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Awesome blind test! Really well done and nice playing.
I confess that I also do not hear much of - if any - difference. For my personal taste, the tone is a tad on the bright side and I wonder if more difference would have been heard in a more mellow amp setting? In any event, these guitars sound really alike and there is no need to spend the big money to get in that tonal territory. But there still is the psychology and the "magic" that so many of us like. (Let us have it please :-))
I have a number of 17" carved top archtops including a L-5. At least when I play, I feel that the L-5 sounds different than the rest. More quiet acoustically and really more of a "velvet" sound, for the lack of a better word. Really different from the ES 175 or the Super 400 or golden eagle ... But none of these is a L-5 copy of course or meant to sound like the L-5. But one thing I'll say is that the playability of the L-5 is really outstanding and and feel of playing it, even if the rest is only in my head, is amazing. I tend to pick it up more just because it feels so right to play it.
Thanks for doing this!
Cheers,
Frank
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04-05-2017 09:56 AM
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All three are so close I think a very small tweak of EQ could make them indistinguishable. I'm surprised they are this close. I might have expected three L5CESs to have more variation. Well done! Thanks for this.
Typically, I'll use a laminated guitar when I need to play at high volumes and a carved top for lower volumes where both the amplified and acoustic sound are present. If I were evaluating these three instruments for purchase the acoustic tone might be a significant factor.Last edited by KirkP; 04-05-2017 at 10:33 AM.
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How is his relevant to my test?
Originally Posted by WilliamScott
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Bad technique by the player, unfortunately. I tried to cut the less cleanly played sections to give each instrument its best presentation, but it wasn't always possible. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Let's pull back the curtain!
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I'm wishing now I'd set this up as a poll of some kind, but too late for that. I'll try to go through and see what the "votes" look like and post the unveiling later today.
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Impressive how close they get considering only one of them is a carved top.
Need to listen over and over again to pick a choice.
Just show in the same condition the differences are subtile.
Would dare to risk 1 for the L5 but they sound all good to me.
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And here is the unveiled version. I have not switched among the guitars, but given each solo complete, one after the other. Some might not be interested in that, so the "answer" is in the thumbnail. Others will enjoy hearing all three and you might be able to assemble some distinctions with longer samples, I don't know.
All three guitars are very nicely set up. Any buzzing you hear is my poor technique. All have wonderful necks, wonderful frets, feel and play really nice. Each has its own charm. My favorite is the Gibson, simply because playing it is such a lush, luxurious feeling and the sound come from it so effortlessly. But the other two are amazing, and I really do need to sell one to pay off the Gibson.
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Aw...I saw the revelation on YouTube by accident. I won't reveal.
Hey, people, never disparage a ply-topped Matsumoku archtop. These guitars are serious, serious instruments--designed to be played by people who make jazz guitar their passion. The Aria PE-180 is capable of hanging in there with anyone's carved body, 17" offering. Just listen to Lawson's test.
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What do we win for passing the test haha
I think that if I were listening on a laptop or only had heard on my phone that I would not have been able to tell at all. Good headphones, though, did make the id'ing a lot easier and if I had not heard your guitars already in the Raney group study thread then I don't know if I would have gotten it correct between the Aria and Gibson. Feels good to get it though!
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The most common correct ID has so far been #3 as the Epiphone. 2nd most frequent right call was #1 as the Aria.
I have to say, I'm also impressed by the performance of the Bluebird microphone in front of the Yamaha G11-210 amp.
I might have to repeat the test using one guitar and 3 different amps!
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It seems most folks liked the sound of the first guitar in your video. We don't know to what extent it was the "Aria'ness" or the "first'ness" that was appealing. It doesn't really matter because the purpose of your test was to talk about the aural differences and not preferences, but the order of presentation makes a difference in how people perceive things. To get rid of the effect of the order of presentation, one needs to have different people see different videos that differ in their order of presentation. By way of apology, I used to teach research methods before going emeritus. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
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What I don't understand, though, is the point of the observation. Something HAS to be first. That's just a given. I actually decided it at random. Literally, I flipped a coin, twice, to eliminate one of the instruments to be first. First toss eliminated the Gibson, second toss eliminated the Epiphone. I suppose if we had a large number of people "score" the test, we could use a statistical model to eliminate that bias. Originally Posted by WilliamScott
On the Pepsi test, i actually don't think it was the sheer "firstness" but, with taste tests, whatever you have first will condition the palate for what you taste next. Participants also only got 1 taste of each. I gave my listeners 3 different cases, and they had several chances to listen to each over the course of the 1 minute sample. I tend to think that might buffer out the bias of the first option a little, but not being a specialist I don't actually know.
I wonder how a test could be shaped to avoid that problem?
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Not intending to promote my own viewpoint, but I haven't seen anyone address my concerns that we are really comparing pickups or strings or ages of strings rather than guitars alone here in the first place. After all, we are all familiar with people raving about the difference that changing pickups makes in their sound or using this or that brand of strings or how it gets worse when the strings get too old... So we can really only compare guitars per se if the guitar itself is the only variable that differs in the 3 examples. Now, maybe that is the case but, if so, it has not yet been stated.
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Well done! I think you have proved pretty well that there is no clear winner for tone among the three.
And,you did it with "clinical" conditions, meaning that the chain of amplification was the same. One might argue about pickup height or string choice, but that takes things in the direction of being more clinical.
I'd argue that a different kind of test would permit EQ and other adjustments because that's the way people actually use the guitars. Presumably, it would be even harder to distinguish among them.
Which one would I gig with? It would be a choice between the best sound (tough choice) and the one I would be least upset over if it got stolen or damaged.
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My goal is to compare the 3 guitars "stock." They have the pickups, wiring harness, that they shipped with. All are set up the way I like a guitar set up. All have TI JazzSwing 13s, about the same age though not exactly, none brand new. Originally Posted by jasaco
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If they sound this similar without controlling for those variables chances are they would sound even more indistinguishable if you used the same exact set of strings and pickups. Originally Posted by jasaco
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My goal was comparison of the "stock" guitars. Also, each of these tends to be a guitar whose pickups have a good reputation. The Gibson has Class 57s, a widely admired pickup for jazz. The Epiphone has a 50SR in the neck position, which is said to have been made by Gibson USA. It uses an Alnico V magnet and 8.5k output. The Aria pickup is pretty renowned for being great, but the manufacturer is not really known. The pickup is unmarked except for a stamp "Pat. Pend. No. 027899" It's a really good pickup as any other PE180 person here will tell you. It's not worth changing out unless someone is going for a single-coil sound I suppose. Originally Posted by jasaco
you are of course welcome to do your own test.
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It is probably an obvious point, but even if the instruments sound literally identical to the listener, they are never even close to identical to the player when s/he is playing them. And that is really what counts - and it's why we as players continually seek instruments that suit us best and get very critical about seemingly minute differences.
Even if we, as players, try to isolate the sound component from the experience of playing the guitar, we can't. That's because we are producing the sound, and in order to do so, we are sensing the physical attributes of the guitar and making extremely subtle decisions about how to manipulate it, all done interactively in real time as we listen.
It's fun to get a bunch of listeners' guesses on identifying similar guitars by sound, but to me as a player, I couldn't really care less. Put three 17" electric archtops or three Telecasters in my hands, and to me they will all feel very different and I'll decide what I prefer based on the whole package.
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I was prepared to be wrong between the Aria and the L-5 and I was. The Epi was easy for me to pick out.
There are two reasons why I preferred the Aria (though my preference was so marginal, that all things being equal, I would still choose the L-5 for its looks alone over the Aria):
1) The Aria is a laminate and I probably, being primarily an ES-175 player prefer the laminate sound in an electric archtop; and
2) The Aria has many years of aging on the L-5. Age dries out the wood and the sound, and I like it dry.
Still, this test justified to me the high current prices on the classic lawsuit Ibanez copies of classic Gibson models.
@ Lawson, keep that L-5. I think with time it will sound as good or better than the Aria and it will inspire your playing more. Keep the Aria as a backup and sell the Epi.
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So, since I was the first one to post the right answer, I get either the Epi or the Aria for free, right? I'll take the Epi. And just to show you what a heckuva guy I am, I'll split the shipping cost with you :-)
Joohn
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What you did was great for randomizing, but it doesn't control for order. Like taste buds drowning in pepsi and coke, ears are similar. If you are really interested in this you could start with this study, and then read the ones that have followed. But I don't recommend it. The gist of it all is that people asked to discriminate sounds were shown to be affected by the order in which the sounds were presented. Order effects are found everywhere, especially so in preference and attitude measures. The way to eliminate them as an explanation for test results can't really be done on a forum such as this one. If Pepsi was really interested in a taste challenge, they would randomly have half of the people get Pepsi first and the other half would get Coke first. By the way, I've used this example over many years in class and about 80% of everyone prefers the soft drink that is presented first. Pepsi does not win in a well-controlled Pepsi Challenge. It's a draw. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
So when we have 3 guitars to compare, there are 6 possible orders of presentation (123,132,213,231,321,312). We need to make a video for each of these orders and randomly assign people to the 6 different listening groups. Then we can separate the order effect from the guitar effect. If we found that people tended to like the first one heard, or couldn't distinguish the first two from each other but could hear a difference in the third, we would know it was because of the order and not the guitar. Or, conversely, we could see it is always the Aria vs. the L-5 that is hard, not first vs. second. Of course, if we find an effect of order, we don't particularly know where it is coming from. For example, it could be "firstness" or it could be the particular notes that are played at the beginning of the solo. I can't think of a way to do this kind of study using the Jazz Guitar Forum. Giving repeated examples, as you did, is a good thing but it doesn't eliminate bias. If I hear the first guitar and I say to myself "I like that", then the next time I see that I am hearing guitar1, I might say to myself, perhaps unconsciously, "that's the one I like".
There are a huge number of variables that could be controlled in studying these three guitars. Many have been mentioned in previous posts. You did a great job of controlling a bunch of the important ones. The lesson I have taken from all your work is that there is very little difference in the recorded electric sound of these 3 guitars, and I thank you for showing that to me so clearly.
BTW, if you are trying to decide whether to sell the Aria or the Epiphone, and you sit down to do an AB comparison, I suggest you do an AB today but then go away and sit down for a BA tomorrow.
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Another relevant (IMHO) point is that how it sounds to the player may be different from how it sounds to the audience because the player is hearing more of the acoustic sound of the guitar than is the audience, and the amount of acoustic sound may well vary by guitar. So, perhaps rather than (or in addition to) the aforementioned recommendation to go from A-B to B-A on different days, you might try recording both, either at the amp and away from the acoustic sound, or closer if you wish to include the acoustic sound (or in both locations, if you like) and then have a friend randomize the order of playback to YOU on several occasions and see if even you have a stable preference for one or the other (presuming you can detect any differences). [No fair playing better on one guitar than the other! Has to be a fair fight!
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Or, since you already have the clips, you could have someone else play those same snippets for you in random order and have you rate (or rank) them...
p.s. Thanks for clarifying about the pups and strings.
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I wouldn't be surprised if people liked the Aria more even in a different order. It is the oldest guitar and older guitars just have a different sound. Also the lower range of the line at the beginning of the solo is where we heard the Aria introduced and that is a very sweet range for jazz guitar. I think the back to back presentation is interesting but I would be curious to hear the complete solo excerpt from each guitar, maybe edited in a few different orders to make sure that the psychological effect of preferring the first guitar doesn't happen. In this case I don't think that is what is happening though - it is just that the Aria was the first guitar and thus we got to hear that lower range more from that guitar since that is where the solo started.
I would also be curious to hear a chord comparison between the three. I have found that single notes are easier to have lawsuit guitars sound like their "real" counterparts but when you hear chords it is a little easier to distinguish them.
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+1 I think this would be a great idea for a second test! Originally Posted by rio
Thanks for all your work as well as the great playing, Lawson!
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