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.
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.
Originally Posted by Stringswinger
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