Maple vs Rosewood and mid scoop

[mcentee2]

Hi,

Hopefully some good folks here can advise as to following:

I have two strats, one with a maple/maple (one piece)  neck and one a maple with rosewood fingerboard.

I have BK Irish Tours neck (5.9k ish and an Apache neck 5.5k ish), and my amp is set on the "just about to breakup" point.

With the Apache in the Rosewood and the ITs in the Maple the latter has the most pronounced output in terms of trule driving my amp - the maple/IT combo truly overdriving into crunch, with the Apache/Rw still fairly clean.

This also seems to correspond to a lack/lowering of mids in the overall sound output of the Rosewood strat.

Ok so far, I thought this was fairly standard stuff, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so pronounced aurally.

Anyway, I thought that by putting the Apaches in the Maple, and the ITs in the Rosewood this would balance out somewhat, but instead I get near enough exactly the same thing happen - I will concede they are a little closer in volume but not much

The Maple/Apache combo still overdrives the amp and seems much "thicker" as well as spanky; the Rosewood/IT combo is still lacking in mids and doesn't overdrive the amp .

I also have some older Squier -type pups that I tried as well, although not great quality (separation wise etc) they exhibited the same thing.

I also thought "nah, can't be right" and spent the weekend going over all the above and swapping the necks around with the bodies as well - both alder, but there was no discernible difference due to body/neck combo.

Overall, wherever the Maple neck went the rich, full, spangly sound went with it; wherever the Rosewood went it was still stratty but sort of thinner and possibly a little more compressed in attack - these are my words, and am struggling to find a "positive" adjective for the Rosewood.

So some questions come out of this:

1) Is this really what Rosewood/Maple is about - I have seen so many references to "nah, they are the same really" - which doesn't match my experience with my necks.

2) Are my necks unrepresentative ?

3) How to get the mids up on my Rosewood neck ? Hotter pickup than the IT, humbuckers (but then I lose the stratty sound), or just use my Bass/Mid/Treble on the amp, maybe try series wiring options etc

4) How to know how/what playing styles suit Rosewood better then the Maple - i.e try to identify and recognise when both sound good in different ways rather than always believe the Maple is "better".

Not sure I would ever want to pick up the Rosewood strat in preference at the moment, and I want to be able to be torn between them to make me smile :)

Any thoughts ?

[AndyR]

Wow! Interesting stuff. I've got no proper answers for you, but kudos to you for the patience to try it all out.

It does seem to fit vaguely with my experience. I have ITs with a rosewood board, Sultans with a rosewood board, and Apaches with a maple neck. The guitar with Sultans is slighty "duller" acoustically than the other two (it's had all three sets at some point, one day I'll get Mothers Milks and try those).

But my impression has always been rosewood board for a "woody" sounding strat, maple for a more zingy/spanky sounding strat. Mine seem to operate like that, and your findings seem to confirm it.

I'm luckier than you, though - I actually want those two different types of strat sound/feel. I must admit, for a cleaner strat sound, "only just" breaking up, I'm with you - maple neck all the way if I have the choice (ie the strings are new enough!)

[Andrew W]

Your discoveries broadly chime with my experience. I've had maple and rosewood boarded Strats over the years and there is a big difference in tone and feel between them I think, though a lack of mids isn't how I have experienced it.

I think "woody" is the word I'd use to describe the rosewood board tone. You might find that Mothers Milk pickups work better in the rosewood boarded Strat as I've found that they complement that woody quality.

It's also worth mentioning that there is quite a bit of variation in tone from one chunk of wood to another. When I was on the hunt for a new Strat, I tried two Nash S63s which, specs wise, should have sounded identical. One had considerably more mid-poke than the other, a fuller sound, and that's what I went with.

One last thought; is your rosewood boarded Strat resonant when played acoustically? I only ask because one other possibility, though rather unhelpful I admit, is maybe you have a bit of a tone sucking neck on the rosewood guitar. Is the connection between the neck and the neck pocket in the body a good one? If there's not a good fit it can really make things sound dead.

[m t soule]

Yes this also tally for me. The words to describe the maple over rosewood is brittle and spanky.

[Telerocker]

Your discoveries broadly chime with my experience. I've had maple and rosewood boarded Strats over the years and there is a big difference in tone and feel between them I think, though a lack of mids isn't how I have experienced it.

I think "woody" is the word I'd use to describe the rosewood board tone. You might find that Mothers Milk pickups work better in the rosewood boarded Strat as I've found that they complement that woody quality.

It's also worth mentioning that there is quite a bit of variation in tone from one chunk of wood to another. When I was on the hunt for a new Strat, I tried two Nash S63s which, specs wise, should have sounded identical. One had considerably more mid-poke than the other, a fuller sound, and that's what I went with.

One last thought; is your rosewood boarded Strat resonant when played acoustically? I only ask because one other possibility, though rather unhelpful I admit, is maybe you have a bit of a tone sucking neck on the rosewood guitar. Is the connection between the neck and the neck pocket in the body a good one? If there's not a good fit it can really make things sound dead.

+1. Wood is a lively and therefore unpredictable material. Some strats sound thick and dark, some bright and thin. Doesn't matter that much if they have a maple or rosewood neck. Even in one batch of the same seriesguitars differences can be apparent. My friend tested several Suhr HSS Classic strats. For sheer beauty he wanted a sonic blue or a vintage white, but he left with a dakota red guitar. Best mids, best sustain, best playability.
In general you can say: maple neck gives more snap and faster attack, rosewood a tad softer attack and overal warmer sound. In general...

If you want mids and output: get a Slowhand-bridge with a baseplate.

[m t soule]

The sound of my alder, ebony, maple jem compared to my basswood maple, maple jem is significant!  And I attribute that significance to the woods.  The alder has almost no bottom because of being made of all bright woods. This is a positive for me btw.

T

[mcentee2]

Glad to know its not just me!

Lots of good points raised above:

1) Appreciate I may just have a particularly scooped neck and it can vary - shame I don't have another (or more) rosewood necks to hand so I can really compare.

2) I already swapped bodies with same result, so don't think its a body wood thing.

3) Yep - Slowhands would give more mids - however that is another set of pickups and cost (!) - if I decide pickups are way to go I'll prob try a series switch first.


4) After I posted I read a bit more on good old google and interesting to read that Rosewood may exhibit a less pronounced "attack" and longer (subjective) decay - this would chime with my "compression" type perception but am not sure the descriptions are the right ones and how the amp reacts as well - I can understand how a fast attack on the guitar would be naturally compressed by the amp before I hear it anyway :)

That is something I shall test out now I am aware to listen properly for it.

5) Finally - recording isn't my forte so prob won't get round to doing any, and even if I did, my equipment is probably woeful enough to make any of it irrelevant for comparison purposes.

However, I do want to experiment with some sort of Frequency analysis software somehow to see if it is actually measurable.I have a Guitar Rig USB controller so can get a bare signal into my PC, so I should be able to assess chords etc with some sort of spread/intensity graph - lots a variables though so you never know....



Now I know this is a "thing" rather than a "problem", I can work with it to find out where its beauty lies and how I can tap into it.

[darkbluemurder]

This also is in line with what a luthier told me - about 80% of the basic guitar tone comes from the neck. It seems that your one piece maple neck is a really good one and the maple/rosewood one is "just OK".

Unfortunately there is no way you can totally compensate that with pickups and/or electronics - as you already found out by your experiments. Next tweaking step with the maple/rw neck guitar could be the hardware - different vibrato block, different saddles etc.

Cheers Stephan

[mcentee2]

...You might find that Mothers Milk pickups work better in the rosewood boarded Strat as I've found that they complement that woody quality.
..

AndyR  -I forgot to reply earlier to this this bit :0

This is where my head scratching continues - if the MMs have a much higher top end wouldn't this just make the situation worse than with the ITs ?

I am still planning on doing some guitar rig/Audacity tests. I did some quick and dirty ones last night and saw some vaguely suggestive responses re upper (?) mids being decreased on the RW (around 1khz-2kz), but I haven't yet settled on what I would consider to be a definitive "test" and making sure both neck's tests are the same - either a single rung chord or a mish mash of all sorts up and down the neck as random as possible hoping for an "average" response keeping volume (picking) as constant as possible.

If those work out I'll post something here.

What I really need is a good selection of used RW necks so I can compare them all and see if some speak to me - not sure if my local shop wlil allow me to bring my own in and sit down, bash away with it against all theirs......mind you that's not such a bad idea either thinking about it, after all I am just a prospective punter....

[Telerocker]

No MM-bridge in that guitar,  a Slowhand-bridge with baseplate will compensate a bit. At least you got strong (low)mids and less topend.

[BigB]

I'm by no mean an expert here but here's my own experience: same body, same pups, same bridge etc, three different necks (one of them a Tele neck actually), all of them with rosewood fretboard, huge difference in tone, volume (both plugged and unplugged) and sustain. In fact I tried the Tele neck because I couldn't believe how much difference I got between the two strat ones.  I might be wrong but I suspect you are in a similar situation, as I don't think the fretboard's wood would make such a difference by itself (and specially not such a difference in output level with the same pups and body etc).

My 2 cents...

[mcentee2]

Hiya - here is an update re Audacity tests. Same type of sample file, neck pup only,  low E string to high E open string individually, then a straight open chord - this shows it off the best. Volumes were equalised for the best test - wasn't much difference at all as I was fairly "scientific" about my picking position  and strength (I hope)


I did loads of other test including fretted chords from open through to 12th fret (all across a single fret) and they were just the same.

Graphs were from Audacity and the two have been copied/paste into ppt where I can overlay them with the top one transparent to a degree.

The lighter plot is the Maple neck, and the darker is the Rosewood. You can see the kick down for the Rosewood between 600 Hz and 1000Hz - there are other sampling rates but this shows it clearest.

This would be the "mid to high mids", that which probably pushes the amp into breakup.

What it also shows is that there isn't much difference overall but in this region - about 5Db - even so its audible and enough for the amp to react to!

I'm by no mean an expert here but here's my own experience: same body, same pups, same bridge etc, three different necks (one of them a Tele neck actually), all of them with rosewood fretboard, huge difference in tone, volume (both plugged and unplugged) and sustain. In fact I tried the Tele neck because I couldn't believe how much difference I got between the two strat ones.  I might be wrong but I suspect you are in a similar situation, as I don't think the fretboard's wood would make such a difference by itself (and specially not such a difference in output level with the same pups and body etc).

My 2 cents...

Yep, totally agree - and if I had some more RW necks I am sure they would vary as well as you say :)