It is currently Mon Mar 16, 2020 10:20 pm

All times are UTC - 7 hours



Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 18 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next
Go to page 1, 2  Next
Author Message
Post subject: best body wood to use with Pearly Gates Duncan pickup?
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 1:51 pm
Offline
Hobbyist
Hobbyist

Joined: Fri Feb 29, 2008 1:34 pm
Posts: 1
Hello all

I'm a long time frankensteiner of fender parts and guitars.... I recently stummbled onto a very good deal on a Fender/Duncan Pearly Gates pickup. I tend to like lower output humbuckers so this might be the ticket.

I've got a neck I really like and now i'm casting about for a body to go with it. For doing classic rock in a cover band, what would be the most logical wood type to get a nice deep chunky sound with this pickup?

Mahogany? Alder? so many choices....

thanks for any replies


Top
Profile
Fender Play Winter Sale 2020
Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:15 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 4:02 pm
Posts: 2353
Location: Pennsylvania
i would most likely go with mahogany, which i have on my les paul and it gives me that feel... really personal preference, but i think that would suit you well


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:24 pm
Offline
Roadie
Roadie
User avatar

Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:42 am
Posts: 258
Hmmm....

If you're pretty wide open to the body wood, I can't help but wonder if there are some other options?

I was reading up on violin construction...why not see what is available with Spruce or Willow?

From: http://www.gussetviolins.com/wood.htm



Quote:
THE PRIMARY WOODS USED IN VIOLIN MAKING are spruce and maple. Spruce is chosen for the top, also called the front, table or soundboard. It is light in weight, yet longitudinally strong and laterally flexible. To the eye, the most prominent feature of a spruce top is the darker vertical graining. These grains are the annual growth rings of the tree. Top wood is cut radially "on the quarter." The back, sides (ribs) and neck are usually maple cut on or close to the quarter.

Occasionally, maple cut tangentially ("on the slab") or poplar is used for the back. The figure, "flame" or "curl" is the most prominent feature of maple. This is the result of the wood fibers having grown in an undulating pattern. When split this wood looks something like corrugated metal; when cut, as in a finished instrument, it produces an interesting optical effect of alternating light and dark flames. Move the light source and the dark flames will turn light and the light flames dark.

Spruce or willow is used internally for blocks and linings. The bass bar and sound post are spruce. The fittings, including pegs, tailpiece and end button are made of any dense hardwood, most commonly ebony, rosewood or boxwood. Oregon mountain mahogany is also an excellent and dense hardwood. The modern fingerboard is solid ebony. For fingerboards and tailpieces, the early Italians used maple or other lighter hardwoods like poplar covered with maple and/or ebony or dyed wood veneer. Ebony and exotic hardwoods were in short supply.

CUTTING and SEASONING. Violin makers prefer wood cut from old growth trees, grown at high altitudes on northern slopes. The wood must be cut during the cold dormant months and stored (seasoned) in controlled conditions for several years. Most of the wood used in violin making is split or cut "on the quarter" for greatest strength.

Immediately after the tree is felled, the trunk is bucked into rounds (cut up into cylindrically shaped lengths) only slightly longer than that needed for the finished pieces. Like slicing a pie, these rounds are split or sawn radially into wedge shaped pieces called billets. The billets are sealed on their ends with hot glue, stacked in such a manner that air can circulate all around them, and stored in a cool area away from direct sunlight.

Each piece of wood dries throughout at an equally slow rate. The drying or seasoning time for a piece of violin wood is generally ten years or more, depending on its size and thickness. Fifty year old wood is even better! Kiln drying of commercial lumber destroys the cell structure of the wood and thus its physical and acoustic properties.



Image


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:37 pm
Offline
Aspiring Musician
Aspiring Musician
User avatar

Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2007 11:31 am
Posts: 940
Violins are resonant instruments, highly dependent on the characteristics of body wood for their sound.

Electric guitars are just big transducers. Your sound will be determined largely by how that Pearly Gates (which is a great humbucker, BTW), sounds driving a given amp: the body wood, despite the endless blathering that goes around online about it, will have virtually little effect on the sound of the guitar. Any given piece of any given wood might be more or less resonant, and it's always possible to get a dead one, but trying to predict tonal quality by wood choice is not meaningful.

Seriously. Amp = approx 60% of tone, pickup another 30, almost all the rest is how you play. Pick any body wood you like. That's what Leo did: he bought the cheapest stuff he could get a finish to stick to.

But I know from experience that posting this fact will not stop this thread from growing to 100+ passionate posts about how "warm" or "punchy" or "focused" (my favorite dopey guitar term) a given type of wood will be with that pickup. There was a guy I knew on another forum who built a huge reputation as a guitar expert just by endlessly repeating the conventional wisdom about such things as if it were fact.


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:45 pm
Offline
Roadie
Roadie
User avatar

Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 9:40 am
Posts: 261
Man Jim it seems every post you make is a rant anymore, but yeah I'd have to go with ya. I'm in the process of planning an alder Les paul experiment to see what kind of comparative sounds I can get. I might make a scientific breakthrough that will result in a lighter, cheaper, thousand dollar Gibson knockoff ( :wink: ). Not really, but I do plan on doing this experiment to see just how important wood is to sound. I will also be doing things like maple neck vs. mahogany and bolt on vs. glued on. HEY WHAT TEH HECK I'LL DO A WHOLE YOUTUBE SERIES ON IT! :o



Enough about me and my feeble attempts to find something with my life. Go with aldar or ash, cheaper and lighter. :wink:

_________________
"The beauty of grace is that it makes life unfair" - Reliant K


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 2:48 pm
Offline
Aspiring Musician
Aspiring Musician
User avatar

Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2007 11:31 am
Posts: 940
I don't "rant." I try to kill misinformation. :D


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 6:45 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician

Joined: Fri Jan 11, 2008 6:28 pm
Posts: 1956
Alder - sorry for the rant!


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 7:35 pm
Offline
Aspiring Musician
Aspiring Musician
User avatar

Joined: Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:56 pm
Posts: 875
Location: Oregon
I'd go w/ Alder, Basswood or Mahogany..


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Fri Feb 29, 2008 9:06 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician

Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2008 1:51 pm
Posts: 2503
Location: Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA
Hello Rod2

My chioce would be northern ash, heavy and hard

Cheers.


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 11:37 am
Offline
Roadie
Roadie
User avatar

Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 9:40 am
Posts: 261
Gravity Jim wrote:
I don't "rant." I try to kill misinformation. :D


yeah well watever you do, it sure helps!

_________________
"The beauty of grace is that it makes life unfair" - Reliant K


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 8:59 pm
Offline
Professional Musician
Professional Musician
User avatar

Joined: Tue Nov 20, 2007 9:48 pm
Posts: 2315
Mahogany and maple.

As for downplaying the effect wood has on the tone--well, let's see--I have played guitars with the same electronics and the same pickups, etc, through the same amp with the same settings, but different wood--and it makes a discernible difference. My Mahogany guitars are much warmer than mahogany with ample caps. And the all mahogany ones don't get the same bite.

No--wood isn't as big a factor as some people make it out to be, but it's a much bigger factor than many make it out to be as well.

Another concern over wood is that some woods are softer and therefore it is possible the hardware may not be as secure--they may sound good, but the construction is of a lower quality--I've seen that as well. I've seen good sounding guitars with hardware pulled out because the wood is softer.

_________________
It wasn't Willy-Nilly, it was at crows.


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 2:51 pm
Offline
Amateur
Amateur
User avatar

Joined: Sat Jan 26, 2008 2:23 pm
Posts: 101
Location: Southeast US
Gravity Jim wrote:
Violins are resonant instruments, highly dependent on the characteristics of body wood for their sound.

Electric guitars are just big transducers. Your sound will be determined largely by how that Pearly Gates (which is a great humbucker, BTW), sounds driving a given amp: the body wood, despite the endless blathering that goes around online about it, will have virtually little effect on the sound of the guitar. Any given piece of any given wood might be more or less resonant, and it's always possible to get a dead one, but trying to predict tonal quality by wood choice is not meaningful.

Seriously. Amp = approx 60% of tone, pickup another 30, almost all the rest is how you play. Pick any body wood you like. That's what Leo did: he bought the cheapest stuff he could get a finish to stick to.

But I know from experience that posting this fact will not stop this thread from growing to 100+ passionate posts about how "warm" or "punchy" or "focused" (my favorite dopey guitar term) a given type of wood will be with that pickup. There was a guy I knew on another forum who built a huge reputation as a guitar expert just by endlessly repeating the conventional wisdom about such things as if it were fact.



You hit the nail on the head G. Jim! I was trying to decide what wood I would use for a project guitar, and having some understanding about how pickups are made (the non-microphonic ones) I came across some actual research done at a university on resonant (hollow) and non resonant (solid) body guitars. The solids do resonate, but only at one frequency, plus given the fact that pups have no moving parts to transduce the body resonances (assuming they're not loosely built and actually vibrate) it's not likely that the wood type even matters. It's easy enough to test for, just dampen the strings with a rag to prevent any vibration and put a tuning fork on the body and see if any sound comes from the amp.

The only time wood matters is when the guitar is a box, not a slab. I could definitely tell the difference b/w my brother's spruce/maple Alvarez Dreadnought and my spruce/rosewood Alvarez Dreadnought.

It's all marketing. Pick the wood for its durability and beauty.

Here's some research pages for those who are interested:

http://online.physics.uiuc.edu/courses/ ... Report.pdf
Page 6 is the summary of the two guitars they tested.

http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/guitars/index.html


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 6:04 pm
Offline
Rock Star
Rock Star
User avatar

Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:33 am
Posts: 8461
Location: Mars, the angry red planet.
FINALLY, I've found INTELLIGENT people who agree that wood is NOT the dominant factor when choosing a pickup!!! Unfortunately, the contrary 'web dogma' will continue to persist and prevail.

While we're on the subject of dopey tonal descriptions, my pet peeve is the dairy product comparisons: "Buttery, creamy, etc".

Note that the Fender (Duncan) Pearly Gates Plus is closer to a 'regular' Duncan 59 than a 'regular' Duncan Pearly Gates. Fender just liked the name, "Pearly Gates" better. Now before someone starts ripping me for this, this information can currently be found on the Duncan website.

My friend, if you enjoy the pickup, build your guitar just the way you want it and let your amp do the rest.


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 6:27 am
Offline
Aspiring Musician
Aspiring Musician
User avatar

Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2007 11:31 am
Posts: 940
Here's the thing: the resonant qualities of a given piece wood will affect the vibration of the string to some degree, and that does change the response of the guitar: more how it "feels" than how it sounds, really. There's no doubt that my hollow mahogany Strat boy responds differently with the same pickups than the solid body it replaced.

My beef is with the idea that you can predict this effect: that alder sounds "brighter" than ash, that mahogany sounds "warmer" than basswood, that the pick attack changes depending on whether it's walnut or swamp ash.

This is voodoo. One peice of alder resonates this way, another resonates that way. All you can ever say for sure is this:

A guitar is a system of parts that makes a sound. This one sounds good. :D


Martian: I bust guitar players all the time for not learning to express themselves in audio terms. "Buttery" doesn't mean a thing to me. "Boosted in the low-mids with a sharp notch around 2K" does. If we all learned to talk audio instead of guitar voodoo, we'd get closer to the sounds in our heads a lot faster.


Top
Profile
Post subject:
Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 6:42 am
Offline
Rock Star
Rock Star
User avatar

Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:33 am
Posts: 8461
Location: Mars, the angry red planet.
Gravity Jim wrote:
...Martian: I bust guitar players all the time for not learning to express themselves in audio terms. "Buttery" doesn't mean a thing to me. "Boosted in the low-mids with a sharp notch around 2K" does. If we all learned to talk audio instead of guitar voodoo, we'd get closer to the sounds in our heads a lot faster.


AMEN!!!


Top
Profile
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 18 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next
Go to page 1, 2  Next

All times are UTC - 7 hours

Fender Play Winter Sale 2020

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to: