A simpler test to find if pickups can pickup the resonance / vibration would be to destring the guitar, anyone out there with a destrung guitar please plug it into your amp and give it a good chap and let us know if any sound is heard through the amp

That to my mind would be nothing more than the strings moving under air pressure from shouting at them. Thats the way I always thought of it.




Yeah but make sure that all the electronics are secured. Infact you'd be better off removing the pickguard aside from the ground wire. Not disconnecting it, just take it away from the body.
That way you can be sure it's tonewood that you're hearing and not electrical interferance. Infact you'd best take the claw, trem and springs off too. Hendrix used to play the tremsprings a lot.

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I knew that thats why the backplate was removed

What a great debate this has been. Makes for interesting reading!!!!

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

That makes a lot of sense. But what frequencies are changed and by how much? I can believe "everything" filters (ie attenuates certain or all frequencies) the sound -- and some "active" things can add to it.

It can't be wide bands of frequencies:
It's not the highs, because they are present in spades with your bridge pickup. It's not the lows because they are present with your neck pickup.
Mids are all around.

If the effect is very subtle, how will we know it through all of the other things that are in between the vibrating strings and the amp speaker?

Maybe we need to ask the guys who design those "modeling" effects. Plug your guitar into one of them and choose what you want your sound to be like coming out: single coils, humbuckers, etc ... do they offer choices of Ash or Alder or Mahogany, maple or rosewood fingerboard?

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Which is why I said Newtons Law that any action (string vibration) creates a reaction (body/neck) changing any part of the body and neck will change the reaction.
Woods have different tonal qualities and internal structures ( cellular, mass, hardness)

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

Here's something else mostly unrelated to throw into the mix, since we're talking about energy transfer.

It will be totally undetectable on each occurrence, and only marginally possible to detect over a longer span of time (say 10 years,) but is measurable on some of the 50 and 60 year old guitars around today.

changing your strings permanently alters the sound of your guitars. As your strings sit in the magnetic field of your pickups (not the electromagnetic field, but idle and sitting above the pole pieces,) they are magnetized slightly, and in turn degauss the pole piece. Every time you change strings you essentially take away some of this magnetic charge, and the new strings are again magnetized further degaussing the pole pieces. This gives the pickups a lower flux density. This is a reason why some pickups get weaker as they age.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

More so with alnico magnets.

My Bareknuckles pickups have changed over less than 6 months. Apparently the first 2 years are spent settling in.

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I recommend thinking it through step by step. It helps a lot.
I started out convinced that Niki was wrong, and in the middle of writing my elongated post a few pages back, I realised that the only stuff being amplified is the vibration of the strings, and that Nick was right.
I was pretty stuck there, since in my mind I had already prepared this advocation of tone wood... I suddenly realised that it is down to basic physics I had in 8th or 9th grade... and that I had been brain-washing myself for a long time!

The brightness of the sound comes down to the density of the materials used.
The sustain of the sound comes down to the density of the materials used also.
A hollowbody is less dense than a solidbody.
Therefore: Less brighter sound, and less sustain.

Also noteworthy may be the fact that it is the badly sound-reproducing magnetic pickups that we all like, but because of their unique sound; not because of the sound of the wood they are mounted on. Basically, we are fans of the worst pickup design in the world

-Nutter

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I started out with nothing, and still have most of it.

Quite a revelation when you realize aint it Herr Nutter.

Just think if this got out. That the better representation of tonewood was through cheapo flimsy bridges that passed a load of frequencies to the wood, never to return.
What would that do to the giant tremblock brigade?
It also explains a lot of the sound difference between the telecaster and strat. Not so much the modern teles, more the vintage style ones That great big hunk of thin metal passing all them vibrations to the body where they get lost.
It rocked my world when I realized the whole tonewood debacle. It is however quite liberating after a while. You'll look at parts in a very different light.
It would be nice to ask one of the line6 guys about the Variax's, or the people who did Fenders VG engine.

Now the game is on. How do we measure body wood vibration to determine which is louder un amped. A resonating electric guitar, or a stiff one?

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Piano tuner would have the kit I'm guessing, sitka spruce soundboard seems to be the favoured wood in the piano world, did you know that a grand piano would be virtually noiseless without the soundboard, been looking aroud some piano build sites looking for answers, seems quite a bit of info surrounding the qualities of what wood to use.

Ripitup

It's a interesting concept, building acoustic instruments, But it's a world away from building electric instruments.
The soundboard of a piano, or the soundbox of a acoustic guitar. Is what amplifies that instrument. It takes the vibration of the string and makes it bigger. In doing so, it imparts some of it's charicteristics on the amplified sound.
It doesn't act on the string or alter the vibration in any way does it? Do you see piano makers talking of how spruce increases sustain or high end on the string? The string acts on the wood, the wood amplifies the string.

If you follow that through to acoustic and electric guitars. You get to see whats going on. The soundbox of a acoustic guitar projects the sound of the string vibrating. Thats why jumbo's are louder than parlour guitars. Bigger soundboxes. They don't cause the string to vibrate differently, just have a bigger space in which to create a bigger sound. The top and back of a acoustic guitar is to a guitar what the soundboard is to a piano.

Electric guitars work through a amplifier. They were never designed to be acoustic instruments. They were designed to run that tiny electrical current from a pickup, down a cable, to a amp. Their a electronic tool.
Just because my mexican strat rings louder unplugged than my deluxe, it matters not one jot. Thats not what the pickup or amp see's.

It's like saying a mahogany casio keyboard sounds different to a plastic one.

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Oh I'm with you 100% Niki, it was your game on comment in your last post, like I said I'd been looking at piano building sites trying to understand why they would prefer certain woods for soundboard construction, just out of curiosity, how the sound wave move's through it, does it produce wolf notes, does it act on the surrounding strings etc etc, to be honest all I could say is "It's twisting my melon man" loads of diagrams, graphs, mathimatical theories the lot, think I got out just in time loving this thread though

I found Twelvebar's and Nikininja's comment on the pickup-demagnitization very interesting. Surely there must be a way to re-magnetize them?

Also, dear Sir Nick, there is no real need to call me Herr... If you want to follow eticette, why not just do it the informal way the Python lads taught us... simply adress me with Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern- schplenden- schlitter- crasscrenbon- fried- digger- dingle- dangle- dongle- dungle- burstein- von- knacker- thrasher- apple- banger- horowitz- ticolensic- grander- knotty- spelltinkle- grandlich- grumblemeyer- spelterwasser- kurstlich- himbleeisen- bahnwagen- gutenabend- bitte- ein- nürnburger- bratwustle- gerspurten- mitz- weimache- luber- hundsfut- gumberaber- shönedanker- kalbsfleisch- mittler- aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm?

(with kind and probably desperate permission from this site. Check it out, it evokes visions of skits long passed and gone... but their memory will last forever.

-Nutter

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I started out with nothing, and still have most of it.

you have a metallic voice?!

strange that magnets could turn your voice sound waves into an electric signal...you might want to get that checked out...or try it without the strings on the guitar...