Your it doesn't matter claims are super wise. My almost master's degree advisor (he was getting kicked out of the university at the time) that secret to acoustics is knowing what details matter. The context of the conversation was me explaining to him a failed experiment I did as an undergrad with a speaker and a pipe and how I barely measured any pressure difference across the pipe. At the time I didn't understand that 1) acoustic pressure typically a miniscule pressure, 2) there is a very large difference between static pressure sensors and sensors that measure fluctuating pressures. Tonewood and body geometry will have an effect on tone of an electric guitar, and subtle changes in the timbre of the instrument are probably detectable with very careful listening, but you will do a far better job tone shaping and controlling the sound on the electronics side. And those subtle changes can easily be masked, manipulated and corrected with the proper equipment and signal processing to the point it doesnt matter.
Thank you for helping to de-mistify and even more importantly, de-mytholigizing these instruments. The great musicians would have still been great musicians regardless of what it said on the headstock, shape of the guitar, woods they were made of and whose "signature" line it belonged to. If you want to become great at playing a guitar, then just play. Play with different shapes, woods, electronics, set-ups, strings, brands, effects, amps, genres...other people. Those are the things that will make whatever guitar you have in your hands, sound great and is the most fun and rewarding part of owning and playing guitars. Don't be afraid to fiddle with the guitar. When I first started playing, for years I had this fear that I didn't have the skills to even adjust a truss rod or file the nut a little They aren't that complicated. When building or modding, again just plaay around and have fun with it. I mean, look at how many times you are refinishing your multi-scale! 😂 Lastly, the thing to remember about companies and guitar companies aren't any different, is that they ultimately exist to make money. If Fender didn't make money with their Strats, there would be no Fender company. Marketing went into determining the shapes of electric guitars because people liked those shapes, wanted to buy those shapes and they feel good about playing those shapes.
It's not so much shape, but mass, which affects resonance and sustain. Some shapes are more massive than others. I have read about flying v shapes having a distinct tone because of the lack of mass immediately behind the bridge, and Eddie Van Halen having quit using his "shark" Destroyer after the first VH tour because the modification made the guitar sound thin. But who knows?
It seems obvious to me that Gibson & Fender were intelligently designing the Paul & Tele shapes to look like scaled down versions of people’s preconceived notions of what a guitar looks like, an acoustic. Once those models were established and accepted all bets were off in terms of body shape.
As you mentioned Chris, pickups and electronics have a huge impact on the sound, but I think the most important thing is the type of neck wood. The differences are clearly audible. Especially when it comes to the differences between maple and rosewood necks. Different sustain, rosewood is more mellow, maple has more mids and highs. The sound shaped in this way will be received by the pickup and sent to the amplifier.
@@redcatstw tone is board specific, not species specific. For example, all Maple boards are not the same, even when cut from the same tree. They vary in density, which affects the tone they produce. Same thing is true with Rosewood and every other species we use to make guitar necks.
@@HighlineGuitars The problem is really with how a player or luthier can reliably draw conclusions about species or "board" differences just from their experience. If two guitars are made from the same body or neck wood species, yet sound different, it doesn't make logical sense to conclude "that must be the wood". Unless you rule out (ie measure) every other possible known explanation for two same-model guitars sounding different - and there are many, many that have been measured in real guitars - you can't conclude which particular element(s) is/are responsible for the sonic differences between those guitars. It's not even reliably possible to swap necks and track the differences that way - there are setup variables that are hard to control and have been shown to be sonically influential too. Regarding species differences, about the only way a player or luthier could conclude that maple *always* sounds different to rosewood would be if it *always* did, AND that the effect overrode every other sonically influential factor (otherwise it would be obscured by other things in some guitars and not others, making a clear conclusion impossible). And the only way you could logically conclude that is was sometimes or always "board specific" would be by complex measurements. Otherwise you just have two guitars made from the same wood species that sound different, and you are leaping to the conclusion that it must be "the board". It's amazingly common for people to blithely say that guitars that differ in density (and mass if shaped the same) must explain why they sound different ... with ZERO evidence linking the differences in density or mass to those sonic differences (solid body guitars are not acoustic guitars; a solid chunk of wood is not the same as a thin acoustic guitar top plate). Until such direct evidence from real guitars becomes available, such pseudoscience statements need to stop. There is however some direct evidence for measured frequency variability within fretboard species (rosewood and ebony) *sometimes* causing measured species-related frequency differences to disappear (see figure 3 in Pate 2022 "An acoustician’s approach of the solid body electric guitar"). What property of the wood that might be due to (there are many) has not been studied. For the measured frequency SIMILARITY between rosewood and maple, see for example Pate's 2015 study "Modal parameter variability in industrial electric guitar making: Manufacturing process, wood variability, and lutherie decisions". Blinded tests have not shown that players can reliably distinguish maple from rosewood when just listening to those guitars (eg GITEC study). So it is likely that the commonly asserted sonic differences are biased by those players being able to see and feel the different fretboards. The situation for bass guitars may be different - such sonic differences may be clearer (eg Sproßmann 2013 "Zum Einfluss der Holzart in Bassgitarrenhälsen auf das Schwingungs- und Klangverhalten").
@@vw9659 and all of that supports my argument that if you don’t like the tone of your guitar, change the pickups, the electronics, the output cable, your amp, the speaker(s), etc. Forget about the wood. Thinking about it is a waste of time and brain power.
A guitar, as the whole construction and electronics has its own tone. The amplifier & speakers have their own tonal characters as well. It is never just one part. It's EVERYTHING.
Hi Chris, I just need to say that I love the tone of these recent videos of yours. I find your approach more balanced, neutral and respectful of others opinions, while still getting your point across very clearly and effectively (maybe even more than before?). Completely agree on all of what you said in this video and the one about hollow and semi hollow bodies as well. Nice work!
There are a lot of factors that change the tone of a guitar, even if the wood comes from the same trunk....but brands have standardized their shapes and woods to, more or less, have the same "tones".
Nice video. I have a different thought that rarely gets brought up. For solid body guitars, my thought is that weight distribution, balance, neck angle and anything that affects feel will change the way a player plays the guitar. Those differences, no matter how subtle, are perceived by the player as tone wood differences. I'm in the camp that if a wood or shape has any difference, It's minimal enough not to worry about. I worry more about weight distribution, balance and feel than how the wood sounds.
@@StealthParrot oh, totally agree. Pickups and pickup placement are the most impactfull, along with gauge and alloy of strings and scale length. I was just talking about the woods and shape. I've said before that any good guitar player should be able to identify the difference between a single coil vs humbucker just by listening, same with any bassist can id a P from jazz bass by listening. But never seen anyone identify maple vs ebony vs Rosewood just by listening. Of course assuming a fairly clean to edge of breakup sound. It gets murky with super saturated compressed sounds.
Definitely the shape of an electric guitar, especially a solidbody is about aesthetics. In my teens I was all about fancy shapes. But the shape will also impact the guitar feels to hold, as well as play. It affects the balance. Those for me combined to perfection with the Ibanez Iceman. Yet other cool shaped guitars I find uncomfortable But that also varies from person to person. So now I look for feel and balance. The shape is also potentially a factor in weight as bigger shapes use more wood than smaller shapes, but of course then the wood used and the hardware also affect weight more than just the shape.
Some people want to believe that when they see Paul Reed Smith tapping on big slabs of wood, or the Fender Custom Shop salesman tapping on bodies and necks on youtube, that PRS and FCS employ some mystical luthiery knowledge to choose woods. And that knowledge and tapping goes into the production of each guitar. It's baseless. That knowledge does not exist, because it's inconsistent with the known measured physics of real solid-body electric guitars. And it's dishonest for PRS and FCS to imply that's how they build guitars. The resonant modal frequencies of solid-body guitars can be readily measured. That has been done in many studies by the likes of Fleischer, Zollner and Pate. Not by electric guitar companies. Those studies have shown for example how those resonant modal frequencies evolve to be quite different from how they started, as the parts of real solid-body guitars are shaped and then assembled (see for example Pate 2015 "Evolution of the modal behaviour of nominally identical electric guitars during the making process"). That evolution has not been shown to be controllable in any given guitar design. And there is only good evidence for the sonic effect of those resonant modes for the (long, thin, flexible, composite) neck. There is no similar evidence the solid body. The science to measure those things did not exist when Fender and Gibson chose their unique, original shapes. There has been a small amount of published research only in recent years that suggests some elements of the shape (single vs double cutaway, assymetric headstocks) may affect some resonant modal frequencies, for example the torsional modes of the neck. Yamaha is the only large manufacturer that has an R&D department that measures their solid-body guitars' resonant modal frequencies during their design. But how those measurements influence the design is obscure (their patents, for example for the Revstar's features, obfuscate proof any real influence). Yamaha seems to prefer similar "smoke and mirrors" marketing, like PRS and FCS, to presenting any solid scientific evidence they might have.
Chris that's a tough one with shape of a guitar along with mass. For example Eddie van Halens Ibanez destroyer for which he cut out the back turning into the shark guitar he always said when he did that it ruined the tone, but see there is a catch before he did that he removed all the electronics and the pickups. And then put one pickup back in and just wired it up to a volume pot directly and then to the jack and I gave no idea if he grounded it again either. when the original configuration was stock with a volume tone and switch. So I believe his drastically altered tone was caused by his not rewiring it correctly. Which is why his tone was ruined. But that's because the way he cut out the body was like a flying v like shape. I think the shame was before he died was not having his pals like Chris Ellis or Matt bruck get a schemitec of the original destroyer and first attempt to rewire it up that way have Eddie tone test it to see if it sounded the way he remembered from the first van Halen album. then work from there until what he wanted was achieved. So shaoe wize not sure but thickness of the shape maybe. I know flying v shaoes and king v shapes or Explorer shapes can get good tone heck even modifying strat bodies to have sharper sides that are not as rounded and thinner don't seem to ruin tone when rewired corectly or heck even cutting and shortening the tops. Now the thickness of the wood to an extant along with wood type yes to an extent but shape not sure but again it comes down to the player and what he likes. Because what I might think sounds like crap or feel comfortable someone else might think is the best tone he had ever heard. So concerning shape and mass that's more of a comfort thing. And playability thing.
Yamaha has been ahead of the game for a while. They are using carbon fiber rods in their guitars. Not where one would expect like in the neck to add stability as we often see in other manufacturers. Yamaha is using them in the bodies of their solid body guitars as well as chamber them in a very specific way to ensure structural integrity and stiffness while being the right weight. I love science and innovation but I also love me a good ole single cut with two buckers.
Hi Chris, are you familiar with the design of the Yamaha Revstar esp the Professional model. I don’t know if each body is tuned like your acoustic example but the potential is there. The interior is carved to get a certain body resonance. Yamaha also claims an Impluse Response Acceleration to make the guitar parts blend as a unit. I’m not sure if it’s marketing speak or a real thing. It’s a guitar that’s on my wish list
I've always felt that the neck wood and fretboard wood have most to do with the tone of the guitar while the body wood really is insignificant on electric guitars. I've definitely noticed a maple fretboard has a brighter tone than a rosewood or ebony and the magnet of the pickup whether alnico or ceramic have different tonal qualities you can hear easily if you're playing with a clean tone.
This question was answered empirically in video I saw a few years ago (I don't remember the channel). The creator took a saw to a strat and gradually reduced it to a mere plank, and compared the sound at the different stages of mutilation. No audible difference whatsoever.
Once again, great video! You are (in my opinion) 100% correct on the "why did Fender go for the strat-shape". Because it is aesthetically pleasing to look at! The same applies for the car industry, food industry, clothing industry and whatever type of industry that sells physical products to people. Appeareance matter! If a brand new car turned out to be the best car ever, but had the shape and appearance of a walking duck, it would never sell. At least not to the big masses. So Leo was right on with the strat, can`t argue with that.
Completely agree, and go even further, you can build an electric guitar with no wood. In fact, at least one modern manufacturer makes a guitar with no body at all(gitler?)
I suppose the second layer to this is to define “how much X matters”. 1%. 5%? 10%? I have some tests running to try and quantify neck woods effect on tonal transmission. Although quantifying the effect heard through a pickup is proving difficult in methodology. Is there AN effect? Of course. But the magnitude of that effect? Unknown so far. And if my measurements are to be believed thus far. There’s huge differences in wood of the same species…. Talk about murky
I think your thoughts on how wood effects the tone you end up with is 100 % correct. I'm just wondering if you have heard about how Yamaha's Revstar Element electric guitar... they say it is chambered for feel and tone. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on this? And if you knew about these guitar's and how they are advertising their processes as to how it effects the tone in the end product.
I only mention cause it sounded as if they are sayjng that they shape their bodys to achieve a specific end tone. Just what you are addressing in your video. Thanks for replying and l fined your videos a very reliable hands on approach to building electric guitars without a bunch of useless fluff. Ty
@@billstayer7517 Keep in mind that the industry is very competitive and marketing is used heavily to differentiate brands and products. More often than not, the marketing is extremely exaggerated.
There has always been a debate about how mass affects sustain. I've always wondered if a Les Paul really sustained longer than an SG. Or does an Explorer really sustain longer than a Tele? But you'd have to swap the same pickup and electronics from guitar to guitar to make sure a hotter pickup isn't used in one or the other.
Guitars with hum-buckers seem to have more sustain because the increased magnetic field is able to pick up more of the cross section area of the string.
There is no evidence that body wood mass affects sustain, within the range of masses of common solid-body electric guitars. It's just one of those vague pseudoscience notions that you hear from the science-challenged echo chamber of famous players, guitar journalists, and guitar manufacturers. Ask them "how" mass affects sustain, that is, what are the physics. You won't get much. The supposed greater sustain of Les Pauls - often supposedly linked to their body wood - has failed to materialize whenever a sustain comparison has been attempted under reasonably controlled conditions (compared to strats for example). If Les Pauls appear to have greater sustain, it is as you imply due to higher output (HB) pickups driving amps into clipping earlier (which means that equi-volume sound lasts longer than an unclipped one); which is how amps used with Les Pauls are typically set up , for the type of music that Les Pauls are typically used for.
I believe you are right when you say that a luthier does not "tune" an electric guitar body to a specific frequency but that's not to say that attention to the shape of the body does not matter- Check out what luthier Ulrich Teuffel found out through experience when building a guitar for the guy in Rammstein- His first attempt used les Paul woods and a "banjo" shaped body with awful sound results- He further added a slice of mahogany (to thicken the body) with no improvement at all- The answer was in the length of the fibers and he conducts a simple experiment to show it- Check it out! He used this knowledge in his design "Tesla""
Can you point us to where you read that ? I can't find it. If nothing else, the weirder Teuffel designs like the Birdfish show that you can make a electric guitar body in just about anyway, and it still sounds like an electric guitar. Which is consistent with the measured physics of real guitars. Without evidence, the "tone bar" thing is a design gimmick. Teuffel is an industrial designer, who naturally leans towards weirder designs. He's not a physicist.
@@vw9659 Teuffel documentary- I answered twice but my comments got deleted- check it out; Teuffel is a great designer not just "weird"- his experiment is conclusive
@@riniones I watched the Teuffel documentary I assume you mean ("From the Inside: Ulrich Teuffel"). It's largely physics-free. You don't need to fully understand guitar physics to make great guitars. As you can clearly see, his approach to guitars is to design the "look", and hope that it works (sounds) OK. Trial and error. Sometimes it did; sometimes it didn't. That's classic industrial design. It's like the difference between an architect and a construction engineer. The architect mostly sets the look/functionality of a building. The construction engineer understands the physics - if it's actually going to work as a building ... that is, not fall down. The banjo-like design "Les Paul" obviously "fell down". Teuffel's demonstration of cutting a wood block down into a longer, thin beam, and thus raising its resonant frequency (proportional to stiffness, inversely propertional to mass), is an undergraduate engineering experiment on beam mechanics. It's not some mystical luthiery understanding that he has hit on. And it mostly ignores the known specific role of the resonant frequency in a solid-body electric guitar. But still it usually sounds like an electric guitar. Again, it shows that you can do many things with the body - from the Tesla to his plastic-shell 1992 Fender prototype guitar to his Birdfish - and it still sounds like an electric guitar. If you like the look of his unique guitar designs, buy one. That's the extent of it.
Fancy maths ... but no evidence that it makes any sonic difference. Yamaha is unique among major electric guitar manufacturers in having the R&D scientists who could prove any such difference. But they choose not to provide any such solid evidence (see their patents), relying instead on vague marketing.
Hi you can build/modding gituar or Bass for a Special Tone ( i am Not Talking about the speaker or amp Setting and Pedals) is The Position of the Pickups.. is a pickup near the Bridge the „tone“ is brighter. Near to the neck ist more muddy because of the vibrition of the String ( not the pickup just the output and The „twaggy“ is The pickup a single coil ) the Wood and shape of a Body just for wight, Look and How Good the Instrument feels in the Hand ..
Yet again, another one that would be SO EASY to answer with actual measurments, but instead people will go all paul reed smith magical faith based wood xylophone and ponitificate endlessly. If it exists in reality, the free REW software will show it
Been using solarez for my first time. ( discovered it on your videos). It's a wonderful product. But after applying, sanding, and applying etc, it seems I can't rid it of very slight "acne " wonder why... Thnx.
Hello, again. Thnk U for your last response... my prior question was about "acne" solarez. It looks wonderful, followed all instructions ( including your's) maybe better described as tiny air bubbles. Love your videos
Actually, if the resonances in the body of the guitar actually played a role, the dimensions and shape of the body would definitely play a role as well, since they influence the possible vibration modes in the body. I mean, would you doubt that the diameter and depth of a tom or a snare drum have an influence on the sound? No, because the vibrations of the skin and the resonances in the body are what makes the sound. Why not for an electric guitar? Because the body just needs to be stiff enough to support the string tension, that's why.
The tone is the electronics+pickups, and that's why a very cheap electric guitar with expensive electrics outclasses a new Gibson or Fender USA in terms of sound.
When the big companies are doing final QC checks do they not hook them up to an oscilloscope and check the frequency response. I'm sure I've seen that in one of those factory tours but I could be wrong. This should show any measurable tonal variations from guitar to guitar no?
Update: this is the video I remember my comment from. Search for 'Making Guitar Pickups with Seymour Duncan | Factory Tour' on the Premier Guitar channel and around the 37 min mark, engineer Kevin Beller is measuring the resonant frequency of some new Jerod James Nichols 3-coil pickups.
@@StealthParrot I missunderstood your original comment. I thought you were saying that guitar manufacturers use a scope to test the impact of the wood since that's what my video was about. Now I realize you were talking about scoping the pickups. I've seen that many times myself.
@@HighlineGuitars I knew I had seen this done somewhere, and I'm with you in thinking that the tone comes predominantly from the pickup. Could any variation from the wood be measured? I don't know, but even if it could .. could that difference really be heard? Unlikely, as you said. I'd love to build a pickup winder and experiment with it on my own. I may have to buy your plans Chris 🙂
i owned a recording studio for many years and discovered that Fender, Gibson, yamaha, etc. shape guitars the way they do to SELL THEM. Not for tone! I used all sorts of effects or sweeteners to change tone, eq, distortion, etc. I've owned squires that sound better than fenders elites at times. Get a pedal and get a life.
@@nnelsonfatsurfer258 by forming a filter network alongside the resistors in the guitar, thru very predictable and well known mathematical formulas. The coolest part is, its also among the cheapest and easiest to experiment with!
Your it doesn't matter claims are super wise. My almost master's degree advisor (he was getting kicked out of the university at the time) that secret to acoustics is knowing what details matter. The context of the conversation was me explaining to him a failed experiment I did as an undergrad with a speaker and a pipe and how I barely measured any pressure difference across the pipe. At the time I didn't understand that 1) acoustic pressure typically a miniscule pressure, 2) there is a very large difference between static pressure sensors and sensors that measure fluctuating pressures.
Tonewood and body geometry will have an effect on tone of an electric guitar, and subtle changes in the timbre of the instrument are probably detectable with very careful listening, but you will do a far better job tone shaping and controlling the sound on the electronics side. And those subtle changes can easily be masked, manipulated and corrected with the proper equipment and signal processing to the point it doesnt matter.
Thank you for helping to de-mistify and even more importantly, de-mytholigizing these instruments. The great musicians would have still been great musicians regardless of what it said on the headstock, shape of the guitar, woods they were made of and whose "signature" line it belonged to. If you want to become great at playing a guitar, then just play. Play with different shapes, woods, electronics, set-ups, strings, brands, effects, amps, genres...other people. Those are the things that will make whatever guitar you have in your hands, sound great and is the most fun and rewarding part of owning and playing guitars.
Don't be afraid to fiddle with the guitar. When I first started playing, for years I had this fear that I didn't have the skills to even adjust a truss rod or file the nut a little They aren't that complicated. When building or modding, again just plaay around and have fun with it. I mean, look at how many times you are refinishing your multi-scale! 😂
Lastly, the thing to remember about companies and guitar companies aren't any different, is that they ultimately exist to make money. If Fender didn't make money with their Strats, there would be no Fender company. Marketing went into determining the shapes of electric guitars because people liked those shapes, wanted to buy those shapes and they feel good about playing those shapes.
It's not so much shape, but mass, which affects resonance and sustain. Some shapes are more massive than others. I have read about flying v shapes having a distinct tone because of the lack of mass immediately behind the bridge, and Eddie Van Halen having quit using his "shark" Destroyer after the first VH tour because the modification made the guitar sound thin. But who knows?
It seems obvious to me that Gibson & Fender were intelligently designing the Paul & Tele shapes to look like scaled down versions of people’s preconceived notions of what a guitar looks like, an acoustic. Once those models were established and accepted all bets were off in terms of body shape.
As you mentioned Chris, pickups and electronics have a huge impact on the sound, but I think the most important thing is the type of neck wood. The differences are clearly audible. Especially when it comes to the differences between maple and rosewood necks. Different sustain, rosewood is more mellow, maple has more mids and highs. The sound shaped in this way will be received by the pickup and sent to the amplifier.
Build enough guitars, and you will discover that Maple can sometimes sound like Rosewood and vice versa.
@@HighlineGuitars Do you know what might be causing this?
@@redcatstw tone is board specific, not species specific. For example, all Maple boards are not the same, even when cut from the same tree. They vary in density, which affects the tone they produce. Same thing is true with Rosewood and every other species we use to make guitar necks.
@@HighlineGuitars The problem is really with how a player or luthier can reliably draw conclusions about species or "board" differences just from their experience.
If two guitars are made from the same body or neck wood species, yet sound different, it doesn't make logical sense to conclude "that must be the wood".
Unless you rule out (ie measure) every other possible known explanation for two same-model guitars sounding different - and there are many, many that have been measured in real guitars - you can't conclude which particular element(s) is/are responsible for the sonic differences between those guitars.
It's not even reliably possible to swap necks and track the differences that way - there are setup variables that are hard to control and have been shown to be sonically influential too.
Regarding species differences, about the only way a player or luthier could conclude that maple *always* sounds different to rosewood would be if it *always* did, AND that the effect overrode every other sonically influential factor (otherwise it would be obscured by other things in some guitars and not others, making a clear conclusion impossible).
And the only way you could logically conclude that is was sometimes or always "board specific" would be by complex measurements. Otherwise you just have two guitars made from the same wood species that sound different, and you are leaping to the conclusion that it must be "the board".
It's amazingly common for people to blithely say that guitars that differ in density (and mass if shaped the same) must explain why they sound different ... with ZERO evidence linking the differences in density or mass to those sonic differences (solid body guitars are not acoustic guitars; a solid chunk of wood is not the same as a thin acoustic guitar top plate). Until such direct evidence from real guitars becomes available, such pseudoscience statements need to stop.
There is however some direct evidence for measured frequency variability within fretboard species (rosewood and ebony) *sometimes* causing measured species-related frequency differences to disappear (see figure 3 in Pate 2022 "An acoustician’s approach of the solid body electric guitar"). What property of the wood that might be due to (there are many) has not been studied.
For the measured frequency SIMILARITY between rosewood and maple, see for example Pate's 2015 study "Modal parameter variability in industrial electric guitar making: Manufacturing process, wood variability, and lutherie decisions".
Blinded tests have not shown that players can reliably distinguish maple from rosewood when just listening to those guitars (eg GITEC study). So it is likely that the commonly asserted sonic differences are biased by those players being able to see and feel the different fretboards. The situation for bass guitars may be different - such sonic differences may be clearer (eg Sproßmann 2013 "Zum Einfluss der Holzart in Bassgitarrenhälsen auf das Schwingungs- und Klangverhalten").
@@vw9659 and all of that supports my argument that if you don’t like the tone of your guitar, change the pickups, the electronics, the output cable, your amp, the speaker(s), etc. Forget about the wood. Thinking about it is a waste of time and brain power.
That ergonomic guitar you showed would be the perfect shape for me! Great video!
Great video!
Think of how few electric guitars would get made each day if the luthier had to stand around tapping the body at every step.
A guitar, as the whole construction and electronics has its own tone. The amplifier & speakers have their own tonal characters as well. It is never just one part. It's EVERYTHING.
That's the best explanation I've ever heard about this topic so far. I agree 100% with you. Great video.
Hi Chris, I just need to say that I love the tone of these recent videos of yours. I find your approach more balanced, neutral and respectful of others opinions, while still getting your point across very clearly and effectively (maybe even more than before?). Completely agree on all of what you said in this video and the one about hollow and semi hollow bodies as well. Nice work!
There are a lot of factors that change the tone of a guitar, even if the wood comes from the same trunk....but brands have standardized their shapes and woods to, more or less, have the same "tones".
Nice video. I have a different thought that rarely gets brought up. For solid body guitars, my thought is that weight distribution, balance, neck angle and anything that affects feel will change the way a player plays the guitar. Those differences, no matter how subtle, are perceived by the player as tone wood differences. I'm in the camp that if a wood or shape has any difference, It's minimal enough not to worry about. I worry more about weight distribution, balance and feel than how the wood sounds.
Yeah, I'd buy that argument. I still feel that pickups have the greatest affect on tone in electric guitars.
@@StealthParrot oh, totally agree. Pickups and pickup placement are the most impactfull, along with gauge and alloy of strings and scale length. I was just talking about the woods and shape.
I've said before that any good guitar player should be able to identify the difference between a single coil vs humbucker just by listening, same with any bassist can id a P from jazz bass by listening. But never seen anyone identify maple vs ebony vs Rosewood just by listening. Of course assuming a fairly clean to edge of breakup sound. It gets murky with super saturated compressed sounds.
Definitely the shape of an electric guitar, especially a solidbody is about aesthetics.
In my teens I was all about fancy shapes.
But the shape will also impact the guitar feels to hold, as well as play.
It affects the balance.
Those for me combined to perfection with the Ibanez Iceman.
Yet other cool shaped guitars I find uncomfortable
But that also varies from person to person.
So now I look for feel and balance.
The shape is also potentially a factor in weight as bigger shapes use more wood than smaller shapes, but of course then the wood used and the hardware also affect weight more than just the shape.
Some people want to believe that when they see Paul Reed Smith tapping on big slabs of wood, or the Fender Custom Shop salesman tapping on bodies and necks on youtube, that PRS and FCS employ some mystical luthiery knowledge to choose woods. And that knowledge and tapping goes into the production of each guitar. It's baseless. That knowledge does not exist, because it's inconsistent with the known measured physics of real solid-body electric guitars. And it's dishonest for PRS and FCS to imply that's how they build guitars.
The resonant modal frequencies of solid-body guitars can be readily measured. That has been done in many studies by the likes of Fleischer, Zollner and Pate. Not by electric guitar companies. Those studies have shown for example how those resonant modal frequencies evolve to be quite different from how they started, as the parts of real solid-body guitars are shaped and then assembled (see for example Pate 2015 "Evolution of the modal behaviour of nominally identical electric guitars during the making process"). That evolution has not been shown to be controllable in any given guitar design. And there is only good evidence for the sonic effect of those resonant modes for the (long, thin, flexible, composite) neck. There is no similar evidence the solid body.
The science to measure those things did not exist when Fender and Gibson chose their unique, original shapes. There has been a small amount of published research only in recent years that suggests some elements of the shape (single vs double cutaway, assymetric headstocks) may affect some resonant modal frequencies, for example the torsional modes of the neck.
Yamaha is the only large manufacturer that has an R&D department that measures their solid-body guitars' resonant modal frequencies during their design. But how those measurements influence the design is obscure (their patents, for example for the Revstar's features, obfuscate proof any real influence). Yamaha seems to prefer similar "smoke and mirrors" marketing, like PRS and FCS, to presenting any solid scientific evidence they might have.
Outstanding explanation Chris. Thank you.
Chris that's a tough one with shape of a guitar along with mass. For example Eddie van Halens Ibanez destroyer for which he cut out the back turning into the shark guitar he always said when he did that it ruined the tone, but see there is a catch before he did that he removed all the electronics and the pickups. And then put one pickup back in and just wired it up to a volume pot directly and then to the jack and I gave no idea if he grounded it again either. when the original configuration was stock with a volume tone and switch. So I believe his drastically altered tone was caused by his not rewiring it correctly. Which is why his tone was ruined. But that's because the way he cut out the body was like a flying v like shape. I think the shame was before he died was not having his pals like Chris Ellis or Matt bruck get a schemitec of the original destroyer and first attempt to rewire it up that way have Eddie tone test it to see if it sounded the way he remembered from the first van Halen album. then work from there until what he wanted was achieved. So shaoe wize not sure but thickness of the shape maybe. I know flying v shaoes and king v shapes or Explorer shapes can get good tone heck even modifying strat bodies to have sharper sides that are not as rounded and thinner don't seem to ruin tone when rewired corectly or heck even cutting and shortening the tops.
Now the thickness of the wood to an extant along with wood type yes to an extent but shape not sure but again it comes down to the player and what he likes. Because what I might think sounds like crap or feel comfortable someone else might think is the best tone he had ever heard.
So concerning shape and mass that's more of a comfort thing. And playability thing.
Yamaha has been ahead of the game for a while. They are using carbon fiber rods in their guitars. Not where one would expect like in the neck to add stability as we often see in other manufacturers. Yamaha is using them in the bodies of their solid body guitars as well as chamber them in a very specific way to ensure structural integrity and stiffness while being the right weight. I love science and innovation but I also love me a good ole single cut with two buckers.
I have always admired Yamaha for what they do.
Hi Chris, are you familiar with the design of the Yamaha Revstar esp the Professional model. I don’t know if each body is tuned like your acoustic example but the potential is there. The interior is carved to get a certain body resonance. Yamaha also claims an Impluse Response Acceleration to make the guitar parts blend as a unit. I’m not sure if it’s marketing speak or a real thing. It’s a guitar that’s on my wish list
I've always felt that the neck wood and fretboard wood have most to do with the tone of the guitar while the body wood really is insignificant on electric guitars. I've definitely noticed a maple fretboard has a brighter tone than a rosewood or ebony and the magnet of the pickup whether alnico or ceramic have different tonal qualities you can hear easily if you're playing with a clean tone.
This question was answered empirically in video I saw a few years ago (I don't remember the channel). The creator took a saw to a strat and gradually reduced it to a mere plank, and compared the sound at the different stages of mutilation. No audible difference whatsoever.
The RUclips channel 'DIY Guitar Making' is worth looking at and the videos from about 5 years ago on the Electric Guitar Tonewood Debate.....
Once again, great video! You are (in my opinion) 100% correct on the "why did Fender go for the strat-shape". Because it is aesthetically pleasing to look at! The same applies for the car industry, food industry, clothing industry and whatever type of industry that sells physical products to people. Appeareance matter! If a brand new car turned out to be the best car ever, but had the shape and appearance of a walking duck, it would never sell. At least not to the big masses. So Leo was right on with the strat, can`t argue with that.
To me Les Paul's "Log" and Rickenbacker's "Frying Pan" before that (among others) refute both the tonewood and body shape myth for solid body guitars.
Completely agree, and go even further, you can build an electric guitar with no wood. In fact, at least one modern manufacturer makes a guitar with no body at all(gitler?)
I suppose the second layer to this is to define “how much X matters”. 1%. 5%? 10%?
I have some tests running to try and quantify neck woods effect on tonal transmission. Although quantifying the effect heard through a pickup is proving difficult in methodology.
Is there AN effect? Of course. But the magnitude of that effect? Unknown so far. And if my measurements are to be believed thus far. There’s huge differences in wood of the same species…. Talk about murky
I think your thoughts on how wood effects the tone you end up with is 100 % correct. I'm just wondering if you have heard about how Yamaha's Revstar Element electric guitar... they say it is chambered for feel and tone. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on this? And if you knew about these guitar's and how they are advertising their processes as to how it effects the tone in the end product.
I know nothing about them.
I only mention cause it sounded as if they are sayjng that they shape their bodys to achieve a specific end tone. Just what you are addressing in your video. Thanks for replying and l fined your videos a very reliable hands on approach to building electric guitars without a bunch of useless fluff. Ty
@@billstayer7517 Keep in mind that the industry is very competitive and marketing is used heavily to differentiate brands and products. More often than not, the marketing is extremely exaggerated.
There has always been a debate about how mass affects sustain. I've always wondered if a Les Paul really sustained longer than an SG. Or does an Explorer really sustain longer than a Tele? But you'd have to swap the same pickup and electronics from guitar to guitar to make sure a hotter pickup isn't used in one or the other.
Guitars with hum-buckers seem to have more sustain because the increased magnetic field is able to pick up more of the cross section area of the string.
There is no evidence that body wood mass affects sustain, within the range of masses of common solid-body electric guitars. It's just one of those vague pseudoscience notions that you hear from the science-challenged echo chamber of famous players, guitar journalists, and guitar manufacturers. Ask them "how" mass affects sustain, that is, what are the physics. You won't get much.
The supposed greater sustain of Les Pauls - often supposedly linked to their body wood - has failed to materialize whenever a sustain comparison has been attempted under reasonably controlled conditions (compared to strats for example).
If Les Pauls appear to have greater sustain, it is as you imply due to higher output (HB) pickups driving amps into clipping earlier (which means that equi-volume sound lasts longer than an unclipped one); which is how amps used with Les Pauls are typically set up , for the type of music that Les Pauls are typically used for.
I believe you are right when you say that a luthier does not "tune" an electric guitar body to a specific frequency but that's not to say that attention to the shape of the body does not matter- Check out what luthier Ulrich Teuffel found out through experience when building a guitar for the guy in Rammstein- His first attempt used les Paul woods and a "banjo" shaped body with awful sound results- He further added a slice of mahogany (to thicken the body) with no improvement at all- The answer was in the length of the fibers and he conducts a simple experiment to show it- Check it out! He used this knowledge in his design "Tesla""
Can you point us to where you read that ? I can't find it. If nothing else, the weirder Teuffel designs like the Birdfish show that you can make a electric guitar body in just about anyway, and it still sounds like an electric guitar. Which is consistent with the measured physics of real guitars. Without evidence, the "tone bar" thing is a design gimmick. Teuffel is an industrial designer, who naturally leans towards weirder designs. He's not a physicist.
@@vw9659 Teuffel documentary- I answered twice but my comments got deleted- check it out; Teuffel is a great designer not just "weird"- his experiment is conclusive
Teuffel documentary
@@vw9659 the results are conclusive- there's a difference between a true guitar designer and a hack
@@riniones I watched the Teuffel documentary I assume you mean ("From the Inside: Ulrich Teuffel"). It's largely physics-free. You don't need to fully understand guitar physics to make great guitars. As you can clearly see, his approach to guitars is to design the "look", and hope that it works (sounds) OK. Trial and error. Sometimes it did; sometimes it didn't. That's classic industrial design. It's like the difference between an architect and a construction engineer. The architect mostly sets the look/functionality of a building. The construction engineer understands the physics - if it's actually going to work as a building ... that is, not fall down. The banjo-like design "Les Paul" obviously "fell down".
Teuffel's demonstration of cutting a wood block down into a longer, thin beam, and thus raising its resonant frequency (proportional to stiffness, inversely propertional to mass), is an undergraduate engineering experiment on beam mechanics. It's not some mystical luthiery understanding that he has hit on. And it mostly ignores the known specific role of the resonant frequency in a solid-body electric guitar. But still it usually sounds like an electric guitar. Again, it shows that you can do many things with the body - from the Tesla to his plastic-shell 1992 Fender prototype guitar to his Birdfish - and it still sounds like an electric guitar.
If you like the look of his unique guitar designs, buy one. That's the extent of it.
Question: for structural stability, how much top thickness do you leave when doing a large, rear control route?
Oh. Supposedly Yamaha Revstars are acoustically chambered with fancy math. Not sure I buy how much it matters though.
Fancy maths ... but no evidence that it makes any sonic difference. Yamaha is unique among major electric guitar manufacturers in having the R&D scientists who could prove any such difference. But they choose not to provide any such solid evidence (see their patents), relying instead on vague marketing.
What happened to the 3d printed guitar?
I saw a short ages ago but nothing full length.
It's alive?
I’ll get to it eventually.
Hi you can build/modding gituar or Bass for a Special Tone ( i am Not Talking about the speaker or amp Setting and Pedals) is The Position of the Pickups.. is a pickup near the Bridge the „tone“ is brighter. Near to the neck ist more muddy because of the vibrition of the String ( not the pickup just the output and The „twaggy“ is The pickup a single coil ) the Wood and shape of a Body just for wight, Look and How Good the Instrument feels in the Hand ..
Yet again, another one that would be SO EASY to answer with actual measurments, but instead people will go all paul reed smith magical faith based wood xylophone and ponitificate endlessly.
If it exists in reality, the free REW software will show it
You say no one is doing this, but Yamaha chambers their Revstars in a measured way
Been using solarez for my first time. ( discovered it on your videos). It's a wonderful product. But after applying, sanding, and applying etc, it seems I can't rid it of very slight "acne " wonder why... Thnx.
I don’t know what that is.
Hello, again. Thnk U for your last response... my prior question was about "acne" solarez. It looks wonderful, followed all instructions ( including your's) maybe better described as tiny air bubbles. Love your videos
Tone of certain guitars. Only ovation tried to customize a particular tone.
Tone shape? Come on now, I fear someone's messing with you. How about tone tee shirt? Tone shoes? Tone lunch? Bah....
Actually, if the resonances in the body of the guitar actually played a role, the dimensions and shape of the body would definitely play a role as well, since they influence the possible vibration modes in the body. I mean, would you doubt that the diameter and depth of a tom or a snare drum have an influence on the sound? No, because the vibrations of the skin and the resonances in the body are what makes the sound. Why not for an electric guitar? Because the body just needs to be stiff enough to support the string tension, that's why.
The tone is the electronics+pickups, and that's why a very cheap electric guitar with expensive electrics outclasses a new Gibson or Fender USA in terms of sound.
no
nope
When the big companies are doing final QC checks do they not hook them up to an oscilloscope and check the frequency response. I'm sure I've seen that in one of those factory tours but I could be wrong. This should show any measurable tonal variations from guitar to guitar no?
I’ve never seen this.
@@HighlineGuitars No, I must have been dreaming, I've looked and can't find anything.
Update: this is the video I remember my comment from. Search for 'Making Guitar Pickups with Seymour Duncan | Factory Tour' on the Premier Guitar channel and around the 37 min mark, engineer Kevin Beller is measuring the resonant frequency of some new Jerod James Nichols 3-coil pickups.
@@StealthParrot I missunderstood your original comment. I thought you were saying that guitar manufacturers use a scope to test the impact of the wood since that's what my video was about. Now I realize you were talking about scoping the pickups. I've seen that many times myself.
@@HighlineGuitars I knew I had seen this done somewhere, and I'm with you in thinking that the tone comes predominantly from the pickup. Could any variation from the wood be measured? I don't know, but even if it could .. could that difference really be heard? Unlikely, as you said. I'd love to build a pickup winder and experiment with it on my own. I may have to buy your plans Chris 🙂
i owned a recording studio for many years and discovered that Fender, Gibson, yamaha, etc. shape guitars the way they do to SELL THEM. Not for tone! I used all sorts of effects or sweeteners to change tone, eq, distortion, etc. I've owned squires that sound better than fenders elites at times. Get a pedal and get a life.
Take your guitar,hit a string,then put put part of it on a table. The body makes a huge difference.
How does that factor into what you hear coming out of a speaker?
@@northernmonkey8652 I can’t hear a difference. People hear a difference because they’ve been told there’s a difference.
I don't know if this is relevant to the conversation (or if you've addressed the topic), but, how do capacitors affect the tone?
@@northernmonkey8652 and yet when asked, people refuse to post a single measurement backing that up, ever
@@nnelsonfatsurfer258 by forming a filter network alongside the resistors in the guitar, thru very predictable and well known mathematical formulas. The coolest part is, its also among the cheapest and easiest to experiment with!