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Post by sumgai on Feb 17, 2017 15:35:17 GMT -5
The fundemental assumption, is if *I* hear a difference, then there must be a difference, and it's up to someone else to do the hard work of explaining why I heard a difference. Or, if I think the wood is responsible for the tone difference, then the wood is responsible for the tone difference, and it's someone else's job to explain why I'm right.
Channel ChrisK much?
Indeed, many of us here (that stick around for more than a quick-and-dirty fix) feel the same way as you. We even had a discussion some time back, and it was revealed that "bias confirmation" was the dark troll behind the door that very few people (let alone guitar players) will admit drives their "irrationally exuberant" spending habits, guitars or otherwise.
Chris had a better word for it: FelderGarb. Basically, that's a malapropism for Gelder Farb, which is German for Golden Color, an idiom for 'the color of money trumps common sense'.* I believe it was also Chris that coined the term 'MarketingSpeak', at least here in The NutzHouse. But I could be incorrect on that score, I'm not sure anymore.
I'll boil it down a different way, but we'll arrive at the same result. As I see it, what's really going on here is something called "ego gratification". That's where one boosts one's ego (the gratify part) by giving the appearance to others that one is independent of needs, and can devote his/her dollars in any manner desired, frivolous or otherwise. Americans call this the "Keeping Up With The Jones's" syndrome. But to me, it really indicates that someone is in dire need of psychiatric help.
More or less, over the past 55 years or so that I've been participating in this thing called guitar music, I've seen just about every reason excuse someone could possibly trot out to justify why they had to have a Les Paul, when they couldn't even play decently on a Stella. For them, the bottom line was excruciatingly obvious - "If I play the same guitar as my hero, then by Gawd, I'm as good as my hero! And don't you bother me with droll facts either. I'll be just as good as my hero by tomorrow - you just watch me!! And all the girls, too... think of all the girls I'll get, man!"
Gawd help us all.
</two cents>
sumgai
* Of course, in true Zen fashion ala ChrisK, he reduced it to "Oooh, shiny!!"
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Post by antigua on Feb 17, 2017 17:05:40 GMT -5
I don't know who ChrisK is, but he sounds like a good guy.
Preferences in terms of guitars seems to follow with preference with respect to music; everyone loves the style of music that was popular when they were in high school, and so everyone loves the instruments they used. I'm fine with that, if it feels good, do it, but what keep me up at night is the Mississippi sized flood of bad science; magic tone caps, magic guitar pickups, etc.
I think the more relevant psychological function at work is the tendency for people to hate the unknown, to be uncomfortable with not having an answer to a question. One of the major appeals of religion is that it provides answers to lots of philosophical unknowables about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. Questions are like pot holes, and people want to fill them as quick as possible. How does maple sound different from alder or ash? Does PIO sound better than ceramic? Nobody really knows, and yet there is a gravitational attraction to any flimsy, dubious answer someone who sounds self confident is willing to put forth. Usually when a car salesman makes a claim about a car the buyer is skeptical, they've learned to be suspicious profiteers, but guitarists are so hungry for answers that the profiteers ("vendor members" on forums) are trusted in ways they really should not be, as it's a conflict of interest.
Speaking of guitar heroes, their own irrationality when it comes to guitars and science makes me just as sad. There is a video of Keith Richards where he extols vintage Fenders, I think it was Telecasters specifically, saying they just never made them like they did pre-CBS, and went on about how magical they were. It's bad enough that people who want to sell said guitars play up those notions, but it's even worse when it's coming from a rock star that people look up to. Mike McCready of Pearl Jam fame is shown in a similar kind of video, talking about how much he loves any guitar made in 1959. "There's just something magical about '59s", they sound so great and are so easy to play. He even has "'59" tattooed to his forearm. The irony is that the better you play, the more skill you have, the less it matters how nice or how old your guitar is.
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Post by newey on Feb 17, 2017 17:17:39 GMT -5
Amen to that, and to Antigua's rant above, all very true. But, sg, you're forgetting your German- "geld" is money, not "golden" (you're perhaps thinking "gelb", i.e., "yellow"?). So "Gelder Farb" is, literally, "money color", or as you say, "the color of money". Another German word comes to my mind- "Schiesse". Or, "Dreck". I used both words liberally while reading, a few years back, a vigorous net discussion of whether or not obtaining that elusive "vintage Strat tone" required the rewiring of one's Strat with cloth-insulated wire. I kid you not, they were serious about this. Now, if one wishes to have their Strat look vintage with the pickguard removed, and provided that one is not trying to fraudulently pass something off as actually vintage, then by all means, buy all the cloth-covered wire you need and have at it. But the wire affects tone??? C'mon man!, as they say on ESPN. I have, however, performed empirical testing, and I can confirm that wires, however insulated, definitely have an adverse affect on the tone of one's guitar if you disconnect them . . .
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Post by reTrEaD on Feb 20, 2017 0:43:03 GMT -5
I don't know who ChrisK is, but he sounds like a good guy. I recommend occasionally stealing very small blocks of time away from your many worthwhile contributions here and sift through early posts on this board. Not just threads he created but conversations where he joined in. Good reading for pleasure as well as education and perspective. Does PIO sound better than ceramic? Nobody really knows, and yet there is a gravitational attraction to any flimsy, dubious answer someone who sounds self confident is willing to put forth. I definitely believe the sonic differences between capacitor types is plausible. Not just because of bulk dielectric properties but mechanical construction and the microstructure of both the dielectric and the "plates", particularly at the interface. I also believe many of the claims put forth by the golden eared gurus are preposterous. It's my belief that where a capacitor is placed in a circuit and the other components involved dictate how much effect any "warts" a capacitor has can have on the sound. In a typical treble-cut tone control, the capacitor is used as a shunt. That alone does not preclude the possible effect the warts might have. But the highest capacitive reactance is at the lowest frequencies. At 100Hz, the capacitive reactance of a 22nF capacitor is only about 72k. This is rather small compared to a 250k pot. At 8kHz, it drops to a mere 900 ohms. With tone on 10, the capacitor rather dwarfed by the series resistance. The entire capacitance is only a tiny part of the equation at high frequencies. So any minor warts it presents should only have a very small effect at low frequencies, minuscule* at high frequencies. I've never bothered to install a switch to short the tone cap in a guitar but I think that might be a worthy experiment. My guess is there will be no discernible difference when the tone is on ten. (* an excellent video series. I highly recommend it.) Tone on 0 (or near zero) changes everything. The capacitor is directly (or nearly) in parallel with the pickups that are selected (assuming the tone control is placed before the volume). So if we can hear the effect of any warts, THIS is where we would expect to hear them. I recall claims about the guitar "springing to life" the tone "opening up" or the "singing" highs, after after replacing ceramics with paper in oil. My reaction?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2017 7:41:07 GMT -5
Most ppl agree that materials/construction matter. Different guitars produce different tones acoustically (unplugged). Acoustic tone as an envelope of frequencies produced by the vibrating strings is transformed to electric A/C current via the guitar pickups and amplified by the amp. Wood is the greater part of the materials used on guitars. Hence the real mystery to me is why there are still people that are sure that wood does not matter and that by replacing the bridge/nut/tuners/pups they can solve all problems with their tone. I don't know if cheaper woods produce worse or better tone. My best sustaining guitar is made of plywood(or so I read on vintage Kramer site). Price IMHO is irrelevant.
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Post by newey on Feb 20, 2017 8:43:33 GMT -5
No thoughtful person would claim that wood doesn't matter at all- as you noted, play it acoustically to test that. But compared to other factors, it's a minor component overall. In the real world, we plug into an amplifier and play, often through one or more effects devices. Are you going to hear the contribution of the wood then?
Of course, any testing of two different guitars will have a number of confounding variables involved- fit at the neck joint, variation in the mounting of the bridge screws, other things could arguably skew ones results. But imagine a thought experiment: Two guitars, one with a plywood body, the other with (your choice of) exotic "tonewood", same neck, same pickups, bridges, nuts, etc. Plug them both into the same Marshall stack, turn the volume up to a level one would be using in a small club gig, and run it through a Boss Super Distortion pedal with the gain at about a "2", just enough to give it some '80s-style crunch. Blindfold 10 guitarists who claim that "tonewood" matters- and the guitarist and those administering the test likewise don't know which guitar is which, for a true double-blind scenario.
Can you honestly say that you could tell the difference? Do you honestly think that the average scores of the 10 subjects would show a difference that was statistically significant?
I know I sure as heck couldn't tell the difference, and I'm dubious of anyone who claims that they could do so.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2017 10:57:40 GMT -5
Exotic wood might be "worse", but anyway, assuming that one guitar has "good" wood/construction and the other not so good, I think that very few (if any) could tell the difference when some generic chords are played. But when we start exploring natural harmonics, pinch harmonics, bass response, sustain on certain notes e.g. on last fret, then I guess the differences will start to be audible by more people.
I play guitar some 30+ years. I love the emg 81/60 on my all mahogany single cut 25". When I fit 81/85 on my "plywood"/maple-rosewood 25.5", I could not get the 81 out of the bridge quick enough. Then I swapped to 85b/81n and I liked it a lot. This cannot be placebo or marketing.
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Post by lunaalta on Feb 20, 2017 12:29:26 GMT -5
No thoughtful person would claim that wood doesn't matter at all- as you noted, play it acoustically to test that. But compared to other factors, it's a minor component overall. In the real world, we plug into an amplifier and play, often through one or more effects devices. Are you going to hear the contribution of the wood then? Of course, any testing of two different guitars will have a number of confounding variables involved- fit at the neck joint, variation in the mounting of the bridge screws, other things could arguably skew ones results. But imagine a thought experiment: Two guitars, one with a plywood body, the other with (your choice of) exotic "tonewood", same neck, same pickups, bridges, nuts, etc. Plug them both into the same Marshall stack, turn the volume up to a level one would be using in a small club gig, and run it through a Boss Super Distortion pedal with the gain at about a "2", just enough to give it some '80s-style crunch. Blindfold 10 guitarists who claim that "tonewood" matters- and the guitarist and those administering the test likewise don't know which guitar is which, for a true double-blind scenario. Can you honestly say that you could tell the difference? Do you honestly think that the average scores of the 10 subjects would show a difference that was statistically significant? I know I sure as heck couldn't tell the difference, and I'm dubious of anyone who claims that they could do so. Hmmmm, although I pretty much agree with what you are saying, I doubt you would judge a serious malt after adding ice and, dare I say it, coke.....? The thought experiment, to my mind, would be a waste of time, therefore. I rarely use 'crunch', or any other distortion, other than that which my amps produce when driven, and even then in small quantity. And my malt neat, preferably in a crystal glass! But then, I'm one of those who turns his nose up at mp3s, too....
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Post by antigua on Feb 20, 2017 14:14:22 GMT -5
Does PIO sound better than ceramic? Nobody really knows, and yet there is a gravitational attraction to any flimsy, dubious answer someone who sounds self confident is willing to put forth. I definitely believe the sonic differences between capacitor types is plausible. Not just because of bulk dielectric properties but mechanical construction and the microstructure of both the dielectric and the "plates", particularly at the interface. I'm pretty sure that differences would manifest as "unwanted" qualities, such as unwanted inductance, resistance, or microphonic induced voltage, so the question would become, is PIO somehow better because it acts like a little inductor or microphone or resistor? But don't answer that... Even concerns about the the various dielectrics behave at the physical level are only applicable at high radio frequencies, in the gigahertz range. Electrical engineers tend to choose a cap based on the load it can handle, precision, heat tolerances, cost, but by and large, 470nF is 470nF. As to capacitance specifically, guitarists seem to thing everything must differ in a way that their magical ears can detect. The assumption is that difference between woods, dielectrics, cloth versus vinyl insulated wire, dive versus quarter pots must all make a difference that is detectable to their golden ears, and you see it flagrantly stated "everything effects the tone", but many on these things fall below that threshold of hearing, and capacitance is just capacitance, unless your ears can detect RF.
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Post by sumgai on Feb 20, 2017 19:28:30 GMT -5
OK, listen up boys and girls, I'm only gonna say this once:
antigua is correct to point out that there ain't no such thing as Golden Ears. In my line of work, I've had occasion to debunk this theory time and again, but you know what? Every person I've ever met who makes that claim has suddenly come up with an excuse as to why he won't take my simple test. I have to wonder, why's that? In essence, you (as in, any person reading this who is not totally deaf) can hear differences in tone, that's a given. But the paramount question is, why? What makes that tone so identifiable? Well, one supportable assertion is why we're here in this very thread - it's the wood. OK, let's look at that, shall we?
On second thought, I'm just gonna go for the jugular - get this folks.... wood has no more effect on tone that religeon has on a fish. For the reasons stated above by others (you simply can't guarantee 100% control over all the various aspects of even the most simple test), wood is stated as the most likely culprit in tone simply because countless guitars made over the past century have been made of so many different species of wood that we have a large sample-set from which we can draw conclusions. Never mind that doing so negates every aspect of Scientific Investigation, it's simply easier to pick on wood, and let the sparks fly.
Let me also state that I am in awe that non-engineers and non-scientists have collected here in The NutzHouse and are attempting to quantify how a pickup contributes to "That Sound" (aka The Mojo Tone)... all in the name of quantifiable results that can be duplicated and thus transferred to other instruments at will. My hat's off to you guys, even if I can spot holes from so far away that I need a healthy dose of some mighty fine Indica in order to get back to Earth. (Which means, of course, that by the time I do get back, I've forgotten just why I was out there in the first place!)
So, we're talking about wood, yes? Well, here's where all you wood-lovers have to either put up or shut up. Allow me:
First up, the Stick. Emmett Chapman's 1974 invention was radical, presaging Ned Steinberger by about a decade, give or take. Where NS stopped, and Chapman kept going, was in making the instrument first and foremost a tapping rig - none of that picking BS for Mr. Chapman. Here's an image:
You can find plenty more info about this on the innerwebs, I won't bore you by helping you out with a Google link.
But if that's still too much wood for you, then we'll just trot right back down memory lane (I was there, when both of these were introduced to the world), and visit the much more rare Alan Gittler's masterstroke, the Purity. (It wasn't called that back then, but even now, mixed names keep coming up for it.)
Yes, I could also grant a dispensation and provides links, but what the hey, I enjoy watching people use the Bible method of learning (Seek, and ye shall find.) Still, just for greekdude's edification, here's a short video of one of Gittler's main proponents:
Go ahead, try to find how wood is contributing to that guy's tone.....
Trusting that I've made my point.....
sumgai
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Post by cynical1 on Feb 20, 2017 20:36:56 GMT -5
Just to beat the dead horse one more time, One thing missing from most of the tonewood debates\discussions\mantras...is the age and stability of the wood.
Anyone who's seen Gary Moore play knows just how much sustain you can weasel out of a 40+ year old piece of wood. Look at the graining on any vintage instrument from the 50's or 60's. You just don't see grain like that anymore. We've used up all the old growth stuff that's commercially viable to retrieve. Now we have all kinds of wood turning up in guitars. Some of the Asian varieties may share the same common name as the traditional species, but their scientific names are much more telling.
But softwoods are not to be discounted out of hand, either. Basswood is typically softer than some grades of conifers(pine), but try and pass off pine as tonewood and hordes of Tone Nazies with storm your shop with torches and a rope.
Here's what it comes down to. Electric guitars of the past 65 odd years required a raw material that is cheap, consistent, easy to machine and easily takes a finish. Look at the historical examples, mahogany, alder, ash, poplar and maple. Walk into any Home Depot and you can find finished pieces in multiple sizes for any of those species...
Sure, the exotic species look cool. I have a neckthrough bass with imbuia (Brazilian walnut) wings that looks bitchin'. Does it sound any better? Well, it does have a nice sustain, but since it also has a 7 piece neckthrough with 5 pieces making up the neck, who knows. It is heavy for a thin body bass, though...
Working with purpleheart, lignum vitae, ebony and other's of their ilk will eat your tooling alive...if you don't chip it trying to route or cut it. Other exotics tend to be oily making gluing and finishing a particular joy to experience. Finding consistent grading in certain exotics can also be a challenge. A production run requires consistency in raw material, and to achieve that using exotics is too expensive to make it a viable option. In the long run, you're not paying extra for the wood as much as you're paying for the agony and extra tooling expended sourcing and working with it. While sexy to look at, exotics are just more trouble than they're worth for a guitar maker to entertain as a standard.
Without beating the "quality of construction" argument to death, I think it's safe to say that most of the guitars built by Fender and Gibson in the 50's and 60's had a reliable standard of construction, at least typical. Accepting that, lets jump ahead 50 years. Our 1950's instrument, which was built from readily available old growth timber (which we discussed previously) and has now had decades to dry and stabilize. There are even discussions on exactly what effect years of absorbing string vibrations has on a piece of wood. The wood in this guitar has now moved all it's ever going to move without external forces. It's harder and it's as dry as it's ever going to be...in a word, it's stable.
To me, this is the heart of the debate. While certain species can be consistent in how the behave allowing the builder to fine tune characteristics by different choices of wood in the build, it's still comes down to having that right piece of aged wood at just the right time to take advantage of all the desirable characteristics that only time can introduce into the wood of an instrument.
I could digress...but I just spent my last two cents...
Happy Trails
Cynical One
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cheap
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Post by cheap on Feb 20, 2017 22:13:29 GMT -5
all the desirable characteristics that only time can introduce into the wood of an instrument. There was a study I posted earlier regarding some if the ways to process wood that affected sustain and resonance.(https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/pdf2013/fpl_2013_gao002.pdf&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjexpXWl6DSAhUI5GMKHe1dAmMQFggNMAA&sig2=omDPi3PNku3Ia43kvSl-uQ&usg=AFQjCNGRjZs9wtGInBIzDjbmwnYN_jz2OQ) I will stand by that there are pretty limited physical factors that can affect sustain in particular, but even overall tone you can't perscribe to a particular grain. The reason you can't is because even the shape of the guitar affects resonant peaks. But if you take resonant peaks out, an electric guitar is affected by merely weight and "modulus of elasticity". Direction of grain does not effect sonic velocity of waves through wood, though a knot in wood can. My bet about old guitars having a reputation for more sustain is that they either have higher MOE, or otherwise do not actually have more sustain. Since I don't have first hand experience, I don't know if the impression is just a result of pretty much exclusively talented guitarists playing 50 year old electric guitars, or if there is a real effect. I guess that's cynical of me, but as I am I can only be jealous of other forum members here that do have first hand experience. Since I'm inclined to believe their testimony, I'm leaning towards that the MOE is affected by age. Now, the actual mechanics of that change are not clear to me(whether the change is affected by moisture, or other factors), but I am willing to bet those effects can be emulated by seasoning techniques, as evidenced by the study posted above. It would be interesting to see a manufacturer's, or even a hobbyist's, attempt at this.
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Post by reTrEaD on Feb 20, 2017 23:55:49 GMT -5
As to capacitance specifically, guitarists seem to thing everything must differ in a way that their magical ears can detect. The assumption is that difference between woods, dielectrics, cloth versus vinyl insulated wire, dive versus quarter pots must all make a difference that is detectable to their golden ears, and you see it flagrantly stated "everything effects the tone", but many on these things fall below that threshold of hearing, and capacitance is just capacitance, unless your ears can detect RF. I'll agree with everything you've said up to and including "many on these things fall below that threshold of hearing". After that, I'll respectfully disagree. So let's go back to earlier in that post and see where you and I diverge. I'm on board with the unwanted characteristic part. The "such as" list you gave might be incomplete, though. I would expect the opposite. If it is better, I would think that would be because it displays less unwanted characteristics. A link I'll provide later seems to support that. Ooops! Sorry. Why only at GHz frequencies? I would suggest that what happens at very small charge might be different than what happens as the charge increases. This wouldn't be dependent on the device being used at extremely high frequencies. All true. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't? I can tell you with absolute certainty that 200,000uF doesn't always act like 200,000uF. Big electrolytics also have a ton of resistance and inductance in series with them because of the way they're constructed. At very low frequencies they act as expected. As the frequency increases, their effectiveness as a filter becomes less. So much less so that it has become a common practice to use two or three capacitors in parallel with them when used in audio amplifiers. Capacitors of progressively lower value. But my suspicion is that the unwanted effects in small capacitors might not be due to the usual suspects. Just because a capacitor is essentially a passive, linear device doesn't mean that its entirely linear. We've looked at resistance and inductance as possible invaders to the real-world manifestation of our ideal device. But those aren't the only possible answers. If every electrical action could be explained by resistive, capacitive, and inductive properties, we wouldn't have diodes, MOVs, etc. Steve Bench did an analysis of several different types of capacitors. The "Sound" of Capacitors The evaluation did NOT include listening. It did have several oscilloscope traces of the various types in a test circuit. www.diyaudioprojects.com/mirror/members.aol.com/sbench102/caps.htmlIt doesn't prove that we can hear the differences in a guitar ... or anywhere for that matter. But it does prove that we can measure a difference. That seems to be the first step, imho* * yeah, I know you hate that but I really do think it appropriate in this case.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2017 0:26:43 GMT -5
Cyn1 nailed it, once again. Cheap, I am still not convinced about the mass thing. I'll have to read the article you posted. SG, substitute wood->material/titanium/carbon fibre/etc and now we have the tone-material debate Also there's smth we forget. All this is meaningful in the traditional analogue world. Going digital and few of the above matters, not even the player
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Post by b4nj0 on Feb 21, 2017 4:43:13 GMT -5
Lots of variables in this discussion that some are trying to pull together to make some sense. Talking at cross purposes if you will. The following cannot really add to the thread because others better qualified than myself have already covered the ground. If the reader knows how to recognise sound information it's all been said, but here goes anyway: Capacitors: As has been noted, at RF capacitor types are important, but not for sound- for RF design integrity. There is zero implication for *tone* so far away from DC. Different types of capacitors do exhibit differing values when subjected to variable voltages. We see this in amplifiers, especially valve ones that deal with higher voltages and often simultaneous DC and AC loads. It follows that under given operating conditions some capacitors will exhibit different values to other types and that should lead to a change in perceived *tone*. Audible though? I'm not sure. In a passive guitar I cannot bring myself to pretend that there will be any difference for a given amount of Leyden Jars. How can anyone believe that PIO caps degraded over the decades sound better than new Spragues because with degraded electrolyte you cannot be objective. Wood/timber Although I THINK I can hear the difference between an all mahogany guitar and say a rosewood/spruce one, it sticks in the craw to state here that there is one. Similarly a maple Vs. a rosewood fretboard. For me, skill in design and execution are of much higher importance than tonewood (sic). What is really important is rigidity. It's a coincidence that heavy and dense materials exhibit rigidity because there are lightweight alternatives that are extremely rigid such as carbon fibre. I make no apologies for dropping the following link in here because I'm sure that I first saw it on this esteemed forum. Yeah I know- manky old computer and "smart" 'phone speakers. Lightweight. Rigid. Design. Execution. But cardboard??? Try educating the "mamils"* that antagonise motorists that sprung shock absorbers on street cycles are a really stupid idea. Take away the rigidity by deploying shock absorbers and you use up some of your pedal efforts in compressing a spring. Downhill and gripping onto the bars OK, but on a street- unbelievable. So it is with an instrument. I own a Stefan Sobell guitar. (Blimus I count myself lucky!) www.sobellguitars.com/new-world-model/I only post a link because most of you will never have heard of a Sobell. My example is Adirondack, Wenge and ebony. It is one of the many things that give me a reason to get up each morning- it really is that good. But it's Stefan's idiosyncratic designs and his skill in execution first and understated artistry second that tips the balance because his guitars are just as good using BRW or African Blackwood and so on. Wasn't it Bob Taylor that made a guitar from pallet wood? (complete with visible machined off nails!) You want serious sustain? Try one of these, you'll never look back. Designed (and made?) in England too; think of that ;<D Not cheap though! origineffects.com/product/sliderig/* Middle-Aged-Men-In-Lycra. e&oe...
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Post by lunaalta on Feb 21, 2017 5:33:22 GMT -5
But if that's still too much wood for you, then we'll just trot right back down memory lane (I was there, when both of these were introduced to the world), and visit the much more rare Alan Gittler's masterstroke, the Purity. (It wasn't called that back then, but even now, mixed names keep coming up for it.)
Yes, I could also grant a dispensation and provides links, but what the hey, I enjoy watching people use the Bible method of learning (Seek, and ye shall find.) Still, just for greekdude's edification, here's a short video of one of Gittler's main proponents:
Go ahead, try to find how wood is contributing to that guy's tone.....
Trusting that I've made my point.....
sumgai
[/quote] Sorry to say this (but, I will anyway... ) But, to me, that's toneless....
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2017 8:41:05 GMT -5
^^^ Titanium is a KNOWN tonematerial. My Ibb has titanium rods in the neck.
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Post by cynical1 on Feb 21, 2017 19:26:39 GMT -5
I will stand by that there are pretty limited physical factors that can affect sustain in particular, but even overall tone you can't perscribe to a particular grain. Tone is the aesthetic end result of a string being set in motion. Everything with a direct or tangential relationship will have some effect on what the ear interprets as "tone"...and the chosen wood used is certainly having a determination on the final dynamic. It's very easy to test this theory. Anyone remember tuning forks? Take one of these analog marvels, set it ringing and then just touch the tip to different species of dried\cured wood. Do this at Home Depot...it really pisses them off... It becomes apparent very soon that different species of wood and how they're cut treat an identical vibration source uniquely. Changing frequencies on the tuning fork makes it more interesting, as different frequencies will have a distinctive TTL from species to species. Age and stability will also have an effect on what you hear. And you're right, wood changes as it ages. Ask any woodworker and they'll tell you it gets harder. Anyone who's tried drilling a hole in a 100 year old osage fence post can certainly tell you that. Provided you don't live in the Pacific Northwest, it also gets drier. How the wood reacts to this march of time varies by species. We've all seen the pine 2" x 4" boards at the home improvement store warped all to Hell in a short time due to inadequate kiln drying. Madrone is a hardwood species difficult to cure properly as it tend to warp and twist as it cures\dries over time. Time will tell how Agathis and Paulownia react over time. Mahogany always impressed me as about the most stable wood over time...YMMV Graining, hardness, density, moisture\oil content along with any\all flaws or inclusions will all have a cumulative effect how the energy of that string vibration behaves. But, as with any organic substance, it's a bit more involved than that... Climate, natural obstacles\intrusions, soil and its neighbors (mammal, bird or insect) will all effect how a tree grows. Anyone with a partial grade school education can accept this, so no "dead horse beating" needed here. Next, we have age of the tree at harvest to factor in. Old growth trees are largely long gone and forgotten on this planet. Whatever survives is either protected or just too damn hard to get to to make it profitable to retrieve. As lately as 40 years ago you could still easily and affordably obtain old growth lumber of nearly any species. If you're a mill supplying someone like fender or Gibson, you're going to give them the best cuts from any log so they keep calling you back. Back in the 50's you could score some beautiful wood for peanuts because it was regarded as an endless resource. People still buy guitars, so the only way to hit a price point to stay economically viable as a mill or guitar builder is to lower your expectation. With the expansion of guitars built in Asia from locally sourced wood, the paradigm has re-calibrated again. Why is this important? Because a tree is living on the early growth. Nutrients are carried on the outer ring of a tree, so this area of the tree will yield the most porous and softest lumber once harvested. With old growth trees you have A LOT of close graining which has already begun to dry and stabilize from the center as the tree grew. These are the rings you use to determine the age of a tree. This is why trees don't break so easily...all those rings on the inside are acting like a support structure while the outer rings are doing all the plumbing. Moving right along, and probably most critical to where you're going to use the wood on the guitar, is how it's cut at the sawmill. Time for some visual aids: So, now the plot has thickened to include all these variables. What was once "Madagascar Unobtanium" or "Brazilian Feldegarb" is now flushed out into a series of environmental and human factors that make the whole "tonewood" debate an rhetorical ouroboros. It always leads to the answer 42. It's just the wrong question. That old demon "build quality" also comes into play. Even if you have the perfect piece of wood, a sloppy neck joint or careless misalignment will sap all the energy from your string vibration to negate it. You have to allow the wood to "work with" the string vibration long enough to appreciate\determine what the wood is contributing to the final "tone". In all reality, the wood is, by technological evolution, a less significant portion of what makes an electric instrument's tone unique. With the advent of the right modeling amp\box you can make your plywood Washburn sound just like Stevie Ray's Strat. My wife says I have a tendency to be a bit verbose...she might be on to something... Happy Trails Cynical One
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2017 3:02:39 GMT -5
^^ where's the like button ?
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Post by sumgai on Feb 22, 2017 13:48:31 GMT -5
^^ where's the like button ? Same place as our former Karma points..... in ProBoards's back pocket, collection dust and termites for lack of use.
Yes, our very own cynical1 has once again stepped up his game, at least long enough to be lucid as only he can be.
I'll not completely retract my earlier musings, but you'll recall that I didn't say "wood contributes nothing to tone" so much as I said "wood contributes too little to be worthy of discussion". I think we're all coming closer, albeit slooooooowly, to an agreement that for an electric guitar (particularly solid body jobbies), wood plays a reduced part of the Mojo Tone® equation, and it's getting to be a smaller and smaller contribution as time marches on. (Hmmm, I wonder if that time-marching-on bit has anything to do with my ears, and how they perceive tone.... es kann sein, nichts war?)
Personally, I consider a guitar body to be nothing more than a carrier of, and for, my pickups. While I can strum a beer can holder, and it would likely make a pleasant sound, I'm not as physically comfortable with that as I am with a thin body, usually made of solid wood. Nor am I as appreciative of what an acoustic can do, tone-wise, as I am with an electric guitar. All of which points out the oh-so-obvious - Tone is in the ear of the beholder!
And I think I've said this before, and if so, then it bears repeating: If we all heard exactly the same thing as the next guy in line, in terms of Tone, then this world would be a sorry-assed place indeed. Individuality, that's the name of the game, amiright?
sumgai
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2017 2:35:51 GMT -5
Have been doing some Linux recordings as of late, on an old Sony Vaio laptop mind you (2012 era), and I came again to the same conclusion : if this goes digital, then not only wood does not matter, but also pickups do not matter, strings do not matter, bridge does not matter, you can make anything sound like anything. So I think that the conditions/assumptions must be explicitly well defined when talking about tone. IMHO for the traditional non-electric instruments, wood/material is everything, in the tube amp world, wood is very important, pups are important as well, in the solid state/modeling amp world, wood is even less important, pups are less important, in the fully virtual amp/digital world of editing/post processing/plugins/etc, none of the above really matters, till ...... you hit this note with lousy sustain and it brings you back to step no1 So, thinking loud here, my conclusion is that in the full digital era, the only traditional thing that still affects tone is the sustain which is dependent on the wood/construction. In my 7-string, most notes ring with good sustain. 1st string, 24th fret, does not have strength. My other two 24-fret guitars give stronger notes on this string/fret. If it was the metal parts then wouldn't this affect the rest of notes? I guess it is in the wood.
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Post by newey on Feb 24, 2017 6:18:15 GMT -5
Not necessarily. Harmonics come into play, moreso on some notes than others.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2017 8:19:54 GMT -5
Not necessarily. Harmonics come into play, moreso on some notes than others. That's true, but one would assume that the sympathetic vibration frequency of metal is much higher than the strings/wood, hence metal is not the culprit here. If it was just choking notes it might be a bad saddle or the bridge, but it would affect more tones than just one string/fret.
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Post by cynical1 on Feb 24, 2017 13:25:11 GMT -5
...I think that the conditions/assumptions must be explicitly well defined when talking about tone. After 6 pages of discussion, you hit the nail on the head. So much of what's out there in print and conjecture has no basis to qualify or support their conclusions. The first thing to consider is that the wood used in the 1950's, which, for the most part, are the select group of species everyone prays to as tonewood, is nothing like the wood used today...because it's simply not there anymore. Time for some visual aids: And that's just the United States. It's no better anywhere else on this rock. It's almost prophetic that the first year of this graphic is only 12 years before the birth of John Locke...but I can digress enough without going down that rabbit hole...entropy still is... To be fair, as Greek points out, with the advent and proliferation of digital modeling and signal processing devices the actual tone an instrument produces doesn't matter as much as it used to. For me, I'm more excited about what can be done with MIDI on a guitar or bass than I am with my species selection. In perspective, Martin, Armstrong, Travis Bean and their ilk who have built non-organic instruments\components were really just ahead of the curve we're all going to come to eventually... But musical instruments evolve just as the music played on them evolves. You might not catch that working in most music stores, though. Guitarists and bassist can be some of the most entrenched thinkers when it comes to their instruments. Rather than experimenting with new designs and raw materials to see what they can offer, the paradigm is still re-tread versus explore. Tough talk from a guy who rescues pieces of firewood because he can't bring himself to burn it... Happy Trails - Cynical One
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Post by sumgai on Jan 5, 2019 0:38:51 GMT -5
Without quoting anything from above (all good points, indeed), I think this video I just found will open some eyes. Needless to say, I think this guy is on to something. sumgai
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Post by pyrroz on Jan 5, 2019 8:14:24 GMT -5
hmm bibliography says that neck is more important, i'd like to see a video where same body is constant and the neck pieces is variable. But as cynical1 said the way/method of the cut is done is also important.
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