Tone Wood Tester: One guitar to test them all
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- čas přidán 25. 12. 2018
- Here's the more scientific follow up to my study. Check out the follow up videos here:
• Tone Wood Tester
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Original video: • "Tone Wood" Blind Test...
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Message heard loud and clear. Every time I play onstage I will make sure I am resting my guitar against the stage wall for maximum tone.
And frankly, just stand offstage.
maybe just have someone else play so I can take a seat and rest.
@@beatmasterbossy would that be a tone seat?
Just lay it down on the stage, that way ALL the connected walls will pick up the tone 😅
Want it louder raise pickups instead of standing touching a wall lol
The funny thing is that if you brace the guitar against something very rigid and massive, that will effectively stiffen the guitar and reduce transfer of vibrations from the string to the guitar. But if you touch it to something softish, it will tend to damp vibrations, i.e., the guitar will vibrate almost as much anyway and the soft thing it's against will absorb much of the energy. (Damping.) And if you touch it to something resonant, what will happen depends on whether the resonant frequencies coincide with the resonant frequencies of the guitar.
what a sweet kid im glad that you not only made him feel included but that you kept his input in the video, i hope to be a father like you someday
Thanks. He's very involved in all my silliness :)
Who Is the kid in the vid?
@@tormaks that's my son, Vance. we sometimes make stuff together at czcams.com/users/vancemaker
tim sway he seems like a really smart kid! You remind me of my friends father, one of the best people I know.
Keep rocking, great video - love how you went about testing.
You will.
If you wanted to get super extra nerdy, you could build a cradle to hold each guitar, with a spring-loaded plectrum arm that could strum the strings in the identical way, with identical force every single time. That might help the internal validity of your sustain and resonance data. Great video, thanks so much!
Someone did just that to compare a wood-bodied strat vs a plexi one. czcams.com/video/5vgwaiScrwA/video.html
8:29 Baseline
8:53 Mahogany
9:16 Poplar
9:37 Swamp Ash
10:05 Canarywood
10:25 Reclaimed Doug Fir
m.czcams.com/video/n02tImce3AE/video.html
I can’t hear any difference at all
@@einsam_aber_freiI can. His guitar isn’t as in/out of tune each pass…😂
There's an oscillation that varies in length on each one. The door has the shortest one and Poplar has the longest. Mahogany sounds slightly less bright too.
If there's one thing I'm sure about after watching this video, it's that tonewood won't save you when the guitar is out of tune. :P
That's what i was thinking
one thing that "could" be argued is that an out of tune guitar will resonate with compromised conditions versus a guitar in tune might resonate better because the notes are more harmonically aligned.
@@bobpascarella4496 Good point but now you've got me even more curious - most of these tonewood tests have focused on sonic qualities and frequency spectra. Has anyone ever done a test that measures their tuning stability? Specifically if a guitar body made of stiff wood like walnut holds its tune better than a (comparatively) more flexible wood like basswood?
@@garrettodonnell4177 id like to see that
Garrett O'Donnell Interesting... my logic would suggest that less string vibration equates to less extremes of amplitude, which equates to less string pull at the saddle/nut. Not sure how the comparison of harmonic orders would stack up in terms of movement. I’d automatically think that resonant low order harmonics would provide more stability issues but maybe higher orders provide more energy, so the harmonic order sustain would be the key factor. How would the saddle/nut pressure effect that study? Would a less stable tuning on an oscilloscope translate to an unpleasant aural experience?
I haven’t got a fucking clue... I’ll get back to my bath 😉
Dude you gotta patent the neck and body blank shapes because this is genius. You could sell necks with all the critical components and body blanks for tone separately so buyers can pick their preferred tone wood. Honestly it really is genius and it's got commercial potential.
If you want to sensibly arrange the jack for the cord, the pickup selector, the volume and tone knobs and maybe another pickup, it might get tricky, though.
@@YTOnceAgain Yeah you're right. Could extend the neck piece out a bit to fit the pickup selector. Not sure about the cable jack though. He'd probably have to use a verticle (relative to the top) input jack. Maybe under the saddle near where tone knobs would be on most guitars.
People could snap on different shapes for their guitar to.
@@NickPuentes Yeah dude this better be a thing soon
If he didn't before he posted the video, then he is SOL. The design has been disclosed now. That makes it "unpatentable" if he didn't put in at least a Provisional Patent application beforehand.
I think the people complaining about strumming position and velocity/force kind of justify the point that you shouldn't care that much about tonewood. If you're a human being playing the guitar and human error makes such an impact on the results, it kind of negates whatever difference there is in tonewood to begin with.
I'm not saying there isn't a difference, I'm just saying if there is a justifiable difference between two types of wood, it's got to be obvious enough that the human element is being outweighed by it. Otherwise, all you have to do is correct for the difference with technique.
bingo
What they actually mean by tonewood is actually tone as in colour or finish or shade haha
I happen to like plain tops better than the figured ones so I'd rather have a PRS CE24 satin than the more expensive one like the CU24 or McCarty
@@iganpparamarta8813 that is not what they mean by tonewood. They're referring to the sound addressed to the wood.
@@seanedwards94 I know just trying to make unfunny jokes
@@iganpparamarta8813 😂 I see, I'll make like a tree and leave
This video gets a like for the interaction with your son alone. I love that you invited him in and didn't shew him away! Good job in the Dad department!
I love that you had your son come on and explain his perspective and theory. I applaud your parenting and craft. I aspire to be a luthier myself.
Sounds like a tenth of a turn on the tone pot would cover the range of all "tone woods" in existence for an electric guitar.
Oh, even less than that. You could pick slightly closer or farther away to the bridge and that would cover the differences. Most of the differences I could hear seemed to be more coming from hitting the chord a tiny bit slower, so the higher notes were more pronounced through the sustain, or from slightly heavier picking technique. In order for this to be properly scientific, it would have to be a single picked string with the same pick and many full length strums from each body type. It would also help out a fuck ton if each was put through a spectrum analyzer at their peak and then halfway down again. That would give some actual quantifiable data to go off of instead of some something seemingly designed to induce a placebo effect
It sounds like there's a slight difference in bass and mid content though. FI, the Poplar sounds like there's less bass as well as more highs than Mahogany and some others. The SA has a slight midrange dip compared to the Mahog. I like those two the best through the amp. They sound "balanced". The Fur is nice. Maybe lacking in mid-bass and sustain. It's all pretty subtle.
@@GCKelloch I've tried and failed to find any credible evidence that 'tone wood' has any practical application in electric guitars. Acoustic guitars, yes, but electric guitars can be made out of anything you like because it's always other components that are most important
@@GCKelloch turn the mids knob on your amp a bit then
@@AnArmoredMarch A robot that picks at a preset force and angle would be good, that simplifies it a lot. Once that and pickup height etc... are near perfectly consistent it would be easier to tell a difference. But they already did scientific analysis and the conclusion was along the lines of "the difference is noticeable in a spectrum but not to the human ear in any meaningful way". So an oscilloscope can tell if it's a alder or mahagony Strat, we likely cant. Still I'm fascinated by the difference in tone between my near identical Gibson and Epiphone V. One mahagony one Korina. Unplugged? Night and day. Non musicians can tell. Plugged in? Well now I put better pickups in the Epiphone so it sounds a lot better than the Gibson. I'll put the same ones in the Gibson and test again but I noticed the weirdest thing. My Epiphone is standard Gibson 628 mm scale length. The Gibson is 620 mm!!!! Didn't notice for 15 years but I measured to compare pickup position on Les Paul vs SG vs Flying V (closest together and closest to bridge on SG much further apart and higher up on Les Paul and even more so on Flying V. The Neck pickup is even higher up, which I think is why Vs have that gorgeous warm tone on the neck. The pickup is just directly against the fingerboard while on a Les Paul the final dummy fret is a bit longer... The Toneriders are definetly outperforming the MUCH more expensive Burstbuckers. Which I'm selling. They're good but not that good. AC2 all the way. My Korina sounds like Lucy now. As bright as a Telecaster and as warm as..m well any PAF equipped guitar really. Put in a coil split and people think my V is a Tele. May as well put humbuckers in the Tele and annoy everyone at once.
Thanks for this! You just proved what I've been thinking for 30 years. I've been playing daily since 76 and I can't tell a difference from wood alone on electric guitars. Acoustic is totally different! The wood makes a huge difference!
in fact, it's SUPER-wrong.
EX: you can play 3 IDENTICAL guitars made by robots... and all 3 will FEEL and SOUND differently! (It's kinda crazy.) LIke, i owned two of the SAME make of a Chevy car, made the SAME YEAR... and they drove very different etc. It's impressive how that happens.
Also, EVERY single time I've done BLIND sound tests, not once have people guessed correctly. (Rule of Thumb: if experts say it, the OPPOSITE is exactly true. Like how my LIGHTEST guitars all have far more sustain than my HEAVIEST guitars.)
Tone wood is almost always BS.
Ya gotta love (i mean hate) the drummers with 25 cymbals... when even drummers in the audience can only detect like 5 different sounds! Ditto 10 toms!
Dumpy Goodness ... the light guitar having more sustain makes sense. Sound is energy. The lighter body will require less energy to vibrate (and thus sustain sound). This tells us that the energy input is a constant, as from a single strum, then lighter body will vibrate for a longer period of time.
I would not be surprised at all if it will be discovered that there is a perfect weight for guitar body for each individual wood species, in terms of volume and sustain.
Of course really, all of this is kind of moot anyway, as components, and more importantly playing style have a HUGE effect on tone. I can make my Strat and my 335 both sound like I am running a way peddle, just by changing the angle of my pick repeatedly.
So while different woods most likely produce subtly different tones, the musician is the biggest factor.
That said, I love the approach and the testing in this video.
@@geebee3d You have hollow body guitars with dark sound.. some hagstrom viking with p90s for example. Most hollow body jazz players like brighter pickups and setups, has nothing to do with wood. Sound in an electric guitars comes from strings vibration over the pickups, the more the guitar vibrates the more energy is loss from the strings the less sustain you will have.
@@geebee3d I don't agree with your conclusion regarding sustain. More energy for equal amplitude doesn't mean that the body ever reaches equal amplitude - on the contrary we should expect the denser material to reach a lower amplitude unless there is more energy transferred to it, but I don't see why more energy would transfer. Density also doesn't imply anything about the loss factor of the material, which will determine internal energy loss for a given amplitude.
That being said, if a less dense material moves enough that the acoustic loss (vibration converted to sound) is greater, then the sustain would be less. This is shown to be true in acoustic guitars, where sustain is inversely proportional to the peak sound pressure due to loss of energy to the air. Any solid-body electric guitar should be so stiff that in-practice this is fairly negligible though, along with the loss factor from the body vibrating, as amplitude will be near-zero in all cases.
Effectively, any electric guitar body should be so stiff that all string vibrations are below the body resonance. This is because stiffness is proportional to the thickness of the material cubed - it should be fairly obvious from this that stiffness is astoundingly high for a solid-body electric (25-45mm of wood) compared to an acoustic guitar top (2-3mm of wood) for any material from which an electric guitar would reasonably be constructed. Discounting bracing, a 35mm solid-body electric built with the same wood as a 2.5mm acoustic guitar top would be over 2,700x as stiff and have a proportionally higher resonance.
We also shouldn't confuse density with stiffness - stiffness to density ratio is probably a much more useful measure for this purpose if you're trying to pick just one figure because both relate to speed of sound and resonance. Regardless, physics supports the result of this video which shows practically no difference between the electric guitar bodies. Once the stiffness pushes the resonance up high enough you just get efficient vibration transmission regardless of the relatively small difference in Young's modulus or loss factor of the materials used. Mechanical isolators rely on the opposite of this, using an interface with much lower resonance than the input vibrations in order to reject them (like the shocks in your car). Only vibrations at or near resonance will reach significant ampltitude from the weak driving force of the strings.
tl;dr: Any wood will sound nearly identical in an electric guitar with a thick enough body.
@@maudiojunky Nice breakdown..)/* Logical..)
The info I’ve gathered from several different tests like this is the following: there is a difference in frequencies and sustain, BUT it is so infinitesimally-small that the player’s strumming, or a simple nudge of a tone/EQ knob can accomplish or obviate with minimal effort.
In other words, it doesn’t matter! Great job on the guitars!
But if those small differences affect the way you feel the guitar due to how it resonates as you play, it’s safe to say it matters.
Just built a new computer. Decided to make the case out of maple so my Spotify playlists would sound snappier.
Ryan Galloway Make it out of rosewood- maple is warmer😉
LMAO.... That's a great idea.
Are you sure they don't sound sappier?
@@Datanditto i know this is a joke but the general consensus is the exact opposite.
Vinnie Conklin I have 10 Strats. Six are rosewood finger boards, four are maple. Much to my surprise, TO MY EARS- the maple is warmer, darker and the rosewood is brighter and snappier. Dont let your eyes tell you the opposite.
Great, now the tone wall debate begins.
hahaha! I only use gypsum, never plaster or sheet rock
Cement blocks for life!!! 🤪🤪🤪
Cedar may resonate far better. Try jamming in an old cedar closet! Hit the walls! ;)
Currently 3d printing a guitar and watching this video made me way more confident in actually wanting to complete the project. Nice work!
That system is a sure winner. I remind us all that this is electric guitar. Acoustic is a different beast what comes to properties of any wood.
08:29 Baseline
8:53 Mahogany
9:16 Poplar
9:37 Swamp Ash
10:05 Canarywood
10:25 Reclaimed Doug Fir
10:46 Solid Core door
12:26 MDF
People who can't hear differences there must not be paying much attention.
They litterally sound the same lmfao
@@yungchill69 They do. The first one is the most different tho obviously.
@@yungchill69 You're "litterally" not listening if you can't tell the difference.
@@iunnox666 you must be smoking meth.
I love CZcams for allowing me to see this kind of comparison and thanks for the sheer amount of effort to produce this video. Nice job!
Just great! Please continue this "tonewood" series and include weird materials. Plastic, metal, cardboard, rubber etc. Your son is great too, you should be proud. Good job man!
This video came back to my recommendations again, I appreciate the time and effort you put on the experiment, it was very fun to watch again! Cheers!
I am 61 years old - I've been playing and thinking about woods since I was ten. I went into engineering as a way of making a living. Having given this considerable thought I would like to give a simple breakdown of why the density and to a much lesser extent grain patterns in the wood of a solid body guitar influence the sound. The guitar is made of four components plus strings - the neck, the nut, the bridge, and the body. Some really great analysis is indicated on several videos - these explain what the string does after it is plucked and how the harmonic content is created. If we had infinite mass on the body and neck that harmonic content would be unaffected by the body or the neck - it would be consistent and without external influence. But we have components that vary in density, geometry and interface (neck-body joint). All will influence the string response. The neck is like a beam cantilevered off of the body, the body is the anchor. A neck can be fat or lean - this will influence how it responds to string vibration. The thicker the less it will vibrate and affect harmonics on the string. The strings are anchored at the nut and the bridge. Both the nut and the bridge transfer the string vibration to their anchor points. So the nut is the transfer point for the neck and the bridge is the transfer point for the body. When plucked the string vibrates and harmonics are created down the length of that string. That vibrational content is transferred through the nut to the neck. If the neck were infinite mass it would not influence the harmonic content of the string. But the neck has mass that is easily influenced, vibrates and injects that vibration back into the string via the nut with its vibrational response. The density (wood species) of the neck and the thickness or stiffness will determine how the strings are influenced. The same thing happens with the bridge. It transfers the vibration of the strings to the body, the body resonates and that vibrational response is transferred back through the bridge to the strings, which then affects the harmonic content of the string vibrational pattern. Everything that goes into the strings is then transferred to the pickup. It is a system. It is a recipe of parts. Different woods and geometries for the body will vibrate differently in response to the string vibration, the same with the neck. Nothing on the guitar is isolated from the other parts. It would take infinite mass of the body and neck for influence on the strings to reach zero. Do you feel the body of your guitar vibrating when you pluck a string or strum a chord? If the string didn’t transfer its vibration to the body you would feel nothing. If the body is vibrating, do you think that is isolated from the strings? - If so, how? It is a system of moving parts, each with its own vibrational characteristics, each influencing the other. The neck and body also share a joint and they influence each other.
Let’s look at construction. Neck - body interface (joint) will affect how those two affect each other. A set neck with lots of surface contact (long tenon Les Paul) will allow those two to vibrate separately and together better than a joint that has less interface. One is not better than the other - they just produce different sets of outcomes at the strings. Different woods (densities and therefore different responses) between the body and neck will have different outcomes at the strings. A solid single wood type body will behave differently than a body constructed of two or more woods with different densities (Les Paul). A maple neck on a Les Paul will sound different than a mahogany neck. A rosewood neck on a Stratocaster will sound different than a maple neck. A neck-through will sound different than a set or screwed on neck. A partial neck-through (as in the tonewood test unit) will respond different to either a set or screwed on neck or a whole neck-through. A neck-through represents the same wood density through the length and the body woods added to it will have considerably less influence on the sound of the strings because the bridge transfers to that neck wood directly and the side body pieces (wings) are only responding to what the neck wood sends to them - and that response has to travel back through the neck wood through the bridge and back to the strings. The body wing vibrational influence is minimized through that transfer. In the partial neck-through again the bridge is mounted to the neck wood and although the mass of this neck wood is less than a full neck-through due to it being a fraction of the body thickness it still influences the passing of the body’s tonewood vibration back to the strings; less of the tonewood’s influence will come across at the strings. In a Les Paul the maple cap is fully bound to the mahogany tonewood and both influence the sound at the string - each wood’s characteristic resonance comes through because the bridge anchor reaches both woods.
Each wood species has a very specific grain type and density range and will have response or resonance that matches that range. Some guitars made out of the same wood sound better to the player than others. One guitar might be put back by a player just to be picked up and purchased by another as the “one” that “hits” it. Most of that is due to wood density - some of it is in the electronics and a minor portion by the quality of construction - but that variation is very slight and mostly fixable.
The woods used on a guitar vary in density. Maple is much more dense than mahogany. Each species of wood has a range of densities that are determined by growth - the more water the faster the growth and the density drops in the range proportionate to the growth rate. To a degree the grain structure affects density in woods like mahogany because the grain is open (porous) and where large variations of grain occur the density in a region of the tree will vary proportionately. One piece of mahogany having consistent grain will have consistent density and resonance where another piece having significant grain pattern changes will have an inconsistent vibration pattern. I have seen mahogany pieces with severe changes in grain structure that seemed to resist vibration. This I attribute to cancelations caused by inconsistent densities through the piece impeding the natural vibration (resonance) due to higher grain density, or impedance, in a portion of that piece. To put it simply - it is a dead piece of wood. This accounts for the variations we see in instruments using mahogany. Woods like alder and maple are closed grain woods and have little variation due to grain pattern changes. Growth rate determines wood density in these trees. Faster growth (lots of water) lower density. Each wood type has its own density range. Eastern hard maple is much denser than western big leaf maple. Both are considered dense compared with alder or a similar wood.
Summing this up - the woods, shapes of body and neck, joint type, and the pickups and electronics all affect the sound coming out of the guitar. It is a recipe. I liken it to what goes on in the kitchen and I prefer to think of guitars as unique in sound from each other. To me the song will dictate which guitar to use because it should serve the song and enhance it. I have heard incredible combinations of different guitars over the years; I have heard guitar selections that made no sense. I like to think this was the engineer rather than the player who made the bad choice.
I think this is how a guitar works - and I have been thinking about it since I carved my first neck at eleven because it was too fat for my fingers. At fourteen a dear friend’s father who really positively influenced my first band was trying to convince me that given the same pickups a guitar made out of concrete would sound the same as one made out of mahogany. I really think he was just giving me something to think about. I did. Thanks Norm.
I would be interested in your interpretation of the article I listed at the top, since you are an engineer and familiar with concepts like scientific testing and f tests of frequency distributions and so on:
physicae.ifi.unicamp.br/physicae/article/view/physicae.9.5
I believe it is an open and closed case that the vibration of the body makes absolutely no significant difference.
But if you have another interpretation I would be interested in hearing it.
@@valueofnothing2487 I have read so many papers on experiments and summaries regarding this matter. All I could get translated on this was the summary. I did however also look at the tables supplied and attempted to understand the approach and construct of the experiment. I can only comment on the data - which appears to have been manipulated for the sake of simplifying the job of reading those results. If you could overlay these response plots as they appear you would definitely see differences. In the summary the author states : "The harmonic spectra of each guitar are compared to each other and there are no significant differences between them. Thus, the variations of timbre of electric guitars, according to the results obtained here, depend on factors other than the wood of the body itself..." The differences are in the data as provided - I can clearly see them, yet the author states "there are no significant differences". If you could see the raw data and compare it the results would probably be even more compelling. Anyone can make an experiment and state conclusions. The reality is that nothing stands alone in an instrument. This is a difficult question to answer and the setup to get conclusive data is not apparent. Is the harmonic content truly represented to the reader? I seriously cannot conclude anything absolute from this paper one way or the other. But if you look at the response tables and if you are capable of discerning the differences by comparing sections of the response curves you will see the differences. Given this manipulated data would I say "no significant differences"? Give me the raw data. If all I had was what is presented I would say it appears as though there are differences, but the data is too tansformed to give an opinion. If pressed I would say the data presents differences that cannot be quantified in terms of actual content and differentiation - but there are apparent differences portrayed in the data given. I would never state "no significant differences". That is a stretch.
@@valueofnothing2487 I have a Stratocaster with a solid rosewood neck that sounds nothing like a solid maple neck. The difference is stunning. I can tell right away the difference between a Les Paul with a mahogany neck and a maple neck. They sound very different. Some people can hear these differences - others can't. That certainly becomes part of the equation at some point. I know a guy who can tell you which microphone would be best given your voice. He can hear all the way up to nearly 25,000 hertz. I wouldn't want to be burdened with all that goes on the average person doesn't hear but is in many man-made environments. Electronics often have circuits that resonate at frequncies in that range - it would drive me nuts. I can hear up to about 16,000 hertz. That is more than enough. My point in my discussion was that this is more complicated than most of us realize and I have not seen one experiment that closed all of the concerns introduced by the experiment itself, let alone answered all of the questions one might have regarding instrument response. Many of these authors arrogantly state conclusions. It happens in science all of the time. Even peer reviewing doesn't guarantee that the conclusions are correct. Don't even get me started. It can be a real minefield. I offer my interpretation based on 50 years of looking at this and wondering. It doesn't matter to me if you agree or disagree.
@@robertduvall7392 it was just a f test of the frequency distribution where the null hypothesis is that the frequencies are all the same. And it could not be rejected at the 95% confidence interval, I presume. Comparing frequency distributions is kind of standard fair in statistics.
when I look at all the graphs I could not see any significant differences.
In terms of what the human ear can hear I would say if you could look at the graphs closely which I am unable to do you could claim that if something is off by a decimal or a half a decimal then there might detect.
maybe I will look at it in the PC and see if I can see differences.
Can you give me an example of one of the differences that you think was different? So I could take a look. You have to admit don't you that they all appear the same shapes roughly right? when one falls the others rise and when one of them fall on they all of them rise? If you step back and look at the big picture it is if you some kind of duplication pain like Thomas Jefferson had or something.
@@valueofnothing2487 We are talking about details, not big picture stuff. There might be a peak at just a few frequencies and a drop at a few frequencies that alter the overal characteristic of the sound. I've done a lot of experimenting with guitars over the years and been surprised at the differences. I really don't know what else to say. Again, if you could see and really analize the original signals and compare detail you would see the difference. Take a guitar and just change the neck wood on it. We are talking about a guitar straight through a clean amp. Certainly if you process the signal through all kinds of effects then all bets are off. The same setup is used on three body boards with the same neck. czcams.com/video/nrEar7dgVwI/video.html If you cannot hear the difference then I certainly can't help you. I don't think you can use statistics to define or describe what people hear.
I'd say get in touch with Adam Savage to build a robot that can strum precisely at different velocities to get an exact reading on how each performs at different volumes. I'd love to hear each of them recorded acoustically with a nice condenser mic, and a contact mic on the body as well. Awesome work with a very creative solution!
And once that's done, use Logic's "Strip Silence" function on each recording so that anything below a certain threshold of volume will be removed. You'll be able to objectively determine where each sustain tail ends.
@Graham Rathbone more extensive testing with repetition and further evaluation is definitely part of it. id just like to see a robot strumming arm with variable picking angle and velocity that can repeat the experiment with inhuman accuracy. that and more ways to observe the difference thus contact mics on the body
There are two ways to create sound on an electric: a moving string, and by moving the pickup under the string (wood vibration). Hence, all that counts is what the pickup "hears." With an electric, you analyze what comes out of the pickup, not the vibrations that come off the body of the guitar.
it would seem that doing an acoustic measurement would be flawed. In a solid body guitar we only have the pickup output as our main source to determine tone. The best science is to measure output and not surface resonance.
A pendulum with a pick would strum the guitar the same every time. Also, holding a chord with your fingers really changes sustain. Just tune to the chord you want to play and have the pendulum play it.
I have watched half a dozen times but get never tired of this upload! Love your channel!
Your son stole the show. Man I applaud your parenting. That's the way my dad taught me. Looking back after 40 years I am so thankful he took the time to explain and capture my interest.
4 min in and I liked, subbed, commented, and put the bell on. I can already tell that your channel is amazing. You are so thorough and creative.
Best part of the video is seeing how you interact and talk to your son. He seems like a great kid and you are a good dad including him in your work and inviting his opinion. As for the results I am not all that surprised that the differences between woods are extremely subtle. Of course real guitar construction is not always that simple and straightforward, most of my nicer guitars have combinations like mahogany body base + figured/carved maple tops, but I think the conclusion of the wood choice only making subtle differences in output, sustain and tone with all else being equal is probably fairly accurate. One suggestion though to have made the baseline test a little bit more interesting and accurate though would to have recorded 3 or 4 chords like Open E, A barre (5th fret), C barre (8 fret) and E barre (12 fret) so you could get at least a little data on the wood response at different frequencies. But you did a good job with the testing based on a single chord for comparison.
The differences between woods are actually rather dramatic IF you are careful about wood selection when preparing to build a new guitar. Picking out better than average woods for one guitar and below average woods for another will result in a pretty significant variance in tone and sustain that is easly noticed.
dude the stuff you make looks so cool. glad i found your video
Wow, what a guy! I admire all the work you've done. Subscribed.
Incredible brother. But, I couldn’t stop thinking about the business opportunity here. You sell me a really well built core with great pick ups, bridge, pots, switches etc. And then offer every shape, color, finish, etc. For me to mount my core in. You could even offer custom designs. Maybe it’s already been mentioned or maybe it’s already available in some form and I don’t know about it....but just the thought of being able to do this I find unique and exciting....get the idea to the patent office.
There are a few others that make swappable guitars and I've done it before. Search "multitar." The one that makes the most sense are pickup packs that pop in and out easily. That's where you can REALLY get a new guitar! I plan to do some messing around with that someday :)
There is somniumguitars.com , they make guitars with different pickup packs. There are a few youtube demo video's by Justin Johnson.
Even more so, if you wanted a red body on a dual humbucker guitar and a green body triple single coil guitar today, and a red strat and a green les paul type tomorrow, it's possible.
This is something I've thought about before. Scale length is counted from the bridge, thus longer or shorter necks is added at the top of the neck. This means we could have a system where you can bolt together any combination of parts. 4-strings, 6, 8, 4 pairs, etc. 14 inch scale length, 20, 25, whatever. You could make any combination.
The idea is that you buy the bridge housing and neck, and then any of hundreds of body designs. Bolt them together and away you go.
Lets say you want a mandolin size and shape body, but 4 strings (uke style), 20 inch scale length like a baritone or octave mando. Easy. You can now make your own hybrids.
@@valueofnothing2487 There's more to the "slave labor" story of Guangdong, et. al, than we hear and of course a CNC machine doesn't care what country it runs in! I don't intend to manufacture this guitar, but I do make guitars here in Connecticut from locally sourced and salvaged materials for those who want that sort of thing and prefer that story to the "made in China" alternative. My mission statement from the get-go has been "custom and responsibly made in the US for around $1k or less".
What a massive amount of work! Kudos!
Make a body out of ramen noodles and superglue. 🎸
are you listening to that awful Paul Jackman podcast instead of mine, Reclaimed Audio? (Obviously I am NOT lol)
Lmao!😂👍😎🎸🎶
Reclaimed ramen!
@@presmasterflash7555 regurgitated noodles - method: find a guitarist whose playing makes up puke; eat a load of ramen noodles; get them play a bit - bucket ready...
There is a video where guys make a guitar like this:
czcams.com/video/dIWxoHl9J6I/video.html
Wow! Respect the effort and dedication to take us on this discovery. Thanks for your hard work and passion for the guitar! 👊
I'd bet pallet wood would blow all those away!
you can't make a guitar out of trash!
@@timsway You sure can. You can make shot cups, maps, legs, coasters, the whole nine yards, all out of trash...err, pallets
@@lfmoliveira1 Stay tuned to Paul's channel and remember my exact response to him :)
@@timsway People made guitars out of fucking cardboard. And it sounded just like any other guitar would.
So pleeeeeease ....
I built an off set hollow body out of milled down pine wall stud 2x4s and a pine shelving board top from Home Depot, basically as a challenge to my self, and it plays and sounds better then my LesPaul custom and my SG standard.
I think that the biggest dependency is likely on your neck piece as it contains the entire length of the string. If you look at how waves are transmitted in a physical medium or even electric waves, you see that when a wave hits a surface that has a lower resistivity, part of the wave goes into that material and part of the wave reflects back. As the resistivity increases (as the guitar gets more hard) more of the wave reflects back, meaning more energy stays in the string. So if the neck has give, energy from the string will vibrate the neck, if the neck has no give, the string will keep more energy and will vibrate at a higher amplitude and longer (that is my theory). Ultimately the magnetic field of the pickup is not being affected by the material in the wood, the sound is purely happening between the string and the pickup. The wood as just acting as a dampener.
This is such a cool experiment. The modular guitar design was so clever. Bravo.
Best video I have seen so far on "tone wood" well done!
You genius, this might be the future of guitars. Maybe in the future we can buy all the shapes we want and just carry a neck with pickups like these
The material & stuff used 2 mate the neck 2 the bridge & pickups is a lot of the sound, & his test keeps that all the same, so makes the test pretty much useless.
Would be useful to put it through a frequency analyser to see if it changes the overtones of notes
People have done that, there is a difference, it’s small, but obviously there’s going to be a difference since the whole interment does resonate.
There would be a difference because each strum is inconsistent.
That you can't tell the difference between without a computer
Old video but really liked you guys ! A friend of mine shared this with me . Thanks from Quebec !
cool stuff Tim - thanks for this video
This was ALMOST perfect.
One thing....well, two things, really:
1: you need to rig a strummer which will strum with the exact same pressure and speed and angle of attack every time, as well as the same spot on the strings.
2: you need to strum it OPEN. because slight variations in how hard you press the strings and how far your fingers are from the frets will affect the sound.
@Human Centered this comment encompasses the real answer that all these videos will come back too. The wood is a very small part of the ensemble that creates the final tone. (And you know I'm credible because I used fancy words. I'm boosting my online points.)
nerd
lionsasbirds it’s called science
you can weigh the wood and calculate the average density of each cut
He was in tune on the first couple of bodies, but the hammering and switching got it out. He would have to find the initial frequency of each in-tune string on the machine you’ve proposed(which is a brilliant idea) as a baseline without any body attached and check/retune after each body back to the baseline to partially eliminate the tuning variable.
The design and build here is brilliant. Patent that before someone takes it. So good. I really enjoy your vids. Also, your son made this video soooo awesome. That kid is amazing. Cheers.
haha! thanks. He always steals the show :)
I subscribed because of this video. Mainly because of the skill you have at making guitars and how many you've made out of different materials
You're very likable and straight forward. I subscribed in the first minute.
Your son has better decorum than people I know in their 20's.
Parenting, a lost art.
@@carlhart9604 Said by a 15 year old or a 50 year old, I'm sure.
And a better brain than most people at ANY age :p
I rewatched this and realize that you did a stellar job Tim. The reality is that through an amp, with other instruments and natural reverb, and drunk guys yelling, you cannot tell. Pickups, density and stiffness seem to be the big influence. Again, brilliant work.
- - Agreed! And don't forget; in many cases the guitar body will be securely clamped between a sweaty arm and a beer gut!
Use some plugin to run a Fourier transform, or FFT, on your recorded audio. This will make a graph showing you the distribution and amplitude of frequencies in your recording, and it will show you visually if there are differences in tone and harmonics. I think the fact the bridge wasn't sitting directly on the body makes a huge difference. Metal is the best sound transmitter in this entire guitar.
Great work and thank you for using reclaimed materials when possible. You are a great artist and show that being responsible with materials can make a big impact and creat awesome guitars or other things. Leading by example. Well done. Cheers
Wood type makes all the difference... to the bank account.
We’ll hold on, now... wood may or may not have a noticeable effect on your tone, but there’s absolutely no doubt that the type of wood you choose can affect sustain, the feel of a guitar, the weight of the guitar, the endurance and quality of a build, and - if you don’t paint it - the LOOK of your guitar, none of which are your “bank account.”
Not to worry Jesse. Most of my comment was meant facetiously. The whole tone wood topic relating to electric guitars is ridiculous, imo. When it comes to weight, strength, stability, sustain and aesthetic.. thats a whole different story. These are more important, yet they're frequently ignored in relation to the topic of tone.
Aah the immeasurable myth of mythical tonewood factless ego wood.
Correct, tonewood is a good sales pitch to remove money from your wallet cause you can't tell other then ego and biass cause you bought it, but it sounds better myth.
Spend your money on the amp, thats where good quality tone comes from. $500 is all you need to spend on the guitar.
Any amp EQ will easily negate any subtle "tonewood"differences there may be. So yeah, sure you might hear a difference but it does not matter whatsoever.
There are much more important factors influencing the tone significantly. For example the amp :-)
I thought Formica® was good; then I tried Corian®, then compressed concrete, then polished granite, then Corsican Marble. With every increase in hardness and mass, I gained sustain, but I missed warm, resonant tones. I finally found the dulcet, velvety tones of blended/compressed Fruit Bat Guano & Mongolian Pony Manure!!
My guitar sounds great, but for some reason nobody likes to play with me much any more!! The only gigs I ever get are outdoors, in a moderate breeze. They are only Indie Rock, where I occasionally fracture my skull with a Shure 55SH, or Punk, where I wipe boogers on my pants-leg and shake my goodies at my frenzied audience.
I've been trying to find a company capable of CNC'ing a piece of black granite into a functioning strat body for me.
Your comment had me lmao!😂👍😎🎸🎶
@@adamgh0 Waterjet and laminate. Then cry when you drop it and it shatters. :P
Same comment as on another vid
I sense a Bias here!
i'm glad you plugged it straight into the interface instead of an amp first gives us a chance to hear more of the raw tone from the pickups
Awesome to keep your son in bud. New sub here. Love your process as well.
Sounds like your son wasn't just parroting your words either. He clearly had his own opinion based on more than a few minutes of experience and research. He may have learned most of it from you but he still made his own connections. Good for him and good for you too. Your a good Dad.
Your son has an amazing grasp on sound technology for his age. Smart cookie that one!
Great video, this makes me excited to build a guitar using reclaimed wood without fear of sound quality. Thanks for the great video.
I've made many! just stay away from soft pine, or reinforce the core with something stronger. The pine doesn't hold up under tension
I wouldn't hesitate to use reclaimed wood to build guitars. As you can imagine balsa wood and some of the lighter softer woods might work - but structurally not hold up. I know that Johnny Lang has a Telecaster whose body is made from spruce - but I believe it is quarter sawn for structural rigidity. He knew spruce was light and it gets used for acoustic instrument tops so why not? I am sure it was a challenge to make it so it would last - but it is possible. Sometimes it is the journey that matters and then you get pleasantly surprised on top of that. You never know.
probably the most interesting tone wood test.
since you use the actual same neck pick up and strings.
you can actually see if it makes a difference.
I love the empirical methodology you are imparting on this experiment!
Magnificent. I cannot wait until Adam Savage gets wind of this and brings you onto Tested for a maker interview.
If you can repeat the test with a controllable and measurable picking/hammering device the results would be more convincing. Testing the effect of the tonewood for different pressure levels (piano to forte) and different string length by using a capo would hopefully end this tonewood scam :) If you would kindly take the time to increase frequency of measurements (make multiple tests for each combination) your results would become much more stronger. You could even extend your tests for different temperature and humidity levels. I know that is a lot of work to do but I got very excited to see someone handling this problem in a such clever and skill-full manner. Whatever you do or do not ill not change the fact that I respect your way of thinking and I am very much pleased to have met your videos! Cheers!!!
Tight neck module insertion is the first variable. You worked it out. Good going.
Forgot this was the original video which received my comments.
You’re CRAZY man! And I LOVE it! 🙂
Best tonewood video I’ve seen yet, hats off to you. To bring it even a step further, you could build a mechanical device that strums the strings for you, so you eliminate that source of variability.
I would also pluck a single string at the time, and then of course compare the spectrograms (frequency content over time), not the waveforms.
In any case my traditional statement that the effect of tonewood of electric solid bodies is minimal has been confirmed now.
Keep up the great work! 👍🏻
Woods make a bigger difference in acoustic guitars IMHO. Electric guitar tones are mostly dictated by the strings, pickups, amps, and speakers. The material is of much less importance compared to these things.
Khalan Wheeler it is mainly the pickup, i had $$$ PRS and cheap guitars and all you gotta do is swap cheap stock pickups with a brand name pickup for same tone as the big boys, i am now the proud owner of a super cheap guitar that I honestly enjoy playing more than my guitar that i sold to buy a car with. I mean the pricy one had a smoother neck but not THAT better and tonewise no better.
Also may need to upgrade to good brand tuners when buying cheap but again, $130 good pickup + $60 tuners to make a cheap guitar sound as good? Yup!
Don't ignore the structual build design, that can have a very massive effect on the sound as well.
A luthier I know has managed to build a guitar that sounds allmost like a grand piano (a lot more low end than other guitars), despite its relatively small size.
The trick behind it: He put the sound hole in a different location, which made the top a lot stronger,
so he didn't need to add as much stiffness to the top, which allowed it to vibrate much more.
I honstely believe, the structural decisions can have a greater effect on the sound than material decisions.
I can clearly hear the difference when I'm mixing with my plugins bypassed, it amazes me. " hmmm maybe a little more...... ya that's better ..." to look and see that its done nothing at all.
I agree completely. Pickups and amp make a bigger difference than the wood does.
Cool guy... Cool kid. Bad assed concept. I'd be awake for days trying these out!.
The attention to detail is fantastic! the interchangeable neck - BRILLIANT
check out this one:) czcams.com/video/2XLz5cQAWLA/video.html
Awesome, you are a craftsman , engineer and a lot more. GREAT JOB! Thanks
When I was a kid, at the same age as your son, I don't even know what the guitar is. Until I'm 20 y.o. I know the guitar very well and I play guitar with my soul, but I still don't even know that the wood can be affecting the tone of a guitar very much. Even the wood is the core, not only the pick-up or the bridge.
But your son, your son... He can explain everything that I know just 3-4 years ago (21-23 y.o. I'm 25 now).
@Tommies They absorb everything...
Even the sands on their school's playground
Since there, clearly, is a difference if a body is attached, and the wood type doesn't matter that much, How much does the SHAPE of different bodies matter. A test of the same wood, but different shapes...?
bbyllma probably very little but mass and density would effect sustain
I think extention on a body have an influence, like bigger horns on double cuts or the extentions on a flying V or Explorer type. On the later, I definitelly hear a difference. More sustain and a warmer tone
This is actually a very good idea
First of yours videos where I noticed the giant wooden stealie! I love it, and your videos man ⚡️
that was a test cut of a GD cribbage board I made for a client.
tim sway that is interesting! I would’ve never guessed that
Your son is awesome man. Reminds me of me and my boy. I always try to get him to think and bounce ideas of him and all that. And now he's off to college. Couldn't be prouder.
The change in tone a wood gives to a guitar vs another available guitar wood, is like having a tone control that rotates one degree. The other variables that affect tone have such a greater effect, that isolating the wood change is very difficult, and its significance pales in comparison to the other variables you can control that affect tone. The wood choice's significance is in looks, weight, sustain, and player comfort.
I really like how the poplar sounds -- seems like the solid core door has the longest sustain? The sum total of them all though? Whoa -- that's rich!
That insert is SO COOL!
I just ran across this video! Cool video! One thing that blew my mind was how you said as a kid you used to practice your bass by putting the headstock against the wall. Holy cow! I used to do the same thing! Our mud room had paneling and that would resonate like crazy!
What a cute kid. You must be a really proud dad. Mahogany, Canary, Doug Fir and Ash sounding the same was an eye opener. The MDF one actually sounded quite good. From this video I have concluded that volume and sustain are affected by wood but tone is only fractionally affected except if you have a poplar guitar. Would love to see the same test with different types of lacquer on the bodies. Paul Reed Smith needs to watch this video. 😉🤣
PRS won't care. He already got your money, dude.
I think the tonewoods don't make that much of a difference it's best to spend your time learning how to play better? An equalizer will make your tone brighter or darker
U R so fukin' right. The only difference between 'tone' wood is the amount of high frequencies. The way they interact & resonate & all the other factors in the response R irrelevant, same way U can make any speaker sound like another just by tweaking an equalizer HAHAHA =)) Tell us next how all cars drive the same... just depends how fast U R going = where the gas pedal is LOL!!!
@@robtog Thanks.
What a really interesting test, and what a smart young man you have, his answer was very mature and well thought out for his age. Thanks.
I've always wondered about this topic..) Thanks for the vid!)
Danelectro used to make the bodies out of masonite, and that is like prehistoric MDF. Best tonewood? Aluminium.
They still do make there guitars out of masonrite.
@@jdl2180 yes they do. They are very comfortable to play. Love the lipstick pickups sound.
They are particle board with a Masonite overlay. Think 50s diner countertop or come to my house and look at my 50s kitchen countertop.
Waterford crystal would sound bright.
Make a guitar body made of epoxy resin containing various materials (ball bearings, gravel, air pockets). It would be interesting to see if the sound changed between additives.
I would expect the discontinuities in density would severely dampen resonance, and irregularly shaped discontinuities would do that even more so, resulting in a quieter guitar with lower sustain. But I could be completely wrong.
@@magnusbruce4051 the only factor that matters is mass.
Really liked this. Your sons curiosity was so great as we are all deep down still curious kids :) Great job thank you!
Loved this so much. A strumming machine and blah blah blah may be somewhat more thorough, but I think you've produced a very effective and efficient test method. Well done.
From computer
baseline 13:09
Mahogany 13:18
Poplar 13:30
Ash 13:41
Canary 14:06
Doug fir 14:16
Solid core door 14:27
MDF 14:41
Many Thanks fer alla th effort, ingenuity, an hard work that yall put into this comparison / tutorial!
I had my own personal faves as well, but, that's jus how ears work...;-)
Dude, I love the way you test!
The cancellation overtone vibratto appears to be a bit different depending on the wood. Some of the harder woods (Mahogany and Canary wood) had like a double cancellation vibratto
Thank you very much for this test. It is a really good attempt to make a scientific comparison. Your solution of the drop in neck/pickup/bridge unit is brilliant.
That said, I think a bolt on neck with a separate drop in bridge/pickup unit would be better. It would eliminate the direct connection of the neck to the bridge. My theory is that the nut (or frets) and the bridge saddles are the two take off points for the strings. That is where vibrations are transferred to the body. In this case, it’s effectively a neck-thru design with body wings of different materials.
The problem with that (as Tim said in the video) is that variations in setup would be more of an issue. Additionally, the wood here will still play a larger role than the wings on a neck-through, as the body is coupled to the "neck" on three sides instead of just two. True, it would be better if the wood in contact with the bridge could change, too, but this test still does a great job at showing just how little impact wood choice has.
no,and all your ideas were kybashed because of inconsistency
Hands off! You need to build an automatic strummer to remove the right hand variable, and strum open strings to remove the left hand variable. Regardless, it's a most interesting and entertaining vid...thanks.
And cheers on your great relationship with your great kid. Sweet.
Well done. I did an impromptu blind listening test while you were actually playing near the end of the video, and I could not hear the “seams”. There’s a lot of nonsense out there about the “best” tonewood, but I believe that what matters most are the hands of the luthier and the hands of the player - and, in the case of solidbody instuments, the hands of the pickup maker. Good video.
Hi Buddy! I think you were correct in saying the most important part is the one you didn’t change. The wood between the neck and bridge. The rest is just to grab or put on your leg. I admire the lengths you will go to, though. Fun stuff!
No noticeable difference here.
The strumming was as consistent as humanly possible!
Seams to apply for neck thru constructions. The main sound comes from the neck and minimal influence of the wings.
I love how your son explains the choose for mor density. He‘s smart (has it from his dad)👏🏼👏🏼🤗
Scientific tip: Plot a fourier transform of the recorded waveforms so that you can see if the spectral response is any different for each kind of wood.
The audio is pinned in the comments for everyone to download and test as they'd like!
To really investigate, one could also excite the different wood bodies with a centrally located tone generator and measure the frequency response for a few key frequencies, calculate/plot the FFT to better see the differences to go with what you hear. This doesn’t distinguish the best wood, however, because that’ll depend on what you like out the pickups. For stability and sustain, pick the wood with the highest elastic modulus, lowest moisture solubility and lowest thermal expansion coefficient.
Yes, he needs to show the power spectrum (which you can get from the magnitude of the FFT)
@@JDCottonMusic Exciting the wood would lead to absolutely no audio since pickups work on magnetic field. Unless you're exciting the whole guitar with strings on, which would maybe make the strings move a bit, but you would end up with pretty much the same signal every time as far as frequency response goes (or just happen to excite at a resonant frequency of the guitar)
I would also add that if you need a spectrum analyzer or some sort of other visual analysis to notice a difference, it is negligible and you shouldn't even worry about tonewood enough to do such a elaborate experiment, or at all
@@escalator9734 You're correct on the latter - excite the entire guitar body with strings on, choosing the wood (for a constant guitar design/geometry that provides the best response. The strings and the guitar are acoustically coupled--a tonewood that absorbs or dampens important frequencies will take more work to play than one that does not--and the strings will translate this energy to the pickups.
Dude, your awesome! Im impressed.
Beautiful!!! Subscribed. Cheers.
This method might be a great idea for a Travel Guitar. Easy assembly and disassembly.
Damn, wish you'd tuned that thing before you started!
yeah...ya think? Anybody got a Snark Tuner for this guy? Hope he doesn't make anymore guitars out of hollow-core doors! Although it's sound was reminiscent of something??? Not sure what!
@@merc1110 danelectro is basically that
Thanks Tim well done man
Very interesting, thanks for sharing your efforts
I reckon an acoustic guitar version of this test would tell a very different story
Hahaha when i got my first electric guitar i found out the wall technique xD and this is the first time i hear of someone doing the same! Great video!
Same here!
I’m a scientist and I have to say, it was absolutely wonderful watching you conduct this experiment! Thank you very much and keep up the good work!
Tim.....Your a mad scientist!!!! I love it, nice job.
Really awesome video, thanks for your hard work in trying to answer this question. I have a couple of ideas for testing to further eliminate variables (namely the human element) that you might look into it if you decide to go any further with this. 1 would be to setup some kind of simple jig that uses a motor to strum the strings at a consistent speed, intensity and angle of attack with the pick. The other would be to decouple the guitar from any hard bodies (suspended by strings or springs?), and having a speaker fire pink noise or a frequency sweep at the guitar which should theoretically transmit over the pickups and be colored by the resonant frequencies of the guitar body so you could compare the graphs and see if they're the same or not.
How can people not hear the difference? Especially the mahogany, it is so brass. The Ash was a little more muddy. The poplar sounded nice. Fir was the worst, imo.
Seriously, I'm just listening on my computer speakers and can hear clear differences between the woods, but as other people have pointed out, this test was not very controlled or scientific.