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Post subject: Strat physics question
Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 12:48 pm
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We all accept that the wood used to make a solid body electric guitar has a significant impact on the tone of the guitar (otherwise strats might be made out of plywood or at least mahogany vs. alder vs. ash wouldn't matter), but can anyone explain how the vibration of the body is transferred to the pickups? Does it create a more complex string vibration or something like that?

Extra credit if you can explain how the maple / rosewood discussion factors into this.

I'm an engineer, so these are the things I torture myself about all day. :wink:

Thanks!


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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 12:56 pm
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Well, you could break it down even further and compare heavier northern ash (baseball bat wood) to lighter swamp ash I guess, but many will say that a ash is a better tonewood.

Many will also say the a maple board gives you a brighter, snapier tone and the rosewood is more of a warmer tone. Of course you ask this and you will get several different opinions I suppose.

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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 1:34 pm
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Posted: 08 Aug 2008 19:48 Post subject: Strat physics question

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We all accept that the wood used to make a solid body electric guitar has a significant impact on the tone of the guitar (otherwise strats might be made out of plywood or at least mahogany vs. alder vs. ash wouldn't matter), but can anyone explain how the vibration of the body is transferred to the pickups? Does it create a more complex string vibration or something like that?

Extra credit if you can explain how the maple / rosewood discussion factors into this.

I'm an engineer, so these are the things I torture myself about all day.

Thanks!



When the guitar is played the whole guitar vibrates, depending on the wood of the body and even the neck your guitar will vibrate and have its own personality, the pickups capture the strings own sound right ? but the whole guitar will resonate strengthening some frequencies and filtering out others ..the body will add its own personality to the whole... thats one of the reasons some people prefer to have their pickups screwed into the wood itself rather than the pickguard.. Ive seen the bridge pickup like that in the Andy Summers Tele... the body is very important .. I will try to buy eventually oen fo those warmoth hollow strat bodies of high quality wood for my strat :P but that can wait ... I am crazy about the idea of getting one of those in strong orange color or maybe bright green .. :P


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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 1:38 pm
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Synkronized wrote:
When the guitar is played the whole guitar vibrates, depending on the wood of the body and even the neck your guitar will vibrate and have its own personality, the pickups capture the strings own sound right ? but the whole guitar will resonate strengthening some frequencies and filtering out others ..the body will add its own personality to the whole... thats one of the reasons some people prefer to have their pickups screwed into the wood itself rather than the pickguard.. Ive seen the bridge pickup like that in the Andy Summers Tele... the body is very important .. I will try to buy eventually oen fo those warmoth hollow strat bodies of high quality wood for my strat :P but that can wait ... I am crazy about the idea of getting one of those in strong orange color or maybe bright green .. :P[/color][/size]


Great explanation! You da man!


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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:07 pm
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I can say that my new strat has a flame maple top & maple neck (ebony fretboard)...
Compared to my old 93 strat with a bacodi wood neck and fretbaord (a dark rosewood).
The new strat is significantly brighter...
This is obvious without even plugging them in.

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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:23 pm
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This is a really interesting question. I've given it much thought myself throughout the years.
I know it matters - I've built several electric guitars myself, with similar pickups etc but with different woods.

I figure it like this: the vibration of the string spreads through the guitar material.
The vibration spreads more efficient in a hard wood, like maple. This gives you a longer sustain - but it costs you the transient (twang) since this absorbs more energy from the strings movement.
The softer wood gives you a more powerful transient but less sustain. I also believe the higher frequencies dampens quicker in the soft wood.

Maple is hard. A maple guitar gives you a somewhat brighter tone than a, say, rosewood guitar. It will also give you a way better sustain but the rosewood guitar would give you better transients. It would IMO be pointless to build a Stratocaster in maple since the transients are important to the Strat people - am I right? Maple is more of a Gibson material (wooow --- sustaaaaain).
(remember the 80s - then we were supposed to buy brass accessories to our guitars "for added sustain". There were brass bridges, brass nuts, brass buttons and even brass straplocks. Some manufacturers called it "Bell brass" - but they did'nt mention that it also killed your transients.)

So - from en engineer to another: follow the energy.

Or maybe I'm just "talking in my night cap" (Swedish expression and local time) :-)


//Erik


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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 3:17 pm
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Good comments above.

To add to the points about sustain. The length of vibration of the string (sustain) is a product of the rigidity of the structure that supports that string, countering its compressivre tension [EDIT: should read, compressive force] - in other words, the body and neck.

Martin Koch illustrates it nicely by taking it to absurd extremes. If the guitar were made of, say, rubber, the string's vibrations would die as soon as the string were struck, as the body dissipated the energy. If, on the other hand, you had a guitar made of reinforced concrete the rigidity of that structure would allow the string to vibrate for ages as the energy was transmitted around and around the system: great for sustain, awful for twang, for the reasons our eminent colleague mentioned previously. And likewise, horrible for tone.

From this one can easily see why a glued in neck tends to give better sustain than a bolt-on one; a through-neck construction better still. And yet we tend to find the last the least characterful.

So, it is the reciprocal relationship of the string to the timber that determines how vibration energy develops and decays, which in turn is detected by the magnetic pickups (which in themselves only collect the tiny current generated by the movement of the metal string within the magnetic field). And that relationship is affected by characteristics such as the density of that timber.

Simple!

cheers - C


Last edited by Ceri on Thu Aug 14, 2008 4:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 4:19 pm
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Thank you professors swenglish and Ceri! :D


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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 4:34 pm
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bluesgrass wrote:
Thank you professors swenglish and Ceri! :D


Hahaha! :D

Now study hard: there is a written exam in the morning...

- C


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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 5:01 pm
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These are the type of post that I enjoy!!! Not some of the same old stuff that been posted lately. Great ! Thanks to both of you. 8)


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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:38 pm
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The string vibrating over the pickup generates a current, which of course goes to the amp.

The string's vibration is complex (VERY COMPLEX), and varies depending on the type of wood. As others have pointed out, the string vibrates differently depending on materials used for the neck, nut, bridge, body, as well as any chambering, etc.

That's pretty much the end of the story. HOW the string vibrates determines the tone that the pickup receives.

Think about a microphone. The singer's voice causes the diaphragm in the microphone to vibrate a certain way, generating an analog signal (current) that carries all the nuances of a Robert Plant or a Bing Crosby or a Judy Garland. All from a vibrating diaphragm. Isn't a string just sort of a long, skinny diaphragm?

Moral of story is let's not underestimate the ability of a guitar string to carry or convey some very complex, nuanced information to your amp. I would disagree with those who put much emphasis on the pickup receiving information directly from the body. That's just not how pickups work. Any change in sound resulting from the pickup being mounted so it can receive direct vibration is probably the result of the vibrating pickup interacting slightly differently with the vibrating string. In other words, the pickup's RELATIVE motion to the strings has been altered.


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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 9:54 pm
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Sorry to disagree with last post, pickups do receive body resonance directly ... if you dont put any strings on the guitar and still knock the pickups with your nails it will capture that.. even if you scream at it it will capture that.... I've actually recorded my voice through my guitars pickups which proved my point.... :P


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Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 11:28 am
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siamese wrote:
Isn't a string just sort of a long, skinny diaphragm? Moral of story is let's not underestimate the ability of a guitar string to carry or convey some very complex, nuanced information to your amp.


That's a neat analogy. Well made point.

Synkronized wrote:
if you dont put any strings on the guitar and still knock the pickups with your nails it will capture that.. even if you scream at it it will capture that.... I've actually recorded my voice through my guitars pickups which proved my point.... :P


And that's very interesting. Scratching the pickups - sure. Pickups detecting sound without the string to create magnetic interference - well: I'm going to try that next time I change my strings. If it's right I'm not quite sure how it is working: I need someone with a lot more electronic understanding than my foggy brain to explain that one...

Good thread, isn't it?

Cheers - C


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Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 11:30 am
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Synkronized wrote:
Sorry to disagree with last post, pickups do receive body resonance directly ... if you dont put any strings on the guitar and still knock the pickups with your nails it will capture that.. even if you scream at it it will capture that.... I've actually recorded my voice through my guitars pickups which proved my point.... :P


Now that you mention it, I actually saw the singer from Modest Mouse scream through his pickups at a show once. Does anyone know how this is picked up?

All of this brings up the point of how imporant it is to have a solid anchor point for the string vibration, as in good quality frets and a quality bridge (the Callaham tremolo block page makes some good points about this: http://www.callahamguitars.com/).


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Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:46 am
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Well if we take your exemple of the singer screaming in his guitar, it's probebly acheived because the strings are vibrating and amplifie the scream thru the pickups. Now i don't know if screaming at a non-strung guitar would do anything..
p.


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