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1 El Rey
2 810
3 Benedetto
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07-22-2026 02:56 PM
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The forum member who correctly names all three guitars wins one of them, yes?
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Nope, the forum member who played all three guitars in the test wins them. Or already won them. Or something like that.
Originally Posted by Mick-7
The forum member who correctly names all three guitars wins one of them, yes?
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One thing this thread has already proven,most guys can't really tell the difference between a Benedetto and a Eastman.
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To me there is zero difference at all. I mean why pay for the Benedetto all that much more money to deliver the same sound. It is not like it is a real acoustic guitar being played in an intimate setting. This is a gigging 7 String played every day and Eastman wins. Originally Posted by nyc chaz
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If I was right, a couple of us could tell the difference. If I was wrong, I am proof positive of your assertion along with many others. Originally Posted by nyc chaz
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There are six possible answers. So, it would not be unexpected for 2 people out of a dozen to get it right. At random.
If everybody stated a favorite and that divided evenly among the three guitars, especially with a lot of participants, that starts to look like the expensive guitar isn't seen, in this situation as outperforming the others.
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Exactly the issue - the statistical question is whether the probability of a correct ID is significantly higher than random chance. But the overall probability of correctly identifying all 3 is a bit more complicated to calculate than it may seem. There are not 6 answers because each selection reduces the remaining number of alternatives from which to choose. So you are not choosing the third one - it's already chosen by your first two choices. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Picking the first one has a 33% probability of being right from pure chance. Once you make your first choice, the probability of guessing the second one correctly purely by chance is now 50% rather than 33%. Having now ID'ed 2 of the 3, your third ID is already made for you because you've eliminated the other 2. IIRC, This is called constant conditional dependency and the probability of randomly guessing all 3 is 1/3 times 1/2 or 15%.
With a dozen respondents, a thumbnail estimate based on a 2 tailed binomial test looks to me like at least 7 would have to have correctly identified one or more to accept that the selections were more accurate than random guesses. A sample of 12 is pretty small, but the p value is calculable and slightly over 0.05 if I did it correctly.
I'll reveal which track was which guitar tomorrow. This isn't an exact analysis. It's just a rough demonstration of how reliably we can identify 3 different guitars purely by listening to them through the same amplifier with the same settings at the same volume. I will freely admit that I strongly doubt that I could ID 3 of someone else's guitars in a similar test. I'm very familiar with these instruments, and I can barely hear enough differences to even make me think I might be able to call them correctly with consistency. I was very surprised when I listened to these, and I probably would have misidentified my own instruments.
My conclusion so far is that there's a lot more similarity than difference in the amplified tone of well designed and built archtop guitars with the same strings and similar pickups through the same amplifier with the same settings, regardless of construction. Let's see what a larger sample size brings.
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Another factor is the same player. We all have our own fingerprint, as it were, our uniquely identifiable sound, that inevitably and subconsciously we seek out with different instruments.
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…but how different do they sound to you, in the room where you recorded this? What do you hear coming out of your amp? If you can hear differences then it’s the recording process that homogenises the sound. If they also sound very similar to you in the room, then the guitars really do sound the same.My conclusion so far is that there's a lot more similarity than difference in the amplified tone of well designed and built archtop guitars with the same strings and similar pickups through the same amplifier with the same settings, regardless of construction. Let's see what a larger sample size brings.
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[QUOTE=nevershouldhavesoldit;1477434]
This is called constant conditional dependency and the probability of randomly guessing all 3 is 1/3 times 1/2 or 15%.'>>>
1/3 times1/2 is 1/6. Same as picking the right solution at random out of 6 possibilities.
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Good morning! They sound surprisingly similar to me through the amp in the room. This is true through the Fuchs, the Blu 6, and the DV Mark EG250 (through a Toob Metro BG+ or my RE 10). Originally Posted by Oscar67
Curiously enough, the Ibanez AF207 that I just sold because I don’t need 5 archtops at my age sounded a bit different from these 3. The heavier build & laminated body plus a thicker poly finish seem to give it a more distinct ES thunk through its Benedetto B7. With the tone pot fully up, it had more of the beautiful woody “guitar-y” tone common to these 3 (although not quite as much). But with the tone pot rolled off a bit, it was definitely a bit more more Tal and Raney (but still far from Pat Martino’s darkest, even with GB114s on it).
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I'll go:
17, 16, 14. I can hear very subtle differences, but all sound good to me. Which is a good thing as I have the 17 and am thinking of adding a 14.
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[QUOTE=rpjazzguitar;1477446]
I accepted your odds purely to come up with a rough estmate of how many correct responses would be enough to accept that the choices were more accurate than random guesses. There are not 6 independent answer sets. Once you've decided which is the 14 and which is the 16, there's no choice left as to which you think is the 17 - it has to be the only one still unidentified. But the odds of getting the third one correct depend on whether you got the first and or the second one correct. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
The mathematical model for this would be far more complex than I can develop, and this is not as simple as our guesstimates make it seem. First of all, the differences among the guitars are not randomly distributed. Second, the respondents are not simply guessing - we all have enough knowledge and experience with guitar tones to be biased. "Bigger body means bigger tone", "thinner body means less bass", "floating pickups sound thinner than set pickups" etc are the kinds of thoughts that color all of our approaches to this. So we're not randomly guessing. We're making educated guesses, and how much our knowledge and beliefs contribute to our accuracy matters.
The question is whether more people got them correct than would be expected if they were simply guessing. This is an interesting if overly simplistic question - nothing more. But there are not 6 actual choices or 6 possible answer sets. The probability that we (as opposed to a bunch of poeple who know nothing about guitars) randomly ID'ed the 3 guitars correctly in this case is "probably" less than 15% for a number of reasons. This makes the number of correct IDs for a statistically significant result even lower than my simple binomial calculation suggests,
Let's see what we have by the end of the day.
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The House Always Wins!
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I have absolutely no idea which guitar goes with which track.
If I listen closely I can hear that they are different guitars, but the difference is negligible, and they're all great sounding. They all sound like good electric archtops.
The best I can do is give my preferences. I like C the best, then A, with B being my least favorite.
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[QUOTE=nevershouldhavesoldit;1477465]
I had Chatgpt do the math for 12 responses.. Looked right. Gives the answer as 6. Not an approximation to the binomial but the exact numbers. It's how many correct answers out of 12 would suggest that the process is not random at the .05 level. Of course, the expected value is 2 correct out of 12, assuming random guessing. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
On a purely impressionistic level, 6 out of 12 would be pretty good, given that the guitars don't sound all that different.
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Originally Posted by Oscar67
Great points! To address them, I just threw down a set of 1 minute senza tempo chord melody passes through the head of the same song (You Don't Know What Love Is) mic'ed at a few feet with crossed cardioids plus an SM58 on a boom to pick up room ambience. The amp is still on the desk where it was for the first track. It's about 18" from the wall behind it, and the back of the ODH cabinet is open for the lowest 25% or so to form a rear vent that reinforces the bass a bit. This effect is slightly more prominent in these tracks than it is in the close mic'ed set. Originally Posted by Mick-7
This is the same amp (ODH110) with the same settings as were used for the close mic'ed tracks. It took a bit more SPL to record to -3 dB peaks, but I only had to turn up the guitar volumes a tiny bit for this. I didn't have to normalize these, as my playing was consistent enough to bring the RMS mean for them all to within 0.5 dB. Interestingly enough, I think the reverb is a bit more prominent in these than it is in the close mic'ed tracks, although I didn't change the setting at all. The room is our second bedroom / den, about 13x18x8' with 2 1/2 full walls of built-in cabinets and bookcases plus a large sofa, 2 chairs and a big area rug. So it's not highly reflective or otherwise live.
The guitars are the same 7 string archtops - a 14"x2" carved with set PU, a 16"x2.5" laminated with set PU, and a 17"x3.3" carved with floating PU. All 3 pickups are KAs. Once again, the differences are not as great as I expected them to be. See what you think:
guitar A:
guitar B:
guitar C:
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I agree completely. I know what they sound like, and they're close enough to make me wonder if I could pick them out of a lineup every time Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
See what you think of the more widely mic'ed tracks I just put up to better address spot-on observations of oscar67 and mick-7.
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Car or goat? Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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[QUOTE=nevershouldhavesoldit;1477506]I agree completely. I know what they sound like, and they're close enough to make me wonder if I could pick them out of a lineup every time
See what you think of the more widely mic'ed tracks I just put up to better address spot-on observations of oscar67 and mick-7.[/QUOTE
A and C sound about the same to me. B may be a little warmer.
Seems to me that recording one guitar with three different EQ settings would produce greater differences than I hear in either set of recordings. Maybe that's so obvious it's not saying much, but I don't hear one as justifying a much higher price than the others.
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Originally Posted by John A.
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Ok again to me not huge differences in sound. The first one seemed to have more bottom end but like most 7 strings it lacks the real tension in the string to get my attention. I am going to pretty much do the same take and say again one of these is a more expensive Benedetto. It did not live up to its added expense for the return in sound. Essentially to me all sound decent and workable.
Now I am going to give the 7 string my critique. I know players who like them and just go all out and use them only. I am not in this camp and Never is a fine player with a nice touch and sound. I really think if you gave him a 6 string only, he actually would smoke playing even better. My reason rest entirely on the low tension and snap to a low A 7 string.
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What, you mean your post wasn't a proof of the Monty Hall Problem? Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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I think this tread shows that when playing plugged in, a players deft touch and a good amp go a long way.I've watched Rich Severson on his YT channel constantly playing different guitars and he pretty much sounds the same.Same with Frank Vignola on his Birdland gig,different guitars over the years and he sounds pretty much the same.Just an aside,the one guitar that really stood out to me on the Birdland broadcast was the Borys that Bill Wurtzel played last month.
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Dampening a carved top for thunk I think
Today, 04:49 PM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos