We can all agree that our wives are awesome...
oh wait, there may be some clamoring from a few disgruntled 'workers.'
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Does fretboard wood make a consistent difference in tone that you can hear?
- Thread starter Gorn
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- difference fretboard tone wood
We can all agree that our wives are awesome...
oh wait, there may be some clamoring from a few disgruntled 'workers.'
See? That's the problem with taking me too seriously....
Tfer wife again.
Absolutely, but that magnetic field is far less consequencial than the physical attributes of the system.
The number of windings in a pickup will alter the magnetic field, but that difference is extremely slight. The magnetic field already exists; a slight change in gauss won't have the affect that some are attributing to it.
If you're curious, remove the pickups from your instrument, and listen to it acoustically. The difference will be minuscule at best.
If you were to remove all the body wood from it, in a line from the bridge to the fret board, the vibrational difference that you sense as sound, would be dramatic.
At that point, you've altered the vibrational system to a point that you've removed significant mass. It would be much quieter, and the tonal (vibrational) characteristic will have changed.
Great! Not that my opinion matters (clearly you don't think it does), but I totally agree with her comments on an instrument being a system. Please ask her what the difference is between standing waves and longitudinal waves, and in what ways they're relevant to this discussion.
If you listen to an electrical instrument with the pickups removed, I agree the difference in pickup windings will be slight.
No, you wouldn't hear a sine wave - have you ever seen a slow motion vid of a string vibrating along its length? No metal string is going to vibrate without harmonics. Of course the construction affects the vibration also.
Which of these harmonics are associated with warm or bright tonal qualities and are attributed to the fretboards?
Asked - her answer.
Longitudinal waves are irrelevant because that's not how a string vibrates.
Standing waves are very relevant because that's what shapes the tone. As the amplitude of the wave runs against the frequency of the medium that it's systems with, those frequencies are absorbed.
Having higher frequency harmonics attenuated because of standing waves, will cause the sound to be less bright sounding.
If you want to argue about the semantics of the word 'bright' then you'll have to argue with someone else. Most people understand what it means when something sounds bright.
Longitudinal waves are what are transmitted through the signal chain to the amp. Standing waves are heard - that's what you hear when your bass is not plugged in, and it's what you hear coming from your amp.
She seems to have asserted that pickups don't make a difference. How about pedals? Preamps? Power amps? Speaker cabinets? Speakers? If pickups don't matter then none of those things matter. Would she argue that no harmonics are lost through this signal chain? Especially the weakest ones, which would *have* to be the ones caused by standing waves bouncing off the fretboard and vibrating the strings.
Wow.
Will a cheap cord affect the sound? Yes. Resistance.
Will an effects pedal??! It bloody well better, or I've wasted a ton of money.
You're REALLY reaching now.
I'm not arguing semantics - I'm asking which harmonics are attributed to "bright" and which ones to "warm" and am contending that - coming out of your amp - they're not attributable to type of fretboard wood. As you said, high frequency harmonics are attenuated by standing waves, and also by interference in the signal chain - like pots, caps, effects, cables, preamps, Power amps, speaker cabinets, speakers, not to mention pickup placement, venue size, venue wall material, venue ceiling height, venue floor material, number of people in the room, etc. Then the psychosocial elements which prevent people from hearing things spoken to them or completely missing the point after this many pages, also affect how you interpret what you hear - as warm or as "who cares".
How so??? Is your wife not asserting that pickups don't affect the tone?? Of course cables and effects do.
I'm out.
You've gone from discussing tonewoods to venue construction in an attempt to dismiss basic physics and vibration in a system.
If you can't hear a difference, be happy and purchase crap because it clearly doesn't matter to you.
Why aren't we arguing what difference pick guards make to tone? How many plys, nitro versus plastic, tort versus black. That makes up a significant surface area, right where the pickups are. How about thumb rests? They're sitting right there, bouncing all those standing waves back against the string. Would it make a difference if it was above the strings or below the strings? What about blocks instead of dots? What about clay dots versus black dots? Binding? How about nickel frets versus stainless steel? How about fret markers on a fretless? How do these things affect how bright an electric bass or guitar is, or how warm it is? Surely you guys must have opinions on these aspects of the system too.
Dude - you're saying longitudinal waves are irrelevant. All that matters are standing waves, you said.
I didn't say I can't hear a difference between two different basses, I've been saying all along that if the type of fretboard wood makes any difference by the time the sound comes out of a speaker and hits your ear, it's negligible. Your talking like it's everything.
ftfy.
I've reread and reread this last few pages thinking that maybe I missed some trolling... all that's being said by those who keep quoting you is that fretboard wood is less of a tone non-contributor than pickguard plies, cable housing material, and strap button material. You've put a lot of energy into this conversation...
Best thing to do is argue the others person's perspective convincingly. This statistically brings people to the middle.
I get guiding people to learn about the placebo effect. Yet why do we hold a belief? What has shown you in your life's experience that says fret board wood can't have any affect? What we do know is some don't think so, some do.
How could it have no effect?
You could feel it as increased rigidity or it's that neck as distinct from another neck making the obvious difference and not the fret board. Since luthiers use laminations to their sonic purposes why wouldn't the application of a different wood enhance or dampen perceived vibrations compared to a solid piece of wood?
I would agree that aggressive touch and steep eq. choices, THD of the pre/amp and quality of speakers can obscure this. I hear this masking all the time, live. Doesn't mean that it's not present and can't be heard in other more favorable settings.
Science is our friend. It has however never discovered anything. Every new discovery already exists and is active in our Universe. Science needs no defending. But waiting for it to describe something to you that you and mankind have experienced for thousands of years is limiting at best.
I get guiding people to learn about the placebo effect. Yet why do we hold a belief? What has shown you in your life's experience that says fret board wood can't have any affect? What we do know is some don't think so, some do.
How could it have no effect?
You could feel it as increased rigidity or it's that neck as distinct from another neck making the obvious difference and not the fret board. Since luthiers use laminations to their sonic purposes why wouldn't the application of a different wood enhance or dampen perceived vibrations compared to a solid piece of wood?
I would agree that aggressive touch and steep eq. choices, THD of the pre/amp and quality of speakers can obscure this. I hear this masking all the time, live. Doesn't mean that it's not present and can't be heard in other more favorable settings.
Science is our friend. It has however never discovered anything. Every new discovery already exists and is active in our Universe. Science needs no defending. But waiting for it to describe something to you that you and mankind have experienced for thousands of years is limiting at best.
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