The Guitar Wood Myth - Emperors New Clothes???

[DaveyHoran]

If you're a tone junkie, you need to be sitting down for this :-)

So this college degree student and guitar player did some thorough tests and came to the conclusion that the body wood in an Electric guitar has no effect on the tone or sustain the guitar produces.

He was testing the "common knowledge" that's floating about about some woods being better than others and he could find no evidence to prove that woods make a difference to electric tone, despite all the big brands claiming that the rarer woods are better and charging top dollar for it... (not talking aesthetics here, purely sound)

He used various guitar shapes and bodies but with identical pickups, same pickup to string gap, same strings and same set ups, recorded the results, comparing frequencies etc and found that the notes were indistinguishable from guitar to guitar...

I guess its another vote for quality pickups but it really makes the tone wood argument void. He has evidence based facts and there is nothing other than opinion and speculation to argue those facts.

I know I bought in to the tone wood story, I have several Mahogany guitars but if I'm honest they have better pickups than my cheaper guitars so are bound to sound better.

What do you think about that fact?

[gwEm]

Sometimes you get a guitar which doesn't sound right no matter what pickups you put in it. I've never got on with poplar or basswood for example.

The difference in brightness between different woods is also quite clear - try a Les Paul with and without a maple cap for example.

Also: rosewood and maple fingerboards

[Gizmo]

Do you have a link for this?

Do you definitely mean tone? It would be good to see what he concluded. I have tried various guitars with same pickups and they sound different plugged in also sustained different. Expensive wood doesnt always guarantee this. that is true

[DaveyHoran]

Here's where I read it:

http://www.guitarsite.com/news/music_news_from_around_the_world/electric-guitar-wood-myth-busted/

When you hear stuff like some Squires being better than Fenders, and some Epiphones being better than Les Pauls, and in my experience some Schecters being up there with Fenders and Gibson you have to wonder how can that happen. I know we all say its a fluke but maybe it is more about the strings, string height, pickups and general set up than it is about the wood...

Very interesting anyway, and as yet this is the first study I've read about that attempts to prove or disprove the idea.

[juansolo]

It's an analogue medium. In that arena, everything has an effect on the sound. It's not 1s and 0s that are absolute. This argument is why Hi Fi purists (I don't like the expression audiophiles, as they tend to be flat earth nutjobs) put so much on the construction of turntables and arms when it comes to getting the information from vinyl as the deck makes a difference to the retrieval as well as the cartridge and electrical side of things. The stability of the drive, the isolation of the motor, the ability of the arm to track smoothly.

This all applies to guitar as it all has a effect on the way the strings vibrate. Subtle or not, there is an effect. It's why unplugged different guitars sound different and resonate differently. All this translates to what the electrical system picks up.

Now how big these differences are is I suppose the point, and the laws of diminishing returns apply in both fields. Does a custom shop Fender sound £1500 better than a Mexi? Likewise a Linn to a Rega? (showing my age there). It's subjective of course. But there are differences there.

[Andrew W]

I look forward to reading this thesis with interest.

[WezV]

Here's where I read it:

http://www.guitarsite.com/news/music_news_from_around_the_world/electric-guitar-wood-myth-busted/[/url

the video on that was rather funny (not by the guy doing the study and the douche kinda undermines his research).   he says a steinberger has more sustain because the strings are in contact with large metal saddles and a metal nut (zero fret).   So basically the things the strings touch makes a difference, but the material those things are connected too  dont :?   so what would happen is i connected that nut and saddles to a piece of dense rubber compared to  metal bar, would they still sound the same.... nope, the rubber would absorb the string vibrations, the metal would not. 

the same thing happens with wood, but obviously most hardwoods are a lot closer to the middle ground of those two examples.  but all with different stiffnes and densities, both within and across species


but i am all for good science to investigate this and look forward to reading the study when its complete.   my main issue so far is that he is using different guitars for this and still finding no significant difference.   if your doing this investigation you need identical guitars where the only difference is the body wood to rule out other variables.   he is using different guitar with the same pickups - so i assume  he is not only saying wood/shape makes no difference he must also be coming to the conclusion that scale length and hardware make no difference as he so far has found "no significant differences" between these different guitars with identical pickups.   makes me wonder if he is measuring the right thing!

then he says we should be making guitars out of something more rigid like carbon fibre.   why?   apparently it makes no difference... also its often more expensive to manufacture guitars that way than using traditional woods

[DaveyHoran]

I'm looking forward to the Thesis too... unless it gets sidelined and he gets a paycheck from Gibson :-)


He's basically saying that if you set up a strat with a Nailbomb and an Les Paul with a Nailbomb, using the same brand strings, intonation and string height to the pickup, that the sound (plugged) will be identical and indistinguishable to the naked ear.

He is NOT referring to their unplugged sound and I think it helps his point that some critics need to refer to the differences in electric guitars unplugged sound in order to show a tone difference.

[WezV]

He's basically saying that if you set up a strat with a Nailbomb and an Les Paul with a Nailbomb, using the same brand strings, intonation and string height to the pickup, that the sound (plugged) will be identical and indistinguishable to the naked ear.

this is my problem.  its basically saying the string length makes no difference.   I actually think this is one of the fundamental things that does make a difference.  it changes the vibrational properties of the string much more directly than changing body wood.   the vibrational properties of the string are the thing the pickup sees which directly leads to your amplified sound.   any argument on whether wood changes the tone has to account for how the wood can change the vibrations of the string.   this is complex and covers many variables.   But the scale lengths affect on the vibrating string is very simple physics

also.   anyone who has tried a vertically strung piano compared with an overstrung (diagonal) will know that string length can make a massive difference to tone.   the diagonal strung pianos have much longer bass strings which sound nice, the vertical ones tend to sound like a wet fart  on the low notes.   obviously that is acoustic tone... but the difference comes down the way the string vibrates

[darkbluemurder]

If it really didn't matter then my two guitars which both have Crawlers in the bridge should sound identical. Well ... they don't ... why?

Did the guy doing the tests have his ears checked before the test?

Cheers Stephan

[TheyCallMeVolume]

Don't agree that they're exactly similar, and there's also that little thing called feel that makes or breaks a guitar for a particular person as well.

[darkbluemurder]

I will concede that in a full band setting the audience will probably not be able to tell the difference - unless it's vastly different guitars.

Cheers Stephan

[DaveyHoran]

He didn't use his ears, he used scientific equipment so he could show fact based evidence rather than opinion. I think that was his point. (i'm not having a go at anyone here, that's really why he did the test)

Regarding the crawlers, maybe the tone would be identical if you tested the same set of crawlers in both guitars with the same pickup height etc.

This is a highly charged topic because we've all been taught from an early age to believe that woods have a huge effect on the tone of our Electric instruments...but has anyone seen real testable evidence proving that beyond a shadow of a doubt?

But I was also taught the rule " I before E except after C " and that's been proven to be incorrect most of the time :-)

We dont have to like the results, in fact I hate that it could be true, and it means that I've paid way too much for some of my guitars,  but he has evidence and all we have to argue against it is our highly charged opinion

[WezV]

We dont have to like the results, in fact I hate that it could be true, and it means that I've paid way too much for some of my guitars,  but he has evidence and all we have to argue against it is our highly charged opinion

He doesn't have irrefutable evidence.   we need more details of the guitars and the tests, and to see some actual evidence

all we have is our highly charged opinions based on extensive experience working with guitars and a basic knowledge of physics.   to be honest I am always happy to see these kinds of tests - but we are a long way from having any actual evidence!

I have made guitars from many kinds of woods, all traditional types and quite a few more unusual choices too.   And i have worked on and played enough different kinds of guitar to know that there is a difference.   If he can't hear the difference between a strat and a les paul, even with the same type of pickup in the same position then whatever he is using to measure the sound is not up to the task.   But we have no details of the tools he is using.

Also he talks about having pickups in "exactly the same position".   Now if he is using guitars with different scale lengths then this also causes issues.   lets say you put all pickups exactly 2" from the bridge.   that is not exactly the same position relative to the whole string length if the scale length is different, and you could be sensing very different vibrational patterns.   so he should be hearing a difference here too - if he isnt then again I would say he is measuring the wrong thing.

he says he has had people listen to the clips and they can't tell the difference.   but we have no details of recording set-up or how the test was conducted.  Could be that the sounds were recorded through a modeller, and played back through cheap headphones... limiting the chances of hearing the differences. without knowing different we have no evidence to the contrary


Ignore whether wood makes a difference for a minute. because if he cant detect the difference caused by scale length then i dont trust he has any chance of picking up the differences caused by wood.


A the moment the strength of his argument is very weak and disproves nothing.   Hopefully the actual paper will be much more detailed and contain something worth discussing.

Science isn't about just presenting evidence and saying "that proves that".   Its subject to peer review, but then it sounds like this is just degree level research so really its just about showing how well you can apply the scientific process and understanding what you could do better rather than providing ground breaking answers to THE questions.  At least he will have plenty to write about in his  discussion

[richard]

This was what Tim Mills had to say on the subject:

I don’t want to upset all of the guitar makers, but this reliance on the body timber as being the whole source of the tone is a complete misnomer. My understanding of it, which is based on my own investigations and also having worked with some of the better luthiers in the country, is that the guitar’s voice comes from the pickup. The feel and the resonance and the sustain are a combination of body timber and body construction.

“With pickups, I believe that if you can find the right voice with your guitar pickup, then you will really bring out the best in your guitar. After all, an electric guitar without a pickup doesn’t work. The pickup is the guitar’s mouthpiece; the pickup hears the sound of the strings, but equally the strings are reliant on factors like the timber and the construction as to how resonant they are going to be. That’s when the importance of timber comes into it, but the ‘voicing’ is down to the pickup and how carefully you choose the materials. As with all of these things, it’s a combination of the whole.”