Debate: Electric guitars and tone woods?

[lapsteel]

If that were completely true, then just placing the vibrating body against your stomach when you play would sound different than holding it away from you at your amp....but it doesn't. Acoustically your chair test and my table test work, but plug it in and the difference nearly disappears.... try it.

I'm not suggesting that the body and construction of an electric has zero effect on tone... but it is overshadowed by everything going on between the bridge, nut pickups and circuits. On acoustics the difference is tangible, but the game changes when magnetic pickups and circuits are introduced, and the subtle tonal differences in body materials are not very evident. Hell most people would even agree that the amp, speaker and cabinet have way more impact on the tonal character that a maple fretboard. Hell even the frets themselves impact the tone more than the fretboard material.

I think the idea of electric guitars interacting with tone wood is heavily influenced by the traditional acoustic guitar ideology, marketing and placebo than it is founded in reality. The concept of "natural tone woods" and "warm" are so prevalent that we actually believe we are playing some earthy instrument with roots in nature, but we are actually interacting with electrical circuit plugged into a grid. Moreover alot of us add even more circuits to make the guitar sound even less like a guitar.

That being said placebo is a powerful effect and it can change the way we interact with the instrument, and by extension change our perception of tone...

[FuzzHugger]

I generally agree with your post. I think you're MUCH more on the right side of the issue than tonewood freaks.

The body's a lot softer, absorbing vibration rather than increasing. Though holding resonant acoustics against the body does change the tone, since acoustics are much more reliant on body vibration.
Will try the chair/table test while plugged in and see if I notice anything.

There's some company selling metal headstock clamps to increase sustain, I assume working on this same principle...though there's a lot of snake oil out there, and it might even be unintentional snake oil--the placebo is incredibly powerful!!! I heard guys swear that their Algal Bloom sounds different on different days (technically impossible, though I suppose there could be something about humidity and amplifier speakers? Most likely, placebo.)

[masked elwood]

damn. i wish i had seen this thread a long time ago. ....

[theavondon]

Then you wouldn't have bought all of those guitars, due to them all being the same?

[masked elwood]

Then you wouldn't have bought all of those guitars, due to them all being the same?

... i suppose that's true. fuck.

nah...i meant that i wish i'd seen this thread earlier as it's a subject i'm all into and shit. now i'm too late to the party.

[theavondon]

Then you wouldn't have bought all of those guitars, due to them all being the same?

... i suppose that's true. fuck.

nah...i meant that i wish i'd seen this thread earlier as it's a subject i'm all into and shit. now i'm too late to the party.

Aw, c'maaaaaaaaaaaaaw, you have something interesting to add, I know it.

[lapsteel]

Then you wouldn't have bought all of those guitars, due to them all being the same?

... i suppose that's true. fuck.

nah...i meant that i wish i'd seen this thread earlier as it's a subject i'm all into and shit. now i'm too late to the party.

Who said all electric guitars sound the same? I know they sound different, but perhaps the reason they sound different has less to do with the material they are fabricated from and more from strings, scale length, pickup variations, wiring harnesses, nuts (for only open strings of course) and bridge. I would even argue that the feel of the guitar would have a deeper affect because of the way the player approaches it... but not necessarily because it is mahogany vs maple. If it was really about tone we would see alot more cherry, spruce and cedar tops and less exotic materials or burl and birdseye variations.

[masked elwood]

lapsteel: we were just talking shite.

about the mass on the headstock.
i'm under the opinion that mass is good for sustain but doesn't really affect the overall tone of the guitar. those fathead metal plates are sorta kool i think and i could see how it could help with providing a different feel when cranking out soaring guitar.
but there is where i think 'tone' it gets divided into different realms.
i feel that the guitar has a inherent tone that is provided via the means and materials it was constructed with. and the person playing has an inherent tone that their psyche provides. it all matters. i feel that the person playing is in the most control of the tone. if you come and play my rig, it sounds like you playing my rig and not like me.

about the tone that the materials provide:
i've experimented quite a bit with all this shite. different wood, finishes, scales, and hardware. good hardware is important for both playing in tune and helping the guitar resonate. those smartwood LP's didn't sound like a classic LP. they don't sound bad but they aren't the same.
diff wood resonates differently and therefore delivers diff tonal vibrations but it only goes so far. and as lapsteel stated, the electric part factors in. i'd mos def take a shitty guitar and great amp over a great guitar and shitty amp.

scale:
where the pickups line up under the strings is important. for example, the placement of the pickups on the jaguar and mustang due to their scale, is the magic of those particular guitars. a long scale mustang will not be the same. it'll be kool, it'll be in the fender realm soundwise, you could get around things with the proper pickups but it wont' play or feel like a mustang. it's prolly be close enough to get by and once the person playing is used to the different scale, they'd play it using the same english (pressure on the frets, bends and natural feel for note/finger placement). but once A/B'd, it'd be different. (the more i think about this... i want to do a long scale mustang)

the nut is important beyond open strings due to it being in constant state of transferring vibrations and anything that comes is constant contact with the strings will be a important part in getting the most out of the natural inherent tone that the guitar has. the way a guitar resonates is what we're referring to as tone anyway.
but that's not to say a plastic nut can't sound good. it's all subfuckingjective in the end.
anyway...that's how i approach it. that's why i dig it when people use gear that i don't particularly like for my sound. (a silverface twin is the worst amp in the world for me.....i hate it to death several times over, yet i love others using them and i can think of more than a few of my fave guitar players using them).

anyway...
i saw several bands a couple nights ago that used what most interweb snobs would refer to as crap (including many of us) and they all sounded brilliant.
how much does gear really matter?

[mathias]

I love having elwood back!

related: me realizing that the guitar player in a band is playing DS-1 into a MG100DFX head and being blown away by the sound he's getting it's about the player, and then a million other variables. "Crap" gear sounds good sometimes too..

[Nelson Instruments]

While different woods (and different pieces of the same species of wood) do vary in density, I would argue that the type of instrument being built, the electronics (if an electric) the bridge/tailpiece have a greater effect on the sound than swapping one wood for another on a fingerboard.
Bob Benedeto built an archtop our of construction grade pine 2x4s to show that it would sound just as good and he did just that!
In the first batch of acoustics I built Half had mahogany necks and half had cherry necks and you'd never hear a difference.
I'm not saying that different woods don't contribute different tonalities (obviously a mahogany top acoustic sounds different than a spruce top) but I think there are those that read way too much into it.
When I buy wood (all procured locally) I have to use what is available. So at first fingerboards were wenge. Then I started using padauk. Now I use padauk and Granidillo.
I use basswood for the wings on the coquettes and socialite guitars which makes them really light! Yet they have as much sustain as even the best les pauls (in my opinion) however there are those that claim that you must have mahogany with maple top and a set neck etc etc to get good sustain, not a maple neck-through with basswood wings and aluminum bridge saddles.
In my time at the vintage guitar store I played so many guitars, vintage and new(er) and I got to the point where it just didn't matter what it was made out of.
For example. Brazillian rosewood is the holy grail for acoustic back and sides. A vintage martin with brazillian rosewood is an expensive proposition. From any era the split is probably 20% sounded REALLY GOOD, 20% sounded not good at all, and the other 60% sounded fine/nice/average.
So from there I decided that for my own instruments I would focus on making them sound as good as I can without worrying about the exact material.
I have an acoustic in this current batch that has a douglas fir top! I am experimenting with it because my local spruce supplier no longer stock spruce. So I am trying something related to spruce that is readily available!
This will be a great test of the different woods theory!

[dubkitty]

I go along with the David Lindley concept that EVERYTHING about the guitar has some effect on the sound...to me, the Fender/Schaller locking tuners i started with on my blue Strat killed resonance compared to the mini-Grover non-lockers i replaced them with. IMO you can hear the difference between a Les Paul-type with a maple neck and one with a mahogany neck. Lindley uses the example that if you take a pickup and suspend it over the strings you get one tone; if you mount it in the body you get a different tone; and if you mount it in a Strat-type pickguard your tone is different yet again. Strats and Teles with ash bodies sound quite different to alder-bodied ones. i could go on. but then, i'm incredibly picky...i've been known to spend hours adjusting the individual polepieces on a pickup in <1/8 turn increments to get the string-to-string balance as perfect as i can. i'm not as daft about it as Eric Johnson, though, who claims he can hear the difference between a Duracell and an Energizer in his Fuzz Face and strips the finish underneath the pickguards of his Strats.

[lapsteel]

I gotta place myself in the Nelson Camp.... pretty much what I am saying just articulated better.

I agree with Elwood that tone is neutral and it is purely subjective as what sounds good, and I also would take a great amp and a shitter guitar any day over the opposite.

What about pickup placement....alot of people argue that a Strat sounds like a Strat because of where the neck pickup is placed...? What are kinda opinions can we get on the idea of tonal nodes along the length of a scale?
Nelson got any theories about that?

[Nelson Instruments]

Honestly I never really gave the exact pickup placement any real thought.
I mean obviously as change proximity of pickup to bridge that affects overall tonality, but if I am understanding your thought correctly, the idea of moving a (for example) neck pickup just little bits back and forth to see if there is an different regarding nodal/harmonics being stronger or weaker....hmmm..
That might actually be an easy experiment. Just get an old dearmond thin archtop pickup with the mounting rod so that the pickup can be slid around any distance and analyze the differences.
I'm not sure that the difference would be appreciable enough to be detected to 99% of us (and the other 1% might be full of it).
It would be an interesting experiment.
It is worth noting (and I think it has already been alluded to) that perception has so much to do with it all.
I have spoken with many an audio engineer that when in a live situation has that person back in the booth always asking for more and more bass.
So the engineer patches some cables to nothing and tells this person that a certain knob of fader now controls bass. So if they aren't liking the sound they can boost or cut as needed.
The guy listens for a bit, walks up, moves the fader, and then smiles as he tells the engineer that THAT is how it should sound.
Many times I think we perceive differences because we simply want to, or we convince ourselves that there must be a difference so we already have a pre-conceived notion of outcome.
To take a (for example) tele with maple fingerboard, take strings off, take neck off, install new neck, restring, and then play it again (which if you're FAST you could do in abt 2-5 min) and with all the extra noises that happen in between clouding your ears you can tell me how different that guitar sounds from when it did 5 minutes ago...well THAT is impressive (no offense intended toward anyone!)
What would be interesting would be to record said guitar with different necks, playing the same chords and riffs and then analyze the frequencies. Then you could tell any real differences, and based off of the human ear's ability to hear and in what increments we hear frequencies in (for example we perceive volume changes exponentially and not linear hence why a trick fender uses is to put a linear taper volume pot in their hot rod series amps so when you try it at the store is sounds soooo loud on 2) only then could we tell
1) what differences are there if any
2) can the human ear actually perceive those differences.

[Mudfuzz]

Good stuff ^

There are SOME sounds you need the pickup in the right spot along the string vibrating length. Easiest way to see for yourself is to go to a store and play similar guitars with 21/22 and 24 fret necks... On basses you really notice for some reason... also some pickups work better in some spots... like Jbass pickups suck way up near the fingerboard... well I guess not suck pre-say but the one time I tried this it was not the best sound.. VS a gibson or RIC style pickup... blah blah blah.. and that is most likely why Rick Tuner and Gibson have made instruments with movable pickups...

[FuzzHugger]

Pickups on rails, that you can slide, changing their position. Patented. By me.