I don't see how you figure that. Your experiment does demonstrate vibrations can be tranfered between pieces of wood. That's all it domonstrates though. It doesn't demonstrate anything at all about pickups. Wood is not magnetic.

Unplugged you can hear it because the table becomes a second audio source but you can't hear it plugged in because a) the amp drowns it out and b) the table is not part of the guitar so it is not being amplified. The table draws it's vibrational energy from the guitar, not the other way around, so if you don't capture it it's lost.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

Sounds like a job for Mythbusters (they'd butcher it so badly)

OK, I think what it's about is this. In these tone discussions people like to argue that whereas stuff like wood and glue matter for acoustic instruments they make very little difference for electric guitars because magnetic pickups ignore most of the tone the vibrating wood imparts to the air and from there to our ears.

So Nick's experiment works this way.

Strum the guitar unplugged. Now, still unplugged, touch the headstock to a suitable piece of furniture. I have a certain sofa that works beautifully for this. With the right lump of furniture we often find that the sound is magnified, so much so that we can feel the extra vibration in our hands on the body of the guitar, as well as hearing it. Also, the tone has become enhanced, enriched.

Now we do the same thing again, but this time plugged in, listening through our speakers. What we find is that whether the headstock is touching the furniture or not the sound coming through the pickups and amp doesn't change. The circuitry has not registered the new vibrational qualities imparted by the extra wood.

Conclusion: what you can hear acoustically is not the same as what pickups detect. So what goes for acoustic guitars doesn't necessarily apply to electrics.

I think Nick's experiment makes the point very neatly.

Cheers - C

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Well said Mr. C....dittos....(have we seen these discussions on the Forum before??)

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Xhefri's Guitars
www.xhefriguitars.com

Ooo, just once or twice.



Cheers man - C

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Instead of trying to prove my experiment a nonsense by misunderstanding my intentions. I suggest you re-read exactly what the point of the test is.

For the last time. It is to show how wood does not affect the sound of a electric guitar.

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No no and no

Right,and it's not that the amp drowns it out as BMW said,but that the sound doesn't change through the amp.

If the amp changed the sound to that degree, then every guitar would sound the same regardless of pickups. Humbuckers would sound the same as singlecoils.

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No no and no

I'm in the unplugged YES, plugged NO camp, the tabletop test to my ears proves it, on a lighter note the endless search for "that" tone has been going on in the electric guitar business for decades, we've got pickups, strings, bridges, tuners, capacitors, potentiometers, thickness of wire, cold rolled steel , alloy, brass and probably a couple of dozen other parts designed to lure you into obtaining "that" tone, I'd have thought that someone somewhere would have by now surely shreiked EUREKA replacable stratocaster horns, mahogany, beech, alder or whatever your ears desire, easily done and a hell of alot easier to the non technical minded endless tone searchers among us

OK, so if I am understanding this correctly you are all saying the wood does not factor into the amplified sound of an electric guitar and the body could just as easily be made of recycled tires because it is pickups and pickups alone that determines tone.

BTW, I would never say that wood is the be all to end all for tone. I have always said wood selection makes only a very small difference but it seems to me you people are saying it makes no difference whatsoever. Am I reading you correctly?

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

The OP wanted to know if it's a myth whether the number of pieces of wood in a guitar affects the sound. I said no in my response, putting me in the minority, which is fine, and it's nice to see that those who disagree are applying a lot of thought to this.

I can't help but shrug my shoulders, because in the 80's I had the opportunity to witness and be a part of comprehensive testing while employed with Gibson at the old Kalamazoo plant.

R&D was in Kalamazoo, even though the new plant was in Nashville, where the solid bodies were produced. At that time, some of the things that the higher-ups were pushing was: better acceptance by the public for Gibson's pickups, flatter fretboards (in the 14 to 15 radius range...and possible a totally flat fingerboard), and producing a guitar that could give both a Gibson and a Fender sound. And ALWAYS trying to reduce cost while maintaining quality.

The R&D room was right in the midst of the production floor, with several large windows. It was about the size of the average living room. Big surprise, wood was a major cost for Gibson, and they knew that they could lower their costs by having more pieces in a body. Nothing was taken for granted, and everything was tested both scientifically and by ear. Tests were done making bodies with multiple laminations and comparing them to identical guitars with 1,2, or three pieces. Tests were done testing a one piece body and then sawing it up and laminating that same body. Wood came to Gibson in large pieces, so it was not problem to simply have the line produce a given production model with wood from the same part of the same tree. Fewer laminations produced warmer, woodier tones.

At that time, the guys running R&D and marketing at Gibson were NOT rockers. They were jazz players who preferred the big jazz boxes and just tolerated solid bodies. This is why their idea of good tone stressed warm woody tones. That was their mindset, and it just wasn't questioned. And that's why Gibson minimized its glue joints, within a given guitar design.

Take any guitar and run it through a pedalboard and into a high gain amp, and the effect of the wood, and the number of pieces of wood become MUCH less important. For the player that uses few or no effects and low to moderate gain, the wood starts to make a difference. Still, not a huge difference, but enough that a company that wants to position itself as a maker of premium guitars usually makes the decision to minimize laminations. Including their painted guitars.

So, the tests have been done. Not by M.I.T., who would have published the results, but by a small group of guys on Parsons street who had absolutely no intention of sharing their hard earned results with anyone else.

Multiples laminations effect tone? Yes. Does it matter to you? Maybe not. Depends on what you want.

OK let's not complicate things by bringing FX into it. Once you do that all bets are off and it's a no brainer that wood means nothing. Let's imagine the cleanest amp we can think of. Fender Dual Professional? Roland JC120?

And I don't think you're in the minority saying the number of pieces has little effect. If I'm reading this correctly I think most of us are in agreement on that but we are at odds as to why.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

As a singer, I have a hard time playing heavier guitars. There are times when I use a wah and sing at the same time. Standing on one foot, doing a stomach crunch, and singing, doesn't make for an easy situation.

I needed something more lightweight, so last year I focused on Basswood bodies. Around Christmas time, I purchased 2 Squier Bullets with Basswood bodies, and made Frankenstrats out of them. I have 4 guitars now that consist of 2 Squier Bullet Basswood bodies, one J.Reynolds Basswood body, and a Squier Bullet Alder body that is freakishly lightweight as well. These guitars when all is put together and strung up weigh between 4-5lbs.

As I put the upgraded pickups and electronics in them, I would notice slight differences in the sounds, but I don't think fingering out one particular property on any individual guitar works for every guitar in a generalized way. With so many factors involved, I find that hard to be possible. Let's just say, so many different factors it would take too long of a post.

If I take a pickguard off of Strat style guitar, install it on a similar Strat style body, and I notice something I don't like (as in maybe less colorful or lifeless), off it comes, and on to where I believe it does sound good. If after a couple of experiments with it I still feel like I get the same result, time to sell or use them for gigs where they might take a beating.

That being said, I can't rule out that the body woods do factor in to some degree. How much? Not sure. I would have to believe that if a guitar body is made from parts of a tree that were surrounding some sort of wound or disease within the tree, it's hard to detect, and the fibers could have been in initial processes of decay and weaker before harvesting, thus possible to sound deadened or be weaker in vibration or resonance as a final result. That's just the woodworker in me talking though. I'm not trying to state a scientific fact. Just an opinion based on my experiences with wood and knowing that some defects are sight unseen.

Glue joints can be stronger joints than the fibers of a solid piece by itself, but not always. In a wood type like Maple (for example), you won't always get as much of a grab as you can with other species, and the joint itself can break easier than, and before, the fibers of a species by itself. However, the average guitar player doesn't come close to putting that kind of pressure it takes to break one. It should only take something extreme to break it.

Right now, I've simply chosen to use Basswood for how lightweight it is, and I like the way my guitars are sounding. I'm not getting any tonal or sustain issues to my ears that cause me to want to revamp them. I personally don't think about how many glue joints may be involved. They sound great to me, and I'm finding it much easier to sing my songs.

Could certain properties be improved? Maybe. But at what point do you say, "it's good enough"? I guess I'm still waiting for those uber ultra tone enhancing 2-point trem screws to come out. I don't know. Enhanced to what? When are the strings gonna come out that move my fingers for me? That's what I wanna know.

I'm still a believer that every facet of a guitar work in unison to create what sound comes out. Create your scenario, listen, like it or don't. If you don't, then create another scenario based on whatever hypothesis you believe is the problem. As long as you reach what you're looking for in the end with whatever individual guitar you're working with that's all that matters.

On the subject of whether good or bad. I've heard guitar tones that I hated when played by themselves, but in a mix of a song can sound very good depending on the mood of the song and what it is. So who's to say exactly what good tone is?

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HaleAmano- House Of Sharks (Now On iTunes)
http://www.reverbnation.com/haleamano
http://www.haleamano.com

I think BMW-KTM that everyone hears differently, you may like the tone of someones guitar playing but to others not so much, I'll say this that when I bought my first strat AM Standard a few years back as soon as I plugged it in what I heard was what I'd been hearing strats do in all the years I've been listening to music unmistakable Stratocaster tone, and I'm sure not every strat i've ever heard was made exactly the same with the same wood type, every peice of wood will have a different grain pattern so therfore no two strats should sound alike but they all do "unmistakable strat tone"

Disclaimer= never played a non wood stratocaster to give an opinion

why not bolt a lump of cast iron to the body of your least liked strat and inform us if there is any difference, I would myself but I only have one Strat

I've not been under the impression this discussion has anything to do with personal preference.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.