Okay... so if wood doesn't matter.... and scale length doesn't matter....

[spawnofthesith]

As far as I can tell, the phrase “Tonewood” is for the most part just a straw man phrase used by detractors of the laws of physics making claims that wood doesn’t effect tone.

I think l suzm and eagle are on the same page

 

[Will Chen]

The guitar needs to work sympathetically with the string vibration or pickups have nothing to pick up.

This is inaccurate. But believe whatever you wish.

 

[spawnofthesith]

I wish I could live in a physics-less world… it would be pretty cool

 

[Cirrus]

I think my wife does, I'll ask her what it's like.

 

[spawnofthesith]

In b4 someone says only pickups matter because wood doesn’t conduct electricity

 

[Eagle]

This is inaccurate. But believe whatever you wish.

Dead spots , good sustain and the way the strings vibrate are acoustic properties of the guitar. Fact.

 

[Cirrus]

This stuff has been done to death, I'll just drop this here:

1. Fender and Gibson chose wood's based on cost, availability, and cosmetics...period.
2. The whole purpose of a solid body guitar is to reduce resonance/feedback. A dense piece of wood rejects the transfer of vibration.
3. Generally, modern pickups are minimally microphonic.
4. Wood is organic and even the same species will vary greatly in density/structure from sample to sample.

None of those points demonstrate that wood resonance doesn't matter. Just that it wasn't originally planned for.

 

[laxu]

My take is that "tonewood" is nothing more than a marketing term.

Atm I own two Les Paul type guitars at somewhat opposite ends of the price spectrum.

Guitar #1: Heatley Tradition.​

This is like the bonanza of buzzword specs:

• Honduras mahogany body/neck.
• Brazilian rosewood fretboard. It even has flame maple binding on it.
• Wolfetone pickups, Tonepros hardware, Sperzel locking tuners, nitro finish etc.
• It's also everything a modern LP type guitar should be - more ergonomic neck joint, headstock with a volute and straight string pull.
• Made in Canada in 2006.

Built perfectly, the fretwork is so good you can get ridiculously low action on it if you want. Just a great boutique guitar. I bought it used because I had trouble finding a Gibson worth a damn here in Finland as I wanted to finally buy a high end LP type guitar.

Guitar #2: Fenix Les Paul copy​

The base spec on this is actually pretty solid:

• 3 piece mahogany body. Or more like 2 piece plus a small sliver of the edge.
• Two piece solid flame maple top rather than veneer as was common on LP copies.
• Rosewood fretboard.
• 3 piece mahogany neck (scarf joint headstock, a small piece of the heel and the rest of the neck)
• Set neck. There are bolt-on versions floating around too.
• Gotoh hardware and tuners.
• Made in South Korea in I think 1990.

The stock electronics and pickups were absolutely awful though. I ripped them out and installed Mastertone active pickups and electronics in it. They were made by an Australian guy that made pretty unique active pickups. If you didn't know, you wouldn't really tell them apart from passives soundwise except they are higher output and lower noise. Nothing like what EMG makes for example.

I also replaced the nut with a bone nut and leveled the frets. So I've put in a good bit of work to make it better.

It plays really well and overall is a well built guitar where it matters - correct neck angle etc. You can see in the pic some of the higher fret inlays are slightly off center - it has some minor cosmetic defects like that.

I'd rate the upgraded Fenix as maybe 80% the guitar that the Heatley is. It doesn't sound the same, but it's really different rather than better or worse. The Heatley plays even better, looks better, feels better.

But is that all worth several thousand euros more than the obscure Fenix LP copy that I bought for peanuts? To me the Heatley is a luxury I can afford and enjoy, but objectively the Fenix is more than good enough. Having those fancy tonewoods certainly weren't the thing that makes the Heatley better to me - it's all in the work its creator Scott Heatley put in to make it so close to perfect. If that wasn't right, it would be just a pretty guitar - and I've sold a few really pretty guitars because they didn't sound that great.

---

Tonewood is a marketing term because there is no reason a guitar has to be made out of wood. There are plenty of man-made materials used as well as less traditional woods. The wood species typically found in guitars have been more of a question of tradition, cost, availability and ease of shaping and painting.

Another favorite guitar of mine is a Flaxwood Rautia made of injection moulded spruce fiber and resin, made right here in Finland. It's near-impervious to weather conditions, I haven't adjusted its truss rod in years. It sounds just as good as any of my traditional guitars.

That said, I don't subscribe to the Jim Lill school of "nothing but the pickup matters". All the materials matter - wood, metals etc. I've put the same pickup in a few guitars and it didn't sound identical in them.

But you don't need some fancy tonewoods to have a great sounding guitar. A lot of those revered vintage Strats, Teles and Les Pauls are pretty much a few planks of wood they chose that day that somehow ended up being better than the next planks they put together. Wood is an inconsistent material after all so there are bound to be gems and duds.

 

[Eagle]

The body needs good properties that it the important thing. But if you are trying to get classic tones then you need to replicate how they were achieved . Old growth Honduran Mahogany has a tone particularly when it has very thin brittle finish on it. Now add hide glue which also drys brittle hard and you have a resonance signature. Everything matters.
Tone wood is a marketing bullshit term yes but guitars built out of anything that works and covered in thick plastic to hide it are just bullshit full stop.

 

[the-trooper]

but guitars built out of anything that works and covered in thick plastic to hide it are just bullshit full stop

Nah, definitely to be continued...

 

[Eagle]

Nah, definitely to be continued...

And you don’t think the constitution and materials effect the tone?? Every decent builder on the planet thinks everything matters and an electric guitar needs to work acoustically first and foremost.

 

[Will Chen]

Dead spots , good sustain and the way the strings vibrate are acoustic properties of the guitar. Fact.

I've never played a well constructed guitar with a dead spot, so I'll take your word for it.

Sustain, if your talking about the actual instrument not the feedback loop playing with a loud amp, is a function of the rejection of transfer of energy from the string. The less "resonant" (more stiff/dense) a body, the more sustain the instrument will have.

No idea what you are talking about in terms of "the way the strings vibrate", you need to be more specific here.

None of those points demonstrate that wood resonance doesn't matter. Just that it wasn't originally planned for.

Explain exactly how the resonance matters. Any vibration of the wood is the impact of loss/transfer of energy from the strings, energy is not transfered back to the strings from the body unless excited by another force such as a loud amp which we know is the feedback loop.
However, reduction of that type of interaction is exactly what a solid body excels at. Anyone who's played a semi hollow or hollow body at volume and can literally feel the guitar quivering and bursts of air shooting out the sound hole knows what I'm talking about.

Look...I'm not going to argue against the idea that some guitars have a little magic about them. Some claim it's a special piece of wood, or that the pickup winding was done in a certain way, or a function of age, or finish, or maybe it was a fantastic fucking day and the player was just in the perfect frame of mind. Maybe it's everything, maybe it's nothing.

It doesn't matter, people will believe what they want, including me. So if it makes you happy to believe mahogany is "warm" and maple is "bright", be happy.

 

[Eagle]

Dead and over loud notes in expensive well constructed guitars is common. Particularly in chambered instruments.

 

[Eagle]

I've never played a well constructed guitar with a dead spot, so I'll take your word for it.

Sustain, if your talking about the actual instrument not the feedback loop playing with a loud amp, is a function of the rejection of transfer of energy from the string. The less "resonant" (more stiff/dense) a body, the more sustain the instrument will have.

No idea what you are talking about in terms of "the way the strings vibrate", you need to be more specific here.



Explain exactly how the resonance matters. Any vibration of the wood is the impact of loss/transfer of energy from the strings, energy is not transfered back to the strings from the body unless excited by another force such as a loud amp which we know is the feedback loop.
However, reduction of that type of interaction is exactly what a solid body excels at. Anyone who's played a semi hollow or hollow body at volume and can literally feel the guitar quivering and bursts of air shooting out the sound hole knows what I'm talking about.

Look...I'm not going to argue against the idea that some guitars have a little magic about them. Some claim it's a special piece of wood, or that the pickup winding was done in a certain way, or a function of age, or finish, or maybe it was a fantastic f*****g day and the player was just in the perfect frame of mind. Maybe it's everything, maybe it's nothing.

It doesn't matter, people will believe what they want, including me. So if it makes you happy to believe mahogany is "warm" and maple is "bright", be happy.

Explain why you think two identical hardware same model guitars never sound identical and even swapped the electrics over from to the other still sounds different?
Everything affects everything and no two guitars are identical. Just because you don’t ‘believe’ it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

 

[Cirrus]

Explain exactly how the resonance matters. Any vibration of the wood is the impact of loss/transfer of energy from the strings, energy is not transfered back to the strings from the body unless excited by another force such as a loud amp which we know is the feedback loop.

I can't explain exactly how resonance matters, can I, Will Chen? But that impossible hurdle that you've set up doesn't really validate your argument either. I'm interested in having a discussion about it from a position of ignorant but honest curiosity, that's how I approach these things.

Your idea about how energy is moving out of the strings into the body is interesting and I reckon has some merit, but I don't think your mental model is quite complete - because energy isn't just turning into sound vibration in the body, it's also turning into heat, which is what sound energy eventually turns into. That alone has big implications; if a body is made of soft material, I wonder if more of the energy leaving the strings quickly turns into heat rather than kinetic energy which is what a sound wave is. If so, that guitar would both sustain less and also not seem to have a particularly vibrant/loud body resonance.

A guitar made of really stiff material might better maintain the propagation of vibrations for longer which would mean more vibration/ resonance/ sound energy and slower loss of that energy to heat.

Your idea that energy is not transferred back to the string once it's in the body? I disagree totally unless I've just misunderstood you. If the vibration of the string can transfer energy to the body, that same mechanism works in reverse - the strings and body will resonate in sympathy and I am *certain* that if you built a damping machine that could totally stop a string then release it again in the space of like a millisecond, there'd be energy still resonating in the body that would start the string vibrating again. That'd be a really interesting experiment actually.

So yeah. I think the problem is you're being really dogmatic about this but your mental model of a guitar body and energy flow is overly simplistic, there are efficiency losses, kinetic energy vs heat decay, resonances moving back and forward between string and body, latitudinal and longitudinal waves moving across the surface of a solid body and within it having differing percentages of kinetic energy kept in the resonating body/string system vs energy lost to acoustic sound that our ears pick up etc etc. And all that will change constantly given the fixed dimensions vs the changing wavelengths of different notes.

So if it makes you happy to believe mahogany is "warm" and maple is "bright", be happy.

Personally, I don't believe anything so simple as that. But I am happy!

 

[Eagle]

I can't explain exactly how resonance matters, can I, Will Chen? But that impossible hurdle that you've set up doesn't really validate your argument either. I'm interested in having a discussion about it from a position of ignorant but honest curiosity, that's how I approach these things.

Your idea about how energy is moving out of the strings into the body is interesting and I reckon has some merit, but I don't think your mental model is quite complete - because energy isn't just turning into sound vibration in the body, it's also turning into heat, which is what sound energy eventually turns into. That alone has big implications; if a body is made of soft material, I wonder if more of the energy leaving the strings quickly turns into heat rather than kinetic energy which is what a sound wave is. If so, that guitar would both sustain less and also not seem to have a particularly vibrant/loud body resonance.

A guitar made of really stiff material might better maintain the propagation of vibrations for longer which would mean more vibration/ resonance/ sound energy and slower loss of that energy to heat.

Your idea that energy is not transferred back to the string once it's in the body? I disagree totally unless I've just misunderstood you. If the vibration of the string can transfer energy to the body, that same mechanism works in reverse - the strings and body will resonate in sympathy and I am *certain* that if you built a damping machine that could totally stop a string then release it again in the space of like a millisecond, there'd be energy still resonating in the body that would start the string vibrating again. That'd be a really interesting experiment actually.

So yeah. I think the problem is you're being really dogmatic about this but your mental model of a guitar body and energy flow is overly simplistic, there are efficiency losses, kinetic energy vs heat decay, resonances moving back and forward between string and body, latitudinal and longitudinal waves moving across the surface of a solid body and within it having differing percentages of kinetic energy kept in the resonating body/string system vs energy lost to acoustic sound that our ears pick up etc etc. And all that will change constantly given the fixed dimensions vs the changing wavelengths of different notes.



Personally, I don't believe anything so simple as that. But I am happy!

This is correct. One more factor is easily resonating instruments sustain less. It’s all a balancing act between desirable characteristics and basic functions.

 

[Will Chen]

our idea about how energy is moving out of the strings into the body is interesting and I reckon has some merit, but I don't think your mental model is quite complete - because energy isn't just turning into sound vibration in the body, it's also turning into heat, which is what sound energy eventually turns into. That alone has big implications; if a body is made of soft material, I wonder if more of the energy leaving the strings quickly turns into heat rather than kinetic energy which is what a sound wave is. If so, that guitar would both sustain less and also not seem to have a particularly vibrant/loud body resonance.

Newton's first law: An object at rest remains at rest, or if in motion, remains in motion at a constant velocity unless acted on by a net external force. In this case we are dealing with 2 bodies (well, a few more, but we'll just simplify to 2), strings and body. Both at rest, now the external force is the pluck of the string, no direct force has acted on the body. The energy in the string is looking to follow the path of least resistance at this point and as it is in direct contact with the body, we do get some transfer however the biggest transfer is into the air resulting in sound. But as we do not have a highly resonant cavity like an acoustic, there is less volume but greater sustain. The new energy in the body is also looking to follow the path of least resistance, there is a lot of resistance back to the string as it is already excited and in motion as such it moves into the air as well. So listen to the electric unplugged, you will hear any potential body resonance in this scenario. Do you think unplugged you can tell the different aural descriptions assigned to different tonewoods? Maybe, maybe not...

However, an electric is not an acoustic. Pickups are not microphones, they create electrical energy from mechanical energy, not specifically acoustic energy. This is an important distinction, it was designed to capture the vibration of the metal string thorough a magnetic field. Now...highly microphonic pickups may pickup some resonance here as the lose wire could be subject to transfer of energy from the body and as such act like a diaphragm and vibrate. But past a certain volume a pickup like this are going to be unwieldy with feedback being a huge issue.

A guitar made of really stiff material might better maintain the propagation of vibrations for longer which would mean more vibration/ resonance/ sound energy and slower loss of that energy to heat.

Again...this is about the path of least resistance. A theoretically infinitely hard body would not accept any energy from the strings, as such all it's energy would have to dissipate into atmosphere equally longer sustain.

Your idea that energy is not transferred back to the string once it's in the body? I disagree totally unless I've just misunderstood you. If the vibration of the string can transfer energy to the body, that same mechanism works in reverse - the strings and body will resonate in sympathy and I am *certain* that if you built a damping machine that could totally stop a string then release it again in the space of like a millisecond, there'd be energy still resonating in the body that would start the string vibrating again. That'd be a really interesting experiment actually.

Again...think of the path of least resistance. You don't have to create an elaborate experiment here. Knock on the guitar, do the strings ring? They certainly do, we have proof energy is transferred from body to string. However, plug in your guitar, play a G chord and knock on your body, really crack the hell out of it. You'll notice that until the volume starts to fall off you will not hear any knocking but as the strings lose volume/energy the knocking becomes more and more apparent until you can hear it disturbing the strings (also note you do not actually hear a knocking sound but the result of a temporarily disturbance of the strings, pickups are not microphones). This is because on initial strum there is more energy moving from string to body than body to strings, again path of least resistance, as the energy dissipates it can start to accept a transfer in the opposite direction, but in the strummed string situation any energy in the body is far less than the vibrating string. The string to body relationship just isn't a feedback loop, it's a river flowing downhill.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Will Chen redux 1: "'resonance' of wood matters in terms of how energy is lost from the strings'"
Will Chen redux 2: "'pickups aren't microphones, they only capture the mechanical energy of the strings.'"
Will Chen redux conclusion: "despite the fact that my redux 1 implies that the manner in which a string loses mechanical energy over time will depend on the wood to which it is attached, and that a pickup will capture the mechanical energy of the string over time, I'm going to conclude that wood can't matter"

There are challenges in trying to use a 9th grade physical science text book as the only basis for understanding how electric guitars might work.

 

[metropolis_4]

1. Fender and Gibson chose wood's based on cost, availability, and cosmetics...period.

I don’t think that’s entirely true. From what I’ve read Fender’s was based on whatever could be sourced cheap from local furniture builders, but Gibson’s were based on the woods traditionally used in acoustic instruments.

When Gibson built its first solid body guitar they weren’t aiming for cheap, they were going for a sophisticated professional alternative to the “primitive” Fender guitars that were gaining popularity. That’s also why they chose to carve the top, because they had actual skilled luthiers who were capable of incorporating traditional guitar features into the design and they knew the competition wasn’t capable at the time of offering anything like that. They saw that as a selling point. It was the Cadillac of solid body guitars.

So cost and availability weren’t primary considerations for Gibson. They wanted to show they had the means of offering something a cut above what the competition could make. And neither were cosmetics because they painted gold paint over the wood so it didn’t even show.

My guess is that Gibson chose woods based on what would be familiar to their existing clientele to try to encourage adoption of this radical new type of instrument

 

[Will Chen]

Will Chen redux 1: "'resonance' of wood matters in terms of how energy is lost from the strings'"
Will Chen redux 2: "'pickups aren't microphones, they only capture the mechanical energy of the strings.'"
Will Chen redux conclusion: "despite the fact that my redux 1 implies that the manner in which a string loses mechanical energy over time will depend on the wood to which it is attached, and that a pickup will capture the mechanical energy of the string over time, I'm going to conclude that wood can't matter"

There are challenges in trying to use a 9th grade physical science text book as the only basis for understanding how electric guitars might work.

Meh...I'm talking about sustain. If one wants to debate the frequency dependent absorption characteristics, please have at. Certainly all wood isn't broadband in terms of frequencies absorbed/rejected. It's absolutely measurable, though wood being organic I seriously doubt anyone can ascribe a specific frequency pattern to any specific species.

And I don't think none of it matters. An electric guitar is a system that works and it works based on the trial and error of many builders over many years figuring out the things that work right. But those same experiences have distinctly proven their is no absolutely right way. The wood absolutely matters in terms some level of rigidness and tight workmanship in any joints. Obviously there are things that make a guitar a guitar.

Regarding woods...I've played maple semi hollows which were nice and warm and mahogany teles which were spanky as hell. Over the years we've seen builders champion some wood and turn their heads to others until suddenly that wood is too expensive or unavailable and suddenly a new species is a premium tonewood to the point of renaming a wood to avoid previous negative reputations.