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Post subject: Pieces of wood of my Stratocaster body??
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 9:37 am
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hello everybody!

my name is Dario and I have an American Standard Stratocaster 2008, I recibed it in January '08.

I would like to know how many pieces of wood has the body of my guitar, but it's olympic white finished. I looked is from a side, and the reflex is "cutted" where it seems to be the union of the pieces, over the finish, and I could count FOUR PIECES for the body!!! is this possible in a Fender Guitar of that level and quality?. I think it's exaggerated, but who knows?

what do you think? Is Fender quality doubtful?? Do you certain know how many pieces of wood has my guitar got??

thank you for your answers!!! And sorry for my bad english.


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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 10:45 am
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Dario
I think its luck of the draw, for how many pieces of wood make up your guitar body.
I myself dont place too much importance in it. Until you saw the guitar into 20 pieces you will never know. I know people with hearing so good, not only can they listen to a solo and name the notes, they can hear which strings the notes are played on. They couldnt hear how many pieces your guitar body has though.

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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 11:53 am
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You want the body of a guitar to be made of several pieces of wood. If the body was cut out one one piece, it would more than likely warp. Unless you had a perfect piece of wood, which is getting rare.

Gluing boards together causes them to twist against each other so they hold each other straight. You really don't want to use boards over 6"(150cm) wide. It also makes the wood more consistent because you can use the best part of the board and get rid of the sapwood.

I'm new to guitars, but I am a master woodworker who learned my craft my building large Pipe Organs. I have built pipes out of wood and I also build PA speaker cabinets. So I know a lot about wood and how it resonates.


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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 12:53 pm
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EOliver wrote:
You want the body of a guitar to be made of several pieces of wood. If the body was cut out one one piece, it would more than likely warp. Unless you had a perfect piece of wood, which is getting rare.

Gluing boards together causes them to twist against each other so they hold each other straight. You really don't want to use boards over 6"(150cm) wide. It also makes the wood more consistent because you can use the best part of the board and get rid of the sapwood.

I'm new to guitars, but I am a master woodworker who learned my craft my building large Pipe Organs. I have built pipes out of wood and I also build PA speaker cabinets. So I know a lot about wood and how it resonates.


Thanks for that info. Sometimes in reading some posts you get the idea that a one piece body is a rare jewel and I never quite understood that. Re: my '08 Am Standard Strat, it seems to be made out of 3 pieces of wood.


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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 12:55 pm
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EOliver wrote:
I'm new to guitars, but I am a master woodworker who learned my craft my building large Pipe Organs. I have built pipes out of wood and I also build PA speaker cabinets. So I know a lot about wood and how it resonates.


Ha! A gentleman who knows about wood: you are going to be kept very busy round here, sir! And I for one would love to see pictures of large pipe organs, if you felt like posting. We're very broad-minded here at the Forum.

Anyway.

Dari0, below is a picture of my black Strat alongside an ash tree. So happens I have known that tree personally since I was a toddler, and judging by what I know about it I'm guessing it is about 90 years old, give or take. So it has plenty of growing left to do, but on the other hand you can see that it is never going to be a Giant Redwood: there is a limit to how much timber you can get out of it.

Remember that you can't use the timber close to the outside, the sapwood. And you can't use the wood right in the middle where the rings are small, because it is not stable. So all the useable material comes from somewhere between those two parts.

Looking at that guitar body you can see that the tree is going to have to grow a lot before you could get a whole body in a single piece from a plank running between the edge and the center. And it will need to be roughly quarter-sawn to be stable.

Commercially, tree trunks are slab-sawn in the mill. That means that you will get a certain amount of quarter-sawn timber; more that is flat-sawn; and most that is in-between. If you are lucky you may get a few one-piece bodies from a tree-trunk. More likely they will be two-piece bodies, which is what you usually find under Fender's transparent finishes, because it looks nicest. And all the rest of that timber should not be wasted. It gets glued together and is found beneath solid color finishes. The smaller pieces tend to find their way into the lower priced Mexican guitars and those from elsewhere.

And they all end up sounding pretty good. Nothing wrong with multipiece bodies, tonally, so long as the grain all runs in the direction of the strings.

Any help?

Cheers - C

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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 1:00 pm
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Ceri wrote:
EOliver wrote:
I'm new to guitars, but I am a master woodworker who learned my craft my building large Pipe Organs. I have built pipes out of wood and I also build PA speaker cabinets. So I know a lot about wood and how it resonates.


Ha! A gentleman who knows about wood: you are going to be kept very busy round here, sir! And I for one would love to see pictures of large pipe organs, if you felt like posting. We're very broad-minded here at the Forum.

Anyway.

Dari0, below is a picture of my black Strat alongside an ash tree. So happens I have known that tree personally since I was a toddler, and judging by what I know about it I'm guessing it is about 90 years old, give or take. So it has plenty of growing left to do, but on the other hand you can see that it is never going to be a Giant Redwood: there is a limit to how much timber you can get out of it.

Remember that you can't use the timber close to the outside, the sapwood. And you can't use the wood right in the middle where the rings are small, because it is not stable. So all the useable material comes from somewhere between those two parts.

Looking at that guitar body you can see that the tree is going to have to grow a lot before you could get a whole body in a single piece from a plank running between the edge and the center. And it will need to be roughly quarter-sawn to be stable.

Commercially, tree trunks are slab-sawn in the mill. That means that you will get a certain amount of quarter-sawn timber; more that is flat-sawn; and most that is in-between. If you are lucky you may get a few one-piece bodies from a tree-trunk. More likely they will be two-piece bodies, which is what you usually find under Fender's transparent finishes, because it looks nicest. And all the rest of that timber should not be wasted. It gets glued together and is found beneath solid color finishes. The smaller pieces tend to find their way into the lower priced Mexican guitars and those from elsewhere.

And they all end up sounding pretty good. Nothing wrong with multipiece bodies, tonally, so long as the grain all runs in the direction of the strings.

Any help?

Cheers - C

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What is the advantage of the one piece body? Thanks.


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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 1:02 pm
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I want to see the pipe organ :shock:

what gauge strings do you use on it :D

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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 1:10 pm
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Its said that one piece bodies have better resonance, tone and look better for see through finishes.
I personaly think its a myth that they sound better. You need superman type hearing to distinguish 1piece from multiple pieced bodies and ignore the tone changes that pickups (no two will be exactly the same), bridges and necks will impart to the overall sound of a guitar. Thats before you get into strings, their age, were they made from the same consignment of alloys, what mass do the tuners add to the headstock, and a gazillion other things that go into making your overall tone.

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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 1:12 pm
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ratboy wrote:
What is the advantage of the one piece body? Thanks.


They look nice. And as you implied before, they are rare, and so prized just for that.

As people have mentioned here before, you'd have to search for a long time before you found a one piece body that had warped through "intrinsic" instability. But on the other hand nobody who uses their ears bothers to claim that they actually sound better.

At the other end of the spectrum, too much glue in the structure of a body probably really does have an adverse effect on tone. But we're talking plywood there, not anything you will ever find from a quality manufacturer in their grown-up lines.

Cheers - C


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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 2:01 pm
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nikininja wrote:
Its said that one piece bodies have better resonance, tone and look better for see through finishes.
I personaly think its a myth that they sound better. You need superman type hearing to distinguish 1piece from multiple pieced bodies and ignore the tone changes that pickups (no two will be exactly the same), bridges and necks will impart to the overall sound of a guitar.



Eric Johnson can hear if it is a one or a seven piece body simply by looking at the guitar regardless of finish!!!

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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 2:56 pm
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bluestube wrote:
Eric Johnson can hear if it is a one or a seven piece body simply by looking at the guitar regardless of finish!!!

That is a joke, right? If not, I'll have to throw the &^$%*^ flag on that one ... (no offense intended)

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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 3:16 pm
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01GT eibach wrote:
bluestube wrote:
Eric Johnson can hear if it is a one or a seven piece body simply by looking at the guitar regardless of finish!!!

That is a joke, right? If not, I'll have to throw the &^$%*^ flag on that one ... (no offense intended)


yes it is a joke, Eric claims that he can hear the difference in different battery brands in his fx pedals, so he can probarly hear the dfference in body pieces i guess he has super hearing!

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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 4:49 pm
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bluestube wrote:
yes it is a joke, Eric claims that he can hear the difference in different battery brands in his fx pedals, so he can probarly hear the dfference in body pieces i guess he has super hearing!


I have read where Eric Johnson says he prefers one-piece bodies. I've seen early pages of Custom Shop orders with his choice of one-piece bodies. I don't know if he hears the difference.

Adding to what Ceri said, I've seen one-piece bodied strats and not a one has been warped or split or anything bad. Come to think of it, the wood Fender uses must be pretty good because I've never seen any of their wood split.

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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:59 pm
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good for eric.
on a good day i can hear if the pedals on or off :D

personaly i dont believe he can hear the difference in batteries. Its far more likely that he can hear if a battery has started loosing charge or is tip top. It would be like saying he can hear the difference from the wall sockets connected to seperate powerplants.

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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 9:03 pm
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nikininja wrote:
good for eric.
on a good day i can hear if the pedals on or off :D

personaly i dont believe he can hear the difference in batteries. Its far more likely that he can hear if a battery has started loosing charge or is tip top. It would be like saying he can hear the difference from the wall sockets connected to seperate powerplants.

Not sure if he still does it but I read that he doesn't ground his gear because he can hear a tonal differnec when using grounded plugs.


Quote:
“I plug into the same positions on the power strips every time, because once you get the polarity right, the tone is more consistent. [Note: No part of Johnson’s rig is grounded, because the vintage amps and Waber power strips don’t have AC ground pins. Johnson also feels that ground pins attract “dirty” power. Therefore, he has carefully arranged the polarity flow of each piece in order to prevent hum or shock.] I figure out which position has the best tone with the least amount of buzz, and I mark it. I also use separate power strips for each thing, which makes the sound more pure, although I’m not sure why. The dirty rhythm head plugs into the main power strip that goes to the wall. The lead head plugs into another strip that feeds off the main one. The Fenders’ power strip feeds off the lead one, and the pedalboard’s power strip feeds off the Fenders’ power strip. If I plug everything into one power strip, the distortion sounds hashy.

Source


Quote:
“Eric is trying to change the folklore about being such a detail-obsessed sonic tweaker,” says Jeff Van Zandt. “He’s slowly getting there. He’s starting to become that guy. The thing he has the most difficulty relaxing about is dirty power. At an old theatre, we will search until we find our own isolated circuit that offers us the best clean power. When we plug into the P.A. power, his AC line level drops every time there’s a spike from a kick drum. He also thinks that all the dirty electricity goes to the ground pins, so his rig is completely ungrounded. He has all the amps plugged into certain sockets in certain power strips according to polarity to achieve the best tone and avoid getting shocked.

Source


So maybe he really can hear batteries and wood piecing. :shock:

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