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That was enlightening. The video that is.
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01-28-2022 06:55 AM
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Complexity, sensory illusions and cognitive biases mess up our expectations of living a linear, predictable, stable lives full of perceptive accuracy. These threads will continue on. We all love building houses of cards. Some of us prefer to look the other way when they tumble. We don't like ruins when it happens to our house of cards.
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Hi,
No one has mentioned fretboard inlays.
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It is possible that some musicians are more discerning and sensitive to subtleties than others. It's either that or there is no discernable difference between 2x4 (or no wood at all) and any guitar wood that's ever been used, it's all in the pickup height, electronics and scale length.
All I know is if I didn't perceive clear differences attributable to the body wood, I too would've been very frustrated with these threads and probably be inclined to believe a narrative about cognitive biases and cork sniffers and what not.Last edited by Tal_175; 01-29-2022 at 07:53 AM.
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Originally Posted by medblues
Last edited by Jim Soloway; 01-29-2022 at 09:30 AM.
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Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
If you're claiming an amp adds an element of fog around the process of hearing tone, then we're in a pickle because every electric guitar tone recored was done through an amp.
I think that's the point of the video. Yes you can hear differences in tone but when the guitar is used for it's intended purpose, it's 6 of one and half a dozen the other. (for the most part).
Don't forget the guy in the video bought an Anderson, he's obviously a connoisseur of tone to some extent, otherwise he would have a fender squire (queue people claiming how great they sound, actually).
I am a connoisseur of tone (in my head) but I, like the guy in the video, are still somewhat sceptical.
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Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
What he did, it seems to me, is start with a real world tone on one instrument and then try to duplicate it on another. He was willing to go far in tweaking things to get the tones to match. I thought the strings suspended in mid air sounded pretty much like the real guitar, for that tone, which was interesting. Maybe he's proven the point that, for that particular tone, you don't need tone wood.
I think he also proved the point that proving this point is a lot of work.
For my own confirmation bias: I'd thought that some things make more of a difference than others. I was already convinced that single coil vs hb was a major factor -- and that it's hard to get one to sound like the other (although I wouldn't swear I could always tell). I think that there's an archtop sound that you can't get with a solid body -- but not every archtop player uses that sound, so, in some cases, it's hard to tell. I think scale length is a significant factor that's hard to surmount. Various adjustments, especially to the pickup, also matter.
I'm undecided about wood. To nail it down, you'd have to meticulously construct a number of otherwise identical instruments out of different woods and set them up identically. You'd have to construct multiple instruments of each type to make sure that the differences were consistent and not just variations within a wood-type. Then, you would have to record them carefully playing clean, but, arguably, also record them using real world tone. Same notes, same player, same pick, same strings, etc.
I guess I would be surprised if a listener in a blind test could reliably separate the sounds by wood-type.
Most players don't choose to go through a linear amp into a linear speaker. Sounds too sterile to most players, I think. So, proving that there's a difference under those conditions proves that wood influences tone, but doesn't prove that the average player could tell the difference using his own sound. And, since there are as many sounds as players, there's another choice to be made in the testing protocol that limits the generalizability of the results.
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Originally Posted by medblues
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A measurable difference is not necessarily a meaningful or audible difference. Your concept of "proof" is softer than mine, let's leave it at that. Your ears and listening finesse is probably better than mine. But you are still under the governance of the laws of psychoacoustics and your ears/brain are as fallible as the best musicians' out there who have been tested and proven to be unable to transcend the limitations of their nervous system.
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Originally Posted by ArchtopHeaven
Many years ago I had a friend who was a terrific performer. When his band broke up he went looking for a way to use his skills as a performer to help him make a living. He got himself a job in the carnival demoing Ginzu knives. He spent hours every day cutting up tin cans and bricks and then after all that abuse he would take the same knife and cut ultra thin slices of tomato, all while spewing a continuous line of patter. People would then line up and buy the knife because he had proved that it was "indestructible". He said to me "When you spend 10 hours a day doing this you get so good at it that you could cut the tomato with a rock. The customers then buy the knife but when they take it home and try it, the tomato goes 'squash'". I couldn't help feeling that I was watching a perfect example of that same craft and that I should enjoy it for its entertainment value only.
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Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
It seemed to me that the amp didn't make everything sound the same. In some cases the sounds were different and got closer after a tweak.
The sounds he got struck me as conventional. So did his playing. So, the experiment could be considered as using a "typical" guitar amp for typical music. For me that's a feature, not a bug. My question is, should I pay more for wood to make a guitar sound better in my application? Hearing a difference on reference monitors set flat doesn't answer that question any better, as far as I can see. Not that I can't see value to the reference monitor experiment to answer a different question.
It reminds me of the issue of expensive 1/4" cables. I roll off treble anyway by adding capacitance with the tone knob. Why would I care that the cable adds an amount less than I'm adding anyway? I'll just turn the knob until I get the sound I like.
I think it was interesting to hear how close a guitar with no body could get to a normal guitar. But, I wasn't all that impressed with the experiment. A lot of what I care about relates to the way the guitar responds to picking. Thud or ring?
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The best sounding electric solid bodies have vintage brick and mortar bodies with cork necks that are carbon fiber reinforced. They of course, have a huge trough where the double acting truss rod system resides.
Who needs F'n wood anymore?
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Good morning gents,
It's not the wood and it's not the pickups.
Well, it is but first and foremost It's the equilibrium of the loads due to string tension (including the force the player exerts when picking/strumming/plucking, fretting and bending and the forces from string oscillation).
The neck, neck joint and body bends and compresses in different ways subject to design, construction and setup. The vibrating string is dependent on the existence of these loads (which are of great magnitude) and the string vibration is colored by the loads and its momentary variations as you play the instrument. Without these loads there would be no sound at all.
The equilibrium does not only affect the way the instrument sounds, but in every way also how it feels in your hands.
The equilibrium is not a constant. It's not "what it is", It's a variable that depends on string gauge, string height, relief and bridge pressure (and many other things that you may or may not be able to adjust by turning a screw). And any equilibrium you've dialed in is never perpetual; it will change over time as joints and wood fibers slowly but surely metamorphs (the top sinks in, the neck warps, the neck angle raises, the bridge flattens) due to the tremendous loads. And the equilibrium will change with the weather, as temperature and humidity makes the construction elements expand and contract, swell and shrink.
The cardinal factor for your tone (whether it's acoustic or amplified) is that you can control the equilibrium of the loads. At your disposal are tuner keys, an adjustable bridge system and an adjustable truss rod. However, many times that's not enough. But it still doesn't mean that the guitar "is what it is", provided we got the tools and know where to look.
The wood plays an important part in maintaining equilibrium. Blanks of various wood species come in different hardness, different stiffness and with different ability to soak and transpire moisture. Some are suitable for instrument making, some are not. Eventually it's the design and construction, "the build", that is the principle factor that enables the user to dial in and maintain equilibrium for a reasonable period of time (and have a good playing, good sounding instrument with acceptable tuning stability until the guitar is due for adjustment).
Acoustic tone is a matter of resonance, which depends on construction and equilibrium. Amplified ("electric") tone is a matter of (amp), pickups, electronics and equilibrium.
When equilibrium is out of whack, your tone sucks (regardless of your Brazilian rosewood and your original PAFs). The funny thing is that when equilibrium is on the sweetspot a well constructed plywood guitar sounds like a million bucks (thanks to your original PAFs).
Have a nice weekend
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In an electric guitar I think everything contributes to the tone. Firstly the player and his touch.
Speaking of the hardware it's strings, pick or fingers, construction, wood, hardware, scale length, pickups, amplification, setup etc. If it would be only e.g. pickups a tele would sound like an L5 if you put the same pickups in it. Well it doesn't. From my personal experiences:
- Changing from a TOM to a wooden bridge in my humble Ibanez Artcore AG75 made a lot of difference.
- I have "built" two telecaster style guitar from parts. And though they share the same weight, hardware, pickups etc. they are bit different. Nothing the audience would notice but I do.
I know this is anecdotal, not sientific, but I think that a guitar's quality is the sum of it's parts. Changing something can make a small or big difference. Think about such simple things as setting the action lower or higher – it will give you a different timbre.
A couple of years ago I wrote an article about Ali Claudi I titled "The Guitar Whisperer" for Akustik Gitarre. I spent a couple of hours with him to get the information for the portrait. Ali is not only an accomplished player but also optimizes the tone of archtop guitars for himself and for colleagues. His tweaks may be as obvious as changing pickups (he has a nice black L4 and he told me he needed a couple of tries before he found the right pickups for that) or a subtle as gluing litte weights underneath the top to get rid of dead notes. That's really working on details. Great man.
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Above all, I think it’s the colour.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
Yesterday, 11:05 PM in The Players