Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: thisisnickpaige on April 10, 2010, 07:52:34 AM
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Does the weight of the body effect the tone? For instance if i want a really warm guitar a mahogany body would do me well but if it gets brighter with more density then i would want it to be a super light thinline mahogany to be warmer yes? Or do i have this wrong? Thank you - Nicholas A. Paige
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It affects it, but there are no hard and fast rules. Light can be bright or warm, depending on the plank of wood itself, and heavy can be bright or warm too.
Each piece of wood is different!
I personally like lighter wood as it sounds 'airier'. Chambered bodies work on this principal to make heavier wood sound more airy.
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when I'm thin I find my playing isn't as warm or sweaty as when I'm fatter.
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strangely enough, when I hover around the 18 stone mark I find my playing more focussed and articulate.... probably because I have to sit down a lot - regards David
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strangely enough, when I hover around the 18 stone mark I find my playing more focussed and articulate.... probably because I have to sit down a lot - regards David
damn beat me to that joke....dave so Francine is light
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It affects it, but there are no hard and fast rules. Light can be bright or warm, depending on the plank of wood itself, and heavy can be bright or warm too.
Each piece of wood is different!
I personally like lighter wood as it sounds 'airier'. Chambered bodies work on this principal to make heavier wood sound more airy.
Agree with all of that.
I like light guitars because they're simply more comfortable to play.
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Agree with all - I don't think weight really plays that much importance. I had an old Tele that weighed 8.5lbs (I think) that was very bright soundig.
I prefer lighter guitars.
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i think most of the tone comes from the Neck. When i built my partscaster i had a 2 birdseye maple necks, 1 with maple board and the other had an ebony board. The ebony board had a darker almost harder sound to it, the maple was much brighter and 'twangier'. I went with the maple as the Rio Grande Muy Grande pups already have a dark middy sound to them.
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i think most of the tone comes from the Neck.
Yeah, I'm starting to think there's some truth in that theory, certainly with bolt-ons.
When I tried changing the neck on my Thinline the tone completely changed - the original neck went back on pronto!
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dave so Francine is light
Yep, low end of 8lbs something 8)
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I don't think it really matters much. My SG is at least half the weight of my Les Pauls and sounds just as thick!
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Now what about the Mahogany: thinline or not. I know its a warm wood and i want my tele to be really warm (as warm as a tele can be). I want a warm tele to compliment my super super super bright tele. Do you think Mahogany is gunna do that? Obviously im gunna get warmer pickups and all that so that will have an effect but do you think the mahogany is a step in the right direction? And if so you think Thinline is a bad idea if im thinking warmer? I just like the idea of a semi hollow so i could play it acousticly and get more sound but if thats in lue of a warmer tone then id opt for no thinline. Then again perhaps it could all be snake oil... i just care to think of these things as i'd be paying money for a body and cant just try it first ya know?
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dave so Francine is light
Yep, low end of 8lbs something 8)
8lb's is light what do you count as heavy
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Well 8 for a les paul aint bad, i mean ive seen some even heavier! but for a tele yea i'd call 8 heavy, though it's all perspective. Again, all up to the personal ear... or shoulder =)
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I'm a bit obsessive about guitar weights, and I'd say 8 pounds is better than "not bad" for a non-chambered LP! Loads of LPs (and similar, like Yamaha SGs) are 9, 10, even 11 pounds.
A typical newer Fender American Standard Strat or Tele is nudging the 8 pound mark, I had a Tele a few years ago which was nearly 9.5.
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yeah so those are some heifers, to be polite 0=) but Philly Q you always seem to be quite the knowledgeable gentleman and a fellow tele connoisseur do you think a mahogany thinline would be any warmer then a solid alder or do you think id be better off with a solid mahogany. I dont care how heavy the guitar is, i just want it warm and my thought of thinline was that i could play without an amp it would sound more audible. and i just love the f-holes. 0=)
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I think a mahogany body will sound warmer than an ash or alder one, for sure.
As for Thinlines.... I've never tried a mahogany one but I have an ash one. I believe the hollow construction emphasises the highs and lows, there's less "focus" to the sound than there is with a solidbody - it can sound sweet if you pick gently, surprisingly harsh if you pick hard. I don't gig, so I've only played at low/home volumes - I don't know how it would behave at stage volume.
In general, if you play rock I think you'd probably be better served by a solid than a thinline.
There is another option - a chambered rather than thinline body. The body's still partially hollow, but it's more like a honeycomb, so it's less "acoustic" than a Thinline. It behaves more like a solid, but with lighter weight and a bit more resonance.
http://www.warmoth.com/Guitar/Bodies/Tele/ChamberedTele.aspx (http://www.warmoth.com/Guitar/Bodies/Tele/ChamberedTele.aspx)
If you want your Tele to be "as warm as a Tele can be", are you considering different neck woods? You could go for a mahogany body and mahogany neck, maybe. And get a modern six-saddle bridge with a thick baseplate, that'll help kill the "Tele twang"! :wink:
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yeah im gettin a six saddle strat style and the neck is a 1967 maple on maple so its gunna be bright hence why i want it so warm of a body. hmm so no thinline i guess? lol i just like the thought of travelling with no ampl and being able to play and hear it just sitting in the airport or what have you.
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You bought that guitar with the '67 neck then? :D
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more then likely yes 0=) My mate is gunna buy the body and such, im snagging the six saddle bridge and neck for $450 so im pretty please, my brand new USACG neck cost me 450 with shipping and tax and such. It's cool how it all happened so weird. My uncle just recently met a professional guitarist and asked him to go check it out for me, i chatted with him, real nice guy. Then he went there just to find out the guy who is selling it is a really good friend of his from high school he hadnt seen in years! LOL soooo weird. God is crazy cool like that =) How it all works; mind blowing. But yeah so now im gunna make a guitar around it, my travel guitar so thats why i was thinking thinline so i could just chill outside with no amp and jam out with whom ever and still have it be kinda audible. Obviously i could just go get an acoustic but screw that i will be playing it plugged in mostly but i do love a good porch jam =) or whatever y'all call porches in England. I know the whole yard/garden bit so dont know if y'all have a difference word for that. but yes, jams out front of my house on the stoop/porch/front attachment. So im gunna build a guitar around it. What you think about it? Then once i decide Mahogany: thinline or not, i still gotta choose pickups and colour lol oy vey lol But first things first, mahogany definitely then? For warmth so the question is thinline or not
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I don't think there is a UK equivalent of a porch jam! :lol: Our weather's too cold, our houses are too close together and only wealthier people have porches! I suppose someone just might pull out a guitar at a barbecue...
I don't want to put you off the Thinline idea, but with that maple-on-maple neck you're probably not going to end up with the ultimate warm Tele you're hoping for. A Thinline is acoustically louder than a solidbody, which is nice when you're sitting around playing on your own, but it's not really loud enough to compete with other instruments or a singer. You might need to drag a little amp and an extension cable out to that porch of yours! :)
So yes, mahogany for warmth... but if you go Thinline I'd guess the exact wood type makes less of a difference, because so much of the body is hollow.
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So then would you say a swamp ash or hard maple thinline would be spunky and super bright? The exact opposite?
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Short answer: NO.
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As I mentioned before, the hollow construction of the Thinline seems to emphasise the highs and lows, certainly when you play the guitar acoustically. It may have less midrange, or it may just have more of everything else, I don't know. As I also mentioned, I don't gig, so I can't really comment on how a Thinline performs under those conditions.
However, if you search "Thinline Vs. Solidbody" (or something like that) on the Tele forum (www.tdpri.com (http://www.tdpri.com)) you'll find loads of different opinions - some say Thinlines are warmer, some say brighter.... but most say that amplified there's not actually much difference at all between the two.
(Here's one quote: "There is a much bigger tonal difference between a Gibson solid body and an archtop, than between a solid Tele and a Thinline")
On "average" an ash or maple Thinline will be brighter than a mahogany one, but I think the bottom line is that all guitars are different, even when they're built exactly the same.
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I'm really surprised no one mentioned this. Its a difference of Focus to Airiness. Its all within the midrange. See there is different ways to get a huge tone. You can either be FAT or WIDE.
Fat = /\
Wide= \/
I bring this up because the difference in weight partially determines how the body effects the midrange of the chain in the tone. With a light body you get more "air" and thus can get a really WIDE tone. OR you can get a really heavy body which can have a ton of PUNCH and some MEAT.
I prefer light bodies.
Look at it this way: Light body = WIDE (and comfy) + C-pig tuned in B = $%&#ING MASSIVE XD
I thought everyone knew this stuff. :\
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Nope i only play guitars and cut the wood i dont know tonal difference, hence why im asking. But i thank you for giving me a real and useful answer not just " play your guitar! ' lol i already do that but when buying a new guitar by parts id like to have a general idea of what ot go after, so sorry if im being annoying , im not trying to be im just very curious. So i think i get what you mean but just to clarify what do you mean but wide sound? So then would a thinline be even more airy is what you're saying? And then what would you call Ash? and what would you call Mahogany (the warmest kind, i still dont know which is, after your last post in my other topic) ?
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I'm a bit obsessive about guitar weights, and I'd say 8 pounds is better than "not bad" for a non-chambered LP! Loads of LPs (and similar, like Yamaha SGs) are 9, 10, even 11 pounds.
A typical newer Fender American Standard Strat or Tele is nudging the 8 pound mark, I had a Tele a few years ago which was nearly 9.5.
There was an early 80s Fender "The Strat" in the shop which weighed in at 12 lbs.
Truly a "fighting" Strat.
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There was an early 80s Fender "The Strat" in the shop which weighed in at 12 lbs.
Truly a "fighting" Strat.
I wouldn't want to fight it! :lol:
If I remember right, that model had a huge chunky brass bridge and brass knobs, which can't have helped.
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LOL that sounds positively horrid! =)
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8lb's is light what do you count as heavy
Hmmm, let's see... What about my 10lbs Vox custom 24 ? Huh ? Not enough ? Then I have a 11+ (almost 12 in fact) lbs Vox standard 25 for you :wink:
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There was an early 80s Fender "The Strat" in the shop which weighed in at 12 lbs.
Truly a "fighting" Strat.
I wouldn't want to fight it! :lol:
If I remember right, that model had a huge chunky brass bridge and brass knobs, which can't have helped.
Indeed it was resplendent with gold plated brass hardware, although the one actually had original chrome tuners.
Rumours are that production costs for this model were more than trade price.
Fender also went back to the pre-CBS small headstock with "the Strat" although they got the shape "wrong"!
Having said that, it was a good sounding guitar.
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There was an early 80s Fender "The Strat" in the shop which weighed in at 12 lbs.
Truly a "fighting" Strat.
I wouldn't want to fight it! :lol:
If I remember right, that model had a huge chunky brass bridge and brass knobs, which can't have helped.
Indeed it was resplendent with gold plated brass hardware, although the one actually had original chrome tuners.
Rumours are that production costs for this model were more than trade price.
Fender also went back to the pre-CBS small headstock with "the Strat" although they got the shape "wrong"!
Having said that, it was a good sounding guitar.
Yeah, I remember GAS-ing over one in the window of John Ham's music shop in Swansea, circa 1980 or '81. They had one of those silver Anniversary Strats too.
(I ended up with a cheap Les Paul copy :( )
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Uff cheap les paul copy...never ever good.... especially instead of a Fender Strat...that stinks.
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One of the warmest guitars I've ever played was an Ibanez with a thin maple neck and a Floyd. Go figure. Heavy mahogany body, though. Bright pink, too. And the second-warmest guitar I've played was an SG. It was red. So there's your correlation: warm colours = warm tones. Those bowling ball Strats must have been very diverse.
Err, anyways. I'm not a huge fan of small hollow-bodied guitars. They have a kind of brittle sound to me. Maybe that's not the best word to describe it, but solid-bodied guitars have mostly sounded thicker in some way. If I were to build a very warm Tele I'd go for a solid mahogany body with a rosewood board neck. You've gone and got the maple one and maple has always sounded a little more articulate to me - which is not the same as bright, necessarily, but it's harder to dial in quite the same thick warmth, I reckon. Thick necks are supposed to have a better sound, too, though I haven't personally found this to be always true. Solid necks with a good connection to the body have better tone, though, for sure.
Then there's pickups, amps settings, and so on. Oh, and the colour, of course. ;)
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I've only really played Les Pauls, or LP imitators, so I don't have a lot of experience with body versus tone apart from LP's. But a friend sent me a link on Piezo pickups. Now, I know that these pickups are meant to emulate acoustic guitars on solid bodies, so that may be the factor here in the demonstration. I heard someone say it isn't the body, but the actual pickup that affects the tone. I do find that hard to believe, but this youtube video has a Piezo pickup nailed onto a concrete block-- YES! Concrete, I said --and it still sounded amazing. Maybe some of you more experienced players can chime in on this. Did the Piezo pickup sound good because it was just an acoustic emulator? Will a hot BKP pickup also sound good on this concrete block?
You have to see the video (just an ordinary chunk of concrete with a pickup attached to it, but still sounds great)-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFyQXy74xz4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFyQXy74xz4)
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I heard someone say it isn't the body, but the actual pickup that affects the tone.
False, and true :wink:
Truth is : everything affects the tone : body wood, neck wood, fretboard wood, thickness, density, shape, construction method, bridge and nut material and type (for the bridge), strings, settings, etc, etc, etc. And of course your fingers.
wrt/ magnetic pups, and depending on winding, mouting system, height adjustment and whatnot, they get more or less of the tone from the wood itself - remember that magnetic pups can be very microphonic. Also, what the pups do pick up - that is, the strings tone - is itself part of and affected by the whole system.
There has been quite a few attempts at building "inert" guitars so "only the pup" would define the tone. I tried a couple of these guitars in 80s - they plain sucked, period. As warm, lively and reactive as a frozen cadaver.
wrt/ piezo pickups, it's an entirely different technology, and I guess that the way they're used in this vid (and are usually used), that is, directly mounted in the bridge itself, greatly minimizes but doesn't totally suppress the impact of the body material and construction. FWIW, you'll notice that the neck itself is good old wood.... They should try with a concrete neck :mrgreen:
Will a hot BKP pickup also sound good on this concrete block?
Can't tell, but I won't bother trying as far as I'm concerned 8)
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piezo electrics translate direct vibration into voltage, while magnetic pickups translate magnetic field variations into voltage. piezos will always sound like piezos wherever they are, they'll have that crisp attack and sensitivity to string sliding and so on. magnetics are warmer because it depends on how the attack is perceived and the whole frequency response of the RLC circuit a guitar pickup makes with its electronics.
that said, piezos being in almost -direct- contact with the string at the bridge also makes its tone very unique, compared to a string hovering over a magnetic field.
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Nope i only play guitars and cut the wood i dont know tonal difference, hence why im asking. But i thank you for giving me a real and useful answer not just " play your guitar! ' lol i already do that but when buying a new guitar by parts id like to have a general idea of what ot go after, so sorry if im being annoying , im not trying to be im just very curious. So i think i get what you mean but just to clarify what do you mean but wide sound? So then would a thinline be even more airy is what you're saying? And then what would you call Ash? and what would you call Mahogany (the warmest kind, i still dont know which is, after your last post in my other topic) ?
Oh the comment about people should know, was more directed to the other people. I wouldn't be that BAM IN YOUR FACE rude. When youre just trying to better understand an instrument. Learning the fundamentals of guitar tone was the funnest year for gear. After you have a good image, youre just waiting for new "stuff" to come out XD or looking for more luthiers XD
A WIDE sound is created by lowering the mids in comparison to the highs and lows. By lowering the mids it seems to emphasize both the strength of the high end and low end. Thus created a wider difference between the high and low. From this you get a wide tone. Understanding the opposite will better allow you to further understand.
To get a FAT sound you emphasize the mids. What this appears to do (from the ear) the emphasized mids seems to lower the difference from high to low end. This lack of contrast between the extremes seems to create a more even fat tone.
I find the best setting more of a WIDE setup. The great extremes of a scooped tone(built right) has astonishing vocal properties because that huge contrast between high and low allows one to achieve a huge variety in tone.(based on physical manipulation)
Ok for the thinline. I noticed on some companies that build hollow bodies, there is a certain feedback. It made Anderson guitars almost unplayable, because of this feedback. I remember holdsworth talking about just this issue. He had away around it, thus I assume luthiers already have fixed that. (So I really dont like hollow bodies, atleast for electric guitar) Depending on your style, if its rock/hard rock and anything more aggressive I would stay away from thinline.
Ahh Ash... Ash is a gold of wood. (A good piece) You can feel a good piece of ash when you play. The resonance is wondrous and lush. The tone is very cool too. Most people think ash is bright, its really not so much. They just dont match it with good pickups. I've had a bunch, in a few ash guitars. But in the end, I had a C-pig and a C-diver in ash (two guitars) and they just blow me away. See ash naturally has a scooped tone. Thus a good pickup leaves chords wide and single notes sing. Its just miraculous :D BUT light ash is what you want if you want ash. Heavy ash is like a shiteeety version of maple. BUT DONT GET HEAVY ASH. Its just not worth it. For many reasons.
I really enjoyed what john suhr said about Mahogany. (good mahogany) It makes sense when you think about this too. (But, Im adding my own two scents here) Mahogany really isn't "warm". When compared to warm tones created at the end of the chain, (the sound you hear) a warm tone from wood would be more like Basswood. Because Basswood tends to cut lot of high frequencies. I always thought of it as a dead wood. It just seems to cut too much presence. Back to Mahogany. It has a very FAT midrange and thus seems to emphasize a more of the low end. Im not saying the actual low mids (maybe it does)(Im no luthier)
Sadly theres really no way of knowing how a guitar will sound till its all complete. :\
All you need is a general idea how it SHOULD sound. + Quality parts and it should sound awesome. :)