fedbo Indeed. More expensive guitars do some things better. But this video shows that better sustain isn't necessarily one of them.
Changing amp/speakers has long been the most drastic tonal quality changer. I've long believed a cheap (yet adequately built) guitar with a good setup and a decent pup into a nice rig will get you much further than a $3000 dollar custom guitar into a cheap practice amp. There are good practice amps these days, but comparatively speaking.
The science seems fairly clear relating to tone. I'm not discounting the other factors that affect the player though ... neck shape and feel, fret size, tuning stability (set up is part of that but not the only thing), body ergonomics ... and aesthetics. I certainly wouldn't discount all of those things when selecting a guitar.
These make me so happy because it just confirms that as long as a guitar is built properly and the pickups are ok, there’s no reason it can’t be a usable sound
True. I finally stopped wasting money on "tonewood" bullshit or new fancy pickups. What really matters is the speaker
@@flachmann161 nah they are really old bad pickups from the 90s and 2000s era when there was no middle ground just great expensive guitars and cheap crap, but true, mostly all the new cheap guitars and all the epi and squiers come with ok, usable Pickups.
@@ot4kon Yes I have pickups like that, they truly suck. It doesn't mean you need Aeymour Duncans or original PAFs you stole from Joe Bonamassa but just decently made pickups. Epiphones from the early 2000s had pretty sucky ones. Alnico Classic. I ordered some Tonerider Alnico 2 Classics, with high hopes. In demos they sound as nice as original PAFs at half the cost of name brand stuff (still a lot of money for two magnets wrapped in copper wire).
I fucking love this guy man. I can hear the cork sniffers sharpening their pitchforks.
This is going to turn into a series called “everything you know about guitar is wrong” and we’ll all be playing the Jim Lill signature squier bullet telecaster with Seymour Duncan pickups that only costs 249.99…
lol
Makes me think of JHS pedal channel with a video talking about solid state amps and how "bad sounding" they are/were, but the video ironically shows how well sounding they can be, despite their supposed "bad reputation".
this is exactly what we should be doing. If Max Ostro plays Squier, it should be enough for us, too. ruclips.net/video/DFAdNbtimGQ/видео.html
@@DigiPal Oh I thought that channel are tube snobs and zealots.
I'm holding out for the channel to promote with a guitar giveaway. Imagine owning your own Jim Lill Signature chopper Strat with custom finish that uses Jim's secret formula for improved tone and sustain.
Interesting. Makes me think that perhaps the higher perceived sustain on a Les Paul vs a Tele might be the fact that the Les Pauls will tend to have higher output pickups, causing the amp to break up more easily.
This has always been at least part of the puzzle. Back before we had such a plethora of pedals, people liked using les Paul’s to drive their Marshall’s for exactly this reason.
Well, you can test this by using similar pickups. There are humbucker T-style guitars but dunno if there's an LP with T-style pickups (that would be interesting). I would guess the LP-style guitars are usually more expensive (glued on neck, carved top etc.) and therefore probably better made because why waste the extra effort (well, there are bolt-on LPs with flat top too). Might be something as simple as sloppily filed nut (why bother if it's a cheap guitar, right). I actually have a T-style guitar (RRP around $1000) with a humbucker and with simple ear test there's no difference to my LP-style guitar (RRP $2000). Fine, it has '59 while the LP has Pearly Gates and they have a bit different pots and caps. Didn't set up a DAW for this. Noo, I didn't pay the full price, both guitars were on some crazy summer sale and are awesome. I hope I could play to be worthy to them. Cheers.
The longest sustained note I’ve ever heard was in the song “Machine Gun” by Hendrix. And that was a strat with a bolt-on neck.
Oh yeah, fully cooking Plexi too.
@@TheMaxKids I can hold a note for a couple minutes. Just get a good comp, high gain and especially an early Muff Style or Swollen Pickle and keep the note trilling slowly
@@KelticKabukiGirl if you keep trilling the note slowly, you're changing the pitch (slightly) and constantly adding/releasing tension, meaning you basically add new vibrations. Point of sustain is that you aren't manipulating the strings. But in a practical sense, this doesn't really matter: you got some long notes in your sleeve and that's all that matters in a musical sense
It's always struck me that keeping the energy of a vibrating string in the string is the best way to sustain the vibration. Taking a significant part of that energy and using it to make other things vibrate means the string doesn't have that energy any more.
But then I'm just another person with a half-baked understanding of physics having an opinion. What we need is tests. Thanks Jim Lill for providing them.
I would agree with you on this 👍
Your point of view makes sense. When people go on about having a resonant electric guitar, they are saying that losing string energy to the guitar body is a good thing. That doesn’t make sense, especially if you are looking for good sustain.
The whole thing about how if an electric guitar sounds good acoustically it will sound good plugged in is ridiculous. That’s an Eric Johnsonism that gets repeated endlessly. It’s nonsense.
@@mark78750 With acoustic guitars, you want to transfer that vibration into the body and for the body to resonate, because the body is doing the amplifying. But with electric guitar you don't use the body to amplify. You're using the amplifier for that!
I think that’s right for an electric guitar. Acoustic guitars have to transform the vibration into air movement, so that’s a completely different situation.
I literally had the same epiphany while watching the video. Seems to me the more insulated the string the more vibration it would keep. I also understand the quiet resonance test winning out. Works the same way as cold water heating faster than hot. The string warbling heavily causes it to loose it's vibration quicker than say a medium to light stroke. So while you would see a louder sound from a heavier stroke it would also suffer the most sustain loss of volume.
*Love* your methodical approach! Hope you keep doing tests like this.
"I've never taken a statistics class..."
I took _one_ in college, got a C. I'm no expert either. Later as a practicing engineer, when I wanted to understand the statistics to analyze experiments, specifically, I was recommended a textbook called "Statistics for Experimenters" (by Box, Hunter and Hunter) and I _highly_ recommend it. The fact that you made that spreadsheet makes it pretty clear to me that you'd appreciate the contents. The fundamental idea is to design the experiment around the data you're hoping to extract, and the book provides the (fairly minimal) math & statistics required to get the most data out of the smallest number of data points. So you either save yourself time doing the tests, or you get more data for the same effort (compared to doing an off-the-cuff experimental design). Now, the method does rely on quantifying results, which won't always be possible in an obvious way. (Exactly how similar or different, as a number, are any two tone samples, for example?) But when it is possible (e.g. how long is the sustain?), it's quite beautiful.
If you're curious, but not quite curious enough to buy a textbook, you might look up "factorial design," which is one of the methods taught in the book. There's not a huge amount of RUclips content on the subject, but this short video discusses the basic idea: ruclips.net/video/GGvuacZb-AQ/видео.html
I would also be happy to help you design an experiment to get a feel for the method.
I love textbook recommendations like this ... Except that the books always cost so much... 😆
He’s joking. He’s taken statistics classes
"NERD!"
Design of experiments. Took it as an engineer in school. Crazy stuff
Jim you've broken the mould. You are making the best guitar videos on YT i've seen in years, congratulations on a job well done.
had a feeling it'd be a player turned maker
I still remember my first electric guitar, and I was a beginner player. It was a red Lotus strat copy, with a beginner Crate amp. I never thought it sounded very good. I could play chords and stuff, but not much else at that time. Then my friend's older brother's bands lead guitar player picked it up once. It was amazing how good the guitar sounded. How the notes rang out. That changed my perspective on instruments that day. A great player can make most anything sound good. Don't buy in to the mystery bull. Buy and use guitars that you like, and that sound good to you. Simple as that. Jim proves this whole story IMO at the end of the video, taking that glued up drilled strat copy, and making it sound good. Great work on this video, and the last.
Dedicated musical scientist👍
Exactly.. took me awhile to learn this... i started with a cheap $99 guitar given to me, I stunk on, eventually I bought a $1,000 strat and left the cheap guitar for years... one day I decided to sell that guitar for $50, and the guy that bought it, well he played it amazing when testing it out and I was like... wow it's actually a decent guitar.
had the same experience with my mim strat
90% of the guitars sound comes from the pickups. Most of the other differences come down to looks and playability, with expensive guitars having smoother, more playable necks that generally can tolerate lower actions better.
I mainly play a Les Paul, but the string tension is lower than a lot of other guitars due to the shorter scale length, which can cause some issues with more complicated passages that employ tremolo picking. It feels like when I play my strat or Ibanez guitars, I can more easily play complex riffs, while the Les Paul feels a bit more effortless in note fretting and bluesy styles of music that aren't as technically demanding.
There have been occasions where I've used friends very expensive and well set up guitars, and it instantly feels like I've gained a year of experience and everything becomes easier to play. Any guitar can sound decent, but there can also be a pretty clear contrast between them, especially comparing beginner sub 200 dollar guitars to guitars in the 500+ range. After 1000 dollars there really isn't much to gain from spending more other than frills
Reminds me of that scene in the Simpsons, when bart gets a new electric guitar but thinks it broken, then Otto picks it up and shreds
Jim Lill - The Electric Guitar Scientist - love it. Keep em coming. Intelligent debate supported by test data is always welcomed. Just downloaded the spreadsheet and will be looking at it. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
The amount of effort you put into this video...man, you've got yourself another subscriber. Excellent work!
"So I did that." Holy cow dude! Respect.
Always love hearing the old sustain comments! I’ve got 12 guitars from different brands ranging from $50 to $1700. Never once have I said I love this guitar it just doesn’t have sustain! Great video look forward to more!
Because the number of songs with over 10,000 views on RUclips that have a guitar note hold for 8+ seconds is probably zero. Even four second notes are rare. However, many players don't like sustain and palm mute their guitar.
He put his own guitars through so much for science. The real research nobody was ready to do. Thank you.
Now I'm sure I don't need a heavy guitar for it to sustain good
Actually this guy does this for quite some time. There are even videos with "tonewoods" and other tests. Quite popular as well.
ruclips.net/channel/UCyaStghQb7_e51PgH8bUkzg
Your videos are really great and have inspired me with my own guitar choices. Forget buying highly expensive guitars I have bought a budget one, got it set up well, changed the pick-up and had them set to a hight of my preference. Personally think I now have a guitar that sounds like one double the cost and with the tone and playability I really like. Thanks so much
This 👆🏼
Word. Just bought a Indo Retro that I'm gonna upgrade the electronics on, give it a set up overhaul and refinish refinish the wood and trim the headstock to look just like a vintage Telecaster and and save 10k.
These videos are amazing Jim. Through pure experimentation alone (not withstanding your own insane knowledge of craftsmanship and musical ability) you're discounting all this marketing we're fed as to what makes a great player. The attention to detail in your videos is insane and will save a lot of people like myself a lot of money when they realise tone is (mostly) in the fingers. You're a world class player but it's also really cool that you don't use these videos to showcase that, just to demo the gear. The air gtr vid blew my mind.
YOU ARE SOOOO CRAZY!!! And I am so glad you are and are running this tests. I've learn more about tone in the couple of hours I have watching your videos, than in my 30 years as a guitar player and musician. Thanx, man!
Love it! Disproves every one of those "golden ear" guys that claim this or that feature of their favorite boutique guitar has the magic sustain. Keep up the good work!
The golden ears have often proven, that they cannot distinguish the „things that control a guitars tone“ in a blind test.
A German university professor, who owns a collection of guitars of original brands wrote a book about all aspects of the system „electrical guitar&“. He occasionally added quotes from „expert magazines“, often contrary quotes, even from the same author, just based on what they tested. The result was: there are design aspects, some designs are just better solutions, but these are not the ones normally seen. E.g. the tone on a old LP was very dull and he found that the short cable from pick to pot was isolated with cotton, which collected moisture from the environment and that changed it‘s capacity to 10x the capacity of a standard guitar cable. So playing in the dessert sounded much better than playing in the Mississippi delta. Or he found that even modern Gibsons used an old approximation for the 12th root of 2 spacing of threads, whereas the cheap Epiphone’s used the correct values.
I guess I'd hear things different if I had gold stuck in my ears too.
@@fromgermany271 Kannst du mir den Autor bzw. Namen des Buches sagen? Bin durch googlen leider grad nicht drauf gestossen.
@@mathkrGames
Manfred Zollner, Physik der Elektrogitarre.
Leider vergriffen, aber in Teilen als PDF runterladbar.
Edit: er hat die einzelnen Kapitel als YT-Videos verfügbar gemacht. Lesen fände ich besser.
@@fromgermany271 Danke!
As a kid when I wanted more sustain with an electric guitar, I upgraded to a better pickup and amp. I’d love to see these tone and sustain videos with acoustic guitars.
Most of the tone wood mythology and all the other magic stuff that people believe does apply to acustica instruments, so I'm guessing that it will be the opposite of this videos.
When I wanted more sustain i just picked again
@@briansanchez9899 yep, acoustic guitar actually uses the guitar itself to make sound, whereas the heavy lifting comes from the amp with electric guitar
@@Ottophil yeah, i never really understood the whole sustain thing. LIke, why lol. Maybe i just dont play the right style, but sustain has never had any effect on anything ive played on an electric guitar through a hi gain tube amp
I have a PhD in physics and would very much endorse you adding "guitar scientist" to your Wikipedia description. You really have the mind of a scientist. Rock on.
Outstanding work Jim! You can call these segments “Guitar Science”
Next video should be about how a hollow body sounds different than a solid body. If the wood and finish has nothing to do with the tone / sustain, why do hollow-bodies have those hollow sounding overtones?
I imagine it would have something to do with the vibration having enough room to go into the body and back out through the sound holes
Sustain is just one aspect of performance. Tone is a very different thing. There are very good reasons why guitar makers use certain tone woods. If it made no difference, why use some expensive wood? I know from personal experience that wood type and construction make a huge difference in tone. I’ve got two Fender basses. One is a Squire P bass, with what amounts to a plywood body. The American P Bass is the exact same size and shape, but is made of Adler. Both necks are identical, rock maple with maple fretboard, and they have both been hot rodded with Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounder pickups, their electronics are identical, I did the work myself. The result is, they are both fine guitars, but the Adler body is head and shoulders above the Squire, it has a beefier tone, a longer sustain, and a quality to the notes that the Squire doesn’t have.
@@alphagt62 he already made a video debunking tone wood....you clearly missed it.
@@joshuarichard2509 all he has done is measure volume, he has in no way measured tone. Some people just don’t want to realize that they are tone deaf. If they can’t hear it, they don’t believe it exists, simple as that.
@@alphagt62 you should definitely make a video countering what Jim has done. It would doubtless be amazing...
I like how he entertains each idea without implying that the idea is stupid and then proceeds to give it a try. There doesn’t seem to be a hint of prejudice against the idea or even stupider ideas.
Sometimes there's a glint in the eye when uttering the most ridiculous beliefs. But that may be (again) the eye of the beholder.
I build and do little experiments to answer my own questions sometimes. These videos have been super interesting to me.
I’ve always wondered if how I hold and move the guitar affects the sustain. It would make sense that how you move the guitar after picking a note could effect how the string vibrates, and how long it vibrates.
And also any airflow/wind could also make a difference in certain settings.
Great video man. I'd love to see a test on why semi hollow guitars sound different in comparison to a solid body.
Very good point! I doubt that putting a strat pickup under the strings of a steel string acoustic would make it sound like a strat?
From what I’ve gathered (and assumed) the most significant factors that effect the overall sound of a guitar are pickup type, pickup position, and player.
The actual Au5 here? That's crazy. Love your music, man
Au5 and I think that final factor counts for about 95% of it.
I'd say the amp has a more significant impact on the sound than the player or even the pickup position.
Guitar players have a hard-on for words like "sustain" and "tonewood". Like you showed, the fact of the matter is, when it comes to electric guitars, the type of wood, its thickness, body size and shape, etc., etc., etc., have little to nothing to do with these mythical words. Electric guitars and the sounds they make are determined by the player and their amp. Thats it.
Pickups too but yeah that’s about it
@@spadestight6308 Pickups and the electrics of the guitar. If you run everything through a passive low-pass it's going to sound different :P
The sound chain is basically the player->strings->pickup->electronics->amp.
Pmuch this.
I remember almost getting caught up in the specifics of the tone wood and all of that nonsense when I was younger.
And then I used my brain and started doing some testing LOL
The way I look at it, those "mythical words" you mentioned definitely can matter, but not for the actual quality of the sound being produced. If you're buying a Mahogany guitar because it's supposed to magically sound better, you're being scammed. BUT if you're buying a specific guitar because the neck is proportioned better for your hands or the body is a better size or the wood is a better quality that will make it durable to warping and other defects over time then you're using those buzz words for the right reasons.
I think a lot of people are trying to hype up these expensive guitars and market them to new players who are likely to not stick with the hobby for a long time. Buzzwords are super effective when targeted towards 16 year olds who are just trying to impress their girlfriends with a guitar. You shouldn't throw all merit in those qualities completely, but you need to choose a guitar for the right reasons and not because some dude said mahogany is better for tone LOL
It's funny when he reads unsubstantiated, contradictory hypothesizing by people on forums. When presented with evidence that their beliefs are incorrect, though, they will claim to have magical ears that can detect sublime differences in tone, and if we were lucky enough to have extra super special hearing, too, then we would realize they are right. They must think they are Ferengi from Star Trek and play a dog whistle like it's a harmonica.
You also have to keep in mind that a few decibels of difference is a massive difference in loudness, since decibels are a logarithmic scale, not a linear one like meters.
exactly ^^
Add few of these "small" differences and you have the tone thing going on.
It's a logarithmic scale because even if the sound is x10 times louder, our ears only percibe an small increase in volume. So a difference of 3-5db is not that much.
"Loudness" is not a physical quantity but a quality of human perception. Pressure is a physical quantity.
Decibels ARE the measure of loudness, i.e. our perception of the (difference in) pressure coming from different sound waves on our ears.
So a few decibels of difference is a small difference in loudness, by definition. They may represent a major difference in the pressure on our ears, but we appear to "sense" this pressure difference in a logarithmic way.
There is more science in these videos than in many published papers in academic journals. Keep it up mate!
And in public schools.
For your next test video, it would be cool if you did necks. Set versus bolted versus through.
I think his previous video with just strings and no fretboard already debunks this myth
Ola englund has done a video on this topic
Your findings (and methodology) create a whole new foundation for guitarists. These pieces of information should be taught in guitar classes. Huge respect
MAN YOU ARE EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT! and you're videos are beyond intelligently made. You get everything down to a science. You will excell in life if you are focused. I wish you worked for me in my Mortgage company
These vids are amazing. And the best takeaway lesson I'm getting, is quit cork sniffing and just pick up your guitar and practice/play/make music. And yes, pickups, setup, and strings probably matter the most. Love it, thanks for all your hard work putting these together!
"..but I did that." That's fucking awesome, I love this.
Some guitars have been hurt in the making of this awesome video.
I really enjoy the posts I've seen so far. You are like a " Musical Mythbuster" Taking a scientific approach to answering a question. The fact that more questions arise, is secondary to the fact that much of what I've heard, doesn't seem to live up to the results. I don't have any answers, I simply try things and settle for what I like best, and not what others tell me.
The most important factor is cost. The more money I spend on a guitar, the less willing I am to accept its shortcomings.
Love to see how every change affects the sound, and not always how you might think
Dude, I don’t know what is more entertaining. Watching your videos or reading the comments!
Some of the tests, like the mattress one, were surprising. A few dB is a big deal. Every raise of 6dB is effectively twice the perceived volume. So if a test does say 18dB in test A and 21dB in test B... That’s pretty major.
Example - 42dB isn’t twice as loud as 21dB - It’s closer to 4 1/2 times louder.
To be fair, the matress/dresser test, was the worst one design wise.
There's no pressure applied on the matress, there is a lot of pressure applied on the dresser.
I love how sarcastic you are when discussing some of the theories while still remaining completely objective in your delivery.
Surprised this has been taken down. Great job dispelling the myths.
I personally feel like to make real difference with a single guitar, you could change the strings, pickups, and amp. But I also feel like sustain is too variable dependent. Like, any small shift in a test could have a significant impact on the outcome.
It just confirms my experience. The important factors of an electric guitar are its playability and its pickup and electronics. The rest is pedals and amps.
The most overall important factor is the player.
Thanks for making the video Jim. I would bet the things that dampen a guitar's vibrations the most are the player's arms, hands and body contacting the guitar's body and neck. It would be interesting to see a test where the guitar was hanging from some thin wire or fishing line and then strummed.
I built my first form scratch solid body electric guitar a while back and found something interesting. I put on the neck and strung up the guitar before I had drilled the cavities for pickups, and the sustain (just acoustically of course) was insane! It was so much it was unpleasant, and I thought I had surely messed something up. Once I had routed the cavities and installed pickups, the guitar behaved much more like others I've played. So something in there made a huge difference! I'm not sure what it was though, and I really don't care too much, just thought it was interesting! Throughout the whole process I learned that a lot of the things we think make such significant differences really don't at the end of the day, very similar to your findings. Thanks so much for your great videos, keep it up!
I find your test videos very interesting. One thing comes to my mind regarding the sustain: new strings vs aged strings. aged strings loose their sustain over time I would assume. (Your strings look new)
I went back to Santana’s Europa as soon as I saw your list and relistened. I counted out the note at around 3:00 as 11 seconds and another later at 17 seconds. I was blown away by it when I heard it as a kid. A musician adult explained it as big gain then a compressor before the amp to level out the volume from pluck to decay. It’s the only reason I knew what a compressor was when I was microcasting FM to my yard and realized I needed a pawnshop 3630. Now I’ll watch this video.
Of you listen the 1980 live version with Yamaha sg, the second note il hold for One minute, but with feedback from amplifier..
Santana talks about utilizing feedback in his masterclass, so I wouldn't discount that as an explanation in that song.
My first 'nice' guitar was a neck thru body Charvel in the 80's. Typical hair metal type guitar, black with the shark-tooth inlays. \m/
One thing I loved about this guitar was that I could very clearly feel the strings vibrating the whole guitar. I could tune the guitar just from the vibrations. I used to say I love the sustain on this guitar. Other people would say the same thing. I have no idea how many db it would drop after 4 seconds, but I wonder if other guitarists mistakenly refer to that wonderful resonance you can physically feel throughout the whole guitar as 'sustain'?
Maybe 8 years ago I bought a PRS SE guitar ($700), much cheaper than that old Charvel ($2500), with a neck thru body and the resonance feeling is very good, but not quite as responsive in the higher frequencies.
Just a thought. It doesn't make me play any better or worse, but it makes me so happy when I play it. Those subtle vibrations give me the sensation of 'feeling' my guitar and the music. Even when I'm noodling around with no amp.
So like it's basically a difference in produced overtones?
This video alone got me to subscribe! Awesome job man!
You're my man. You clearly point out the evidences for all of my suppositions. I like Your approach very much and hope to see more💪
'Just' 3dB louder is in fact twice as loud... Great testing and mindboggling results!
3dB louder is twice the sound energy. 6dB louder is twice the sound pressure. 10dB louder is approximately twice the perceived loudness.
your videos are an absolute godsend
so many guitar myths busted and confirmed, but generally speaking, most people are just making stuff up with absolutely zero data to back up their pet theories. But this guy. Jim. He's gone way beyond anything anyone's done out there studying guitars.
Jim, you’re truly the Adam Ragusea of guitar experiments. Super interesting stuff, keep it up
That he is.
And as Adam sometimes shows up at music youtube Im waiting for the time he appears in comments on this channel.
So in a nutshell anything will do as long as it has decent electrics and a good set up. Excellent! :)
Here is something to try… how does string mass affect sustain? Will thicker strings sustain more, less, or the same?
You already have your answer in this video. He compares a high E and a low E. How much more difference do you want in string gauge. Heavier strings sustained longer by a bit, but considering how minimal the difference was between that big a swing, going from 9s to 10s won't have a huge impact on sustain. (Though it will affect the balance of your tone in my experience.)
@@Dartheomus That's not a good comparison, since there is a difference in string tension between the high and low E. Plus there might be a difference in wound vs unwound.
What's more relevant to the discussion is the test he does when tuning the guitar up or down. It seems that more string tension decreases sustain, thus thicker strings, which require more tension to reach the same pitch, likely have less sustain.
EDIT: Actually watching the video he seems to get mixed results with pitching up or down... strumming all the strings results in considerably less loss in db when tuned down; whereas on individual strings the opposite it appears to be true.
@@jasperdgg You hit the nail on the head. The results were inconsistent. That means the slight effects of string gauge will be negligible. Playing style will matter far more.
@@Dartheomus Agreed. I think there was also that Beato video a while back that concluded that lighter gauges may sound better, or at the very least don't sound worse. I might have to re-watch that one though to be sure. There doesn't seem to be a reason to torture ourselves playing thick strings in search of that elusive tone or sustain, that's for sure.
I enjoy the fact that all these myths are getting busted; it's liberating to not care so much about gear and just focus on playing. Get the cheapest guitar that is playable, put some nice pickups in, learn to do a good setup and play the hell out of it.
The string length and gauge certainly do make a difference in sustain. This is very easy to prove on any guitar by shortening the length by fretting, etc.
The 4 second note song was the world's first example of Doom Country.
I know this about resonance; the resonant frequency of a material is the frequency that it vibrates at most freely. That means as the frequency of the notes change, it will affect the sustainability of the guitar. There also seems to be some effect on the amount of energy that is making the sound and how much that gets absorbed, before it is transferred into sound output into the pickups and amplifier. That is why when you pressed the guitar into the dresser, it lost more db. The dresser was absorbing the sound energy. So, there is a tradeoff between the amount of mass of the guitar body and neck and the frequency of the notes being played. Some tones will bounce off of materials, while others are absorbed or vibrated by those materials.
A nice thing to consider would be to analyze the harmonic content of the sustain (think a waterfall graph like the ones on acoustic room measurements). Probably woods and construction may have some influence there.
If people are still watching this video decades from now, then we’ll all know it has good sustain.
Using the guitar body as a cutting board was a nice touch.
I appreciate the amount of work that yo put ito your experiment on sustain.
The neck can have a lot of difference in sustain. I haven't played around much with metal neck 6 string guitars, but basses show a huge difference between wood and aluminum necks. Carbon fiber necks also have longer sustain.
With a Fender bass (either Precision or Jazz) , a C note played on the G string (fifth fret) dies very quickly and produces a strange overtone.
This does not happen on an Aluminum or Carbon fiber neck. If I have this problem during recording of a Fender style bass, I just add a C clamp to the headstock. This changes the neck resonance and the C note plays cleanly.
Another eye opening voodoo dispelling series of tests! Great work, keep it up, we'll soon be strumming stick necked cigar boxes.....think that's been done, hmm.
These videos are my new favorites and are regularly posted when the phrase “tonewood” comes up! 😂😂
10:55 dude built the trypophobia guitar
Knocked it out of the park again, Jim. In the words of Mrs. Goose in Top Gun, "Unless you are a fool, hearts (lovers of idea of 'tonewoods' in electric guitars) are breaking all over the world toooo nite!" You've crushed their love affair with the idea that "tonewoods" make a difference in electric guitars🤣🤣🤣
Seen this one yet? ruclips.net/video/nrEar7dgVwI/видео.html
@@TheMemagNeman That video is manipulated. He uses an eq in order to mislead. Using high end audio it can be heard very clearly. There is a complete switchoff in certain bands.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 And here I though people wanted to approach the matter open minded , yet it turns out when you have no other means to accept the reality, you evoke conspiracy. There are plenty of Johan's videos that are interesting. Isn't using a compressor a change in perceived sound? You should tell that to Jim.
@@hans-joachimbierwirth4727 If you believe nothing matters in guitar but strings and pickups, please go buy a gibson humbucker , stick it on a strat and tell people it's just like an SG. I have seen someone suggesting this in the comments. This is plain nonsense. This is not science, these are entertainment videos.
@@TheMemagNeman Making shit up doesn't help your case. Tonality of a guitar is primarily determined by its geometry, secondarily by the pickup. That is not only scale length but also the ratio between the distances from pickup to and pickup to saddle. That's why you can emulate BB King's hollowbody tone using a Telecaster, which is a very different guitar.
Whilst I agree that the difference is minimal, dB is a logarithmic scale. So a 3dB difference is actually a factor of 2 i.e. half the power/twice the power.
Still agree the difference is negligible to us heating, but the numbers suggest that there's potentially significant amounts of power drop on the higher attenuating results.
Also would need to rewatch but I think some results showed the higher frequencies being damped by some situations and the lower frequencies damped by others?
A tenfold change in wave amplitude is only a doubling/halving of perceived loudness, all else being equal. 3db is the smallest change we can hear under typical conditions.
"Well I've never taken a statistics course, but" *does some extremely precise science*
I think the Quality of Sustain is the most important thing regarding this topic.
Interesting stuff dude. I've really enjoyed these videos about what makes electric guitar sound the way it does.
Sustain is the quality factor (Q) of the mechanical oscillating system. It depends of construction and materials of the parts of that system. The Q is different at different frequencies, so material affects frequency spectrum, i.e. tone.
Agree, but to what noticeable degree, especially to the audience. Point of diminishing returns is very small. Very Very small....
@@iam.miikey Basically, if you like the guitar, it is good enough. That was the point of the videos.
As a guitar builder myself i am so tired of all the BS around wood tone, finish, guitare construction ect. Mate you're videos are gems but try to make the "believers" change there mind is like trying to demonstrate that Earth is a sphere to a flat earther. Keep doing it tho for Science (and our entertainment)
Myth busters for guitar. Thank you for taking the time to make these videos and saving many many people in the future from going down the wrong path.
Great stuff! That spreadsheet was sooo necessary! I bet you slept well when this video was done!
So these tests now make me beg the question: how much does guitar construction have an influence on the sound? Will putting an electric pickup on an acoustic sound just like a traditional solid guitar? How much difference is there between solid, semi-hollow, and fully hollow guitars?
That answer is a lot more complicated since acoustic properties of the body’s cavity begin to matter. It’s why semi hollows sound different, or different acoustic body shapes have different characteristics.
You can put an electric pickup in an acoustic with a little bit of work, but most of the time you’ll see a piezo pickup instead, which measures vibration off of the bridge. That’s what makes piezo so bright in comparison, but also relatively quiet.
There are some arguments over bolt on necks vs neck through vs set in, but in practice it’s a balance between practicality, playability at upper frets, how easy it is to repair and price. People will argue back and forth which one sounds better but honestly there isn’t much of a difference. Neck through is hands down the easiest to play since upper fret access is unlimited, but is definitely the most expensive to make and the hardest to repair. Bolt on is practical, easy to repair, simple and very easy to replace, but often times the joint doesn’t give good upper fret access, although that has gotten better over the years. Set in necks are the original design, and sit somewhere between the two.
The main enemy of these hollowbody guitars is simply feedback. The bodies of these guitars are specifically built to be a resonance chamber, so if your guitar is reflecting the amp sound back into the guitar it will do the same thing as a solid body. It is just much more prone to it due to that.
For tonal characteristics between each type i think it’s easier heard than explained. Solid bodies are very recognizable as the electric guitar tone, hollow bodies are often used in jazz and sometimes country, and semi hollow bodies are just hollow bodies with a solid block through the middle. Reduces feedback dramatically but doesn’t sound entirely like either, ends up being just as flexible as a solid body.
if you put a magnetic pickup on an acoustic, you need to also use electric guitar strings if you want it to sound like an electric fyi
@@solkvist8668 I guess the ideal way to test this would be to get a Les Paul, 335/333, and 330 and swap the same electronics out. In my experience, semi-hollows are a little smoother on the initial attack of the note, while solid-bodies have a bit more "snappiness." The only fully hollow guitar I've owned was a bass, and it was more difficult to mute when playing quick patterns compared to my solid basses.
The heart of a musician, the mind of a scientist. Bravo!
The sustain noted in Cemetery Gates is Dimebag doing a pig squeal with his Dean guitar which featured a recess in the body behind the bridge to allow the Floyd Rose to have a greater pig squeal.
Dude, you’re legend! When you said you did 600+ strums I’ve lost it!
This video sustained my full attention.
I adore these videos absolutely destroying the stubborn mythology around guitar. Just goes to show it really doesn’t matter what and electric guitar is made of. If it sounds good and plays good, it is good. End of story.
Jim, you're amazing!
Hi Jim. I'm a guitar lover too, and in a quest for debunking some guitar marketing myths. I found your last videos very clinical and with impressive results. But, to complement your experiences, I have to put in the table two more factors that might greatly influence the tone of a guitar... What about the STRINGS and FRETWIRE materials? Thank for your incredible job!
“..meaning 648 different pieces of data…
So I did that.”
That’s where I subscribed
What a great video! I would love to play that guitar at the end haha
Best use of feedback I can remember is in Santana's solo on Incident at Neshabur (Abraxis). Turns into a fading whistle kind of.
I have always wondered how much of my love or dislike for an instrument is objective or me making wishes. I myself, find it very hard to be objective, especially if im a tad disapointed.... Good film. Great work.
Awesome video. Nut material is a real one that I've noticed on upgrading cheap guitars. Cheap plastic vs bone. However the truth could be (after watching this video) that I'm replacing a poorly cut nut with a properly cut one
I just found this channel and I love it
Great stuff. Way to cut through the BS and pseudo science in music.
It's a little known fact that standing on top of your guitar while playing it makes it sustain better. Of course thats only if its also on top of a dresser.
Epic video.
thanks man for taking the time!! look for groovy lessons, he has vast knowledge in the matter
it'd be really interesting to see the sustain difference between a wooden neck guitar & an aluminum neck guitar like an EGC or a travis bean
since it's such a wildly different material than wood it would most likely sustain differently than a wooden neck
Excellent work Jim! Thank you. I'll be studying that spreadsheet for a while yet.