tonewood? why?

[monkey hotel]

Howdy Folks!

...just to prove that wood really doesn't matter:

Cardboard Strat

[strat80hm]

Thanks for sharing - the concept is not new but this one is very well made!

The war in the comments below the videos is predictable yet hilarious - guitarists can be SO conservative...

Again a blatant proof (as we needed one) that one hears with their eyes a lot - always good to be reminded reality: many roads lead to Roma haha

[sumgai]

paging Runewalker, paging Runewalker... opinion needed in Aisle 5 please.

[cynical1]

That was very cool. I'd love to know what they used as a binder in the cardboard.

I was impressed at how well the neck performed.

Just goes to show how the tone wood game changes when the pickups go in...

HTC1

[Deleted]

Being of the modern "internet" digital generation, I'd love to agree, but unfortunately materials (e.g. wood/cardboard/carbon fibre/<insert your favorite material here/>etc...) matters as has been shown multiple times, the videos' sound provided are youtube-type quality anyway.
So yes, the thing sounds like a guitar, but no, not all 25.5 S/S/S strats with the same pups sound the same. Their necks/bodies vibrate at (and absorb) different frequencies of the harmonic composition, thus pronouncing the rest of them. The resulting harmonics are all sensed by the pups.

[monkey hotel]

Feb 1, 2016 12:25:06 GMT -5 @pyrros said:

Their necks/bodies vibrate at (and absorb) different frequencies of the harmonic composition, thus pronouncing the rest of them. The resulting harmonics are all sensed by the pups.

I demand complete graphs of frequency response considering player's density variance depending on actual pole shift, anamorphic flux of corresponding star constellations and humidity!

;-)

[Deleted]

Feb 1, 2016 12:41:30 GMT -5 monkey hotel said:

Feb 1, 2016 12:25:06 GMT -5 @pyrros said:

Their necks/bodies vibrate at (and absorb) different frequencies of the harmonic composition, thus pronouncing the rest of them. The resulting harmonics are all sensed by the pups.

I demand complete graphs of frequency response considering player's density variance depending on actual pole shift, anamorphic flux of corresponding star constellations and humidity!

;-)

man, I told you I wanted to agree, but just couldn't. In the meantime I guess the time when someone brings the exact identical waveforms for same geometry/pups but essentially different woods won't come any time soon

[monkey hotel]

I know, greekdude, i know.
I wasn't too serious about my initial statement.

(...before i start posting things like "the lego guitar", the "Wangcaster"  or even edible guitars, this should probably go to a different section.)

[blademaster2]

I also agree with greekdude, of course. No instrumentation can show the differences that human hearing can distinguish. If I look at the waveform or spectral response of a piano compared to a guitar I could never point out the differences or even recognize which is which, and yet I can hear the difference any time.

[cynical1]

Yeah, but the real question is what's it gonna sound like after you sweat on it for a half hour...

HTC1

[JFrankParnell]

Ok, as long as we're talking tonewood...

I just saw, touched, played one of these:


Sandblasted finish. They look *so* cool. I love the texture of them, too. They make it in strats, teles, precisions, maybe jazzes, not sure. However, GuitarStoreGuy was telling me about the 'thin, nitro' finish and how that affected the sustain, at least... he may have stopped short of saying the tone was better, but as soon as he launched into it, I started racking my brain to remember what the Gnutz boys thought about finishes. Thoughts?

[cynical1]

OK, once and for all...the reason Gibson and Fender used nitrocellulose lacquer back in the 50's was because it was the cheapest finish they could get away with. No voodoo, no feldergarb and certainly no mystic tone genie involved.

In the early 60's Fender began to use a filler\base coating trade named Fullerplast. It's a real thick plastic coating that removed the need for grain filling in a production environment. Again, a step to control costs, this time by removing a labor cost from the process.

They still coated them with nitro, but again, only because it's cheap.

Don't get me wrong, I like lacquer. It's easy to apply, super easy on repairs and you can get a shine you can shave with...and did I mention that it's cheap?

Does the thin nitro coating have an effect on the tone? Sure. So does the length of your guitar cable. If I blind-folded you and made you pick which guitar had a nitro finish I'd bet the farm you couldn't do it. I'll go so far as to say no one can do it.

So, the next time someone trots out the nitrocellulose Holy Grail nonsense, just smile and thank some hopefully long dead ahole in Marketing somewhere for starting that urban legend.

HTC1

[strat80hm]

Feb 1, 2016 16:27:56 GMT -5 blademaster2 said:

I also agree with greekdude, of course. No instrumentation can show the differences that human hearing can distinguish. If I look at the waveform or spectral response of a piano compared to a guitar I could never point out the differences or even recognize which is which, and yet I can hear the difference any time.

Furthermore, from my own experience, when listening to waveforms (attack, decay, sustain, release) right after the "attack" phase, it is not easy to tell a piano from a guitar or a cello:

To me, the attack (and peak) is the main differentiating factor between instruments.

[strat80hm]

Feb 2, 2016 18:01:19 GMT -5 cynical1 said:

So, the next time someone trots out the nitrocellulose Holy Grail nonsense, just smile and thank some hopefully long dead ahole in Marketing somewhere for starting that urban legend.

HTC1

What!?! How about brass nut, mojo banjo, grigri guitar, voodoo drums, Mississippi crossroad, black cats, blue LEDs, brown m&ms, pink elephants, point-to-point soldering and clothe-sleeved wire???

Legends too since you re at it???

[cheap]

Well, the way I see it, and I really have wasted a ton of time doing research on this stuff, is that the factor that a guitarist can actually perceive is weight. A heavier guitar has more sustain and less resonance. A lighter guitar has less sustain and more resonance. Supposedly this is because the additional resonance of a guitar reduces sustain when waves bounce back from the body into the strings destructively. Whatever the reason, you can find an example of this here:


How that resonance affects the actual sustained note is another story. The way I see it, the phase cancellation of fundamental, and all harmonics, is going to be even enough that you'll always have the same proportion of fundamental to harmonics as if you took the guitar body out of the equation. If you're talking about a single string. But I do think resonance has a huge impact on chords.

When you play an open string, and you neglect to mute the other strings, you'll notice they ring out a little. This is the effect of resonance. You can quickly notice this effect is greater in an acoustic guitar then say, a heavy les paul. But does that just affect muting, or does it affect timbre?

I believe this affects the timbre. First of all, let me say it's the overall weight, and not the species of wood or the finish, that changes resonance. Some woods are heavier than others, but to my understanding a well secured lead weight on an alder body will have the same overall resonance as a mahogany body. But I digress. The resonance can affect the timbre of chords through the reinforcement of constructive wavelengths and weakening of destructive wavelengths. Whereas before(discussing a single string), the frequencies resonating in the body were exactly the same as the ones in the string, when you've got 6 strings all resonating differently, and all sending waves into the body, the relationships between the strings becomes complicated.

Be warned, the next part of my argument is partly informed by my own ears. I don't know, but I highly doubt, that it is possible to measure this.

I believe that when an instrument resonates a chord, the most powerful overtones(lower order harmonics) are more likely to survive and reinforce, while the weaker overtones(higher order harmonics) are more likely to be destroyed and die. Also, I believe that the mathematical relationship between two notes means that a 2 note chord will sustain longest if the notes are a 5th apart. That's because the notes will have more harmonics in common. Common overtones will have less destructive interaction than uncommon overtones. How does this effect timbre? Well, a more resonant instrument will have the chaotic higher order harmonics destroyed sooner during the sustain if a chord, leaving the more mathematically related, and musically harmonious overtones ringing out.

I feel it's worth mentioning at this point before anyone gets too excited and goes and builds a paper maché guitar that the gauge and tension of the strings has a huge impact on the way the strings interact, as well resonance and sustain. It's very difficult to say what's noticeable and what isn't, what has a greater impact and what can be ignored.

By now you're probably thinking I've driven the topic completely into the ground. But wait, there's more! This is the most controversial (in my mind) area of the debate. For that reason, I think it's particularly important to be careful of what words I choose. This is also the area of the debate where some will come to the conclusion(which I cannot hope to refute) that the species of wood effects the timbre. That area of the debate is known as peak resonant frequencies, dead spots, or wolf tones.

I prefer to call these wolf tones. Why? Because it's not what guitarists call them! We're all aware of the pseudo-science that many guitar companies have put out over the years, so I like to use the same term we've been using for this since the time of Bach. Wolf tones are notes that ring louder acoustically on an instrument than the other notes, because the whole instrument resonates at the same frequency. More energy is lost into the air, so the sustain is shorter. Hence, they're called dead spots on electric guitars because the acoustic volume doesn't matter, and they sound quiet and short through the amp.

The first thing to understand about wolf tones is that many exist on your guitar at once. People often refer to guitars as having a single peak resonance frequency. When they do so, they are simply referring to the largest wolf tone. That is to say, the wolf tone of the greatest part of the body and neck combined. This is an important one because nearly all the other wolf tones go completely unnoticed. The way to measure the other wolf tones is to subject an instrument to sound waves from a frequency generator and see what parts vibrate. You can find an example here: (I couldn't find the video, I'll add it later) Edit: Here it is. The person who made the video is very opinionated to say the least. Please just consider the experiment on its own merit as an illustration. The comments given about the nut and the bridge do have value, though.

Now, the wolf tone not only affects the fundamental, but it also affects overtones. What's important to notice, is that it effects different order harmonics for every note. Say the wolf tone is at a D. Generally wolf tones aren't at exact notes, but let's say it is. It would affect the D note most, and the G note second most. The G note would have a diminished lower order harmonic, which might make the upper harmonics more emphasized by comparison. It will certainly make the fundamental sound more forward. But it will have little effect on a G#, only affecting very high order harmonics.

What's important to get from all that is that a wood won't be warmer or brighter based on resonant frequency. What might be useful to know is that heavier guitars have higher peak resonant frequencies, and lighter guitars have lower peak resonant frequencies. Though, I believe taking the peak resonant frequency into account is foolish, since the interaction of the wolf tones changes for every note. Nobody buys a guitar with specific notes in mind. Now, in general a musical wolf tone is a bad thing for an electric guitar. It'll result in a dead spot. But it's basically impossible to avoid this when building a guitar. You can't predict the resonant frequency when the guitar is assembled. It can be remedied by adding or removing weight to certain parts of the guitar. For example, people often have added weights to the headstock of bass guitars to remedy dead spots. They move the wolf tone to a different note, and hopefully it is a less musical one.

So, in conclusion, does wood species matter? No. Does wood matter? Yes. The combination of weight and shape dictates the wolf tone of an instrument, which can be an annoyance! However, it doesn't change the timbre of the instrument. Overall weight, on the other hand, does change the timbre of the instrument! As far as what players prefer, it sure varies. There's no right answer to timbre. The weight doesn't, however, affect the overall frequency response of the guitar. It won't make a guitar darker or brighter.

If you're a millionaire musician who can afford to buy a guitar for every song, feel free to use the knowledge of wolf tones to blow a whole bunch of dough. You might want that one note to have slightly more fundamental than the others! For the rest of us, I'd say the most we ought to worry about is the weight. Even that, compared to the many other factors that effect timbre, is small.

[newey]

I dunno about all that. It's an electric guitar, after all, and the whole point of 'ol Les and Leo developing the solid-body guitar was to take acoustics, resonances, etc. out of the equation. Particularly the resonances, which in a hollow-bodied design meant, essentially, feedback.

Does wood have an effect? As Cyn1 said, prove it in a double-blind test against several sets of ears. To my mind (and ears), the pickups' contribution vastly outweighs everything else. Second in line is the neck joint and the construction of the bridge, those things do affect tone, subtly but perhaps measurably. But, add in effects pedals, amp gain, etc, and good luck finding any component of your tone that can be reliably traced to anything we would call "tonewood".

But the search for the Magic Mojo™ will forever continue . . .

[cheap]

I have to agree with newey here on most fronts. Tonewood has no impact on the sound of the instrument. I'd even say the neck joint has no impact on the tone of the instrument. As I said before I don't think peak resonant frequencies change the tone of the instrument. I also happen to think the only thing a neck joint could impact is those peak resonant frequencies. I don't see how a neck joint could have much way of interacting with the strings.

I do think the weight of the guitar changes at the very least the sustain of a guitar. I dunno of you can really call that tone, but there you have it. I do think that a lighter guitar will have more interaction between the strings.

What that interaction actually does, other than impact the sustain, is somewhat beyond me. All that theory guesswork about fundamentals and overtones is pretty much just an idea. I think it could be so, at least it seems likely to me. But I'll bet there's someone out there with a much better understanding of physics who could set me straight.

I guess I want to emphasize that my post is all about that I don't believe in tonewood. As far as I see it, you could go ahead and strap some weights to an alder guitar and get the same result as swapping the whole body to mahogany.

[Deleted]

Jun 6, 2016 21:58:46 GMT -5 cheap said:

I guess I want to emphasize that my post is all about that I don't believe in tonewood. As far as I see it, you could go ahead and strap some weights to an alder guitar and get the same result as swapping the whole body to mahogany.

Man you brought some very interesting points above. The only thing I would substitute is "weight" for "stiffness". Maybe the same effect with stiffness is achieved via inertia through weight but this is certainly the longest path. Take a look at the modern chambered Les Pauls. Do they sustain less than the "old" 50's monsters? I think not.

On the last one, about strapping weights to the alder guitar, go grab some cheapo strat with lousy sustain and do the test. You will only get a cheapo heavier strat with lousy sustain.

[cheap]

Jun 7, 2016 3:35:07 GMT -5 @pyrros said:

go grab some cheapo strat with lousy sustain and do the test. You will only get a cheapo heavier strat with lousy sustain.

Well, this guy did the test. I don't think wet sand is any stiffer than mahogany! It's a long video, but worth watching.


Personally I do think the weight relieved guitars ought to have less sustain, I can't tell the difference though. We're dealing with a small factor, after all.

[blademaster2]

No measurements or experiments can tell me what I know I hear. Just like a chemical analysis will not distinguish a fine wine from a cheap wine. Human senses are needed.

Guitar tone lies mostly in the transient response of the string and body/bridge/fret interaction, and what this phenomenon does when the pups detect the signal and the amplifier amplifies it. This must be at least partly influenced by the stiffness of the body material, which will vary as a function of frequency. Night and Day difference? No, but audible enough between types in guitar bodies even with the same pickups.

More weight means more inertia, and that leads to more stiffness to vibration across all (most) frequencies where the same material is used - hence more sustain. Change the material stiffness, however, and it all changes again.

A guitar body made of tire rubber, however heavy, would never exhibit the same stiffness and sustain as one made of stiffer material like wood. Different woods will present different stiffness to vibration, varying across frequencies, which will colour the tone. Most people can hear this if the material changes enough, but for wood to wood it is a narrower range of difference. Beyond a certain point where the body material is suitably stiff (i.e. no tire rubber or silicon gel), different species of wood will not have a night and day impact on tone and it starts to get muddled up with other factors, not the least of which is the pups themselves (in fact they are hugely influential, as they have their own frequency responses and gain) and the amplifier. Additionally, given that most of the tone is evident in the transient response, the attack of picking of the string itself will make a big difference as we all know.

So in my opinion (and I can never prove this, either), "tonewood" refers to woods that are stiff enough across the frequencies of interest to respond well for guitar applications. No one uses balsa wood for a guitar - and yet it could be made strong enough with a little ingenuity. Their stiffness and the structural homogeneity (such as the neck joint, which introduces a discontinuity that impacts coupling of these vibrations across this interface), will be subtly audible - albeit not measurable - in a guitar. Some are VERY subtle, I know, and I could never reliably tell one from another blindfolded either.

No one can prove any of this with measurements, so the "why tonewood" debate will rage on.....

[b4nj0]

Deliberately giving subjective things the swerve, I'd just offer the observation that in my opinion, active pickups notwithstanding, pickups are passive devices that do not exhibit any gain.

e&oe...

[blademaster2]

Acknowledged.

"Gain" for a transducer such as a pickup is still the term that is commonly used, passive or not.

Strictly speaking it perhaps should really be termed "response" or "sensitivity", which would be the relationship between the mechanical energy of the string versus the resulting electrical output (in this case, voltage) generated by the pickup in response to that. "Gain" is really the ratio of output to input where the units are the same (i.e. voltage), which is dimensionless, whereas the pickup performs a conversion.

[cynical1]

Cheap -

I read your original post a couple of times, and have to admit, you make some very interesting and well reasoned points. I agree with most of them.

One point never brought up in these discussions is the age of the wood in question. About 20 years ago I started experimenting with salvage lumber. Back then, architectural salvage was not the cash cow it is now. I've found 100+ year old beams that I cut down, at great expense to my tooling, and built into basses and guitars. I actually found that these instruments were brighter than instruments I had used younger wood on.

I must respectfully disagree with your point on newer Les Pauls sustaining as long as ones built in the 50's. All mechanical points being equal, the 50-60 year old piece of wood is is going to hold a note much better than a piece of kiln dried 2 year old wood. At 5 decades the wood is as hard and stable as it's ever going to be and moisture is at it's absolute minimum. The graining was also superior on salvage lumber than on newer lumber simply because all the trees that the wood was taken from in the 50's was old growth. The graining is almost always superior on the older lumber. Nowadays they use quick growing softer woods...and sometimes I think their definition of curing the wood consists of just running a hair dryer on it after chopping it down. Pick any species and your results will be the same.

I have never been one to lock step with the "tonewood" gurus. Read any of my posts and you will see that. I will back up a bit and say that the species of wood will have an effect on the overall tone of the instrument. How noticeable it is certainly is a matter of debate.

From my experience, the tightness of your tolerances and the alignment of all components contacting the string will have more effect on the overall tone and performance of an instrument than the wood used.

Thanks for making me think for a change.

Happy Trails

Cynical One

[cheap]

As a point of order(whatever that means), I guess I should say, while you can't measure the character of an instrument, there are things you can measure. When I talk about an instrument's resonance, I'm not talking about the character of the resonance, just how much there is. In other words, how much the thing shakes! That's one of those things you can measure. As far as how resonance affects character or timbre, that's a whole different can of worms. Well, I think it's natural to want to get straight to the heart of the matter, but you sure can't debate on it in very concrete terms.

That said these sort of almost-scientific points I'm making are pretty useless, but I don't think I can manage to address too much at once. Something like sustain is also subject to interpretation. When does the note we hear really stop? Well, it's definitely some time before the string stops measurably moving. Heck, you can even see the thing moving and not be able to hear it!

Measuring these two factors, particulaly sustain which is affected to a greater extent by electronics, is more out of a morbid curiosity than out of an attempt to improve or select an instrument or tone. One should definitely follow one's ears, but I don't need to tell you veterans of tone that! As a newbie I lose sight of that too often, but the subject still piques my interest.

To move on to elasticity... I think it changes the timbre through the bridge. I think I've gotta agree with you here, with the caveat that it'd only be perceptible(to anyone) if the bridge was mounted to a thin piece of wood. Rigidity is a function of thickness, after all. I think that among two archtop guitars, if you were to make the tops of each the same thickness, the rigidity of the wood would change the timbre. Archtops do dampen a wide range of frequencies. Once again, my tragic lack of experience renders me unable to comment on what the character of a less rigid top would be compared to a more rigid top.

But y'know, solid body guitars on the other hand, you've got a different matter. And I also don't think grain can be perceived. The theory behind that, I suppose, would be that a greater surface area would cause more energy to be transferred to the air? Can anyone clarify on this? Moisture, I get(it has a huge impact on weight), but I don't think that two guitars weighing the same with different cuts of wood, moisture content, etcetera, would have any effect on anything but peak resonant frequencies... And I do still think a peak resonant frequency can't be cited as a cause of a change overall frequency response, only of specific dead spots.

Once again I'm only talking about the electric guitar signal. Anyways I want to thank everyone for being nice to me about this... All I'm saying is fun for me to think about, but I know this is a delicate subject. You guys have seriously elevated this question beyond anything I've found online, which usually consists of a whole bunch of bickering.

I know I know just enough to be dangerous... That is, only enough to think I'm right and throw around terms I barely know the meaning of. That's why my position, though once again a position of debate and not musicianship, is totally open to change. In this post in particular I don't want any of you to think that I think I refuted you... I definitely failed to prove any of you wrong. But I haven't been convinced either way! Here's to a continued discussion! (Please don't feel obligated though)

[cheap]

I think I failed to address a important point in my last post. It's one that I can sum up pretty succinctly, though. The string sustains, the wood doesn't(through an amp). We essentially don't care about the ability of the wood to hold a tone. You will probably find a stiffer guitar(based on cynical1's testimony) able to hold its peak resonant frequency after being hit by a hammer, if held by the headstock, for a longer time. Or... something besides a hammer. Something polite.

Anyway, I don't believe that'll change timbre or sustain through an amp... Unless, you say that the rigid material will also have less phase change. That would be a result of the wave moving more quickly through the material. Hmm... Some good food for thought there. I don't know that a longitudinal wave would respond differently to stiffness, or only density. I guess I have to hit the books some more.

[sumgai]

I shouldn't do this, but.....

First, a big welcome to cheap.  Gotta love that moniker, even if just for all the possible permutations here in The NutzHouse, let alone elsewhere.

Next, I wanna aks you all a question.... how come the rest of you don't stop to wonder, why is that I, gumbo and a small handful of others here don't chip in to this discussion? Would it perhaps be because we have/use Roland VG gear, stuff that does indeed break out each factor mentioned above into a variable that can be adjusted as desired? (And a lot of other little trinkets, to boot.)  We know what works, and for the most part, what doesn't - at least for us, individually.

Contrary to popular belief, what you get when you pay Roland's exorbitant prices is their awe-inspiring experience in modeling each factor into something that can be defined mathematically.  Yes, it can be done, and in such a way so as to guarantee that even so-called Golden Ear listeners will not be able to tell the difference between modeled and real-meal-deal tones.  cyn says he'd bet a farm that one couldn't tell the difference, given a double blindfold test.  I'll go even further - I'll pay your freight to show up at my door, with you bringing your own instrument(s), and we'll have a little test.  If you can guess the right answer 52% of the time, then I'll pay your way back home.  If not, then I'll drive you to the bus station, and the rest is up to you.

Oh wait, that's already been done!  Just whistle up asmith - he's been here and done this.  Ask him his impressions.  In fact, JFrank himself also heard my VG-55, as played by Ace, in his home (not mine).  There's a movie clip of that somewhere around here.....

Runewalker has it right - tonewood, shmonewood.  If you ignore all the other details whilst propounding one certain factoid, then you're either willfully ignorant, or you have a bright future ahead of you in Marketing.

'Nuff said.

sumgai

[cheap]

Thanks for the welcome, sumgai. As you can imagine from my name, I'm not impartial! Then again, nobody who owns a guitar is free of a bit of bias. I thought tone wood was the most important factor of a guitar when I started playing. It's a shame, too, cuz I'd still have that cheap-o bass if I realized I could fix it up like I can now. When I first saw stuff about tonewood being a myth online, it was an instant sell... I think I was just a bit eager to believe what I wanted to. It's only after realizing the ways the strings do interact with the body that I started taking the question seriously. The difference between acoustic factors and what changes the string vibration obviously is something I'm still working out.

Honestly from a musicianship and consumer perspective I've made up my mind a while ago. I like my guitars cheap and my necks sturdy! I'll handle the rest after I get my hands on it, tone included.

...not that this one is a sturdy neck. But hey, for $20 not bad!

[blademaster2]

sumgai

I have tried a modeling effect unit (not Roland, Vox if I recall correctly) and while it did provide good tones on many settings I could not use it due to the latency, which was very noticeable to me. It might have been 100ms to 150ms, but whatever it was I could not tolerate it. Have you seen that in other brands?

If I correctly understood Cyn1, he did say that the body material properties does create a noticeable difference in the tone of instruments he has built. While I have only built three myself, I still believe that the material influenced the tone of mine (mostly on the attack, or "transient response").  I believe Cyn1 and I also were in agreement that the difference due to body material alone is subtle and can be swamped by many other factors.

I will close in saying that I am not influenced by price, cork-sniffers, or by pseudo-science - only my own senses and my technical experience acquired from my day job and education. I have nothing to prove to anyone. I appreciate the tone of this discussion having been respectful and informative (your quote of "tonewood schmonewood" notwithstanding  ;-)   ) as I find this a fascinating and enjoyable topic. I love the guitar and enjoy conversing with others who share that.

[cheap]

By transient response, do you guys mean the decay?

By the way, in my opinion the only way to make a good comparison between body materials is to compare the "same guitar" and swap the body... of you can call that the same guitar. Even stuff like potentiometers tend to have enough variation that two 250k pots can sound different from eachother, much moreso caps. To that nd there is a video of a guy who did a blind test betwewn acrylic and wood(can't remember the species, but ai doubt it even weighed something similar to acrylic). Now, even if you can't tell the difference between those two, it doesn't prove anything, since it could be that even though the materials are vastly different, the factors "balance out".

I definitely wouldn't ask anyone to post results here, but it is a fun experiment, although pretty casual. It's just a bunch of sound clips of the two bodies scrambled up, and you're meant to guess which sound clip goes with which body for every clip individually. A devious person would want the people who tend to give wood more credit for tone to take the tests. They'd probably try the hardest, right? Kinda funny, but even in a blind test bias enters into it. Anyways, with 18 sound samples, you can expect some deviation. Here's the video. Grab your paper and pen!


I haven't done this video yet either. I might find that I can't tell the difference in weight as well as I think I can. I know that I'll be trying to use sustain to tell them apart. Strategy!

[blademaster2]

To be rigid about definitions, the entire guitar note is transient since it changes from attack to decay and then fades to nothing.

Within the time that the plucked note sounds, there is the very active picking and brief 'shock wave' on the string and instrument that we call the attack (and this is what I call the transient response), and then after that the note rings and has a different balance in the harmonics, and this is called the sustain (I would call this the continuous wave) followed by decay.

[In mechanical systems the "shock response spectrum" is nonlinear and difficult - likely impossible - to accurately model mathematically so if Roland has done it then it is more likely from experimentation rather than predictive math.]

I think, to be fair to those of us who honestly attribute some of the tonal qualities of a solid body guitar to the body material, I would only expect to detect the differences if it was *me* playing it. That way I would know *how* I was picking the string and what response I would normally expect from that in order to compare. To expect to hear and compare different guitars played by others in a blind test - where I do not have that sensory knowledge of what excitation the string was given when it was played - seems unrealistic.

In my case I did once play a Fender guitar before I changed out its pickups (done for a customer in a store where I worked), and I took the old pickup home and for fun fastened it beneath the strings of another guitar I had and connected it to my amplifier (an AMPEG V4, which are fairly clean and hi-fidelity). It was interesting to hear the difference - clearly some difference due to the different amplifier, but there was a definite lack of the 'plastic' tone from the Fender pickguard in the attack that I could hear as I played. Similarly when I purchased a Stratocaster pickup for a solid maple-bodied guitar that I build I found that it bore little resemblance to the sound of a Strat through the same amplifier. Same pickup (more or less), same position, but quite different tone especially on the "attack".

That is a snippet of my own experience .