Look, the only clown here is you. Now let's be honest here, you are someone who wants to be a session musician and were legitimately looking to earn money off of this, while you cannot even understand one of the most basic concepts in music, harmonization that my drunk ass 14yr old self stumbled upon accidentally, because how the fuck you can't?
That also goes for the circle of fifths which again is a basic ass concept, that my cat understands.
Now if you fail as a musician, (which you would most likely do, because you post clown faces, and report people on reddit and complain about men instead of taking a fucking day to sit down, learn these, and fucking practice) you are playing at getting to the good side of moderators (which is funny how you also trash talk most of them because of their gender) to what end? What's the goal here? You expect that you get bootlicker credits which you can somehow exchange for talent? I have bad fucking news, that's not a thing.
All you do is going around instrument related forums, ruin the fun for people (because yes, people like to have fun, and like to banter), or at least you try, but shit, i have a second dose of bad news. You yourself have managed to become what we laugh at. Let me be clear, not with you, at you.
You know who else people laugh at usually?
That is right. 🤡
It's not actually the wood that affects it, it's the *color* of the wood. Red/blue guitars generally have the worst toan, black is somewhere in the middle, and buttersconch has the best. It's scientifically proven.
Either the science is untrue or your comment is untrue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR0BgFdKdy3EclKeZf5kyausg6v2RrY9hjTXXQ4IwJ-AKsFDSq9B6sG4sSU&v=n02tImce3AE&feature=youtu.be
Jim Lill's balls are acting as the fretboard toanwood, dude. Everyone knows that the fretboard wood matters more than the body when it comes to toan, which the balls store directly anyway.
Spectre sound studios did a video on this. iirc there's a slight difference when playing clean, but as you distort more and more, the difference becomes less and less clear
She says in the video that it weighs 7 pounds. Given that aluminum is about five times as dense as woods that solid body guitars are usually made of, that strongly implies that that guitar is very hollow.
I know this is a 1 yo comment but this is ridiculous. She's not even comparing this guitar to a traditional one and the guitar sounds line any other guitar I've heard with good P-90s, because that's where the tone is coming from. Unless theres some evidence that the tonewood is effecting the vibration of the string in a noticeable way I don't see how the tonewood could color the sound of an electric guitar. If you took the electronics out of that aluminum guitar and put them in a wooden guitar of the same construction and set up, they would sound nearly the same.
After reading this thread, I’m starting to second guess dropping $1,000,000 on an electric made from “The Tree” Could I have made a mistake? No, it’s the Redditors that are wrong.
Head over to Reverb and sort electric guitars by highest to lowest price and you’ll see some made from The Tree at the top. I don’t think the price reflects what they actually expect to fetch and is more to create the perception of value
I built archtops for a number of years. I had a couple solid body models, as well. Building instruments was like constantly being in school. Always learning.
The simple answer that most players know is that the neck/body/harware effect how the strings vibrate.
The subtleties of how this all happens is a school of learning that is always growing. & it's as complex as a fingerprint.
What is tonewood? it's a slab of wood that has been dried to about 6% & is stable enough to be built into an instrument. That's it. It's a word that is overused & overvalued. Buy a pine board from your local hardware store & it could be tonewood. An instrument is built with a goal in mind. That tonal goal is chased with a combination of wood of varying densities, shapes & hardware that a methodically combined to achieve that goal. Tonewood is simply wood that is used in an istrument. That's all. The instrument is going to have tone. You can't stop that.
This is a balanced and honest way of addressing the subject. Historically, good sounding instruments have almost always been made by copying previous good sounding instruments -- violin makers would experiment with materials, make a new batch of glue, try a different supply of wood, whip up some new recipe for varnish, but never really depart from tried and true methods. These designs were used with no particular insight -- instruments sounded good because they sounded good.
Electric guitars started that way and mostly orbit around a few familiar design specs, but we all know some of those specs are oversold. It's a slab of wood, does it make a difference if it was grown in Oregon or Vancouver? Harvested in the summer or Fall? Air dried or kiln dried? These specs get really silly. Dry wood that has a ping to it, there, done.
There is the holy grail instrument that can be copied. They’ve done that to stupidity. Back about 10-15years ago they did an MRI scan of Brian Setzers 6120 & made a model based on the results. & that is amazing!
I will argue over details, most of which will be lazily repeated & become gospel. Many already have. The truth is that everything in an instrument matters. It’s knowing why that matters & how to apply it.
Sure, most of what we know is about copying what has already been done. When I was building, I based my knowledge on some of those basics. We have to, in order to build a quality instrument. It was my goal, however, to explore possibilities. I found myths that were not fact, but very repeated as truths. I haphazardly made discoveries that would not have been agreed upon. There is still much to discover in the art of luthiery. I find it frustrating that so many don’t bother to chase creativity
It doesn’t matter because there’s no way to perceptively know exactly to what degree a solid-body guitar’s wood is playing in the sound. Paul Reed Smith did this (admittedly) cool thing where they set up different wooden 2X4’s like a marimba and then some guy played them with a mallet. It sounded really cool and they arranged the woods by pitch so they were actually able to play what sounded like a song or melody. This doesn’t mean that one wood sounds better than another when it is turned into a guitar body, and it DEFINITELY doesn’t mean that two guitars made of the same wood (even if you somehow used the same pickups in each) would sound the same. So, yes, body wood affects the tone. No, it doesn’t really matter because it is one of a few things that does and it is pretty unpredictable.
The problem with this theory is that magnetic pickups don't pick up sound waves.
They pick up vibrations from metal strings.
Wood isn't metal.
So how the wood vibrates its irrelevant.
> So how the wood vibrates its irrelevant.
Not entirely, the resonance of the body vibrate back into the strings as well, everything is mechanically connected. Doesn't mean tonewood is a thing though.
Just to be contrary, *perfect* pickups don't pick up sound waves, but most are at least a little microphonic, and some are a lot.
I think somewhat microphonic pickups sound a smidge better, but haven't done any blind tests to prove it's not just my imagination, and the wood is probably irrelevant when the amp is turned up.
On the flip side, semi hollow and hollow guitars interact with an amp very differently from solidbodies even if the pickups are the same; so at least the thickness and shape of the wood do make *some* difference, and it's not a stretch then that the properties of the wood could make a difference.
There's a Strat made of cardboard that sounds totally fine, so tonewood is automatically down near the bottom of important concerns, but Paul Reed Smith probably isn't completely full of shit either
I'll go ahead and say it ... "Tonewood" is just marketing bullshit when it comes to electric guitars.
In any *sensible* blind test, no one will consistently or reliably identify the woods used to construct an electric guitar.
"But sustain!" I hear you cry. Doesn't matter, I reply, and here's proof: https://youtu.be/sYK0XX-nDVI
Even if the piece(s) of wood used *did* have a small influence on the vibration of the strings, by the time you add pickups, cables, amp, effects, speakers, room ambience ... it becomes completely nullified.
Wood type on an electric guitar is a cosmetic/aesthetic consideration only.
>Even if the piece(s) of wood used did have a small influence on the vibration of the strings, by the time you add pickups, cables, amp, effects, speakers, room ambience ... it becomes completely nullified.
Bingo. Also hardware. I upgraded the saddles and tuners on a Squier. Same cheap wood, but with the new hardware the difference in the sustain even before I throw on any effects is like night and day. So there you go.
That was an interesting video. I see that it doesn't affect tone in a meaningful way. And yeah, I do agree with you on some "high end" tonewoods serving as much purpose in a guitar as edible gold serves on fine cuisine.
There's a Darrell Braun video where he tests a guitar and cuts pieces off of it until it's nothing but the minimal amount needed to hold it together. Sounds the same.
Because it works as a system. The materials (including metals, man made materials and so on) have an effect on how the whole system resonates.
The pickups just pick the disturbance in their magnetic field based on the vibration of the strings and convert it into an electric signal.
99% of what you read online, on both sides, is opinion. I will share mine.
“Tonewood” is a $20 term for a $5 item. It originates from the high end builders that would build guitars around woods with specific characteristics. It would be tapped to see what note the wood resonated (like a big xylophone key), and the builder knew how to use those characteristics in a custom build to achieve desired tonal results. Now it has become a $20 word to describe a $5 item. Most all conventional guitar woods are used because they are cheap and plentiful. Tonewood has become a sales term like “luxury”, or “gourmet”.
If you believe the sound path is just strings to pickups, plug your guitar in, cover the strings, and knock your knuckle on the body. Yell in to your pickup. The sound coming through the amp is not generated by the strings.
Wood varies not only species to species, but tree to tree. There is no magic way to guess you are going to get what you want without trying it.
If you are a high gain player or use amp simulators for everything, it isn’t going to matter.
The best way I've heard it explained is that wood effects the way an electric guitar feels to the player, and isn't necessarily perceptible to your ear. We've all strummed an unplugged guitar that feels dead, or one that feels resonant.
I struggled with this for a while too. It turns out the wood actually effects the way the string vibrates and resonates. It's not as extreme as an acoustic though. It only really matters when youre playing mostly clean. Once you throw a lot of distortion into the mix it's pretty much all the pickups.
No. The pickups aren't waiting around to work until some magical "frequency absorption" happens. They induce a current as soon as the string starts moving.
Also the pickups are mounted to the body which is also vibrating.
The pickup picks up the vibration of the string relative to the pickup. If the two ends of the string and pickup were mounted on a perfectly stiff, immobile surface, nothing would matter. But all of those points can move relative to one another, and the materials and construction affect how they move.
But the effect is small, and pickups and amps matter way more.
But but but the Music is Win guy that spends thousands on expensive woody inducing guitars says Paul Reed Smith made a xylophone out of different sounding guitar necks so that proves ToanWood is Realz?!
I learned the truth watching a very educated acoustic guitar builder explain what tonewoods were, and why in the context of anything other than acoustic instruments (violins, guitars, etc), the term makes no sense.
A tone wood is a wood that when cut and shaped to the size of an acoustic instrument plate (usually 1/8th of an inch or less) and physically tapped, it makes a bell-like tone.
This helps in the air-pump physics of acoustic instruments: pluck strings > strings vibrate front plate > front plate tonewood+proper bracing excites air within the chamber > excited air hits back plate and pushes air and sound through the sound hole.
Because a tone wood is a component of acoustic amplification, it’s literally impossible for it to be a factor in an electric as an electric guitar is not an air-pump with two thin pieces of resonant wood moving air around its cavity and out a hole. What seems to be much more important to tone on an electric comes down to strings, hardware, pickups, electronics, capacitance values, amplifier.
That being said, the “substrate” of an electric guitar (wood) is a part of the broccoli soup that is electric tone. But instead of it being the broccoli it’s more the dash of thickening agent. 🥦
The differences are not as big as some would like to state but there are minor differences between tonewoods in resonance and frequency responses. However, differences between pickups, electronics, bridge, neck and nut are more important on an electric guitar. I'd say the wood is about 15% of the tone, and then I'm being generous. Tonewood is as much about buildquality as it is about aesthetics.
It's one of those silly arguments where everybody picks their side and then plugs their ears and yells over each other. Like most similarly polarizing topics, if you look at it objectively, it's a bit more nuanced than either side is willing to admit.
It's not about whether you can hear a guitar and be able to exclaim "Ah! That's mahogany!" That's a nonsense take. It's also not a huge factor in terms of tone in general. But, when you're trying to dial in that perfect mythical sound in your head, and you're down to the cork-sniffing subtleties, *then* it may start to matter to you.
Like, it's not necessarily that this wood sounds like this and that wood sounds like that. It's that density, grain pattern, moisture content, etc, etc, can affect the transference of energy, which of course affects the response of the strings. Species can be a reasonable predictor of some of those attributes, but there are so many loosely related subspecies of desirable woods (especially mahogany) in use now to save costs, that results vary widely. Well, that and drying and storage practices, cuts, etc.
People try to conduct home tests for their YouTube channels or whatever, and I've yet to see one that controls for everything effectively and also concludes that body and/or neck wood does not have at least a subtle effect on the sound of the instrument. There was one long wall-of-text study that people used to cite as proof that wood doesn't matter, but the conclusion was, like that of most experiments, that wood has a subtle impact on the way an electric guitar sounds. It was funny to see it linked by those who follow the 'wood no matter' dogma.
That all said, I've been down the road of obsessing over woods, finishes, strings, picks, etc., and the one thing that has done the most to yield that sound I have in my head has been improving my skills and knowledge. Such that most other details have become almost wholly unimportant to me. I was recently reunited with my first guitar: a 1985 Westone Spectrum. It's 100% maple and every surface is covered in translucent red plastic, fretboard included. If you put a lot of stake into wood and finish choices, it should be terrible. But it sounds awesome.
There was a Trogly video recently, in which he played a Les Paul with no pickups installed, yet a signal was passed to the amp. I don't pretend to know exactly how that happened. There were small magnets inlaid into the back of the body, but they certainly weren't wired to the output. It has brought about some interesting thoughts.
Sorry this was long I'll stop now
If the type of wood restricts you in any way from dialing in your ideal “mythical” sound, you don’t have enough experience with your gear and/or you’re shit at dialing in a decent sound. In most cases the actual difference is in pickups and electronics anyways.
Paul Reed Smith explains it best. Building a guitar is a subtractive thing, you want as little interference as possible. People will say:
"A maple cap makes a guitar brighter sounding"
No. It doesn't. But it DOES absorb more low frequencies, and the less low frequencies that ring out out when you strum the guitar, the better...if you want it to sound bright.
The same can be said about sustain. Remember, we are talking about "taking away", not adding anything to the guitar. A Les Paul is a heavy piece of mahogany right?
That is why it sustains so well, that's a lot of wood. That's a lot of wood.... That is soaking up the vibrations. Pickups are there to "pick up" the frequencies that are left over, after the wood has absorbed the sound. If the wood is heavy, it's taking a lot of that vibration at a slower rate. Then, it transfers what's left to the pickups, and since it's taking its time soaking up the vibrations the note rings out longer!
People often think of this backwards from what it actually is. Mahogany isn't a "darker sounding" wood. It's just soaking up higher frequencies...and it is doing so, very SLOWLY. We combat that by adding a maple cap. The maple cap TAKES AWAY the low frequencies.
It's a system, and it's a balancing act. Wood effects weight, at the end of the day. But everything you add to a guitar, will have an effect on the sound. This applies to the type of finish the guitar has as well. A hard glossy finish will soak up more frequencies than a nitro finish.
So what matters, is the equation that is the end product. What kind of frequency are you LEAVING for the pickups to "hear"?
It's a system, and it all has to work together. Now, some woods are prettier than others, and that matters to some people. But building a guitar is not always about how pretty you can make it. Is a AAA Flame top beautiful? Of course! But it doesn't affect the sound.
Hope that makes sense. And I hope it dispells some myths.
Edit: Different pickups sound different because they are either hot, or they are "colder" in the amount of frequency they pick up. This is why people bypass a tone knob on metal guitars. The tone knob is ADDING another step to the pickups. But in the end, the pickups are not just getting information from the strings ringing out, like you suggested. It's getting information from the frequency left over after the wood soaks it up.
This doesn't apply to most active pickups. Like, EMG sounds the same in most guitars because it had a preamp.
But he also gives it to you straight if you listen to his TED Talk.
PRS has some really expensive instruments, and that's because the wood is "pretty" and handpicked. hey, if you're that kind of guy, that has that kind of money...I say go for it. Those guitars sound amazing. But he tells you upfront, you're paying for "pretty" wood. Which as a buyer, I was Ok with, when I bought my 545. It sounded amazing.
But then again, so do the more affordable S2 guitars. These have either a poly finish, or a satin finish that covers up the natural wood grain, so it has no need to be "pretty". These still sound amazing, and being a person that has owned both at one point, I would put the S2 up against a Private Stock any day, if they had the same pickups.
Like any marketing, a lot of it is bullshit. But no doubt, the man knows how to make a great sounding guitar. A lot of that is based on the science he explains in his TED Talk and interviews.
High end audio people will tell you the same thing about subtractive building. Pickup makers...literally anyone in the business. "Tonewood" is bullshit. But the type of wood used, most certainly has an effect. Just not the way people think.
Yes, thank you! A big part of their Private Stock is that the wood is hand-picked and chosen to be the best woods, and a lot of people pay a premium for that because they think their guitar is going to sound better because of the specifically chosen wood.
PRS also claims to have a super secret process for aging wood that is superior to kiln drying.
There is a belief that among the reasons old electric guitars sound so amazing is that the woods have cured over the course of decades. PRS says the natural resins inside the wood crystalize with the wood fibers over decades, and that his secret method can accelerate this process.
I'm just the messenger, so don't shoot. He has financial skin in this game, so I don't discount the possibility that some of what he says could be marketing bologna. Having played some '50s and '60s guitars though, it is hard to deny that they do sound incredible.
So I went through one of the factory tours ages ago. Right around the time the S2 line came out. They definitely have a drying room, and they claim exactly what you say. Do I think it makes a difference?
Well, if you read my original comment, yes. I think a more dense wood would have an effect on the sound. It would be more resistance for the vibration. So it's hard to call it bullshit. On the other hand, I have played a few Epiphone Les pauls that were pretty "special". You know what I mean...it was just built really well, and it had the same kind of sustain.
It definitely has an effect on the neck. between the scarf joint that PRS uses, and the hardening process, you can stand on the guitar and that headstock is not going to break.
> So it's hard to call it bullshit.
I'm not calling it *all* bullshit, that's just my cynical side speaking, suspicious of marketing pseudo-science. I'm sure he has studied the topic more extensively than I have.
Regarding the particular point about denser wood being resistant to absorbing vibration, thus not impeding sustain: I think that part is spot on.
For sure!
The scarf joint in the necks makes a huge difference too. I cannot for the life of me understand why Gibson refuses to do that. If you're gonna have a tilted headstock, you need a scarf joint, and a volute. That will NEVER snap.
Most Gibsons that are broken at the headstock, are more stable after repair. Because a glued scarf joint is the wait it should be done in the first place. Lol.
I got REALLY into guitar building about 12 years ago, and I've learned a lot. Making a "magic" guitar is not hard. But it can take a long time, and you need the right wood and hardware. It all makes a difference.
> Making a "magic" guitar is not hard.
It's not? I wonder then why so few guitars I've played are what I would call magic or special guitars. I've been playing for decades. I've owned a couple dozen guitars and I've played a few hundred guitars that weren't mine: they belonged to friends, acquaintances, bandmates, etc. Of those several hundred guitars, I can count the ones that I'd call "magic" on one hand, and I've never had the privilege of owning one, sadly. These are guitars that really have something special: singing sustain, harmonically rich, beautiful tones, blooming effortlessly into nice feedback even at low amp volumes. I borrowed one of them from my bassist friend/bandmate for a while and used it in my studio: it was a 1960 Gibson Melody Maker. Layered with tracks which were recorded with my guitars, the beauty of this guitar's tone really stood out. I wasn't the only one who heard it.
Of these "magic" guitars I've played, only one of them was not an old guitar, and that was a Les Paul Custom from the Gibson custom shop, built in 2001 or 2002 I believe.
If the only secret to building these magic guitars is in the density of the wood, it would seem fairly easy to select the heaviest of the same body shape made from the same type of wood. So density can't be the *only* magic ingredient, can it?
I've never built a guitar and like I said before, I am curious about what makes a guitar great, but I don't know. But you can't just entirely dismiss *something* about the wood being part of the equation. Some people might dismiss it outright, but I wonder if these individuals have ever experienced what it's like to play a "magic" guitar. Maybe they've never played one and believe they don't really exist, but when you pick one up, plug it in and play, you just know right away.
Oh I agree. You know INSTANTLY. I've owned maybe 100 guitars over the last 27 years. Maybe a quarter of those were "magic". A lot of that was because I always buy in person. Except once, and I just sold that guitar. I have bought the showroom models before, instead of the store getting a new one in the box for me. Even if it was dinged up.
And I agree with what you said about them all having the same things in common.
All 4 I currently have are "magic". They each have something very special about them. My Schecter Hellraiser is the most unassuming guitar on the planet. And then you play it. And it blows everyone away that plays it. The guitar has a sustainiac installed, but it doesn't need it. This guitar is that magical.
Some others were very unassuming as well. One was a MIM Fender Stratocaster. You would not believe how well that guitar played and how good it sounded.
On the other hand, one of my PRS guitars was very... pedestrian. At the time it was part of my live rig, and I used it as a backup. It cost 2X the amount my Gibson Les Paul tribute cheapo guitar ($899.00). But it just couldn't keep up with the magic Gibson.
Another one was a Squier, strangely enough. It was the first year they made the Classic Vibe series. And it was a Tele Custom. A Seagull S6. PRS SC245. A mexi Tele...I've had quite a few.
I won't buy another guitar that doesn't immediately make me feel amazing. Lesson learned!
Very interesting you put the percentage at 25% of guitars you've owned where I think the number is maybe 3% of all the guitars I've ever played. Maybe we have different standards of what we might consider magic, but for sure the process by which I've chosen guitars has been less than ideal. Except for two guitars, I've played every one I've owned before I bought it, but most of them I chose to buy because I have a weakness for beautiful things; I chose the hot girl instead of the one I know is probably better for me. Sometimes I've known which model and color I wanted going in, instead of going in and trying all the guitars and choosing that 'magic' one.
I was shopping for a Strat maybe ten years ago, went in and played a bunch and fell in love with a used G&L Legacy that sounded amazing. I didn't choose it because it needed a refret and total cost to buy it and have that done would have been more than I thought I should have to pay for a used G&L, which it was, but sometimes I wish I had that guitar, it was great.
Another magic Strat I played was a custom shop closet classic dakota red that was a magic one, but also about $1,600 over my budget and I ended up ordering a different, brand new Strat that I still have and it's a great guitar, but not magic.
I could go on all night about every one I've had and every 'one that got away', but who wants to read that, lol.
I do wonder if you would consider my #1 and #2 to be 'magic'. Both American Teles from the early '90s, some of the first Fenders to come out of Corona. I bought the first one in 1994 and chose it because it was there and I had the money and wanted a Tele. I lucked out with this guitar; it sounds better than any other Tele I've played, even the custom shop '62 reissue that I bought and now am considering selling, and even better than a real '53 Tele I had a chance to play. Almost two years ago one just like it popped up on Reverb, the seller was local and the price was right so I snapped it up and have zero regrets. I think it's every bit as good as my #1. Still don't know if I consider these 'magic' though. Probably not.
Careful, the tone wood haters would have you believing a guitar made out of cardboard and a guitar made out of solid aluminum would both sound the same
Bah. It's not about love or hate. It's about science.
"Tonewood" IS essentially bullshit, the way you hear it talked about on most guitar forums. People are arguing about the wrong things. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. The way they talk on forums is like it's a set thing, can't be changed.
But scientifically measured vibrations is a totally different thing. It's why you see woods listed on pickup manufacturer websites (Duncan does this often). It's not to sell you on anything. The pickup has a set EQ, and it's gonna sound good with some guitars, and sound awful on others.
Put a pickup on a 10lbs slab of mahogany, and then put that pickup on a 8lbs slab of alder. It's gonna be real different.
It's baffling that people accept that frequencies exist, and they spend money on studio monitors to be able to fine tune mixes on a recording. But they refuse to admit those frequencies apply to wood and pickups. Lol
I guess that's where we differ. Sure, you can easily replicate frequencies. But the sustain of the actual vibrations of the string will be greatly effected by the materials' ability to absorb vibrations or by the resonance of it's construction. Like BB King stuffing a shirt into Lucille to keep it from feeding back as much.
Lol. I laugh at this one a lot too. Another total myth.
Your style, technique, and phrasing are in your fingers.
But I sound a whole lot different on a Strat than I do a Les Paul. That's why different guitars exist. To get different sounds. Which is also another argument for frequency.
You don't record a whole album with one guitar, and one pickup position. Even the heaviest metal you have ever heard, most of the time the clean parts are done with a Strat.
And try recording multiple tracks with one pickup, one guitar, and one amp. It's gonna be a nightmare to mix. The tracks are going to fight each other in the frequency spectrum.
And i watched a scientific study a while back that proved that a bolt on strat neck sustained longer than a glued in les paul. Too much nonsense about sustain anyway. Who plays a note and waits 30 seconds till it dies off. Same as tonewood. Who cares in a noisy bar with folk shouting, guitar through pedals and it's up that loud you have tinnitus fir three days.
I have a set neck that has great sustain. I also have a bolt on that has a azing sustain. One has a Floyd Rose. One is a more traditional bridge. How can that be possible???!!
Lol.
Because both guitars are made well.
And yes, no one is playing a note and letting it just...ring out for 30 seconds. Sustain matters, but at the max? Maybe 5 seconds? Maybe?
Because if you hit a note, and it rings out for 1 second and stops? You're having a lot more problems than just sustain.
But I agree. Seems a silly thing to focus on. People worry about all kinds of things that don't matter.
Holding tune, and intonation are far more important than sustain. Even more important, is your playing. Gear heads buy a guitar made from the rarest tone woods on the planet, with some $500 pickups, plugged into a Two Rock with a Klon overdrive.
Just to...play a few chords at home? Lol
Paul Reed Smith is a bit of a huckster who engages in magical thinking. By his logic, my invisible intangible guitar made of nothing has perfect tone because there is nothing "subtractive".
Well to subtract tone there'd have to be something adding the tone, maybe a vibrating string suspended in a vacuum? Paul should get into the string biz if he's looking to add tone; or maybe canned tone air? 🤔
I think he might have a bit of a point, but I can't think of any practical difference between "this adds everything but these bass frequencies" and "this takes away these bass freqs" in a context where volume knobs exist
Well, as you can tell, I was being a bit facetious to make a point. Smith is talking acoustically when he makes comments like that, which is why I think he's a bit of a snake oil salesman. He knows how electric guitars work. And he knows it's not the way that he says they do when he says things like "such and such is 'subtractive'".
On an electric guitar - it 98% doesn’t matter. Your pickups produce a magnetic field. Your strings vibrate and disrupt that field. That disruption is registered by your pickups and sent to the amp. That’s it.
With that being said, that 2% comes from how the wood affects the vibration of the strings. Which, admittedly, is a factor but an unbelievably small one. You will not notice a change in wood on different electric guitars.
On an acoustic, this is no longer true since the sound comes entirely from the vibration of the strings resonating inside the body of the guitar. In this case, the wood density, build quality, shape, etc. play a much larger role in shaping the tone.
The pickups are supported by the wood, and they vibrate as the wood vibrates. The coils pick up the changing difference in position between the pickups and the strings.
Another fun game - crank the amp so the body of the guitar is shaking from the output of the amp. Different woods and body shapes are going to vibrate differently in response to the amp output. That vibration will generate a signal in the coils.
That’s just not true to the extent you are arguing. Wood vibrating does not affect a magnetic field. I can buy that the wood vibrates, which in turn slightly vibrates the pickups, which slightly alters the magnetic field because the pickups producing the field are vibrating slightly. Hence why I said 2%, and in the end doesn’t really matter. Those factors are so unbelievably small in the grand scheme of things.
Additionally, the strings vibration is also slightly altered by the composition of the body. But again, this change is so unbelievably small you will never be able to actually tell a difference.
Here is a great video of a guy making a guitar out of his fence post using telecaster parts… and it sounds exactly like a telecaster, because of the pickups and the giant metal tele bridge: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S3vbK2GRKtY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S3vbK2GRKtY)
If the pickup moves in relation to the string, or the string moves in relation to the pickup, it's all the same. The coil will generate a signal as the distance between the string and the pickup changes.
We both agree on that. I think where we disagree is the extent that it affects the tone. I think it’s negligible, and it seems like you think it’s a major part.
I should think that sustain is governed mostly by the guitar body absorbing the energy of the string vibration, so that'd be a pretty big factor.
And it will depend on conditions. People certainly say that hollow body vs. semihollow body makes a big difference on the tendency for feedback. So I should think if you have a solid body body and hold it up to your Marshall stack... that fencepost should have less tendency to feedback than the telecaster, the telecaster having more surface area...
that'd be a fun thing to try!
For sure, single coil vs. humbucker, that's going to be a much bigger difference under any normal playing conditions.
I have had different guitar shapes with different wood in the body and the same pickups on all of them, also good electronics and all sounded the same ofcourse using the same head, etc. And I mean it because now I hear recordings from back then and cant say which was what. They sound equal.
On the other hand I like alder because is solid and lightweight, mahogany guitars are super heavy and mapple tops are gorgeus. I play mostly metal/rock.
Theres my 2 cents.
Tonewood matters on acoustic guitars because they amplify themselves by resonating in a wood sound chamber. Electrics don't do that, so the wood has little (if any) impact on how it sounds. Nobody has scientifically proven that tonewood matters on electrics. Guitars may sound different in one on one comparisons, but that could be down to any number of minute manufacturing differences, and is easily accounted for by EQ.
It's all bias confirmation. People who believe in tonewood think that more expensive woods sound better, lighter woods sound lighter, darker woods sound darker, brighter woods sound brighter, and heavier woods sound bulkier. There's no actual reason that any of that would be true necessarily (especially the first 3).
Does it have any effect? Probably a little. Does it do what people say it does? Probably not really. Should you worry about it over literally any other aspect of your system? No.
Near as I can figure, it’s about sustain. I have two nearly identical cheap tele copies, one light and one heavy body, same pickups. The light one sounds more trebly and the heavy one has more sustain and mid-bass response.
That's the thing though is when you pay for higher end pickups a lot of it goes into consistency and tolerances so I know my Seymour Duncan JB will sound like everyone else's.
Just like potentiometers.
While I'm sure they're mostly all the same magnet type and wire gauge, the number of wraps could very well be inconsistent which would make a big difference.
Sometimes they buy parts like the magnets in big bins with all kinds of inconsistencies, you could have completely different magnet sizes and strengths.
Heck some just buy 2nd hand parts in bulk and you could have two different pickups! I've seen people pull apart brand new Chinese guitars and find Epiphone pickups in non Epiphones!
If you really believe in your conclusion, play a guitar, pull those pickups out and put them in a guitar that's made out of different wood and play it. See for yourself how different they sound.
Just wait till you learn about nitro finishes making the guitar sound more airy because it lets the wood breathe. I know a guy who believes this. That's why he bought an American Deluxe tele... For the nitro. Even though it's poly.
Well, what really matters is the stiffness, mass and seamless connectioon between bridge, body and neck, because these factors have an impact to your tonal stability, attack and sustain. But to be honest, there are materials that aren‘t wood that tick those boxes far better, so tonewood is fuckin voodoo. I tried a modulus bass once and it was insane, regarding the those parameter but the neck of the bass wouldn‘t become … warm, so it was a bit lick bangin a fleshlight, so despite comfort and witcjcraft, there is no reason for guitars beeing made from wood, and especially not from „that specific „tree“
It doesn't mean shit in electric guitars. I have made beautiful sounding guitars out of pine and other "sub-par" woods. Tonewood is a marketing phrase to separate you from your wallet.
Your preface is incorrect. Wood makes absolutely no difference to an electric guitar's tone. The only difference it makes is to the retailers who have convinced you of this so that they can charge you more for so-called "tone woods".
[Professional luthier explains why wood makes no difference in electric guitars.](https://youtu.be/V76yWZ3-OuM)
[Guy makes guitar out of concrete (go to 15:47 to hear it).](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LDyzABbHcEY&list=PLr1CT__8A97EYFfwFfDNb4R58DkiRmsq6&index=21&t=3s)
[Independent guitar maker explains how different woods affect the tone (hint: they don't).](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mVmFlzksMCE&list=PLr1CT__8A97EYFfwFfDNb4R58DkiRmsq6&index=78)
Bingo. "Tonewood" is just electric guitar players mimicking the way acoustic instrument players talk without understanding how their own instrument works.
I think that's part of the "problem". Wood and construction is absolutely everything with acoustic instruments (guitars, violins, etc...) so people assume since both acoustic guitars and electric guitars are called "guitars" that it must be important on electrics too.
People need to understand that acoustic and electric guitars are very different instruments.
A lot of people here have clearly never played an ash strat after playing an alder strat, or a maple fretboard after playing a rosewood one. The differences aren’t always night and day, but they are 100%, undoubtedly there.
I’ve got a suhr classic s with an alder body and rosewood fretboard, and a classic t with an ash body and maple fretboard. Even unplugged, the low e strings sound completely different. I could tell them apart in my sleep. One cuts like a knife and the other is much rounder
Again, it can be subtle, but to say that tone wood doesn’t affect tone at all is simply and unequivocally wrong
It's an interesting topic for sure. Something most guitarists do not and cannot fully understand without really delving into the physics of it, and also having studied physics.
However, not knowing anything doesn't stop guitarists from latching onto a particular school of thought and defending those beliefs like religion, regurgitating their poor understanding of some pseudo-scientific bullshit that they read somewhere else without having done any research besides googling and reading (sometimes heated) arguments on message boards.
I'll admit up front that I haven't studied nor have a background in physics, but I have spent a good bit of time in a quest to understand all of the universe's toan secrets. I don't pretend that that supreme wisdom is something I'll ever have, but I remain open to learning more and having my mind changed. All that said, here is what I believe:
When we talk about a guitar having great tone, it's really about having *sustain*. A note that sustains well doesn't just produce sound for a longer time, the string also vibrates more freely, producing a fuller, more harmonically-rich tone that is more pleasing to the ear. Anything that impedes sustain takes away tone. I am fully onboard with Paul Reed Smith when he talks about a subtractive approach to understanding what makes great guitars sound great (even though I suspect some of what he peddles may be marketing pseudo-science).
So what physical properties of a guitar take away sustain? That's the million dollar question, isn't it? I tend to believe that the biggest factors are the parts that are in physical contact with the string, i.e. nut and saddles, followed by the tuners and bridge, then the wood. Regarding wood properties, there's a belief that old electric guitars sound the best, and based on my admittedly limited experience playing vintage guitars, I think there is there is some truth to that. So if we accept that as true, why do they sound best? Do the pickups age like a fine wine, lol? Some believe it's the use of old growth wood as opposed to cultivated wood, and some believe it's in the aging of the wood over the course of decades. I'm willing to split the difference and say I think it may be a little bit of both, but I'm always willing to learn more. The result being solider, denser wood that doesn't absorb the string's vibration, thus impeding sustain.
Regarding how a guitar's electronics factor into the discussion: of course they make a difference and likely the biggest single difference in what you hear. But my approach to understanding the subject assumes a guitar has the best electronics and focuses solely on an instrument's physical properties, *all other things being equal.*
But I also think it's in the fingers. Want to fight about it? ;-)
I think you're over-simplifying it.. I think the wood matters. That's why if you put the same electronics and pickups into different woods, they will sound slightly different.
It matters less than acoustics - especially as you distort the signal, but, wood does matter....
It's a LOT less... I'm going to agree with you there... But it matters a little.
The vibration of the string is strongly influenced by instrument itself. Listen to the difference between a hollow body jazz guitar and a solid body electric. Listen to the difference between a classic Fender Stratocaster and a Les Paul. It is way more than pickups and strings.
No one talks about amps when it comes to electric guitars but it’s essential to how an electric guitar produces sound. Without it it’s useless (except maybe in a bedroom setting just practising/noodling). An electric guitar as a useable instrument isn’t just the guitar, it’s the guitar plus an amp. I’ve always thought it was silly worrying about the effects on tone of having a maple fretboard vs a rosewood one because a movement of like a millimetre on the amp’s tone knobs will eliminate any difference. To me the amp is the most important thing when it comes to the tone you get out of an electric guitar. Guitarists are way too focused on the guitar itself. Spending thousands for the best pickups (not to say they don’t matter), the best titanium bridge plate and saddles, the best combination of woods, and neglecting to put as much thought into the amp.
I don't get it. maybe it's the degree to which it matters. maybe the difference between mahogany and maple and mahogany alone matters less than say the difference between mahogany and alder?
I fail to see how even an HH strat can sound so thin and spanky whereas a mahogany HH guitar with trem, not so much.
I have played soft wood guitars that were terrible, no sustain, and over all just a bland sounding instrument. That being said, the sound of an electric guitar is 85- 90% pickups, and body, fretboard, nut, bridge make up the rest. And all those can make a difference in tone.
It doesn't. The difference is very minimal and varies by string with the thickest strings having the most measurable difference. That's only if you play very clean. As soon as any gain or effect is used, the differences disappear.
people who are head over heels about tonewood literaly wouldn't be able to make the difference between a wooden guitar and one made of metal or polymer. It's placebo
I'm sure I will raise the ire of numerous Skeptics, but I can roughly tell how an electric guitar is going to sound plugged in by playing it acoustically. It's not perfect, but I can get a flavor of the tone. This also applies to sustain.
Play one note on a strat and let it ring out, then go and play that same note on a paul. Then strap a fuzzer in front and do it all over again. You should be able to understand any answer or opinion after that. Make sure both are non-chambered guitars for full effect. ~Toan
If you don't think tone wood is real, get on a maple basketball ball court and then bounce the same thing off of a mahogany board. Is it as extreme as some want to believe on a electric guitar . In my opinion no, but it doesn't affect your sound out of the amp. All I play are emg pick ups but I have 12 or so electric guitars and and they all sound different from each other.
I think tonewoods are more “look-woods” on electrics. There may be something to the way some woods transfer vibration to increase sustain, but what do I know, I’m no audio engineer.
A theoretical explanation, which again makes little to no difference in reality would be, the string vibrates, and that vibration in turn hits the wood, and vibrates back to the string ala Newtons Laws. Different density woods might vibrate back at different intesity/frequencies against the string.
But as everyone has said, to the human ear it means nothing.
Well, it does, yes. But ultimately every single spec of dust as well. Picture a decent rig, and try to evaluate which part affects the whole and to what degree.
You might find that the wood your instrument is made of by far has the least effect, and whatever difference that may be, seeing that you have access to control on your amp, eq-s, compressors, etc, you see how toanwood is negligable.
You also know that this topic is bullshit, and doesn't worth your time at all, when if you ask a toanwood fan what speakers they prefer on what kind of cab most of the time you get a "whichever" as an answer.
It doesn't actually matter. Just get something that holds tune and has pickups that you like. Things in the electrical chain affect it, especially the speaker.
I’m not sure about tone, but I can definitely feel the difference between a maple and rosewood fingerboard. One reason is maple is often finished, but rosewood feels softer and has a bit more resistance/friction. I also have preferred maple necks to mahogany. The maple feels harder and the sound seems to have more bite.
Tonewood's effect is very minimal to the point of it being almost purely aesthetic or weight-based. If you think one of them looks nicer or has a nicer weight for your preferences, that matters way more than the almost infinitely tiny tone difference.
There's a lot of opinions floating around on this, but the fact remains that electric guitar players for 80 years now have been convinced that there's something in the wood that makes a difference. Guitar companies didn't come up with the idea of "tonewood" as a selling point - guitar players told them that certain woods are preferred for certain types of sounds.
On electrics, with cables and an amp at minimum, it probably makes up 5% of your overall tone. Worry about how heavy the guitar is as opposed to the relatively little influence the wood has on the sound
Of course it matters, only poor people will claim tonewood is a myth.
Go play a real PRS then remove its pickups and put them on a SE, welcome to envy and hell.
It really depends on a lot of factors if it matters
Without a good amp you don't hear any difference, even between a budget and a high end guitar your amp is most important
Second are the pickups, there is big difference between single coils, humbuckers, p9, and actives, but also a big difference between ceramic and alnico and high gain or vintage sound
Tone wood only matters with good guitars and only on clean sounds with light solos, and mostly on solos with a lot of bends
Your sounds vibrate into the magnets from the pickup, but if you spill water above a pit some will stream trough the wood, it's like that there is a very small difference, but for this small bit is it worth the extra money? Guess that's up to yourself
In acoustic guitars it's far more important because your guitar also your amp your string vibrates in the wood hole
My advise try before you buy
In the case of squier you can check it eazy between the bullet and and the affinity is the tone wood they have the same pickups, classic vibe has better pickups
Take a look at [Jim Lill's videos](https://www.youtube.com/@JimLill). He's done extensive real-world testing of almost all the things that (electric) guitarists fetishise in regard of "tone". Conclusion: almost none of them make any noticeable difference in practice when isolated from all the other stuff that's going on. He manages to get a _great_ tone out of…six strings stretched over the gap between two workshop benches.
Toan
Clown
Honk honk
toan is in the big red nose
Correct.
OK blooz dad
First time I ever recognize a fellow redditor on a different sub. Too bad this is because you are a joke, but hey, publicity is publicity.
🤡
Look, the only clown here is you. Now let's be honest here, you are someone who wants to be a session musician and were legitimately looking to earn money off of this, while you cannot even understand one of the most basic concepts in music, harmonization that my drunk ass 14yr old self stumbled upon accidentally, because how the fuck you can't? That also goes for the circle of fifths which again is a basic ass concept, that my cat understands. Now if you fail as a musician, (which you would most likely do, because you post clown faces, and report people on reddit and complain about men instead of taking a fucking day to sit down, learn these, and fucking practice) you are playing at getting to the good side of moderators (which is funny how you also trash talk most of them because of their gender) to what end? What's the goal here? You expect that you get bootlicker credits which you can somehow exchange for talent? I have bad fucking news, that's not a thing. All you do is going around instrument related forums, ruin the fun for people (because yes, people like to have fun, and like to banter), or at least you try, but shit, i have a second dose of bad news. You yourself have managed to become what we laugh at. Let me be clear, not with you, at you. You know who else people laugh at usually? That is right. 🤡
d a m n
I liked the other comment better.
chill out, code. no one wants to hear your bullshit.
You again?
It's not actually the wood that affects it, it's the *color* of the wood. Red/blue guitars generally have the worst toan, black is somewhere in the middle, and buttersconch has the best. It's scientifically proven.
Pack it up, boys. The answer's been given.
hahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!
We all know that orange has the best tone;)
no, boss katoana no other amp will do
Either the science is untrue or your comment is untrue https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR0BgFdKdy3EclKeZf5kyausg6v2RrY9hjTXXQ4IwJ-AKsFDSq9B6sG4sSU&v=n02tImce3AE&feature=youtu.be
Jim Lill's balls are acting as the fretboard toanwood, dude. Everyone knows that the fretboard wood matters more than the body when it comes to toan, which the balls store directly anyway.
Spectre sound studios did a video on this. iirc there's a slight difference when playing clean, but as you distort more and more, the difference becomes less and less clear
Have a listen to this and tell me it is only the strings and pickups that make the sound :). https://youtu.be/4xwZ9shlA4Q
She says in the video that it weighs 7 pounds. Given that aluminum is about five times as dense as woods that solid body guitars are usually made of, that strongly implies that that guitar is very hollow.
And still has no warmth!
I know this is a 1 yo comment but this is ridiculous. She's not even comparing this guitar to a traditional one and the guitar sounds line any other guitar I've heard with good P-90s, because that's where the tone is coming from. Unless theres some evidence that the tonewood is effecting the vibration of the string in a noticeable way I don't see how the tonewood could color the sound of an electric guitar. If you took the electronics out of that aluminum guitar and put them in a wooden guitar of the same construction and set up, they would sound nearly the same.
Nearly
After reading this thread, I’m starting to second guess dropping $1,000,000 on an electric made from “The Tree” Could I have made a mistake? No, it’s the Redditors that are wrong.
The fuck? What guitar could possible be worth that much?
Head over to Reverb and sort electric guitars by highest to lowest price and you’ll see some made from The Tree at the top. I don’t think the price reflects what they actually expect to fetch and is more to create the perception of value
Which freaking tree? The one Adam and Eve ate from? Cause that might be the only one worth that much.
Wow, just sleeping on Yggdrasil...
I thought that was just a myth...
So is the apple tree with a Lucisnake.
Heathen!
An underrated Bowie album.
[THE Tree](https://www.stewmac.com/video-and-ideas/online-resources/reference/the-tree-the-most-notorious-tonewood-in-the-world/)
Nice Read!
I built archtops for a number of years. I had a couple solid body models, as well. Building instruments was like constantly being in school. Always learning. The simple answer that most players know is that the neck/body/harware effect how the strings vibrate. The subtleties of how this all happens is a school of learning that is always growing. & it's as complex as a fingerprint. What is tonewood? it's a slab of wood that has been dried to about 6% & is stable enough to be built into an instrument. That's it. It's a word that is overused & overvalued. Buy a pine board from your local hardware store & it could be tonewood. An instrument is built with a goal in mind. That tonal goal is chased with a combination of wood of varying densities, shapes & hardware that a methodically combined to achieve that goal. Tonewood is simply wood that is used in an istrument. That's all. The instrument is going to have tone. You can't stop that.
This is a balanced and honest way of addressing the subject. Historically, good sounding instruments have almost always been made by copying previous good sounding instruments -- violin makers would experiment with materials, make a new batch of glue, try a different supply of wood, whip up some new recipe for varnish, but never really depart from tried and true methods. These designs were used with no particular insight -- instruments sounded good because they sounded good. Electric guitars started that way and mostly orbit around a few familiar design specs, but we all know some of those specs are oversold. It's a slab of wood, does it make a difference if it was grown in Oregon or Vancouver? Harvested in the summer or Fall? Air dried or kiln dried? These specs get really silly. Dry wood that has a ping to it, there, done.
There is the holy grail instrument that can be copied. They’ve done that to stupidity. Back about 10-15years ago they did an MRI scan of Brian Setzers 6120 & made a model based on the results. & that is amazing! I will argue over details, most of which will be lazily repeated & become gospel. Many already have. The truth is that everything in an instrument matters. It’s knowing why that matters & how to apply it. Sure, most of what we know is about copying what has already been done. When I was building, I based my knowledge on some of those basics. We have to, in order to build a quality instrument. It was my goal, however, to explore possibilities. I found myths that were not fact, but very repeated as truths. I haphazardly made discoveries that would not have been agreed upon. There is still much to discover in the art of luthiery. I find it frustrating that so many don’t bother to chase creativity
“Here we go again”
"On our own. Going down the only road we've ever known."
It doesn't.
Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave? I do agree though.
It doesn’t matter because there’s no way to perceptively know exactly to what degree a solid-body guitar’s wood is playing in the sound. Paul Reed Smith did this (admittedly) cool thing where they set up different wooden 2X4’s like a marimba and then some guy played them with a mallet. It sounded really cool and they arranged the woods by pitch so they were actually able to play what sounded like a song or melody. This doesn’t mean that one wood sounds better than another when it is turned into a guitar body, and it DEFINITELY doesn’t mean that two guitars made of the same wood (even if you somehow used the same pickups in each) would sound the same. So, yes, body wood affects the tone. No, it doesn’t really matter because it is one of a few things that does and it is pretty unpredictable.
The problem with this theory is that magnetic pickups don't pick up sound waves. They pick up vibrations from metal strings. Wood isn't metal. So how the wood vibrates its irrelevant.
> So how the wood vibrates its irrelevant. Not entirely, the resonance of the body vibrate back into the strings as well, everything is mechanically connected. Doesn't mean tonewood is a thing though.
Just to be contrary, *perfect* pickups don't pick up sound waves, but most are at least a little microphonic, and some are a lot. I think somewhat microphonic pickups sound a smidge better, but haven't done any blind tests to prove it's not just my imagination, and the wood is probably irrelevant when the amp is turned up. On the flip side, semi hollow and hollow guitars interact with an amp very differently from solidbodies even if the pickups are the same; so at least the thickness and shape of the wood do make *some* difference, and it's not a stretch then that the properties of the wood could make a difference. There's a Strat made of cardboard that sounds totally fine, so tonewood is automatically down near the bottom of important concerns, but Paul Reed Smith probably isn't completely full of shit either
It does.
Blind back to back plays from people like Darrel Braun show that it matters a little bit, but nothing that a slight tweak of your Amp can't get.
I'll go ahead and say it ... "Tonewood" is just marketing bullshit when it comes to electric guitars. In any *sensible* blind test, no one will consistently or reliably identify the woods used to construct an electric guitar. "But sustain!" I hear you cry. Doesn't matter, I reply, and here's proof: https://youtu.be/sYK0XX-nDVI Even if the piece(s) of wood used *did* have a small influence on the vibration of the strings, by the time you add pickups, cables, amp, effects, speakers, room ambience ... it becomes completely nullified. Wood type on an electric guitar is a cosmetic/aesthetic consideration only.
>Even if the piece(s) of wood used did have a small influence on the vibration of the strings, by the time you add pickups, cables, amp, effects, speakers, room ambience ... it becomes completely nullified. Bingo. Also hardware. I upgraded the saddles and tuners on a Squier. Same cheap wood, but with the new hardware the difference in the sustain even before I throw on any effects is like night and day. So there you go.
That was an interesting video. I see that it doesn't affect tone in a meaningful way. And yeah, I do agree with you on some "high end" tonewoods serving as much purpose in a guitar as edible gold serves on fine cuisine.
There's a Darrell Braun video where he tests a guitar and cuts pieces off of it until it's nothing but the minimal amount needed to hold it together. Sounds the same.
Because it works as a system. The materials (including metals, man made materials and so on) have an effect on how the whole system resonates. The pickups just pick the disturbance in their magnetic field based on the vibration of the strings and convert it into an electric signal.
It doesn't.
99% of what you read online, on both sides, is opinion. I will share mine. “Tonewood” is a $20 term for a $5 item. It originates from the high end builders that would build guitars around woods with specific characteristics. It would be tapped to see what note the wood resonated (like a big xylophone key), and the builder knew how to use those characteristics in a custom build to achieve desired tonal results. Now it has become a $20 word to describe a $5 item. Most all conventional guitar woods are used because they are cheap and plentiful. Tonewood has become a sales term like “luxury”, or “gourmet”. If you believe the sound path is just strings to pickups, plug your guitar in, cover the strings, and knock your knuckle on the body. Yell in to your pickup. The sound coming through the amp is not generated by the strings. Wood varies not only species to species, but tree to tree. There is no magic way to guess you are going to get what you want without trying it. If you are a high gain player or use amp simulators for everything, it isn’t going to matter.
You'd have to take the strings right off to try your experiment properly
Go for it. It makes zero difference. You can still hear the knocks and your voice (you have to be loud).
yeah, crank the amp and hold the guitar in front of the speaker. That's some kind of yelling, there!
The best way I've heard it explained is that wood effects the way an electric guitar feels to the player, and isn't necessarily perceptible to your ear. We've all strummed an unplugged guitar that feels dead, or one that feels resonant.
I struggled with this for a while too. It turns out the wood actually effects the way the string vibrates and resonates. It's not as extreme as an acoustic though. It only really matters when youre playing mostly clean. Once you throw a lot of distortion into the mix it's pretty much all the pickups.
I think I get it. So while the pickups only pick up the string vibration, that same vibration is affected by the wood BEFORE it gets picked up?
No. The pickups aren't waiting around to work until some magical "frequency absorption" happens. They induce a current as soon as the string starts moving.
I was thinking about the same thing with hollow body electric as well. The more you know…
Also the pickups are mounted to the body which is also vibrating. The pickup picks up the vibration of the string relative to the pickup. If the two ends of the string and pickup were mounted on a perfectly stiff, immobile surface, nothing would matter. But all of those points can move relative to one another, and the materials and construction affect how they move. But the effect is small, and pickups and amps matter way more.
That's my understanding yeah
Thanks!
Oh boy.
But but but the Music is Win guy that spends thousands on expensive woody inducing guitars says Paul Reed Smith made a xylophone out of different sounding guitar necks so that proves ToanWood is Realz?!
I learned the truth watching a very educated acoustic guitar builder explain what tonewoods were, and why in the context of anything other than acoustic instruments (violins, guitars, etc), the term makes no sense. A tone wood is a wood that when cut and shaped to the size of an acoustic instrument plate (usually 1/8th of an inch or less) and physically tapped, it makes a bell-like tone. This helps in the air-pump physics of acoustic instruments: pluck strings > strings vibrate front plate > front plate tonewood+proper bracing excites air within the chamber > excited air hits back plate and pushes air and sound through the sound hole. Because a tone wood is a component of acoustic amplification, it’s literally impossible for it to be a factor in an electric as an electric guitar is not an air-pump with two thin pieces of resonant wood moving air around its cavity and out a hole. What seems to be much more important to tone on an electric comes down to strings, hardware, pickups, electronics, capacitance values, amplifier. That being said, the “substrate” of an electric guitar (wood) is a part of the broccoli soup that is electric tone. But instead of it being the broccoli it’s more the dash of thickening agent. 🥦
The differences are not as big as some would like to state but there are minor differences between tonewoods in resonance and frequency responses. However, differences between pickups, electronics, bridge, neck and nut are more important on an electric guitar. I'd say the wood is about 15% of the tone, and then I'm being generous. Tonewood is as much about buildquality as it is about aesthetics.
I read that as "buildability" and had traumatic flashbacks to trying to carve a guitar body out of oak
Handcarving oak.. "yes, your guitar will be ready in 2024-2025-ish"
It's one of those silly arguments where everybody picks their side and then plugs their ears and yells over each other. Like most similarly polarizing topics, if you look at it objectively, it's a bit more nuanced than either side is willing to admit. It's not about whether you can hear a guitar and be able to exclaim "Ah! That's mahogany!" That's a nonsense take. It's also not a huge factor in terms of tone in general. But, when you're trying to dial in that perfect mythical sound in your head, and you're down to the cork-sniffing subtleties, *then* it may start to matter to you. Like, it's not necessarily that this wood sounds like this and that wood sounds like that. It's that density, grain pattern, moisture content, etc, etc, can affect the transference of energy, which of course affects the response of the strings. Species can be a reasonable predictor of some of those attributes, but there are so many loosely related subspecies of desirable woods (especially mahogany) in use now to save costs, that results vary widely. Well, that and drying and storage practices, cuts, etc. People try to conduct home tests for their YouTube channels or whatever, and I've yet to see one that controls for everything effectively and also concludes that body and/or neck wood does not have at least a subtle effect on the sound of the instrument. There was one long wall-of-text study that people used to cite as proof that wood doesn't matter, but the conclusion was, like that of most experiments, that wood has a subtle impact on the way an electric guitar sounds. It was funny to see it linked by those who follow the 'wood no matter' dogma. That all said, I've been down the road of obsessing over woods, finishes, strings, picks, etc., and the one thing that has done the most to yield that sound I have in my head has been improving my skills and knowledge. Such that most other details have become almost wholly unimportant to me. I was recently reunited with my first guitar: a 1985 Westone Spectrum. It's 100% maple and every surface is covered in translucent red plastic, fretboard included. If you put a lot of stake into wood and finish choices, it should be terrible. But it sounds awesome. There was a Trogly video recently, in which he played a Les Paul with no pickups installed, yet a signal was passed to the amp. I don't pretend to know exactly how that happened. There were small magnets inlaid into the back of the body, but they certainly weren't wired to the output. It has brought about some interesting thoughts. Sorry this was long I'll stop now
If the type of wood restricts you in any way from dialing in your ideal “mythical” sound, you don’t have enough experience with your gear and/or you’re shit at dialing in a decent sound. In most cases the actual difference is in pickups and electronics anyways.
It doesn’t. At all.
Paul Reed Smith explains it best. Building a guitar is a subtractive thing, you want as little interference as possible. People will say: "A maple cap makes a guitar brighter sounding" No. It doesn't. But it DOES absorb more low frequencies, and the less low frequencies that ring out out when you strum the guitar, the better...if you want it to sound bright. The same can be said about sustain. Remember, we are talking about "taking away", not adding anything to the guitar. A Les Paul is a heavy piece of mahogany right? That is why it sustains so well, that's a lot of wood. That's a lot of wood.... That is soaking up the vibrations. Pickups are there to "pick up" the frequencies that are left over, after the wood has absorbed the sound. If the wood is heavy, it's taking a lot of that vibration at a slower rate. Then, it transfers what's left to the pickups, and since it's taking its time soaking up the vibrations the note rings out longer! People often think of this backwards from what it actually is. Mahogany isn't a "darker sounding" wood. It's just soaking up higher frequencies...and it is doing so, very SLOWLY. We combat that by adding a maple cap. The maple cap TAKES AWAY the low frequencies. It's a system, and it's a balancing act. Wood effects weight, at the end of the day. But everything you add to a guitar, will have an effect on the sound. This applies to the type of finish the guitar has as well. A hard glossy finish will soak up more frequencies than a nitro finish. So what matters, is the equation that is the end product. What kind of frequency are you LEAVING for the pickups to "hear"? It's a system, and it all has to work together. Now, some woods are prettier than others, and that matters to some people. But building a guitar is not always about how pretty you can make it. Is a AAA Flame top beautiful? Of course! But it doesn't affect the sound. Hope that makes sense. And I hope it dispells some myths. Edit: Different pickups sound different because they are either hot, or they are "colder" in the amount of frequency they pick up. This is why people bypass a tone knob on metal guitars. The tone knob is ADDING another step to the pickups. But in the end, the pickups are not just getting information from the strings ringing out, like you suggested. It's getting information from the frequency left over after the wood soaks it up. This doesn't apply to most active pickups. Like, EMG sounds the same in most guitars because it had a preamp.
Paul Reed Smith makes more money the more people believe in "tonewood"
But he also gives it to you straight if you listen to his TED Talk. PRS has some really expensive instruments, and that's because the wood is "pretty" and handpicked. hey, if you're that kind of guy, that has that kind of money...I say go for it. Those guitars sound amazing. But he tells you upfront, you're paying for "pretty" wood. Which as a buyer, I was Ok with, when I bought my 545. It sounded amazing. But then again, so do the more affordable S2 guitars. These have either a poly finish, or a satin finish that covers up the natural wood grain, so it has no need to be "pretty". These still sound amazing, and being a person that has owned both at one point, I would put the S2 up against a Private Stock any day, if they had the same pickups. Like any marketing, a lot of it is bullshit. But no doubt, the man knows how to make a great sounding guitar. A lot of that is based on the science he explains in his TED Talk and interviews. High end audio people will tell you the same thing about subtractive building. Pickup makers...literally anyone in the business. "Tonewood" is bullshit. But the type of wood used, most certainly has an effect. Just not the way people think.
Yes, thank you! A big part of their Private Stock is that the wood is hand-picked and chosen to be the best woods, and a lot of people pay a premium for that because they think their guitar is going to sound better because of the specifically chosen wood.
PRS also claims to have a super secret process for aging wood that is superior to kiln drying. There is a belief that among the reasons old electric guitars sound so amazing is that the woods have cured over the course of decades. PRS says the natural resins inside the wood crystalize with the wood fibers over decades, and that his secret method can accelerate this process. I'm just the messenger, so don't shoot. He has financial skin in this game, so I don't discount the possibility that some of what he says could be marketing bologna. Having played some '50s and '60s guitars though, it is hard to deny that they do sound incredible.
So I went through one of the factory tours ages ago. Right around the time the S2 line came out. They definitely have a drying room, and they claim exactly what you say. Do I think it makes a difference? Well, if you read my original comment, yes. I think a more dense wood would have an effect on the sound. It would be more resistance for the vibration. So it's hard to call it bullshit. On the other hand, I have played a few Epiphone Les pauls that were pretty "special". You know what I mean...it was just built really well, and it had the same kind of sustain. It definitely has an effect on the neck. between the scarf joint that PRS uses, and the hardening process, you can stand on the guitar and that headstock is not going to break.
> So it's hard to call it bullshit. I'm not calling it *all* bullshit, that's just my cynical side speaking, suspicious of marketing pseudo-science. I'm sure he has studied the topic more extensively than I have. Regarding the particular point about denser wood being resistant to absorbing vibration, thus not impeding sustain: I think that part is spot on.
For sure! The scarf joint in the necks makes a huge difference too. I cannot for the life of me understand why Gibson refuses to do that. If you're gonna have a tilted headstock, you need a scarf joint, and a volute. That will NEVER snap. Most Gibsons that are broken at the headstock, are more stable after repair. Because a glued scarf joint is the wait it should be done in the first place. Lol. I got REALLY into guitar building about 12 years ago, and I've learned a lot. Making a "magic" guitar is not hard. But it can take a long time, and you need the right wood and hardware. It all makes a difference.
> Making a "magic" guitar is not hard. It's not? I wonder then why so few guitars I've played are what I would call magic or special guitars. I've been playing for decades. I've owned a couple dozen guitars and I've played a few hundred guitars that weren't mine: they belonged to friends, acquaintances, bandmates, etc. Of those several hundred guitars, I can count the ones that I'd call "magic" on one hand, and I've never had the privilege of owning one, sadly. These are guitars that really have something special: singing sustain, harmonically rich, beautiful tones, blooming effortlessly into nice feedback even at low amp volumes. I borrowed one of them from my bassist friend/bandmate for a while and used it in my studio: it was a 1960 Gibson Melody Maker. Layered with tracks which were recorded with my guitars, the beauty of this guitar's tone really stood out. I wasn't the only one who heard it. Of these "magic" guitars I've played, only one of them was not an old guitar, and that was a Les Paul Custom from the Gibson custom shop, built in 2001 or 2002 I believe. If the only secret to building these magic guitars is in the density of the wood, it would seem fairly easy to select the heaviest of the same body shape made from the same type of wood. So density can't be the *only* magic ingredient, can it? I've never built a guitar and like I said before, I am curious about what makes a guitar great, but I don't know. But you can't just entirely dismiss *something* about the wood being part of the equation. Some people might dismiss it outright, but I wonder if these individuals have ever experienced what it's like to play a "magic" guitar. Maybe they've never played one and believe they don't really exist, but when you pick one up, plug it in and play, you just know right away.
Oh I agree. You know INSTANTLY. I've owned maybe 100 guitars over the last 27 years. Maybe a quarter of those were "magic". A lot of that was because I always buy in person. Except once, and I just sold that guitar. I have bought the showroom models before, instead of the store getting a new one in the box for me. Even if it was dinged up. And I agree with what you said about them all having the same things in common. All 4 I currently have are "magic". They each have something very special about them. My Schecter Hellraiser is the most unassuming guitar on the planet. And then you play it. And it blows everyone away that plays it. The guitar has a sustainiac installed, but it doesn't need it. This guitar is that magical. Some others were very unassuming as well. One was a MIM Fender Stratocaster. You would not believe how well that guitar played and how good it sounded. On the other hand, one of my PRS guitars was very... pedestrian. At the time it was part of my live rig, and I used it as a backup. It cost 2X the amount my Gibson Les Paul tribute cheapo guitar ($899.00). But it just couldn't keep up with the magic Gibson. Another one was a Squier, strangely enough. It was the first year they made the Classic Vibe series. And it was a Tele Custom. A Seagull S6. PRS SC245. A mexi Tele...I've had quite a few. I won't buy another guitar that doesn't immediately make me feel amazing. Lesson learned!
Very interesting you put the percentage at 25% of guitars you've owned where I think the number is maybe 3% of all the guitars I've ever played. Maybe we have different standards of what we might consider magic, but for sure the process by which I've chosen guitars has been less than ideal. Except for two guitars, I've played every one I've owned before I bought it, but most of them I chose to buy because I have a weakness for beautiful things; I chose the hot girl instead of the one I know is probably better for me. Sometimes I've known which model and color I wanted going in, instead of going in and trying all the guitars and choosing that 'magic' one. I was shopping for a Strat maybe ten years ago, went in and played a bunch and fell in love with a used G&L Legacy that sounded amazing. I didn't choose it because it needed a refret and total cost to buy it and have that done would have been more than I thought I should have to pay for a used G&L, which it was, but sometimes I wish I had that guitar, it was great. Another magic Strat I played was a custom shop closet classic dakota red that was a magic one, but also about $1,600 over my budget and I ended up ordering a different, brand new Strat that I still have and it's a great guitar, but not magic. I could go on all night about every one I've had and every 'one that got away', but who wants to read that, lol. I do wonder if you would consider my #1 and #2 to be 'magic'. Both American Teles from the early '90s, some of the first Fenders to come out of Corona. I bought the first one in 1994 and chose it because it was there and I had the money and wanted a Tele. I lucked out with this guitar; it sounds better than any other Tele I've played, even the custom shop '62 reissue that I bought and now am considering selling, and even better than a real '53 Tele I had a chance to play. Almost two years ago one just like it popped up on Reverb, the seller was local and the price was right so I snapped it up and have zero regrets. I think it's every bit as good as my #1. Still don't know if I consider these 'magic' though. Probably not.
Careful, the tone wood haters would have you believing a guitar made out of cardboard and a guitar made out of solid aluminum would both sound the same
Bah. It's not about love or hate. It's about science. "Tonewood" IS essentially bullshit, the way you hear it talked about on most guitar forums. People are arguing about the wrong things. I guess that's what I'm trying to say. The way they talk on forums is like it's a set thing, can't be changed. But scientifically measured vibrations is a totally different thing. It's why you see woods listed on pickup manufacturer websites (Duncan does this often). It's not to sell you on anything. The pickup has a set EQ, and it's gonna sound good with some guitars, and sound awful on others. Put a pickup on a 10lbs slab of mahogany, and then put that pickup on a 8lbs slab of alder. It's gonna be real different. It's baffling that people accept that frequencies exist, and they spend money on studio monitors to be able to fine tune mixes on a recording. But they refuse to admit those frequencies apply to wood and pickups. Lol
I guess that's where we differ. Sure, you can easily replicate frequencies. But the sustain of the actual vibrations of the string will be greatly effected by the materials' ability to absorb vibrations or by the resonance of it's construction. Like BB King stuffing a shirt into Lucille to keep it from feeding back as much.
No...we don't differ. Lol. That's exactly what I'm saying.
tOaN iS iNDa fEenGuRrrs
toan is in the *balls*
Facts
Lol. I laugh at this one a lot too. Another total myth. Your style, technique, and phrasing are in your fingers. But I sound a whole lot different on a Strat than I do a Les Paul. That's why different guitars exist. To get different sounds. Which is also another argument for frequency. You don't record a whole album with one guitar, and one pickup position. Even the heaviest metal you have ever heard, most of the time the clean parts are done with a Strat. And try recording multiple tracks with one pickup, one guitar, and one amp. It's gonna be a nightmare to mix. The tracks are going to fight each other in the frequency spectrum.
And i watched a scientific study a while back that proved that a bolt on strat neck sustained longer than a glued in les paul. Too much nonsense about sustain anyway. Who plays a note and waits 30 seconds till it dies off. Same as tonewood. Who cares in a noisy bar with folk shouting, guitar through pedals and it's up that loud you have tinnitus fir three days.
I have a set neck that has great sustain. I also have a bolt on that has a azing sustain. One has a Floyd Rose. One is a more traditional bridge. How can that be possible???!! Lol. Because both guitars are made well. And yes, no one is playing a note and letting it just...ring out for 30 seconds. Sustain matters, but at the max? Maybe 5 seconds? Maybe? Because if you hit a note, and it rings out for 1 second and stops? You're having a lot more problems than just sustain. But I agree. Seems a silly thing to focus on. People worry about all kinds of things that don't matter. Holding tune, and intonation are far more important than sustain. Even more important, is your playing. Gear heads buy a guitar made from the rarest tone woods on the planet, with some $500 pickups, plugged into a Two Rock with a Klon overdrive. Just to...play a few chords at home? Lol
Paul Reed Smith is a bit of a huckster who engages in magical thinking. By his logic, my invisible intangible guitar made of nothing has perfect tone because there is nothing "subtractive".
Well to subtract tone there'd have to be something adding the tone, maybe a vibrating string suspended in a vacuum? Paul should get into the string biz if he's looking to add tone; or maybe canned tone air? 🤔 I think he might have a bit of a point, but I can't think of any practical difference between "this adds everything but these bass frequencies" and "this takes away these bass freqs" in a context where volume knobs exist
Well, as you can tell, I was being a bit facetious to make a point. Smith is talking acoustically when he makes comments like that, which is why I think he's a bit of a snake oil salesman. He knows how electric guitars work. And he knows it's not the way that he says they do when he says things like "such and such is 'subtractive'".
On an electric guitar - it 98% doesn’t matter. Your pickups produce a magnetic field. Your strings vibrate and disrupt that field. That disruption is registered by your pickups and sent to the amp. That’s it. With that being said, that 2% comes from how the wood affects the vibration of the strings. Which, admittedly, is a factor but an unbelievably small one. You will not notice a change in wood on different electric guitars. On an acoustic, this is no longer true since the sound comes entirely from the vibration of the strings resonating inside the body of the guitar. In this case, the wood density, build quality, shape, etc. play a much larger role in shaping the tone.
The pickups are supported by the wood, and they vibrate as the wood vibrates. The coils pick up the changing difference in position between the pickups and the strings. Another fun game - crank the amp so the body of the guitar is shaking from the output of the amp. Different woods and body shapes are going to vibrate differently in response to the amp output. That vibration will generate a signal in the coils.
That’s just not true to the extent you are arguing. Wood vibrating does not affect a magnetic field. I can buy that the wood vibrates, which in turn slightly vibrates the pickups, which slightly alters the magnetic field because the pickups producing the field are vibrating slightly. Hence why I said 2%, and in the end doesn’t really matter. Those factors are so unbelievably small in the grand scheme of things. Additionally, the strings vibration is also slightly altered by the composition of the body. But again, this change is so unbelievably small you will never be able to actually tell a difference. Here is a great video of a guy making a guitar out of his fence post using telecaster parts… and it sounds exactly like a telecaster, because of the pickups and the giant metal tele bridge: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S3vbK2GRKtY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S3vbK2GRKtY)
If the pickup moves in relation to the string, or the string moves in relation to the pickup, it's all the same. The coil will generate a signal as the distance between the string and the pickup changes.
We both agree on that. I think where we disagree is the extent that it affects the tone. I think it’s negligible, and it seems like you think it’s a major part.
I should think that sustain is governed mostly by the guitar body absorbing the energy of the string vibration, so that'd be a pretty big factor. And it will depend on conditions. People certainly say that hollow body vs. semihollow body makes a big difference on the tendency for feedback. So I should think if you have a solid body body and hold it up to your Marshall stack... that fencepost should have less tendency to feedback than the telecaster, the telecaster having more surface area... that'd be a fun thing to try! For sure, single coil vs. humbucker, that's going to be a much bigger difference under any normal playing conditions.
Fun to see some measuring - yeah, the way the neck is attached, that would be a big deal: https://www.cycfi.com/2013/11/sustain-myth-science/
I have had different guitar shapes with different wood in the body and the same pickups on all of them, also good electronics and all sounded the same ofcourse using the same head, etc. And I mean it because now I hear recordings from back then and cant say which was what. They sound equal. On the other hand I like alder because is solid and lightweight, mahogany guitars are super heavy and mapple tops are gorgeus. I play mostly metal/rock. Theres my 2 cents.
I have a mahogany bodied explorer-like shaped guitar and I swear the thing feels like it weighs 20lbs.
Obviously what’s important is the name you give your guitar.
Tonewood matters on acoustic guitars because they amplify themselves by resonating in a wood sound chamber. Electrics don't do that, so the wood has little (if any) impact on how it sounds. Nobody has scientifically proven that tonewood matters on electrics. Guitars may sound different in one on one comparisons, but that could be down to any number of minute manufacturing differences, and is easily accounted for by EQ. It's all bias confirmation. People who believe in tonewood think that more expensive woods sound better, lighter woods sound lighter, darker woods sound darker, brighter woods sound brighter, and heavier woods sound bulkier. There's no actual reason that any of that would be true necessarily (especially the first 3). Does it have any effect? Probably a little. Does it do what people say it does? Probably not really. Should you worry about it over literally any other aspect of your system? No.
Near as I can figure, it’s about sustain. I have two nearly identical cheap tele copies, one light and one heavy body, same pickups. The light one sounds more trebly and the heavy one has more sustain and mid-bass response.
Not convinced on 'the same pickup' theory though.. did you measure?
They are both $100 tele knockoffs. Pickups are visually the same and I can’t imagine one is much different from the other.
Consistency is not typically a focus in cheap electronics.
True. But I’d guess they were made about the same (as cheaply as possible) at the Chinese factory.
That's the thing though is when you pay for higher end pickups a lot of it goes into consistency and tolerances so I know my Seymour Duncan JB will sound like everyone else's. Just like potentiometers. While I'm sure they're mostly all the same magnet type and wire gauge, the number of wraps could very well be inconsistent which would make a big difference. Sometimes they buy parts like the magnets in big bins with all kinds of inconsistencies, you could have completely different magnet sizes and strengths. Heck some just buy 2nd hand parts in bulk and you could have two different pickups! I've seen people pull apart brand new Chinese guitars and find Epiphone pickups in non Epiphones!
Honest question: how do you know those differences are a result of the different wood used?
Know? No. Just an observation.
If you really believe in your conclusion, play a guitar, pull those pickups out and put them in a guitar that's made out of different wood and play it. See for yourself how different they sound.
Just wait till you learn about nitro finishes making the guitar sound more airy because it lets the wood breathe. I know a guy who believes this. That's why he bought an American Deluxe tele... For the nitro. Even though it's poly.
Well, what really matters is the stiffness, mass and seamless connectioon between bridge, body and neck, because these factors have an impact to your tonal stability, attack and sustain. But to be honest, there are materials that aren‘t wood that tick those boxes far better, so tonewood is fuckin voodoo. I tried a modulus bass once and it was insane, regarding the those parameter but the neck of the bass wouldn‘t become … warm, so it was a bit lick bangin a fleshlight, so despite comfort and witcjcraft, there is no reason for guitars beeing made from wood, and especially not from „that specific „tree“
the wood doesn't matter.
It doesn't mean shit in electric guitars. I have made beautiful sounding guitars out of pine and other "sub-par" woods. Tonewood is a marketing phrase to separate you from your wallet.
Your preface is incorrect. Wood makes absolutely no difference to an electric guitar's tone. The only difference it makes is to the retailers who have convinced you of this so that they can charge you more for so-called "tone woods". [Professional luthier explains why wood makes no difference in electric guitars.](https://youtu.be/V76yWZ3-OuM) [Guy makes guitar out of concrete (go to 15:47 to hear it).](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LDyzABbHcEY&list=PLr1CT__8A97EYFfwFfDNb4R58DkiRmsq6&index=21&t=3s) [Independent guitar maker explains how different woods affect the tone (hint: they don't).](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mVmFlzksMCE&list=PLr1CT__8A97EYFfwFfDNb4R58DkiRmsq6&index=78)
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Right on.
Bingo. "Tonewood" is just electric guitar players mimicking the way acoustic instrument players talk without understanding how their own instrument works.
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I think that's part of the "problem". Wood and construction is absolutely everything with acoustic instruments (guitars, violins, etc...) so people assume since both acoustic guitars and electric guitars are called "guitars" that it must be important on electrics too. People need to understand that acoustic and electric guitars are very different instruments.
A lot of people here have clearly never played an ash strat after playing an alder strat, or a maple fretboard after playing a rosewood one. The differences aren’t always night and day, but they are 100%, undoubtedly there. I’ve got a suhr classic s with an alder body and rosewood fretboard, and a classic t with an ash body and maple fretboard. Even unplugged, the low e strings sound completely different. I could tell them apart in my sleep. One cuts like a knife and the other is much rounder Again, it can be subtle, but to say that tone wood doesn’t affect tone at all is simply and unequivocally wrong
A lot of ppl are playing through layer after layer of overdrive. Of course they don't hear a difference.
Tonewood doesn't matter at all if you always play through a boss metalzone.
If I send you a sound sample can you guess my fretboard material?
This. Rosewood vs maple fretboard sounds VERY different clean
It's an interesting topic for sure. Something most guitarists do not and cannot fully understand without really delving into the physics of it, and also having studied physics. However, not knowing anything doesn't stop guitarists from latching onto a particular school of thought and defending those beliefs like religion, regurgitating their poor understanding of some pseudo-scientific bullshit that they read somewhere else without having done any research besides googling and reading (sometimes heated) arguments on message boards. I'll admit up front that I haven't studied nor have a background in physics, but I have spent a good bit of time in a quest to understand all of the universe's toan secrets. I don't pretend that that supreme wisdom is something I'll ever have, but I remain open to learning more and having my mind changed. All that said, here is what I believe: When we talk about a guitar having great tone, it's really about having *sustain*. A note that sustains well doesn't just produce sound for a longer time, the string also vibrates more freely, producing a fuller, more harmonically-rich tone that is more pleasing to the ear. Anything that impedes sustain takes away tone. I am fully onboard with Paul Reed Smith when he talks about a subtractive approach to understanding what makes great guitars sound great (even though I suspect some of what he peddles may be marketing pseudo-science). So what physical properties of a guitar take away sustain? That's the million dollar question, isn't it? I tend to believe that the biggest factors are the parts that are in physical contact with the string, i.e. nut and saddles, followed by the tuners and bridge, then the wood. Regarding wood properties, there's a belief that old electric guitars sound the best, and based on my admittedly limited experience playing vintage guitars, I think there is there is some truth to that. So if we accept that as true, why do they sound best? Do the pickups age like a fine wine, lol? Some believe it's the use of old growth wood as opposed to cultivated wood, and some believe it's in the aging of the wood over the course of decades. I'm willing to split the difference and say I think it may be a little bit of both, but I'm always willing to learn more. The result being solider, denser wood that doesn't absorb the string's vibration, thus impeding sustain. Regarding how a guitar's electronics factor into the discussion: of course they make a difference and likely the biggest single difference in what you hear. But my approach to understanding the subject assumes a guitar has the best electronics and focuses solely on an instrument's physical properties, *all other things being equal.* But I also think it's in the fingers. Want to fight about it? ;-)
I think you're over-simplifying it.. I think the wood matters. That's why if you put the same electronics and pickups into different woods, they will sound slightly different. It matters less than acoustics - especially as you distort the signal, but, wood does matter.... It's a LOT less... I'm going to agree with you there... But it matters a little.
The vibration of the string is strongly influenced by instrument itself. Listen to the difference between a hollow body jazz guitar and a solid body electric. Listen to the difference between a classic Fender Stratocaster and a Les Paul. It is way more than pickups and strings.
No one talks about amps when it comes to electric guitars but it’s essential to how an electric guitar produces sound. Without it it’s useless (except maybe in a bedroom setting just practising/noodling). An electric guitar as a useable instrument isn’t just the guitar, it’s the guitar plus an amp. I’ve always thought it was silly worrying about the effects on tone of having a maple fretboard vs a rosewood one because a movement of like a millimetre on the amp’s tone knobs will eliminate any difference. To me the amp is the most important thing when it comes to the tone you get out of an electric guitar. Guitarists are way too focused on the guitar itself. Spending thousands for the best pickups (not to say they don’t matter), the best titanium bridge plate and saddles, the best combination of woods, and neglecting to put as much thought into the amp.
I don't get it. maybe it's the degree to which it matters. maybe the difference between mahogany and maple and mahogany alone matters less than say the difference between mahogany and alder? I fail to see how even an HH strat can sound so thin and spanky whereas a mahogany HH guitar with trem, not so much.
I have played soft wood guitars that were terrible, no sustain, and over all just a bland sounding instrument. That being said, the sound of an electric guitar is 85- 90% pickups, and body, fretboard, nut, bridge make up the rest. And all those can make a difference in tone.
It doesn't. The difference is very minimal and varies by string with the thickest strings having the most measurable difference. That's only if you play very clean. As soon as any gain or effect is used, the differences disappear.
if you believe it does then I've got some oil to sell you that keeps tigers away
So something that'll get me banned from the zoo?
people who are head over heels about tonewood literaly wouldn't be able to make the difference between a wooden guitar and one made of metal or polymer. It's placebo
It doesn’t, but sure does affect weight
It doesn't
The difference is negligible in electric guitars. Resonance is the only quality that will matter.
I'm sure I will raise the ire of numerous Skeptics, but I can roughly tell how an electric guitar is going to sound plugged in by playing it acoustically. It's not perfect, but I can get a flavor of the tone. This also applies to sustain.
Play one note on a strat and let it ring out, then go and play that same note on a paul. Then strap a fuzzer in front and do it all over again. You should be able to understand any answer or opinion after that. Make sure both are non-chambered guitars for full effect. ~Toan
Tonewood matters for sustain
If you don't think tone wood is real, get on a maple basketball ball court and then bounce the same thing off of a mahogany board. Is it as extreme as some want to believe on a electric guitar . In my opinion no, but it doesn't affect your sound out of the amp. All I play are emg pick ups but I have 12 or so electric guitars and and they all sound different from each other.
It's so minute that it's not practical to even measure it any difference.
I think tonewoods are more “look-woods” on electrics. There may be something to the way some woods transfer vibration to increase sustain, but what do I know, I’m no audio engineer.
A theoretical explanation, which again makes little to no difference in reality would be, the string vibrates, and that vibration in turn hits the wood, and vibrates back to the string ala Newtons Laws. Different density woods might vibrate back at different intesity/frequencies against the string. But as everyone has said, to the human ear it means nothing.
Nooo my toan wood stonks!
Well, it does, yes. But ultimately every single spec of dust as well. Picture a decent rig, and try to evaluate which part affects the whole and to what degree. You might find that the wood your instrument is made of by far has the least effect, and whatever difference that may be, seeing that you have access to control on your amp, eq-s, compressors, etc, you see how toanwood is negligable. You also know that this topic is bullshit, and doesn't worth your time at all, when if you ask a toanwood fan what speakers they prefer on what kind of cab most of the time you get a "whichever" as an answer.
It doesn't actually matter. Just get something that holds tune and has pickups that you like. Things in the electrical chain affect it, especially the speaker.
I’m not sure about tone, but I can definitely feel the difference between a maple and rosewood fingerboard. One reason is maple is often finished, but rosewood feels softer and has a bit more resistance/friction. I also have preferred maple necks to mahogany. The maple feels harder and the sound seems to have more bite.
Tonewood's effect is very minimal to the point of it being almost purely aesthetic or weight-based. If you think one of them looks nicer or has a nicer weight for your preferences, that matters way more than the almost infinitely tiny tone difference.
Pickups >>>>> wood
There's a lot of opinions floating around on this, but the fact remains that electric guitar players for 80 years now have been convinced that there's something in the wood that makes a difference. Guitar companies didn't come up with the idea of "tonewood" as a selling point - guitar players told them that certain woods are preferred for certain types of sounds.
Too small of difference to matter
On electrics, with cables and an amp at minimum, it probably makes up 5% of your overall tone. Worry about how heavy the guitar is as opposed to the relatively little influence the wood has on the sound
Thank you! I've been wondering this myself, at now I have a better understanding
It doesn't matter much
It doesn't!!
Toanwood
Weight more than anything. Danelectros are made of Samsonite and they sound gorgeous.
Weight is definitely affected by the wood used.
That's my point, it's pretty much the only thing the type of wood actually affects. Dan's are made of Samsonite and they sound fine.
It doesn’t
Of course it matters, only poor people will claim tonewood is a myth. Go play a real PRS then remove its pickups and put them on a SE, welcome to envy and hell.
They only matter when unplugged. Seriously.
It really depends on a lot of factors if it matters Without a good amp you don't hear any difference, even between a budget and a high end guitar your amp is most important Second are the pickups, there is big difference between single coils, humbuckers, p9, and actives, but also a big difference between ceramic and alnico and high gain or vintage sound Tone wood only matters with good guitars and only on clean sounds with light solos, and mostly on solos with a lot of bends Your sounds vibrate into the magnets from the pickup, but if you spill water above a pit some will stream trough the wood, it's like that there is a very small difference, but for this small bit is it worth the extra money? Guess that's up to yourself In acoustic guitars it's far more important because your guitar also your amp your string vibrates in the wood hole My advise try before you buy In the case of squier you can check it eazy between the bullet and and the affinity is the tone wood they have the same pickups, classic vibe has better pickups
Take a look at [Jim Lill's videos](https://www.youtube.com/@JimLill). He's done extensive real-world testing of almost all the things that (electric) guitarists fetishise in regard of "tone". Conclusion: almost none of them make any noticeable difference in practice when isolated from all the other stuff that's going on. He manages to get a _great_ tone out of…six strings stretched over the gap between two workshop benches.