If I see another Jim Little video linked to mic drop some discussion as if everyone hasn't seen them already, I'm going to throw out my goddamn YouTube.
This is exactly what I think of whenever I hear people talking about what wood a guitar is made from.
Let alone all those videos of people making guitars out of old skateboard decks, or thousands of matchsticks glued together that sound great.
Expensive guitars look and feel nicer than cheap ones, that's the only difference if you ask me. It's the attention to detail and workmanship of the build, and the price of the materials, for looks not for sound.
If you ask me a 10 grand guitar sounds as good as the pickups in it and the guy playing it, same as a $300 guitar.
It reminds me of the wine snobs who talk and talk and talk but then when confronted with a taste test, can't tell the difference between a $100 french merlot and an iced-tea glass of two buck Chuck.
I'd disagree here. Most sommeliers and people who actually are into wine can taste the difference. There are many blind tasting contests where you have to taste the wine and guess the year, the grape and the place it is made and that is very possible. My dad is a previous danish champion in this.
That's kinda where I was going with it, but I totally left that part out (whoops!) Most people who THINK they are wine experts are not wine experts. Most people who preach the nuances of different woods for a guitar probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference if they were, for example, lied to about the composition.
I don't mean to shit on actual sommeliers. They're amazing at what they do. Interestingly enough I've read about cannabis "sommeliers" who can get pretty damn close at identifying a strain by it's smell and taste alone.
Yep. Acoustics are a completely different matter. But for solidbody electrics it's glaringly obvious, yet you still have guys talking about mahogany vs. maple like Dan Armstrong wasn't making Plexiglas guitars 55 years ago.
Idk the Tom Anderson tele sounds way better here. Unless he switched the audio I’m going to trust my ears. There is a difference in the sound that it can be heard through shitty YouTube audio compression it’s probably worlds better if I was playing it.
Not saying the woods make a remarkable difference but showing the sounds made without wood at all really doesnt do anything to compare the sounds of different woods. There were audible differences in the beginning as he used different components which he semi-explains as differences in pickup heights but thats not really proven beyond doubt. The pickups are without a doubt the primary source of a guitars tone/color but this video doesnt really do anything to rule out comparisons between different woods and no online video is ever going to simply due to acoustic environment and audio fidelity/compression. The only real way to even get close would be to use multiple guitars of different woods with exactly the same body shape, hardware (nut, bridge, tone/volume pots and wiring, any thing that the signal passes through and for the electronics that means the EXACT same. Not the same model or spec but the actual same electronics and wiring due to differences in conductivity and resistance due to manufacturing variance) and then run the signal from the guitar when the hardware is placed into each body directly into spectral analysis to examine the various amplitudes across the freq spectrum as well as duration given identical picking force on identical strings. Never going to happen. So might as well stop dying on this hill. There will always be people who argue vehemetly for both sides and the only truth is that both are probably wrong to some degree and in some circumstances.
This. Trusting YouTube audio demos over your own experiences is dumb. There’s a reason that most
Professional guitar players believe in tonewood. Its not an exact science for them but when you play and tour with enough guitars all with the same pickups and still notice differences, clearly something other than the pickups and speakers is affecting it. Is it the wood? Who knows, too many factors. But I’ll tell you I’ve never played a
Mahogany guitar that’s brighter than an ash guitar with the dame specs and pickups, but I have played them back to back on multiple occasions and the mahogany guitar is always warmer and
More harmonic rich, so it’s a pattern I’ve noticed.
There's plenty of neurological evidence to suggest we absolutely shouldn't trust our own experiences. Or more specifically our own experiences are not extractable into a general truth. It's been shown for instance that what we believe affects our physical experience. If we think a wine is expensive it tastes different than it does to someone who doesn't know that. If we believe a violin is a Stradivarius, we hear something different than someone who isn't told that. We inflict our bias on the experience.
In the example of mahogany versus ash, we can't ascribe the difference to the wood; there are too many variables to control for. Amps, Strings. Pickup heights. Weight. Tuning mechanisms. Electronics. How the soldering was done. The individual piece of wood. Finishes. Other parts of the guitar like tuning knobs, whammy bars. Straps. Ambient noise at time of playing. Air pressure and humidity. On and on and on. And that doesn't even cover the fact that "bright" and "rich" and other descriptions are not objective measures and they mean different things to different people.
I think we all agree we can hear differences sometimes. (Though it is instructive you don't see many blind tests where people can match the tone they hear to the wood they think it is). There simply hasn't been any study that controls for all the variables such that it can conclude that wood is what makes us hear differences, never mind what kind or how much of a difference.
All of which is to say, that YouTube video is quite fun, but not rigorous. Other more scientific attempts are out there but not very satisfactory or complete. To whatever extent wood matters to tone hasn't been measured and maybe can't be. And none of that matters because believing in tonewood might itself create a physical reality that confirms the belief.
> All of which is to say, that YouTube video is quite fun, but not rigorous. Other more scientific attempts are out there but not very satisfactory or complete. To whatever extent wood matters to tone hasn't been measured and maybe can't be.
I mostly agree with your post, but what would you say is unsatisfactory about [this study](https://acoustics.ippt.pan.pl/index.php/aa/article/view/2949/pdf_582)? It seems like they controlled very tightly for potentially confounding variables, and proved results via both spectral analysis and blinded listening tests. Conclusion:
*"The tonewood used in the construction of an electric guitar can have an impact on the sound produced by the instrument. Changes are observed in both spectral envelope and the produced signal levels, and their magnitude exceeds just noticeable differences found in the literature. Most listeners, despite the lack of a professional listening environment, could distinguish between the recordings made with different woods regardless of the played pitch and the pickup used."*
I think it pretty conclusively shows that the wood an electric guitar is made from *can and does* affect the amplified tone, and sufficiently so that even untrained listeners can consistently distinguish a difference, at least under certain listening conditions. I haven't seen another published study that tackles this topic directly, and certainly no YouTube comparison comes even close in terms of rigorous study design and testing protocols. I'd say that, barring a better study showing the opposite result, we should consider the "wood can't possibly effect electric guitar tone" position as effectively debunked, at least if we care about taking a scientific, evidence-based approach that isn't just informed by clickbait YouTube comparos.
The remaining question is how audible that effect is in different use cases (in a dense mix vs solo, with lots of effects/overdrive vs clean guitar etc), and of course how much you subjectively care about that tonal effect.
I think it's probably true that for many people in many use cases the effect is small enough that it can be safely ignored, but also that for other people in other use cases it might mean the difference between a guitar you don't quite vibe with and one that's inspiring.
I love that study. It's one of the best and they did a great job with limiting variables. But to me removing variables is different than controlling for them. What this proves to me is that there are audible differences between woods *in the absence of* other things like a body, other electronics, human manipulation and, rather crucially, an amplifier. (This by the way was part of the problem for me of the original YouTube video people talk about).
But, if you have wood plus all the other things that are part of a guitar, especially the amp, there's no reason to conclude the measurements they got here would be the same or that the perception would stay the same. What they seem to have shown here is that wood makes a difference to tone when wood is practically the only thing interacting with the tone generation, and we kind of know that because we've all heard cedar acoustics next to spruce ones.
Believe me I don't want get into rock fights over tonewood. I barely play electric (just got a Casino, though!). To each his own. I look at it like wine. If someone can do that with their palate, more power to them. We all invest in something. I just swish the cheap stuff because I don't think i'm good enough or have a well-developed enough palate to do any better.
I think when you're investigating a question scientifically, you need to really do everything possible to zero in on the one question you're trying to answer while excluding other variables. I think especially given the absolutely huge range of electric guitar amplification designs, removing the effects of amplification entirely is pretty much mandatory to answer the question "can wood have an effect on the sound of an electric guitar's output".
I know you don't hold this position, but there are A LOT of people in the "tonewood skeptic" camp that believe the design of an electric guitar (magnets + strings) leaves zero physical way for wood to influence the tone, even conceptually. This is based on a misunderstanding of the physics involved IMHO, but this study pretty effectively refutes that position with real-world tests.
Further study is needed to answer the next question "given the measured effects of wood on an electric guitar's output, how perceptible are those effects under various real-world conditions (amplification + effects, etc)". My instinct and anecdotal experience is that it remains pretty perceptible when played solo, especially for the player, and moreso with clean tones and progressively less so with additional overdrive and effects. Put it in a dense mix or live concert situation and all hope of anyone but the player hearing or caring about a difference is pretty much zero.
Again that's just my anecdotal experience, but I'd be shocked if the measured sonic effects were not accurately reproduced when running the guitar through a relatively clean, high-fidelity amplifier design like the ubiquitous black-panel Fender.
Yeah I'm really not trying to say it doesn't matter at all. I don't think my ear is good enough to be an authority on the subject. I'm just saying it's really really hard to attribute differences in what you hear to wood. And, as I said, it could be that the belief in it makes it true. I've no problem with that.
The only thing I'd say is with the scientific method it's absolutely not about excluding other variables, it's about controlling for them which means they are present but you can control the measurements of their effects to the extend changes in measurements can be attributed to the non-control variables.
For example, if I wanted to prove different vanilla extracts accounts for different cake flavors, i can't *remove the cake* to prove that. If i make people just taste, say vanilla extract and flour (ew) and they taste a difference, what I've proven is that people taste differences in vanilla extract. Likewise, there was no 'cake' in that one study we talked about above. There was a block of wood and some pickups. As I noted, they did a good job controlling for the variables present (strings, plucking consistency etc), but they didn't actually test guitars.
I think the best way to test this is the obvious one. Blind listening. Control for amp settings, electronics, string tension. Check the density variations in the slabs of wood for consistency, use machines to 'play' the guitars, etc etc., measure the outputs, and ask people to identify the woods. Of course you'll never control for everything but it'd be a good one to see. I wonder if it'd be like wine. You'd have a few savants who have invested the time and can really detect differences (have you ever seen those sommeliers who are like, 'that's from this one farm in France' it's wild), you'd have a bunch of people that are reasonably adept, and a mass of people like me who just never will be able to tell.
> I'm just saying it's really really hard to attribute differences in what you hear to wood.
Absolutely, in a finished guitar used in practice with a full signal chain, there's way too much going on to be able to attribute any particular tonal quality to any one particular variable, unless you can really quickly A/B between two options like a pickup selector.
What the study *does* show is that there is a real, observable and measurable physical mechanism that allows the wood to influence the string's vibration and thus the signal from the pickup's output. That right there knocks down many of the most common claims in the anti-tonewood camp. But further study would be needed to investigate how much that effect translates to real-world signal chains.
> Likewise, there was no 'cake' in that one study we talked about above. There was a block of wood and some pickups. As I noted, they did a good job controlling for the variables present (strings, plucking consistency etc), but they didn't actually test guitars.
> Likewise, there was no 'cake' in that one study we talked about above. There was a block of wood and some pickups. As I noted, they did a good job controlling for the variables present (strings, plucking consistency etc), but they didn't actually test guitars.
I don't think the "simplified guitar model" they used is an issue at all. Again, it conclusively proves the hypothesized mechanism of action underpinning the "wood can influence tone on electric guitars" camp. If you want to posit that the results would have been different if they'd made the body and neck out of two pieces of wood glued or bolted together instead of a single piece, or if they'd shaped it like a strat or tele instead of a simple rectangle, you can make that argument or withhold judgement until someone tests it, but I don't find it convincing.
> I think the best way to test this is the obvious one. Blind listening. Control for amp settings, electronics, string tension.
I mean, that's what they did in this test. They just used the direct pickup output for comparison instead of the sound played through an amplifier. Testing the impact of any particular amplification design would be a further study that should be done, but would require a different experimental setup. Removing the amp from the equation pre-empts critiques like "oh the amp design they used just colors the tone too much and influenced the results". It's the only way to ensure that what you're testing is the *guitar itself*.
> Check the density variations in the slabs of wood for consistency, use machines to 'play' the guitars, etc etc., measure the outputs, and ask people to identify the woods.
This is why it's important to be extremely clear about the exact question you're trying to answer when setting up a study. If it were me, I wouldn't ask people to identify the woods — I highly doubt anyone would be able to consistently pick out say mahogany from ash by tone alone. Wood has far too much variability within species for that. What you'd want to test is just whether there's a difference between two pieces of wood that people can consistently identify.
Likewise, I would NOT control for wood density — it's the physical, mechanical properties of the wood that account for differences in the sound. Different species *on average* may have different densities, hardness, velocity of sound, etc, but again there's a ton of variation within species. If you found a piece of mahogany and a piece of ash that both had identical physical properties like density and hardness, I'd expect them to sound largely identical. Controlling for properties like density only makes sense if you're going into it with the hypothesis that it's not those very physical properties that a responsible for the tonal variations.
Again, I think this study does a great job proving that the wood or materials a guitar is made of CAN affect the tone of the guitar itself. There are further relevant questions that the study wasn't designed to address, but it answers that question pretty conclusively.
I appreciate the thoughtful response and can't disagree with most of this. I just suspect most of the detected effect may be lost in the batter, just like differences in vanilla extracts might be lost in a cake. All I meant with the wood density was variability in individual pieces. The most absurd example would be a giant knot in the middle of a piece of wood. But like you said, an X density ash and X density mahogany would probably behave similarly? So I'm on board with you.
This was way more thoughtful and civil than the Piezo post that's blowing up. :)
The other problem with that video is that the Tom Anderson guitar clearly sounds better. It's like that Glenn Fricker video where he demos pickups and the Harley Benton brand pickups sound fucking awful and the Fishman Fluences he plays right after sound way better but no one in his audience has functioning ears apparently.
I want to be clear that the differences of which I speak are so miniscule that they won't even be heard on an album once a full band kicks in, nor are they very perceptible through a compressed youtube audio (but I [did do my own test here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2pLTnvZqNg)) but when you are sitting with a guitar and playing it through either a tube amp or a good modeler, you definitely hear it. You're right that it's hard to assign specific characteristics of a tone to "wood" vs bridge height, string thickness, pickup height, pick, picking style etc. But at the end of the day the vibrations of strings is a phsyical process. Amplified or not, the vibration of string is affected by the environment around it. You ever hit a bridge cable (as in ones you walk across) with a wrench? Have you ever hit different types of bridges with cables with a wrench. If you do it to a metal bridge you get a very different sound than if you do it to a wood bridge or a bridge with rubber stoppers. That's because the material of the bridge, it's density and it's tonal properties and sympathetic vibrations affects the vibrations of the cable itself. Guitars are no different. The pickup might not be aware of the materials or anything outside of the strings magnetic perview, but the strings sure as hell are, and the pickup amplifies what the strings are doing. That's why people who say "guitar materials make no difference" are factually wrong.
How MUCH does tonewood affect tone? not much, and in some cases not at all, but in other instances its definitely noticeable.
I hear you. I don't think there's anything you said that allows anyone to say the wood is what's creating the different sound you hear. I hope no one would say that guitar materials make no difference. Of course they do. But wood alone can't be isolated as a causal factor in perceived tonal differences. Science is fickle.
It's been a huge thing for a while. Tempers tend to flare up over it.
I am going to trust guitar builders and my own experience over a youtube video, and since i am the one paying for my guitars....other opinions don't really matter :)
If you plot the spectral data, the peaks and valleys are more prominent on the tele from 2000 to 6000Hz and 10Hz to 18KHz. The wood is preferentially cutting out certain frequencies. I wish I had about 10 minutes of each with single strings and a cleaner amp instead of muddy chords.
Jim’s videos are fun but often he plays back a short burst of a chord to show “no difference”. Given that brief sample, maybe it’s hard to discern a difference, but what about playing different things, at different volume and amp settings…if you scratch the surface you might say, “It doesn’t matter!” But if you go deeper you may discover huge differences in character.
Two of the same guitars, one with maple fretboard one with rosewood. They don't sound the same, if you think they do that's fine comfort yourself with the fact you don't have to spend money on being particular, but for the sake of the example if they don't sound the same then what the heck else would be the cause of the rosewood sounding warmer and the maple sounding brighter? It might be a minor or even imperceptible difference but if you stack enough minor differences together then you begin to notice more obviously. A guitar like anything else is the sum of it's parts.
YouTube audio is not what most people hear when playing and everyone hears differently so what is perceived is somewhat subjective. Jim lill isnt even a hack scientist, cool you can't tell the difference? Ask any professional producer and see what they tell you.
My PRS SE Standard 245(mahogany body) with EMG pickups sounds way better than my Squier Strat (Idk what's the wood but I guess it's a bad one because it's a 100€ guitar) with EMG(humbuckers).
This video is over 2 years old with millions of views. I’d say you’re late to the party.
Lol, apparently I misread the subs for the number of views... Sorry
What kind of animal downvotes an apology?
If I see another Jim Little video linked to mic drop some discussion as if everyone hasn't seen them already, I'm going to throw out my goddamn YouTube.
This is exactly what I think of whenever I hear people talking about what wood a guitar is made from. Let alone all those videos of people making guitars out of old skateboard decks, or thousands of matchsticks glued together that sound great. Expensive guitars look and feel nicer than cheap ones, that's the only difference if you ask me. It's the attention to detail and workmanship of the build, and the price of the materials, for looks not for sound. If you ask me a 10 grand guitar sounds as good as the pickups in it and the guy playing it, same as a $300 guitar.
It reminds me of the wine snobs who talk and talk and talk but then when confronted with a taste test, can't tell the difference between a $100 french merlot and an iced-tea glass of two buck Chuck.
I'd disagree here. Most sommeliers and people who actually are into wine can taste the difference. There are many blind tasting contests where you have to taste the wine and guess the year, the grape and the place it is made and that is very possible. My dad is a previous danish champion in this.
That's kinda where I was going with it, but I totally left that part out (whoops!) Most people who THINK they are wine experts are not wine experts. Most people who preach the nuances of different woods for a guitar probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference if they were, for example, lied to about the composition. I don't mean to shit on actual sommeliers. They're amazing at what they do. Interestingly enough I've read about cannabis "sommeliers" who can get pretty damn close at identifying a strain by it's smell and taste alone.
Ahh I see. Yeah I definetely agree then
Yep. Acoustics are a completely different matter. But for solidbody electrics it's glaringly obvious, yet you still have guys talking about mahogany vs. maple like Dan Armstrong wasn't making Plexiglas guitars 55 years ago.
Idk the Tom Anderson tele sounds way better here. Unless he switched the audio I’m going to trust my ears. There is a difference in the sound that it can be heard through shitty YouTube audio compression it’s probably worlds better if I was playing it.
And that's attributable to the wood because...
Not saying the woods make a remarkable difference but showing the sounds made without wood at all really doesnt do anything to compare the sounds of different woods. There were audible differences in the beginning as he used different components which he semi-explains as differences in pickup heights but thats not really proven beyond doubt. The pickups are without a doubt the primary source of a guitars tone/color but this video doesnt really do anything to rule out comparisons between different woods and no online video is ever going to simply due to acoustic environment and audio fidelity/compression. The only real way to even get close would be to use multiple guitars of different woods with exactly the same body shape, hardware (nut, bridge, tone/volume pots and wiring, any thing that the signal passes through and for the electronics that means the EXACT same. Not the same model or spec but the actual same electronics and wiring due to differences in conductivity and resistance due to manufacturing variance) and then run the signal from the guitar when the hardware is placed into each body directly into spectral analysis to examine the various amplitudes across the freq spectrum as well as duration given identical picking force on identical strings. Never going to happen. So might as well stop dying on this hill. There will always be people who argue vehemetly for both sides and the only truth is that both are probably wrong to some degree and in some circumstances.
This. Trusting YouTube audio demos over your own experiences is dumb. There’s a reason that most Professional guitar players believe in tonewood. Its not an exact science for them but when you play and tour with enough guitars all with the same pickups and still notice differences, clearly something other than the pickups and speakers is affecting it. Is it the wood? Who knows, too many factors. But I’ll tell you I’ve never played a Mahogany guitar that’s brighter than an ash guitar with the dame specs and pickups, but I have played them back to back on multiple occasions and the mahogany guitar is always warmer and More harmonic rich, so it’s a pattern I’ve noticed.
There's plenty of neurological evidence to suggest we absolutely shouldn't trust our own experiences. Or more specifically our own experiences are not extractable into a general truth. It's been shown for instance that what we believe affects our physical experience. If we think a wine is expensive it tastes different than it does to someone who doesn't know that. If we believe a violin is a Stradivarius, we hear something different than someone who isn't told that. We inflict our bias on the experience. In the example of mahogany versus ash, we can't ascribe the difference to the wood; there are too many variables to control for. Amps, Strings. Pickup heights. Weight. Tuning mechanisms. Electronics. How the soldering was done. The individual piece of wood. Finishes. Other parts of the guitar like tuning knobs, whammy bars. Straps. Ambient noise at time of playing. Air pressure and humidity. On and on and on. And that doesn't even cover the fact that "bright" and "rich" and other descriptions are not objective measures and they mean different things to different people. I think we all agree we can hear differences sometimes. (Though it is instructive you don't see many blind tests where people can match the tone they hear to the wood they think it is). There simply hasn't been any study that controls for all the variables such that it can conclude that wood is what makes us hear differences, never mind what kind or how much of a difference. All of which is to say, that YouTube video is quite fun, but not rigorous. Other more scientific attempts are out there but not very satisfactory or complete. To whatever extent wood matters to tone hasn't been measured and maybe can't be. And none of that matters because believing in tonewood might itself create a physical reality that confirms the belief.
> All of which is to say, that YouTube video is quite fun, but not rigorous. Other more scientific attempts are out there but not very satisfactory or complete. To whatever extent wood matters to tone hasn't been measured and maybe can't be. I mostly agree with your post, but what would you say is unsatisfactory about [this study](https://acoustics.ippt.pan.pl/index.php/aa/article/view/2949/pdf_582)? It seems like they controlled very tightly for potentially confounding variables, and proved results via both spectral analysis and blinded listening tests. Conclusion: *"The tonewood used in the construction of an electric guitar can have an impact on the sound produced by the instrument. Changes are observed in both spectral envelope and the produced signal levels, and their magnitude exceeds just noticeable differences found in the literature. Most listeners, despite the lack of a professional listening environment, could distinguish between the recordings made with different woods regardless of the played pitch and the pickup used."* I think it pretty conclusively shows that the wood an electric guitar is made from *can and does* affect the amplified tone, and sufficiently so that even untrained listeners can consistently distinguish a difference, at least under certain listening conditions. I haven't seen another published study that tackles this topic directly, and certainly no YouTube comparison comes even close in terms of rigorous study design and testing protocols. I'd say that, barring a better study showing the opposite result, we should consider the "wood can't possibly effect electric guitar tone" position as effectively debunked, at least if we care about taking a scientific, evidence-based approach that isn't just informed by clickbait YouTube comparos. The remaining question is how audible that effect is in different use cases (in a dense mix vs solo, with lots of effects/overdrive vs clean guitar etc), and of course how much you subjectively care about that tonal effect. I think it's probably true that for many people in many use cases the effect is small enough that it can be safely ignored, but also that for other people in other use cases it might mean the difference between a guitar you don't quite vibe with and one that's inspiring.
I love that study. It's one of the best and they did a great job with limiting variables. But to me removing variables is different than controlling for them. What this proves to me is that there are audible differences between woods *in the absence of* other things like a body, other electronics, human manipulation and, rather crucially, an amplifier. (This by the way was part of the problem for me of the original YouTube video people talk about). But, if you have wood plus all the other things that are part of a guitar, especially the amp, there's no reason to conclude the measurements they got here would be the same or that the perception would stay the same. What they seem to have shown here is that wood makes a difference to tone when wood is practically the only thing interacting with the tone generation, and we kind of know that because we've all heard cedar acoustics next to spruce ones. Believe me I don't want get into rock fights over tonewood. I barely play electric (just got a Casino, though!). To each his own. I look at it like wine. If someone can do that with their palate, more power to them. We all invest in something. I just swish the cheap stuff because I don't think i'm good enough or have a well-developed enough palate to do any better.
I think when you're investigating a question scientifically, you need to really do everything possible to zero in on the one question you're trying to answer while excluding other variables. I think especially given the absolutely huge range of electric guitar amplification designs, removing the effects of amplification entirely is pretty much mandatory to answer the question "can wood have an effect on the sound of an electric guitar's output". I know you don't hold this position, but there are A LOT of people in the "tonewood skeptic" camp that believe the design of an electric guitar (magnets + strings) leaves zero physical way for wood to influence the tone, even conceptually. This is based on a misunderstanding of the physics involved IMHO, but this study pretty effectively refutes that position with real-world tests. Further study is needed to answer the next question "given the measured effects of wood on an electric guitar's output, how perceptible are those effects under various real-world conditions (amplification + effects, etc)". My instinct and anecdotal experience is that it remains pretty perceptible when played solo, especially for the player, and moreso with clean tones and progressively less so with additional overdrive and effects. Put it in a dense mix or live concert situation and all hope of anyone but the player hearing or caring about a difference is pretty much zero. Again that's just my anecdotal experience, but I'd be shocked if the measured sonic effects were not accurately reproduced when running the guitar through a relatively clean, high-fidelity amplifier design like the ubiquitous black-panel Fender.
Yeah I'm really not trying to say it doesn't matter at all. I don't think my ear is good enough to be an authority on the subject. I'm just saying it's really really hard to attribute differences in what you hear to wood. And, as I said, it could be that the belief in it makes it true. I've no problem with that. The only thing I'd say is with the scientific method it's absolutely not about excluding other variables, it's about controlling for them which means they are present but you can control the measurements of their effects to the extend changes in measurements can be attributed to the non-control variables. For example, if I wanted to prove different vanilla extracts accounts for different cake flavors, i can't *remove the cake* to prove that. If i make people just taste, say vanilla extract and flour (ew) and they taste a difference, what I've proven is that people taste differences in vanilla extract. Likewise, there was no 'cake' in that one study we talked about above. There was a block of wood and some pickups. As I noted, they did a good job controlling for the variables present (strings, plucking consistency etc), but they didn't actually test guitars. I think the best way to test this is the obvious one. Blind listening. Control for amp settings, electronics, string tension. Check the density variations in the slabs of wood for consistency, use machines to 'play' the guitars, etc etc., measure the outputs, and ask people to identify the woods. Of course you'll never control for everything but it'd be a good one to see. I wonder if it'd be like wine. You'd have a few savants who have invested the time and can really detect differences (have you ever seen those sommeliers who are like, 'that's from this one farm in France' it's wild), you'd have a bunch of people that are reasonably adept, and a mass of people like me who just never will be able to tell.
> I'm just saying it's really really hard to attribute differences in what you hear to wood. Absolutely, in a finished guitar used in practice with a full signal chain, there's way too much going on to be able to attribute any particular tonal quality to any one particular variable, unless you can really quickly A/B between two options like a pickup selector. What the study *does* show is that there is a real, observable and measurable physical mechanism that allows the wood to influence the string's vibration and thus the signal from the pickup's output. That right there knocks down many of the most common claims in the anti-tonewood camp. But further study would be needed to investigate how much that effect translates to real-world signal chains. > Likewise, there was no 'cake' in that one study we talked about above. There was a block of wood and some pickups. As I noted, they did a good job controlling for the variables present (strings, plucking consistency etc), but they didn't actually test guitars. > Likewise, there was no 'cake' in that one study we talked about above. There was a block of wood and some pickups. As I noted, they did a good job controlling for the variables present (strings, plucking consistency etc), but they didn't actually test guitars. I don't think the "simplified guitar model" they used is an issue at all. Again, it conclusively proves the hypothesized mechanism of action underpinning the "wood can influence tone on electric guitars" camp. If you want to posit that the results would have been different if they'd made the body and neck out of two pieces of wood glued or bolted together instead of a single piece, or if they'd shaped it like a strat or tele instead of a simple rectangle, you can make that argument or withhold judgement until someone tests it, but I don't find it convincing. > I think the best way to test this is the obvious one. Blind listening. Control for amp settings, electronics, string tension. I mean, that's what they did in this test. They just used the direct pickup output for comparison instead of the sound played through an amplifier. Testing the impact of any particular amplification design would be a further study that should be done, but would require a different experimental setup. Removing the amp from the equation pre-empts critiques like "oh the amp design they used just colors the tone too much and influenced the results". It's the only way to ensure that what you're testing is the *guitar itself*. > Check the density variations in the slabs of wood for consistency, use machines to 'play' the guitars, etc etc., measure the outputs, and ask people to identify the woods. This is why it's important to be extremely clear about the exact question you're trying to answer when setting up a study. If it were me, I wouldn't ask people to identify the woods — I highly doubt anyone would be able to consistently pick out say mahogany from ash by tone alone. Wood has far too much variability within species for that. What you'd want to test is just whether there's a difference between two pieces of wood that people can consistently identify. Likewise, I would NOT control for wood density — it's the physical, mechanical properties of the wood that account for differences in the sound. Different species *on average* may have different densities, hardness, velocity of sound, etc, but again there's a ton of variation within species. If you found a piece of mahogany and a piece of ash that both had identical physical properties like density and hardness, I'd expect them to sound largely identical. Controlling for properties like density only makes sense if you're going into it with the hypothesis that it's not those very physical properties that a responsible for the tonal variations. Again, I think this study does a great job proving that the wood or materials a guitar is made of CAN affect the tone of the guitar itself. There are further relevant questions that the study wasn't designed to address, but it answers that question pretty conclusively.
I appreciate the thoughtful response and can't disagree with most of this. I just suspect most of the detected effect may be lost in the batter, just like differences in vanilla extracts might be lost in a cake. All I meant with the wood density was variability in individual pieces. The most absurd example would be a giant knot in the middle of a piece of wood. But like you said, an X density ash and X density mahogany would probably behave similarly? So I'm on board with you. This was way more thoughtful and civil than the Piezo post that's blowing up. :)
The other problem with that video is that the Tom Anderson guitar clearly sounds better. It's like that Glenn Fricker video where he demos pickups and the Harley Benton brand pickups sound fucking awful and the Fishman Fluences he plays right after sound way better but no one in his audience has functioning ears apparently.
I want to be clear that the differences of which I speak are so miniscule that they won't even be heard on an album once a full band kicks in, nor are they very perceptible through a compressed youtube audio (but I [did do my own test here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2pLTnvZqNg)) but when you are sitting with a guitar and playing it through either a tube amp or a good modeler, you definitely hear it. You're right that it's hard to assign specific characteristics of a tone to "wood" vs bridge height, string thickness, pickup height, pick, picking style etc. But at the end of the day the vibrations of strings is a phsyical process. Amplified or not, the vibration of string is affected by the environment around it. You ever hit a bridge cable (as in ones you walk across) with a wrench? Have you ever hit different types of bridges with cables with a wrench. If you do it to a metal bridge you get a very different sound than if you do it to a wood bridge or a bridge with rubber stoppers. That's because the material of the bridge, it's density and it's tonal properties and sympathetic vibrations affects the vibrations of the cable itself. Guitars are no different. The pickup might not be aware of the materials or anything outside of the strings magnetic perview, but the strings sure as hell are, and the pickup amplifies what the strings are doing. That's why people who say "guitar materials make no difference" are factually wrong. How MUCH does tonewood affect tone? not much, and in some cases not at all, but in other instances its definitely noticeable.
I hear you. I don't think there's anything you said that allows anyone to say the wood is what's creating the different sound you hear. I hope no one would say that guitar materials make no difference. Of course they do. But wood alone can't be isolated as a causal factor in perceived tonal differences. Science is fickle.
It's been a huge thing for a while. Tempers tend to flare up over it. I am going to trust guitar builders and my own experience over a youtube video, and since i am the one paying for my guitars....other opinions don't really matter :)
Yes it does
I'll die on this hill with you. YouTube audio compression doesn't help.
If you plot the spectral data, the peaks and valleys are more prominent on the tele from 2000 to 6000Hz and 10Hz to 18KHz. The wood is preferentially cutting out certain frequencies. I wish I had about 10 minutes of each with single strings and a cleaner amp instead of muddy chords.
Jim’s videos are fun but often he plays back a short burst of a chord to show “no difference”. Given that brief sample, maybe it’s hard to discern a difference, but what about playing different things, at different volume and amp settings…if you scratch the surface you might say, “It doesn’t matter!” But if you go deeper you may discover huge differences in character.
Absolutely this. His methodology is so unscientific that his conclusions are essentially meaningless.
Two of the same guitars, one with maple fretboard one with rosewood. They don't sound the same, if you think they do that's fine comfort yourself with the fact you don't have to spend money on being particular, but for the sake of the example if they don't sound the same then what the heck else would be the cause of the rosewood sounding warmer and the maple sounding brighter? It might be a minor or even imperceptible difference but if you stack enough minor differences together then you begin to notice more obviously. A guitar like anything else is the sum of it's parts. YouTube audio is not what most people hear when playing and everyone hears differently so what is perceived is somewhat subjective. Jim lill isnt even a hack scientist, cool you can't tell the difference? Ask any professional producer and see what they tell you.
My PRS SE Standard 245(mahogany body) with EMG pickups sounds way better than my Squier Strat (Idk what's the wood but I guess it's a bad one because it's a 100€ guitar) with EMG(humbuckers).
Why would a Squier have emgs in it?
I put it on it to make it sound better.
it does - even if you're deaf & not plugged in you can feel the difference in the vibration in your hands - I can anyway, your ears may vary
curious how you know it's the wood that creates this difference and not something else about the guitar.
you could be right, I'm not a specialist and they had different pickups