That's fantastic jmg257.

Looks like some excellent science showing the differences in woods. And that is an excellent way to have a direct comparison like that. Some people knew about these difference, but maybe just had the hardness confused, or simply misunderstood why the difference was there.

I really like the scale showing frequency responses (resonance) of the different woods. I can see how the perceptions of sounds can differ from one person to the next, as it seems that some of the woods cover a broader range of tones than others, so some people will be more sensitive to the highs, and some people will be more sensitive to the mids or lows. Was that data gathered using vibration analysis equipment? (data trap?)

I can feel us slowly inching our way towards the real facts that some have known all along, and maybe the hearing sensitive will no longer have to put up with ridicule and scorn. Well, at least for awhile....

Now, I have to ask; what are you selling, and why did you make all of that up? (seriously JK)

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Hi Shim,

The tone chart is from Taylor Guitars - I take no credit.
That's why I add qualifiers like "seems" & "perceived"...not sure how Taylor came up with it, but I do use it when shopping for acoustics.

Aha! Taylor is behind the ruse, I knew it.

But seriously, great job, and thanks for the excellent contribution.

_________________
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Por favor, disculpe mi español, no se llega a la práctica con mucha frecuencia.

If you have a maple neck and you want smoother tones out of your guitar, don't change the neck, just change the strings and go for Pure Nickel (Fender 150s' for example).
On the other hand, if you have a rosewood neck and the desire for brighter tones, go for stainless steel strings (Fender 350s').

Strings cost $5-$10. Necks cost a bit more
It all comes down to this. Buy whatever looks better to you. You can manipulate the sound properties afterwards with just a new string set or a different pot or even a different pick.

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Alexander
AMSTD Strat RW Candy Cola +Callaham + Texas Specials +Tortoise shell pickguard/Fender Blues Junior III SN FSR
Salonica-Greece


Macedonia IS GREECE the last 2500 years

I found this fabulous interview with Ned Steinberger that sets EVERYONE'S speculations about what makes good sustain on its ear. All of us are flat-out wrong. The wood has nothing, repeat NOTHING to do with the sound. It's all about the rigidity of the instrument. This was a surprise and a revelation but makes sense as my travel guitar, a Steinberger Spirit (made by Gibson, I guess) has surprisingly good sustain and the neck is one piece with the body. Steinberger originally hit big with his carbon-fiber bass guitars, not even wood!

Here's the excerpt from the NS Designs web site.

"It was obvious that I didn't understand how it worked, or I wouldn't have built it wrong. So I needed to think about this thing again and I needed to understand it. I thought that if I could learn to understand what was wrong, I might be able to figure out what would be right. So I started to experiment.

The most informative experiment was taking the instrument and clamping it to a very rigid, heavy structure. This happened to be a very heavy workbench I had at the time. I clamped it very solidly to that, but in a way so you could still play it, you could still play all the notes and hear what they sounded like.

The sound of the instruments was reversed 180 degrees. This same instrument that had poor sustain, a great deal of irregularity from note to note with dead spots all over, a wimpy, disappointing kind of sound was transformed into an instrument that had tremendous sustain, a lot of brilliance and clarity, just a wonderful tone.

JR: Just by making it rigid?

NS: By making it both rigid and heavy. It was a big workbench that weighed 150 pounds and had C-clamps all over it. "

It makes a lot of sense. A flexible body absorbs the string's energy in its flexing. A rigid body won't.

I don't believe anything in this tone chart. This is just the common "knowledge" but I doubt it has anything to do with the reality. I have heard a carbon Cello .... pretty much ends discussion about different sounds of necks/woods.

Cheers

David

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"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."

Why?

As for the Tone Chart, I imagine Taylor and Martin and Gibson know at least a few things about tone woods in the guitars they build, and they and others agree quite often on what to GENERALLY EXPECT when discussing the impact of many of these woods in acoustic guitars...to the point that they are pretty good at it.

Maybe your reality is just different then theirs?

Yes, it does make sense!
Wasn't that the point behind Les Paul and his Log, and the eventual design of the LP? Heavy solid body with a solid core? Maple over mahogany for higher body density?

Um, that is exactly what we are saying about different woods, they have an affect on the tone produced. Heavier/denser wood affects the sound differently than a lighter/less dense wood. Rather than turn anything "on its ear", this article is quite the opposite (at least the part that you posted), and confirms rather than denies the claims made about wood and tone (resonance). The wood DOES have something to do with it, and it seems that you don't understand the article that you posted. Take the pickups from your Steinberger and put them in a nice Squier and see if they sound exactly the same. (Clue:, the two guitars won't sound the same at all).

In fact, the part where the guitar was clamped to the bench and the sound was altered, confirms what we have said in other posts about the finish on the body also affecting the guitars resonance.

_________________
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Hi gentlemen: I'd politely suggest both of these are two parts of the story, but neither is the whole. Rigidity of the system upon which it is stretched is a very important aspect of the sound imparted to a vibrating string, especially regarding note decay, but other characteristics of the timber affect it also. That's because different timbers absorb different parts of the sound spectrum and feed the remainder back into the string differently, not only in accordance with their rigidity.

There are tables to be had of the density of different woods and also their tensile strength, and neither factor maps precisely onto the perceived tonal characteristics of timber. Here's one such; we see that mahogany and maple have similar densities (within the wider scheme of things) and yet we all think mahogany backed acoustics sound substantially different than maple ones:

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wood- ... -d_40.html

So there's plenty more to it than a single factor.

Far as demonstrating the effect of rigidity on vibration goes, there is a nice little experiment we can do to observe it. Take an elastic band and stretch it across a cereal bowl or similar sized ceramic object. Give it a pluck and listen to the sound. Now stretch the same elastic band between the tips of your thumb and second finger to the same distance as it was on the bowl, pluck it and see how completely different the sound it.

The band was stretched to the same length and produced the same pitched note, but the quality of the sound was entirely dissimilar. That's because try as you might you can't hold the band rigid with your fingers so much of its vibration is instantly dissipated.

But anyone who thinks rigidity is therefore the only quality that matters needs to try playing a Dan Armstrong / Ampeg plexiglass guitar. That is far more rigid than any wooden guitar, and yet the tone is strangely lifeless and disappointing. The sound doesn't have the interesting tonal "fingerprint" that the peaks and troughs of different timber's vibrational absorbtion produces.

People have poured vast effort into analysing the tone of violins and trying to reproduce it with computer guided resin built instruments - and found the same thing.

It all keeps life interesting.

Cheers - C

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I have over 60 electrics. I can tell no difference between neck materials. 'If' there is a difference, it is so dwarfed by other variables to be insignificant.

Humans are are masters of self-deception and nowhere is this greater than among guitar players.

I agree Ceri. Each part contributes (positively or negatively) to the tone produced by an instrument, some parts more than others. The sound produced is the sum of the parts, and there are nearly an infinite number of subtle variances in each part from instrument to instrument, no two being exactly the same, even among "identical" models.

Nuances, subtleties and noticeable are the claim for the differences, nothing extreme.

Great analogy with the stretched band, seems clear and simple. In the article posted above, I thought of doing the same thing before, clamping a guitar body tightly to check the difference in resonance and sound, or even coating a body in different materials, but....sheesh!

I do like the idea of the carbon guitars, but haven't had the chance to try any of them out to check the sound.

_________________
---> "The amp should be SWITCHED OFF AND UNPLUGGED before you do this!" <---

Por favor, disculpe mi español, no se llega a la práctica con mucha frecuencia.

Half the people here missed the point:
Rigidity is critical to sound and sustain. If you read more of Ned Steinberger's interview, he goes on to say that if you put holes in a boulder and strung strings across it the sustain would go on and on. Just like the rubber band and the bowl analogy.

Steinberger also made it clear he was TOTALLY talking about electric instruments, saying hollow acoustic instruments are completely different. Nobody's going to argue that different pickups don't affect sound. That's just absurd.

But just like you cannot make good coffee with bad water, you can't make a good solid body guitar without rigidity to prevent flexing when the string is played. Steinberger built his guitars and basses from carbon fibers and fiberglass resin.

BTW, the "secret" of the Stradivarius was discovered about 30 years ago when a PhD chemist, who was also a musician, discovered that the old-timers soaked their wood in chemical concoctions to strip every last bit of sap out of the wood cells. He later went into building string instruments and, while they had their unique tone, they rivaled Strads in the quality of sound.

After Leo Fender and Les Paul, it's hard to find another guitar builder as innovative and successful as Ned Steinberger. Everyone else in the electric guitar world pretty much imitates those three.

I'm not getting who 'missed the point'...



What exactly was everyone else speculating about sustain that was flat-out wrong?

Seemed Les nailed it a long time ago...who thinks he was wrong?

Hmmm...is it the unimportance of wood/material that is surprising you?

Yes. and that most people are insisting that it does matter. I have no clue if Les Paul knew that his fantastic sustain was due to the lack of flexion in the neck and body or thought it was due to something else. I do know that Ned Steinberger figured it out via a predictable set of circumstances, and thereafter has worked to always keep his instruments extremely rigid.