Tonewood

[Klatu]

Jim Soloway recently went through the customization process with Heritage and came out with what he felt were real winners.

[Chrome]

Although the guitars in this video are flat-top acoustics - not arch-tops - it's a good example of sound produced by various woods:

Has anyone seen an equivalent video where someone plays 4-6 examples of the same guitar model and woods?

[Archie]

Has anyone seen an equivalent video where someone plays 4-6 examples of the same guitar model and woods?

That doesn't work though because you can get the same guitar, made by the same woods to sound totally different.

[Chrome]

That is exactly what I would like to hear. How wide is the range of sound for guitars that are "identical"?

[Jim Soloway]

That is exactly what I would like to hear. How wide is the range of sound for guitars that are "identical"?

In my experience (at least with the guitars we built), the range exists but is limited enough to hear a general tonal characteristic that is easily identified.

[Jim Soloway]

That doesn't work though because you can get the same guitar, made by the same woods to sound totally different.

That has rarely been my experience (assuming the same player and set up). Somewhat different? Yes. Totally different? No.

[jazzbow]

Guitar tonewood is like photography!

Same lens, same camera, same film. Take the same picture twice but move slightly between them and the colours tones will be different.

Same design, same luthier, same chisels. Take the same wood, split it twice and make two guitars and the tonal colours will be different.

Pass the cheese

[boognish23]

I don't know jack about tonewoods or building guitars, but this seemed germain. Ola describes a high school science project his son did. There are some good links in the comments, and of course, one vitriolic jerk.

The impact of wood choice in an electric guitar | Strandberg Guitarworks

[mercosound]

I like Chrome's idea about a comparison of different guitars that are the same model/woods. That would be cool - don't know anyone who could pull that off.

As a hearsay anecdote, I recently spoke with a friend of mine who once fronted some cash to a local independent instrument dealer so that he could buy 10 Martin guitars (some sort of traditional style D18's, I believe), and get a quantity discount. In return, my friend got the "pick of the litter", at cost. I asked him if it was difficult to decide which instrument to choose, and he said that no, it wasn't difficult at all, implying that the differences were less than subtle. Not a surprise, but a confirmation.

It's great that so many instruments are available for purchase on line, but sometimes I miss the days when you were blown away by one that you met "in person".

[John A.]

Has anyone seen an equivalent video where someone plays 4-6 examples of the same guitar model and woods?

These guys do tons of comparisons that that attempt to highlight a single difference (e.g., body woods) in otherwise very similar guitars.

Acoustic Guitar Comparisons

I've listened to a bunch of 'em through headphones with my eyes closed (OK, so I peek a little ...). I mostly find it very hard to tell the difference.

John

[strumcat]

Great article and video. My take is that alder lows and swamp ash lows are similarly full, but alder has fuller, rounder highs than swamp ash. In this test the high E sounded dead with swamp ash, even though it's the same string.

The koa in this test had tighter, less boomy bass, but the high E string test was inconsistent (it still sounded fuller than the swamp ash high E). If You prefer middles, koa might be good.

The Zebrano highs and lows had more resonance, a richer set of overtones that sounded almost like a very, very subtle chorus effect. Very nice indeed to my ears, but some people might not like it.

Summary of what I got from this test:
- Alder, nice all around sound,
- Swamp ash, ok bass but muted highs,
- Koa, focused vibrant middle overtones and tighter bass,
- Zebrano, rich set of pleasing overtones, lush sounding.

Just my $0.02