# Tonewood: Myth and Magic or Bullcrap?



## demonx (Jan 27, 2014)

Everyone who has had a custom guitar built for them has heard of Tonewood. The magical forces of nature creating the perfect pieces of timber that combined in the right combination create the exact sound we're looking for and if tapped in the right spot in the right wind direction will ring like a bell and sing like an angel.

Or is it all bullshit?

There will always be people who are 100% convinced that this timber makes the guitar sound like this and so forth, but does it really? It's one of those arguments like is God real, however in the Tonewood debate it's scientifically been proven to be fact and its also scientifically proven to be myth.

So which one is it?

So lets start with something that isn't argued. It has been agreed to be fact by the guys on both sides of the fence that in an electric guitar, the pickups contribute to at least 90% of the sound.

So if pickups are 90% of the sound, whats the 10%? Surely it can't be everything? YES! Everything else! Bridge and strings which are the next two most influential components in the sound of an electric guitar, and then after all that the Tonewood. All of that is divided up in the measly 10%

Now if we were looking at a acoustic guitar or a violin, there is no pickup, so all of a sudden the Tonewood becomes a much higher percentage. For example Tonewood used on the top of an acoustic is the most influential timber in the guitar etc etc, however in this case, we are discussing electric guitars with high gain pickups. But when it comes to peoples education on the matter, most of it comes from the books or papers written on guitar building by old school luthiers, most of which are educated from the Acoustic world. The knowledge used for them to build acoustics they just transferred straight over to electrics and then everyone just repeats all this like mindless parrots as if its all the same for electric guitars.

An example (and if you search the net you'll find hundreds of examples - I've even seen guitars made from concrete!)

A colleague of mine once built two guitars. One from quality "tonewood" and the other from cheap hardware shop Pine. Recorded one, swapped the hardware over and recorded the other. The recordings were made public for people to guess and they sounded virtually identical, so much so that it was 50/50 as to which was the Tonewood. I myself listened to these two samples and buggered if I could tell which is which.

So whats my stance?

I get asked all the time what my guitars sound like. I respond they sound like whatever pickup you put in them. If It's a Bareknuckle warpig, then it'll sound like a Bareknuckle Warpig. If you get that pickup and put it in a Fender, then all of a sudden that Fender will sound like a Bareknuckle Warpig, not a Fender. That pickup is high gain enough to override any influence the "Tonewood" has. Sure it may sound slightly different in each guitar, but it'll still sound like a Warpig. If you take out the Warpig and throw in an EMG, then all of a sudden it sounds like an EMG.

If you put an EMG in a guitar do you really think it matters sound wise if the guitar has a Maple or Rosewood board? You can get two identical guitars with rosewood boards, they'll both sound slightly different. You can get two identical guitars with the exact same specs and same pickups and most of the time they will still sound slightly different. That's the way it is.

So if the Tonewood only makes such a tiny difference, can we hear it?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In reality though, it's such a tiny difference with high gain pickups that you can walk over to your amp, tweak the knobs just a bit and its the same as if it were a different timber.

I've had other builders say to me: "How can you build a guitar that is all Mahogany, you can't have more than X% Mahogany oterwise the sound will be too deep and muddy" - well, um. Yeah. Guess I've proved that one wrong time and time again. Don't believe everything you read kids!

When I'm dealing with a new customer and planning out a build with them, I suggest they choose the pickups first and build the guitar around that. Choose the bridge second. Choose the strings third. Tonewood I advise to be selected for looks and for stability, as the looks and stability (in my opinion) offer much more influence in the build than their tonal characteristics will will be overruled by the pickups and amp. What I mean by stability is the guitars ability to stay in one piece over it's lifetime and not fall apart, bend, warp, split etc. Longevity. 

There will always be people that want to argue this, I say whatever. I'm offering my opinion as a builder and player and you are more than welcome to your own. Sure there are always going to be other variables, but I'm breaking this down for the new guy without using words that have to be looked up on a dictionary, to the guitar player who has little understanding, so he or she will able to make some simple decisions based on what is made out to be way more complex than it really is.


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## sezna (Jan 27, 2014)

I agree with you. I play cello and bass in an orchestra, and the wood makes a _huge _difference. Almost completely defines the instrument. Same with acoustic guitars. However, electric guitars just don't rely on the wood to generate the sound, they rely on steel wires and electromagnets. Sure the wood makes a difference, but not nearly as noticeable as, say, your amp.


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## leonardo7 (Jan 28, 2014)

You have to really think outside of the box on this one. If I look at you standing there then I see you standing there, I see your body standing there. If I put on some glasses with green lenses and then look at you then I still see you, but everything appears green. What percentage of you changes because of the green lenses? Its the same with pickups, you can put different pickups in a guitar and it will color the sound, but the fundamental will still be there.


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## Fretless (Jan 28, 2014)

I know Andertons has a video where they compare two guitars with the exact same setup, and the only difference being wood choice. They found there was a noticeable difference. I'll look for it in a bit. Still gotta finish some training for work in the mean time (I swear I'm not slacking at all).


*edit*

Found it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLxE8iDWD_w


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## penguin_316 (Jan 28, 2014)

No two pieces of wood are the same, ever! Keep that in mind when doing "identical" builds with the same wood. You can even get extreme differences in weight, density, color, figuring in different cuts from the same tree.

The construction method matter way more than the wood choices. Although, I have found the hardest, and relatively densest woods to have more punch than cheaper "soft" hardwoods.


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## penguin_316 (Jan 28, 2014)

Also, not to debunk that video you listed but it is of 2 different players playing guitars setup the same but with different woods. I think one of the biggest contributors to the differences in tone is going to be the player. Having said that, the differences are there but like the OP said....nothing a small twist of a knob can't change.

The tone wood debate, cork-sniffery most can't backup when it comes to blind sound clips.


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## InfinityCollision (Jan 28, 2014)

I have heard tonal differences in electric guitars that were identical save for some wood in their construction. Bugger if I could reliably tell you which guitar had which type of wood though. I'm not even sure I could have told you they were different in a mix rather than solo. They still sound like electric guitars, there's inevitable variances between cuts of wood, and there is so much else in the signal chain that is going to have a vastly greater impact on your sound, particularly if playing with high gain. I agree, stability and looks should come first.


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## Dcm81 (Jan 28, 2014)

so as we're on the topic of wood here......what would be the hardest most dense wood you can think of, that is also light weight?


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## InfinityCollision (Jan 28, 2014)

Dcm81 said:


> so as we're on the topic of wood here......what would be the hardest most dense wood you can think of, that is also light weight?



You realize "most dense" and "light weight" are contradictory, right?

EDIT: Also worth noting that there are other factors to bear in mind. Hardness does not necessarily equate to stability for example.


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## TRENCHLORD (Jan 28, 2014)

I've always noticed guitars with maple or maple/walnut necks have a snappier more solid fundamental low-end than guitars with mahogany necks.
It's not nearly as hearable as it is feel-able IMO.

Body wood (on neck-thru) makes more of a difference in how the mids sit, which is very adjustable once it gets to the amp.
Almost every single maple-necked basswood body guitar I've ever played has less lower-mids than any maple-necked mahogany bodied guitar. 
Alder always seems to bring a clearer more open tone throughout the frequency bands.

Like some have already said, we always compensate for the differences with our pedals and amps so the differences are squashed mostly by the time the signal hits the speakers. 
The neck-wood (harder vs softer) seems the hardest to compensate for with tone controls. 
You can always change pickups or string sets though to make a softer sounding guitar ring clearer or tighter.


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## The Reverend (Jan 28, 2014)

If I had enough money, and the engineering know-how, I would design an experiment to put all this shit to rest. I've seen one where the data suggests that wood choice affects tone in electric guitars only nominally, to the point where it's indistinguishable. A lot of people said it was designed poorly, so it's debatable as proof. 

I personally don't think it makes much difference. Maybe it's because the majority of my time playing guitar has been with modelers, but I couldn't even tell you honestly that my guitar has a bright character, or a harsh high end, or a very middy, energetic tone. It depends so much on the amp and all the various parts of the signal chain. This doesn't only apply to high gain stuff, either.


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## GunnarJames (Jan 28, 2014)

TRENCHLORD said:


> It's not nearly as hearable as it is feel-able IMO.



+1


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## capoeiraesp (Jan 28, 2014)

All 3 of my guitars have the same pickups in the bridge position. All 3 have completely different body and neck woods. All 3 sound different even when tuned the same. 
Aside from the subtle differences in tone, I love the different woods from a visual perspective. I figure if I'm going custom put the nicest types of the woods into the builds available, not second rate exotic timbers or aesthetically boring woods unless there's coloured lacquer involved. That's just me and I like to spoil myself because I work hard to have such luxuries.


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## Pat_tct (Jan 28, 2014)

I must agree with the OP.
At least I can't hear the difference. show me a recording of just a guitar track and i can't tell for the love of all that is holy if it's a mahagony or basswood body.....

i care more if the wood is light (or the specific piece used), stable, and good looking.


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## Vzmike (Jan 28, 2014)

Wood is an organic material, so it's always going to be different. I think somebody said this already...curse you bastards for making me look trendy.

I must admit though it's very easy to just go along with the bandwagon and sing a song you don't know the words to...


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## Vzmike (Jan 28, 2014)

capoeiraesp said:


> All 3 of my guitars have the same pickups in the bridge position. All 3 have completely different body and neck woods. All 3 sound different even when tuned the same.
> Aside from the subtle differences in tone, I love the different woods from a visual perspective. I figure if I'm going custom put the nicest types of the woods into the builds available, not second rate exotic timbers or aesthetically boring woods unless there's coloured lacquer involved. That's just me and I like to spoil myself because I work hard to have such luxuries.


NOBODY LIKES A SHOW OFF DAMN IT.


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## jonajon91 (Jan 28, 2014)

(Only slightly on topic here, I didn't want to make a whole new thread.
Can anyone tell be about swietenia mahogany for a bass guitar body?)


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## Yo_Wattup (Jan 28, 2014)

penguin_316 said:


> No two pieces of wood are the same, ever! Keep that in mind when doing "identical" builds with the same wood. You can even get extreme differences in weight, density, color, figuring in different cuts from the same tree.



+1

This especially applies to Ash



Dcm81 said:


> so as we're on the topic of wood here......what would be the hardest most dense wood you can think of, that is also light weight?



Dense literally means heavy. So your asking what is the heaviest lightest wood?


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## mniel8195 (Jan 28, 2014)

besides sound i feel like there is a different "feel to certain woods" kinda hard to explain. not like the texture but the texture of sound i guess. Its like how different amps have a different feel. No what i am saying?!?!


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## helferlain (Jan 28, 2014)

+1 to the OP

I think about 
99 % PU / electronics (amp, effects) / player.

That leaves ~ 1% for tonewood and other psychoacoustics.

This discussion would be so much more scientifc and comprehensible, if it was about terms like "stiffness", "desnity", "resonance frequency" or "hardness".

Those are the charactersistcs of the "tonewoods", that shape that little percentage of wood influence to the sound. And those charcteristics can differ betweent pieces of wood even from the same tree, but they are scientifical measurable.

And its interesting, how most of the typical woods in elctric guitar building tend to the same region of those characteristics.


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## TRENCHLORD (Jan 28, 2014)

Does Wood Matter? threads always end up being two different discussions, one about the bare instrument unplugged and one about the amped sound (which we all can agree matters more for electrics).

The more clean and/or transparent your rig is the more you'll hear any differences.
Kick in the sizzling gore metal hyper-gain and sure wood won't matter much if any.


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## Necromagnon (Jan 28, 2014)

(I've post it so many times these past days...)

PS: I will detail a bit my point of view:
All this story about "dark sounding mahogany" and "bright maple" started with the war Fender/Gibson. But I have the feeling (it's feeling, no historical research on there nor anything) that people just keep that the wood is different between the two, and that's what makes the dark sound and the clear sound. But the pups are completely different, and even with the same pups, there's a difference. Why? But simply because of the scale length! A longer scale length gives much more highs the a shorter one.
As Searl Guitars says (sorry, I don't know your first name), we should replace each parameter in order of impact:
1 - Player
2 - Pups and amp (amplifier + cabinet)
3 - Bridge and strings
4 - Scale length
5 - Nut
6 - Luthiery (a sloppy work will sound worse then a better one)

Then, after this, and I probably forgot some, woods coming into the game. i'm sure noone can accurately say which pups is on the guitar with a blind test, so you seriously ear the wood? Really?
In acoustic instrument, it's obviously different and wood becomes a much more important parameter, but for electric guitars...


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## pondman (Jan 28, 2014)

I play mainly acoustic guitar these days due to hand and arm injuries.
The pickup on a none electric acoustic "is" the timber/tone-wood and its amazing how one timber sounds completely different to another. I've never noticed this difference on electric guitars although I have been surprised at the sound of some of my home-builds being nothing like I imagined they would be when I plugged them in. 
Whenever I'm trying out a guitar to buy I always play it unplugged first mainly to listen to any set up problems. I always thought lighter body woods always sounded better unplugged but sounded exactly the same as the heavier version plugged in.

I'd be inclined to agree with the OP on this one.


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## asfeir (Jan 28, 2014)

10% of the tone is still a lot in my opinion. I mean it's surely audible.


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## patata (Jan 28, 2014)

sezna said:


> I agree with you. I play cello and bass in an orchestra, and the wood makes a _huge _difference. Almost completely defines the instrument. Same with acoustic guitars. However, electric guitars just don't rely on the wood to generate the sound, they rely on steel wires and electromagnets. Sure the wood makes a difference, but not nearly as noticeable as, say, your amp.



I,as a cello and double bass player,can confirm that.


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## Pat_tct (Jan 28, 2014)

As Stef Carpenter said: "The Guitar itself doesn't do anything. It's up to you to make it sound great"

With that in mind, if it wasn't for looks, stability, feel and weight I would care for the body wood.
If you can make a guitar sound great you can do it regardless of tonewoods.
And if you suck at creating great tones (which doesn't mean that you have to be a bad guitar player by any means) the best woods in the world wouldn't make your tone better.



just my opinion.


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## Grand Moff Tim (Jan 28, 2014)

You'd need a pretty large sample size for comparison in order to conduct an experiment that anyone would take seriously, and only the big boys in the guitar manufacturing world can really afford to do that. They're also the ones with the most to lose if it turns out tonewoods are a bunch of hooey, so I doubt they're going to put the money and effort into an experiment that might prove they've all been blowing smoke up our asses for sixty+ years.


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## shanejohnson02 (Jan 28, 2014)

I used to believe tonewood was a joke. Granted, I still believe that the amp and pickups by far play the most part in how a guitar sounds. That being said, there is a Chappers video floating around where they take two identical guitars and run them into the same amp via a a/b switch. The only difference is the wood. They even strum the strings in the same location. After watching that, I can definitely say that wood makes an audible difference.


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## Pat_tct (Jan 28, 2014)

you could easily have gotten that result with 2 guitars from the same run and both made out of ash.
let there be a difference in the density of the piece they used for the guitars and you could hear some difference.

but there is not a specific sound from one wood to another, that you couldn't have with the other tonewood.

get 2 swamp ash guitars with the same hardware and necks etc and one might sound darker than the other.

it is not granted that chappers stummed both guitars exactly the same. position and strength wise.

but this is basically and endless discussion and there is no real answer to the question as it is hard to make a 100% scientific study.

you would need 2 tonewoods with the exact same density, width, cut etc and the exact same hardware. and i believe that even 2 pickups from the same run can sound a little different.


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## shanejohnson02 (Jan 28, 2014)

Pat_tct said:


> you could easily have gotten that result with 2 guitars from the same run and both made out of ash.
> let there be a difference in the density of the piece they used for the guitars and you could hear some difference.
> 
> but there is not a specific sound from one wood to another, that you couldn't have with the other tonewood.
> ...



Did you even watch the video? I assure you that 2 pieces of swamp ash, regardless of how different they may sound, won't have *that* much of a difference.

That said, I do agree that it's not the most scientific study. But, it convinced me.


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## ghostred7 (Jan 28, 2014)

shanejohnson02 said:


> Did you even watch the video? I assure you that 2 pieces of swamp ash, regardless of how different they may sound, won't have *that* much of a difference.
> 
> That said, I do agree that it's not the most scientific study. But, it convinced me.


For those interested....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3jT22SWju4

The comments are amusing

EDIT: I'm not saying I agree or disagree with this video....was just helping out Shane there


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## Pat_tct (Jan 28, 2014)

yes i have watched the video as I am, as many people on here, quite a follower of chappers and I really like what he is doing and all that.

but that is what i was trying to say. i can't really tell if the following contributors to sound were exactly the same:

Pickups, Hand position while picking, strength of picking, neck woods (maybe they make a small difference, too), construction (i can't recall if it were bolt-on guitars. if they were does it make a difference if the bolts are more tight than on the other?)

there a many factors that just do that little to sound but it adds up.


well just my 2 cent

but i could be entirely wrong. i won't say that tone woods makes absolutely no difference in tone but there is just nothing that really won me over


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## ElRay (Jan 28, 2014)

Yo_Wattup said:


> Dense literally means heavy.



I'll pick some nits here:

Density is (weight/volume). Given two objects with the same volume, the denser one will be heavier, but density is not equivalent to weight.

Ray


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## ghostred7 (Jan 28, 2014)

Oh...and I unless I see a test performed with a robotic arm on a 100% exact chain (sans wood), I won't buy any video proof simply because a fraction of a mm in pick angle can change the sound. With two separate people doing the test, can't rely on that completely.

I do believe, as shown in that video, that different woods will effect stuff like sustain and ultimately feedback. Tonal coloring though, I'd have to see the controlled test results and their output in frequency output, not human ear comparison.


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## ElRay (Jan 28, 2014)

:deadhorse:

There's no doubt that a particular piece of wood may sound different than another piece of wood; however, "The Tonewood Myth" that every species of wood has unique, identifiable sound characteristics, really has no evidence.

I've said this before, but show me a true blind study where the experts can tell the wood in a series of guitars just by listening to the play through the same pick-ups, cable, amp, speaker(s), and I'll buy into the tone wood myth.

That said, I think most of the folks that are adamant that the tonewood myth is real, are referring to instruments they've played, so they're picking-up sympathetic vibrations that aren't begin heard by folks merely listening to what's coming out of the speakers.

Ray


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## HighPotency (Jan 28, 2014)

When it comes down to it, wood is an organic material. Like has already been said, no two pieces of wood will ever be exactly the same. They may have predictable characteristics (i.e. we know mahogany is typically fairly heavy and balsa wood is typically extremely light), but organic materials will always have some level of uniqueness.

The number of different factors that determine how a guitar sounds makes it impossible to say "A mahogany guitar will sound like ____" or "an alder guitar will sound like ___."

I think the quality of the wood is more important than the species. I'd rather have a 3 pound mahogany body than a 3 pound alder body, but getting a 3 pound mahogany body is really difficult because most of the mahogany that comes in is fairly new growth which tends to be quite dense. When picking an ash body blank, weight was the most important factor next to cost. I'm not as concerned with the top wood that I pick since it's typically not very thick and for aesthetic purposes anyway.

TL;DR - Quality of the cut is more important than species. No two guitars will sound exactly the same, but using high quality wood will ensure that however it sounds, it will sound good.


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## ramses (Jan 28, 2014)

ElRay said:


> :deadhorse:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yup.

Until there is a properly designed, double-blind study, with a large enough sample of both instruments and human subjects, there is no evidence of anything. Currently this is just speculation, anecdotes, biases, and major placebo effects, i.e., a myth.


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## mwcarl (Jan 28, 2014)

ramses said:


> Until there is a properly designed, double-blind study, with a large enough sample of both instruments and human subjects, there is no evidence of anything. Currently this is just speculation, anecdotes, biases, and major placebo effects, i.e., a myth.



I don't see what human subjects has to do with anything. If you can quantify the difference in audio signal between guitars built with different high quality woods in as identical in construction as possible that is enough. Then you can argue all you want about how much that difference can be identified by ear.

What would be interesting to me would be to know whether the people who believe that wood type has no noticeable effect on an electric guitar would make the same argument for an acoustic guitar.


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## Navid (Jan 28, 2014)

My question is: Why do people even care so much? Holy shit.


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## Prophetable (Jan 28, 2014)

Because people want to maximize the tone of their guitar.


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## 1b4n3z (Jan 28, 2014)

There's a really dedicated luthier here, who has collaborated in a research on the matter, and I tend to take his word for it - tonewoods do matter. But it may not be a very easy task to predict a certain tone out of a certain species. For example the if the luthier in question tries to emulate the sought-after tone of a fifties Les Paul, he would not choose contemporary mahogany and maple combination at all - they are not similar to the ones used back then. Spanish cedar and baltic birch for the top? - much closer  I think the field is too fixated on supplying tried-and-tested materials by and large - the actual tone desired might be achieved by a wholly different choice of materials. That's also one of the reasons I applaud the exotic wood guitar provision by 'smaller' manufacturers, often seen here discussing builds and whatnot.


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## abandonist (Jan 28, 2014)

If you play distorted and want to talk about tonewoods you're being an asshole.


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## eaeolian (Jan 28, 2014)

Ugh. I cannot believe people are actually agreeing with this guy. We desperately need our own version of The Book of Epic Fail.

With his argument, you might as well make guitars out of plywood. One out of 1000 of those will sound good, maybe. If you're lucky.

Wood is a part of the equation. I have never been let down by a solid body that sounds good unplugged - they always sound good plugged in, regardless of pickups. I have seen guitars with beautiful workmanship that were dead as doornails (a specific ESP SRC 7 comes to mind, but there have been plenty of others), and seen sloppily-assembled bolt-ons that just sang and sounded good no matter what pickups you put in them.

My experience (and physics, since string vibration is effected by the wood it's attached to, just like an acoustic) doesn't bear out your arguments. Having good wood matters.


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## eaeolian (Jan 28, 2014)

abandonist said:


> If you play distorted and want to talk about tonewoods you're being an asshole.



You're certainly being an asshole, and you can have a week to consider it.


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## darren (Jan 28, 2014)

eaeolian said:


> Having good wood matters.



That's what she said.


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## Prophetable (Jan 28, 2014)

eaeolian said:


> You're certainly being an asshole, and you can have a week to consider it.


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## InfinityCollision (Jan 28, 2014)

eaeolian said:


> Ugh. I cannot believe people are actually agreeing with this guy. We desperately need our own version of The Book of Epic Fail.


Was that really necessary or even warranted?



> With his argument, you might as well make guitars out of plywood.



I'll do you one better:

Official Luthiers Forum! &bull; View topic - The Torres Cardboard Guitar



There are a number of other such acoustics and classicals that have been built, and by all accounts they're quite serviceable. Maybe they don't sound like they're made of Brazilian Rosewood, but good builders have, to the extent that I've found such builds, produced nice guitars out of such materials. That's to say nothing of the various alternative materials that have seen use in electric guitars of late. By all accounts those still sound like electric guitars too.



> Wood is a part of the equation.


I don't think anyone's actually tried to argue that wood has exactly zero effect on an electric guitar's sound. Whether the effect is noticeable after significant electronic manipulation, on the other hand...

Before you write me off and fire off another "book of fail" reply, bear in mind I argued for some audibility of tonewoods earlier in the thread.


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## Necromagnon (Jan 28, 2014)

eaeolian said:


> My experience (and physics, since string vibration is effected by the wood it's attached to, just like an acoustic) doesn't bear out your arguments. Having good wood matters.


I don't really agree. The string vibrate because it is attached between 2 points. I'm pretty sure (and it's only speculation, didn't try but can be done easily by everyone) you can take out the pups, and place them on a separate board and place them over the strings, adn you'll have the same tone (at the imprecision of replacing exactly the pups at the same position).
You can also put a string on two separate points (i.e. that doesn't belong to the same structure or too an infinite one) and a pup on another separate structure, and you'll have still the (almost) same tone.

"[For electric guitars] _strings vibrate and perturbate a magnetic field, perturbations then transformed into an analogical signal. Everything else is just side effect." _(I don't remember which luthier said that.  )

For me, in terms of physics, wood cannont really impact. Here's how I see it (and I don't say I'm 100% right): the string vibrate and directly perturbate the magnetic field. Beside that, the vibration is transmitted on one side to the neck, and on the other side to the body. Lets call those wave N and B, respectively, for clarity purpose.
Wave N then moves along the neck and enters the body, slightly modified from it's original frequency due to neck stiffness, i.e. neck resonance frequency. Wave B is diffused in the body with a change in frequency due to body stiffness. Then, each wave to move to the other point (nut or bridge) to perturbate in their way the strings vibration. Note that there's a lot of damping on frequencies that are out of the resonance frequency in a structure. Then, wave N as been shifted from string vibration to keep mostly the resonance frequency and harmonics of the neck, and then enters the body with a total different resonance frequency (their's a so little probability that those two match that we can estimate the damping of wave N to be huge). Same goes for wave B.

PS: nevermind, this case is for a ponctual wave propagation, not a continous wave, my bad.

So, what I'd like to say here is that we can speculate with many theory, even a little physical, that will attest or not that wood is highly important. The only answer to the debate, imo, as been said a couple of times before:


> Until there is a properly designed, double-blind study, with a large enough sample of both instruments and human subjects, there is no evidence of anything. Currently this is just speculation, anecdotes, biases, and major placebo effects, i.e., a myth.


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## Necris (Jan 28, 2014)

eaeolian said:


> With his argument, you might as well make guitars out of plywood. One out of 1000 of those will sound good, maybe. If you're lucky.
> 
> Wood is a part of the equation. I have never been let down by a solid body that sounds good unplugged - they always sound good plugged in, regardless of pickups.



A JS series jackson warrior I have is a bunch of alder (allegedly) offcuts glued together and sandwiched between two pieces of what looks like particle board. The guitar sounded good enough regardless of what pickups were in it that it was the only guitar I used for about 4 years (2006-2010).

My Zion on the other hand sounds good acoustically but took a few different sets of pickups to get a good sound out of.

Many of my guitars are cheap yet don't sound much worse (if at all) than my far more expensive instruments.


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## eaeolian (Jan 28, 2014)

InfinityCollision said:


> Was that really necessary or even warranted?



Yep. Since that's where it ended up at the expats version of this forum, it seemed like I should (and could) get a chuckle out of the OGs that still come here. There's been at least three other threads about this here - and that's just the ones I remember. (Yes, I'm too busy to do a search.)



InfinityCollision said:


> I don't think anyone's actually tried to argue that wood has exactly zero effect on an electric guitar's sound. Whether the effect is noticeable after significant electronic manipulation, on the other hand...



*I* can hear the difference between good wood and bad wood in a guitar when I'm sitting in the room with it. In a mix, the better sounding guitar will (generally) need less EQ and "sit" better, all other things being as equal as they can be. It's not like I'm afraid of the gain knob, either.

That said, I usually couldn't tell you what kind of wood it is from a recording. I certainly can't on the dead ones. 

If you're using a POD on Insane (bad approximation of actual tone) with the gain cranked and EMGs, well, yeah, the wood isn't going to make *much* difference, but you probably don't care at that point - or you're going for something intentionally mechanical/non-guitar sounding.


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## eaeolian (Jan 28, 2014)

Necris said:


> A JS series jackson warrior I have is a bunch of alder (allegedly) offcuts glued together and sandwiched between two pieces of what looks like particle board. The guitar sounded good enough regardless of what pickups were in it that it was the only guitar I used for about 4 years (2006-2010).



Sure. You occasionally find a good sounding plywood Hondo from the '70s, too. Sometimes it just works.



> My Zion on the other hand sounds good acoustically but took a few different sets of pickups to get a good sound out of.
> 
> Many of my guitars are cheap yet don't sound worse than my far more expensive instruments.



Price isn't really what I'm talking about. I have a Turbo Series Zion that I paid about $700 for new (in 1989, but still...). It's not "expensive" wood, it's swamp ash with a maple/brazilian rosewood (still common at the time) neck. It sounds spectacular, and it wasn't expensive.

The art of guitar building should be picking the wood that will sound the best. Unfortunately, it's become picking the wood that looks the best, and "expensive" instruments anymore are frequently more about looks.


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## Winspear (Jan 28, 2014)

It's definitely significant. Maybe only 10% if you want to put a number on it, but really in terms of what "10%" could actually mean in the frequency spectrum - it's a hell of a lot. There will be differences in the tone of guitars where the only difference is wood. But as mentioned, it could happen with the same wood types too because of varying density. 
I don't think specific woods are too important - but thinking on a simpler level of light/dense, definitely a big difference. As another poster said, perhaps more (read: VERY) noticeable in terms of feel, which definitely has an impact on the way _I _play, at least. 
If I had to place things in order:
Technique - 30%
Pickups - 30%
Scale length, strings, setup, bridge - 25%
Wood densities - 15%


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## TRENCHLORD (Jan 28, 2014)

Joe Satriani even says that the thick chrome finishes on some of his guitars (especially the one that's flaking now real bad) makes for a certain special treble quality that none of his other guitars have.
And we know that guy has played a metric shit-ton of high quality guitars.


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## InfinityCollision (Jan 28, 2014)

eaeolian said:


> Yep. Since that's where it ended up at the expats version of this forum, it seemed like I should (and could) get a chuckle out of the OGs that still come here. There's been at least three other threads about this here - and that's just the ones I remember. (Yes, I'm too busy to do a search.)


Fair enough. As a non-OG it came off as rather tasteless considering that a similarly derogatory post earned a ban.



> *I* can hear the difference between good wood and bad wood in a guitar when I'm sitting in the room with it. In a mix, the better sounding guitar will (generally) need less EQ and "sit" better, all other things being as equal as they can be. It's not like I'm afraid of the gain knob, either.


Again, fair enough. I've had some success differentiating between clean recordings through the same amp/settings ("that's guitar A/B", not "that's mahogany/alder"). Distortion has always been more about other things to me.


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## eaeolian (Jan 28, 2014)

InfinityCollision said:


> Fair enough. As a non-OG it came off as rather tasteless considering that a similarly derogatory post earned a ban.



I didn't call people assholes while providing nothing of worth to the discussion. Somewhat different content level.


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## Duke318 (Jan 28, 2014)

In my experience, changing pickups doesn't change the sound nearly as much as most people think it does. In my Maple neck, bolt-on, basswood body JP6, no pickup in the world can make it sound like a mahogany, set-neck guitar. The lower-mids just are not there. This gives it other advantages however, making it sound much tighter and much better for lower tunings. You could put duncan blackouts in this thing, one of the most saturated high-gain pickups on the market, and it still wouldn't sound like a mahogany guitar. 

There really isn't much difference in audible sound, however. The difference is mostly in attack and feel. 

It's kind of a crapshoot. I have had mahogany guitars sound very thin and weak before. I would say that more often than not you will get a thicker sound out of a set-neck mahogany guitar vs. a bolt-on basswood guitar. There exists the Les Paul vs. Strat crowd for a reason, and both have their advantages and disadvantages.


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## mnemonic (Jan 28, 2014)

The problem I see with all these tonewood arguments is people against tonewood making a difference always cite recordings on the internet. You're missing out one pretty big part of the equation there; the feel. You know, that thing that makes some people hate POD's and digital gear, and like tube amps. 

Different woods definitely have a different feel when I'm playing, no matter what pickups are in them. Two of my guitars I've had for nearly a decade and I've cycled lots of different pickups through both of them, but theres one common factor. The very light-weight and acoustically-dull sounding guitar sounds dull and muddy no matter what pickups are in it, and the lively, bright and clear (acoustically) guitar sounds great pretty much no matter what.


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## cromaticas (Jan 28, 2014)

Wood does affect the tone,just not enough to notice with distortion on... And if you really think you can hear the difference,why not just get an eq?


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## J7string (Jan 28, 2014)

Tone wood does make a difference, but I'm not going to share my opinion because my thread of an identical topic got locked, so I'm not going to waste my valuable energy.


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## technomancer (Jan 28, 2014)

eaeolian said:


> I didn't call people assholes while providing nothing of worth to the discussion. Somewhat different content level.



You're also not a serial troll who should probably be perma banned by now...

That said I can't believe we're having this thread again


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## mwcarl (Jan 28, 2014)

Necromagnon said:


> I don't really agree. The string vibrate because it is attached between 2 points. I'm pretty sure (and it's only speculation, didn't try but can be done easily by everyone) you can take out the pups, and place them on a separate board and place them over the strings, adn you'll have the same tone (at the imprecision of replacing exactly the pups at the same position).
> You can also put a string on two separate points (i.e. that doesn't belong to the same structure or too an infinite one) and a pup on another separate structure, and you'll have still the (almost) same tone.



So you're saying that you couldn't hear a difference between a brass nut and a graphite nut? Or a zero fret?



Necromagnon said:


> "[For electric guitars] _strings vibrate and perturbate a magnetic field, perturbations then transformed into an analogical signal. Everything else is just side effect." _(I don't remember which luthier said that.  )
> 
> For me, in terms of physics, wood cannont really impact. Here's how I see it (and I don't say I'm 100% right): the string vibrate and directly perturbate the magnetic field. Beside that, the vibration is transmitted on one side to the neck, and on the other side to the body. Lets call those wave N and B, respectively, for clarity purpose.
> Wave N then moves along the neck and enters the body, slightly modified from it's original frequency due to neck stiffness, i.e. neck resonance frequency. Wave B is diffused in the body with a change in frequency due to body stiffness. Then, each wave to move to the other point (nut or bridge) to perturbate in their way the strings vibration. Note that there's a lot of damping on frequencies that are out of the resonance frequency in a structure. Then, wave N as been shifted from string vibration to keep mostly the resonance frequency and harmonics of the neck, and then enters the body with a total different resonance frequency (their's a so little probability that those two match that we can estimate the damping of wave N to be huge). Same goes for wave B.



I've read this several times and none of it strikes me as convincing that the resonance of the material between the nut/fret and bridge has nothing to do with the string. A study would be nice to get some answers, but until then your opinion is as valid as someone who thinks it's possible that the construction material (not just the wood, everything) contributes significantly to the instrument tone.


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## GunnarJames (Jan 28, 2014)

To contradict my last post (I believe wood contributes a different "feel" to the tone than a different sound) - Why don't we (the group who thinks tone woods don't affect tone, or not enough for it to matter) just play guitars made of plastic yet? I mean, they'd surely cost much less and need less maintenance. 

Outside of aesthetics, there has to be some other reason right?


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## The Reverend (Jan 28, 2014)

mwcarl said:


> I don't see what human subjects has to do with anything. If you can quantify the difference in audio signal between guitars built with different high quality woods in as identical in construction as possible that is enough. Then you can argue all you want about how much that difference can be identified by ear.
> 
> What would be interesting to me would be to know whether the people who believe that wood type has no noticeable effect on an electric guitar would make the same argument for an acoustic guitar.



That experiment has been done. The variance was tiny. However, defenders of tone wood didn't feel the study compensated for various differences. That's why you don't hear it referenced a lot. 

Electric guitars and acoustic guitars generate sound in two incredibly different ways. Comparing the two is literally like comparing apples to oranges.


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## The Reverend (Jan 28, 2014)

GunnarJames said:


> To contradict my last post (I believe wood contributes a different "feel" to the tone than a different sound) - Why don't we (the group who thinks tone woods don't affect tone, or not enough for it to matter) just play guitars made of plastic yet? I mean, they'd surely cost much less and need less maintenance.
> 
> Outside of aesthetics, there has to be some other reason right?



There's not enough demand. There's guitars made of out of stone, carbon fiber, plastic, all that jazz, but the average guitarist plays, you guessed it, guitars made of wood.


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## GunnarJames (Jan 28, 2014)

The Reverend said:


> There's not enough demand. There's guitars made of out of stone, carbon fiber, plastic, all that jazz, but the average guitarist plays, you guessed it, guitars made of wood.



Oh I know, I'm just having some fun opening another can of worms.


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## ormsby guitars (Jan 28, 2014)

I look forward to your MDF through neck models Searl. You'll be able to rip into them and cut the cost down, and take over the world.


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## demonx (Jan 28, 2014)

ormsby guitars said:


> I look forward to your MDF through neck models Searl. You'll be able to rip into them and cut the cost down, and take over the world.



Well, Torres already has made a paper Mâché classical guitar which sounded pretty damn good, so maybe that's the way to go?


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## Necris (Jan 28, 2014)

I guess after we get the effect of wood on tone sorted out the next area of discussion should be the effect of different types/thicknesses of finish on tone, effect of hardware material on tone, effect of different types of wiring on tone, effects of glue on tone etc. And then after that we can enter the realm of recording (with a microphone!) and evaluate every variable there too.

I think somewhere along the line the effect of wood on tone becomes pretty minimal.


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## sehnomatic (Jan 28, 2014)

May I introduce something new? Dampening factor.

We've all flicked rulers on our desks or tables, if you haven't, do it right now. Introduce as many variables as possible, ruler material, how hard you hold the ruler, put paper between the ruler and your table, put things on your ruler, put that thing on different positions on the ruler. Now what if the ruler parallels a guitar string?

What I'll propose, and like most "theories" guitar related, is just a theory: guitar "tone" comes from the interaction of everything and the string - then of course, string and pickup. 

If you rummage through the laws of conservation of energy, one can deduce that string vibration (sustain?) WILL be lost as it is transferred into the neck, body, hardware and back to the string - It's all a matter of how well it will transfer it back. 

Like your ruler, if the contact isn't good (not holding the ruler down well), the string/ruler will not vibrate for as long as energy is lost in the transfer back and forth. Hence good construction > good wood.

If you put anything else on the ruler that isn't solid (not being solid will dissipate energy) the ruler will not vibrate for as long. Arguably, tremolos, floyd roses in particular which will dissipate a lot of energy can affect your tone.

Punch your mattress, now punch your table. Which one returns the most energy? Again, arguably, density of wood affects tone.

I tried to approach guitar from a scientific perspective, but as with everything guitar: *nothing is or will be set in stone.*


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## ormsby guitars (Jan 28, 2014)

Necris said:


> I guess after we get the effect of wood on tone sorted out the next area of discussion should be the effect of different types/thicknesses of finish on tone, effect of hardware material on tone, effect of different types of wiring on tone, effects of glue on tone etc. And then after that we can enter the realm of recording (with a microphone!) and evaluate every variable there too.
> 
> I think somewhere along the line the effect of wood on tone becomes pretty minimal.



I spent the first two years doing these tests with a university. So, rather than speculation, I can make an opinion based on facts I discovered. For the most part my findings were as expected. But a lot were not. 

Actually one of the main reasons I don't do through necks without a fight, and I don't wind high gain pickups without first talking the customer into just trusting me to work out what he needs (rather than go on descriptions from a catalogue), with a free exchange if it isn't perfect... 3 swaps out of over 600+ pickups is a good indicator I reckon. 

But, I still say, if "tone woods" don't have an effect on the sound, build a bunch of plastic/MDF guitars, and then convince people to buy them. If you honestly believe that wood is a myth, niche your market and send all of us out of business  With a Cnc on the way Allan, this will be easy to do.

But, for me, whilst sound is of the most importance, looks need to be there too.


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## darren (Jan 28, 2014)

I have a Danelectro, which is a hollow plywood frame with a hardboard top and back. It sounds awesome&#8230; for what it is and what it does. 

But i don't want all of my guitars to sound like that.


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## Danukenator (Jan 29, 2014)

ormsby guitars said:


> I spent the first two years doing these tests with a university. So, rather than speculation, I can make an opinion based on facts I discovered.



I'd be curious to see the tests and the results. Can you share them?


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## DaddleCecapitation (Jan 29, 2014)

I've always held to the hypothesis that when the wood of a guitar resonates with the strings, it creates a feedback loop, giving the sound more sustain and characteristic harmonics. It always made sense to me that it's not just the pickups affecting the tone, but the bridge, neck joint, neck wood and body wood. They're all significant factors in my opinion.


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## AwDeOh (Jan 29, 2014)

ormsby guitars said:


> But, I still say, if "tone woods" don't have an effect on the sound, build a bunch of plastic/MDF guitars, and then convince people to buy them.



Everyone will go guitar-nerd crazy when I release my upcoming line of Spalted Brazilian MDF guitars. Just you wait.. 

How come you don't like neck-throughs? I may have missed an explanation in my sleep-deprived forum-skimming state.


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## Dayn (Jan 29, 2014)

I always thought it was simple physics.

The sound in an electric guitar is based on vibrating metal between two points creating an electric signal via the pickups. That is the sound that you hear.

But those points aren't floating in the aether. They're attached to something, in most cases, wood. The string vibrates and causes the body to vibrate. Those vibrations in the body feedback into the strings. The strings are affected by that, depending on how the body vibrates. If it's a sponge and that energy is lost, there's less effect on the strings.

Which explains why my basswood RG2228 sounds beautiful unplugged and vibrates well, whereas my old tune-o-matic guitar with much lower quality basswood sounded like... ...it sounded like a metal string vibrating between two points. The wood didn't play much of a role as my RG2228, because it simply wasn't as good a tonewood.

Correct me if I'm wrong...


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## DaddleCecapitation (Jan 29, 2014)

I think what OP is saying is that the preconception that Mahogany (Mahogany is a huge variety of species' by the way) sounds dark and Alder sounds bright is flawed. You can make a bright sounding guitar with Mahogany, for example.

I'd bet money that a comparison between a dead piece of pine and a loud piece of tonewood, something that rings out acoustically, would show that tonewood makes a difference.

I also don't doubt that an MDF plastic guitar would sound much worse than a Mahogany or Alder guitar.


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## The Reverend (Jan 29, 2014)

So this is what a guitar made of stone sounds like. Interestingly, it sounds like a guitar. 



EDIT: And here's one with some clean tones. Doth mine ears deceive me, or do I hear some Tele twang in there towards the end?


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## AxeHappy (Jan 29, 2014)

I think wood undeniably effects your tone. To one degree or anything. I won't put percentages on it because it will change based on your rig.

What I don't buy is that specific types of wood sound a certain way. There is *way* much variance in wood for that to be true.

Thusly, tone wood is largely irrelevant and it is up to good lutheir to to tone taps and what not and match woods together. 

Violin makers would shave off very specifc and small amounts of the sound board to control the tone. i would like to see more discussions about builder techniques and skill then the nebulous concept of all cuts of wood from one genus (as Mahogany includes a whole hell of a lot of species) sound pretty much exactly the same.


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## Necromagnon (Jan 29, 2014)

ormsby guitars said:


> But, I still say, if "tone woods" don't have an effect on the sound, build a bunch of plastic/MDF guitars, and then convince people to buy them. If you honestly believe that wood is a myth, niche your market and send all of us out of business  With a Cnc on the way Allan, this will be easy to do.


For me, it's more a matter of customer opinion than a matter of physics. It's like many things in life, you sometimes don't trust something, because you're used to something else.
I was speaking with a friend that is working on civil engineering, and was working with plastic reinforcement for concrete, instead of using steel. And it works perfectly. But I'm sure that if you build a huge sky scrapper with this technic, and then you inform people of how it has been built (plastic instead of steel), almost 75% of people will not want to get into that building because they fear the resistance of plastic.

Wood is very beautifull, and plastic... This is, for me, the most important part: if you want a trans-black finish, it's hard to do it on PMMA. 

So, I'm not saying that wood completely doesn't affect the tone. What I say is that is too small to be really heard without all the placebo that has been introduced by years of preconceived ideas. Acoustic tone is made by the wood transfering the vibration to the ambiant air. An acoustic top is 2/2.5 mm thick, a electric guitar body is 40mm thick. Factor of 20. The stiffness is proportionnal by the square of the thickness. So a factor of 20 on the thickness increase stiffness by a factor of 400! This is without taking into account that body woods in electric guitars are much stiffer than common spruce or cedar used for acoustic tops. So the acoustic sound of an electric is very very low, and we want to ear the different from a very small change in density/stiffness of wood? I'm not convinced.

Another good exampl, imo, are the Parker Fly. I owned one (I miss it so much :'( ), and it sounds ....ing awesome. Parker are made out of cheap poplar wood (yes, poplar is pretty cheap, very soft), and the body is very very thin. SO there's not so much room for the vibration, and there's a lot of damping because poplar is very soft. And still, it sounds huge. On the other hand, you have cheap Ibanez and other asian built guitars made out of poplar too that doesn't really sound that good... There's obviously a difference (I hope!) in wood quality between Parker and asian guitars, but it's, for me, very minor difference.

Finally, about the plywood guitars "sometimes" sounding great, I think it's more a problem a quality stability than anything else. Sometimes, you have a guitar that hase been well build, but not always. The process was not consistent.


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## 4Eyes (Jan 29, 2014)

yes, wood does affect tone. no, it isn't myth. it's simple physics as someone said. it depends on wood properties how much and how different are two pieces of wood.

[/end thread]


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## Necromagnon (Jan 29, 2014)

4Eyes said:


> yes, wood does affect tone. no, it isn't myth. it's simple physics as someone said. it depends on wood properties how much and how different are two pieces of wood.
> 
> [/end thread]


What a detailed argument.


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## danresn (Jan 29, 2014)

I definitely think it has an effect of the tone, it just isn't as large as some claim. I think the biggest part wood choice plays in a guitars tone is the way the harmonics decay.

I've always felt when playing that lighter Alder/Basswood bodies decay in a way I prefer over mahogany. This could all be in my head, but that's just how I feel.


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## JP Universe (Jan 29, 2014)

Noooo&#8230;. not this again  

I'm generally one of the 'Don't give a shit about the woods kinda guy'
I go for aesthetics on my guitars and let my pickups/effects/amp do the work.

I still 'feel' like my all mahogany KxK sounds the best by quite a bit no matter what I'm plugging into. Not sure if it's the Seymour Duncans in it however I'm not really a SD type of guy  Just feels like everything came together on that one&#8230;..

Generally though guitarists just need something else to talk about on the interwebz or brag to their friends about how good their ear is&#8230;. They go on about how they specced their guitar out THIS way because it brings out the 'lows/mids/highs and that it's no longer bright or muddy


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## shikamaru (Jan 29, 2014)

Navid said:


> My question is: Why do people even care so much? Holy shit.



I do. And the reason is that Im concerned about the ecological impact of harvesting wood. The fact that some species have gone extinct because of that is a concern.

I am now convinced that tonewood makes exactly 0 difference in how a guitar sound, and to me that is good news, because that means we can use alternative materials to do a guitar, or use species of wood that are not endangered without it making the slightest difference. I wasnt as much thinking about this as before I started interesting myself to luthiery, and building my own guitar.

That doesnt mean you can use anything. Weight is a concern, stiffness is another, esthaetics, stability, all these matter, but not tone in an electric guitar.

I did a prototype guitar out of scrap wood, when I build the real thing, I know that I can take tone^Wwood from a local supply, not one harvested at the other end of the world, from an overexploited kind of wood, and that is great !


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