So you are not for convincing otherwise then ? Its all about marketing my friend . I am not dissing the mans qualifications or instruments . But I will continue to question opinions of any and everyone and still listen with my ears .
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More Sheldon Dingwall and Tone Wood
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
So you are not for convincing otherwise then ? Its all about marketing my friend . I am not dissing the mans qualifications or instruments . But I will continue to question opinions of any and everyone and still listen with my ears .
We all listen with our ears. We don't all hear things the same way. Whether I agree or not, I will tend to pay attention to what people say who have the sort of experience we're looking at here. I certainly wouldn't dismiss it out of hand as just "confirmation bias" or other such labels.
I guess my point was more to say that I know these guys personally and I know that the methods they use to make their instruments come from decades of R&D having made literally thousands of instruments. These are not people who come up with an idea, like dual density bodies, as a way to peddle snake oil to their customers. If Sheldon choses to use dual density woods for certain models, then I believe he does so because he, and a lot of his clients, believe there is a benefit towards doing so.
And not to knock anyone opinions, but not all ears are created equal. Just because one person's ears aren't able to tell a difference between body wood A or B, pickup A/B, or bridge A/B, it certainly doesn't mean that other players can't hear a between these components. And I don't say that to be condescending, it's just the simple truth that some players have the ears to pick out these subtle details while others don't.
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Yeah, but,....what difference is someone hearing? What is the reasoning behind knocking on the wood? What does it do? What effect does it have on the strings and the sound? How does it work?
Why can't anyone give a clear, scientific explanation?
If a mechanic kicked my tires and said he could tell how well the engine runs by the sound the tires make when kicked,...you bet yer a$$ I'm gonna say, "oh yeah? Explain how that works".
And going on and on about how he's been a top notch mechanic for 30 years and trying to twist it around into me having no respect for the man, still doesn't answer the question. The mechanic having "better ears" than me, doesn't answer the question either.
If someone could simply explain the mechanics and reasoning of what's actually happening here, then I'll not only stop calling it nonsense,...I'll start knocking on pieces of wood too!!
If there's any real value to it, I'm interested.
But these threads go on for days and there's never an answer.
Like was said earlier, everyone knows the names and instruments being mentioned. No one reading or commenting in this thread has any doubt that these are very skilled and experienced builders and top shelf instruments. It would be nice if we would stop trying to twist this into being disrespectful, when a simple explanation would be a lot more helpful and useful. Especially to new builders.
Why can't anyone give a clear, scientific explanation?
If a mechanic kicked my tires and said he could tell how well the engine runs by the sound the tires make when kicked,...you bet yer a$$ I'm gonna say, "oh yeah? Explain how that works".
And going on and on about how he's been a top notch mechanic for 30 years and trying to twist it around into me having no respect for the man, still doesn't answer the question. The mechanic having "better ears" than me, doesn't answer the question either.
If someone could simply explain the mechanics and reasoning of what's actually happening here, then I'll not only stop calling it nonsense,...I'll start knocking on pieces of wood too!!
If there's any real value to it, I'm interested.
But these threads go on for days and there's never an answer.
Like was said earlier, everyone knows the names and instruments being mentioned. No one reading or commenting in this thread has any doubt that these are very skilled and experienced builders and top shelf instruments. It would be nice if we would stop trying to twist this into being disrespectful, when a simple explanation would be a lot more helpful and useful. Especially to new builders.
Of course the woods used matters.
Can't really make a neck out of balsa.
I'm asking about knocking on the body of a solid body blank and how the sound you hear, translates into,......what, exactly?
That's what the thread is about.
Can't really make a neck out of balsa.
I'm asking about knocking on the body of a solid body blank and how the sound you hear, translates into,......what, exactly?
That's what the thread is about.
Maybe ... "it's complicated"? We don't always know exactly why something works the way it does, but we can tell that it works - as with the car example, I don't know a ton about cars (some, but not a whole lot), but I can tell when a car zooms or when it doesn't, and I might find it zooms more with high octane fuel ... or whatever. Even though I wouldn't know the exact physics behind this. I can give you a theory as to why the body (and other physical components) in an electric guitar might influence the amplified sound, but I can't prove it to you, which is what you want. But if one experiences it, there it is.
As an example, not specifically wood type related, though possibly a little bit, watch GE Smith playing Mike Bloomfield's beat old Telecaster (the guitar that killed folk). "Not every Telecaster does that, only the really good ones, where you can really dig into it and it ... snaps back at you." Why does that happen? We can speculate, and I might have some ideas, but hearing it leaves no mistake that that guitar does indeed "snap back at you". Some of this stuff is experiential, simple as that.
There is a study that has been referenced various times in these various "tone wood" threads, in which a blind test was conducted with several types of body wood, with the same anchoring attached to each one ... and a strong majority of the listeners could accurately discern a difference in amplified sound (Is example A the same wood or different from example B?). I think it's a difficult thing to study, for several reasons, but we do have some evidence that there can be an actual difference in amplified sound with different body woods. Snarky dismissals from some quarters don't change this, and don't change the fact that some people hear a difference, where others don't.
"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" [meaning science] Or, "It's good to keep an open mind."
Luthiers have been tapping on wood for centuries. There’s no science behind it, it’s an art. Through repetition, you develop a sense of how resonances of different woods interact, but you’ll never completely nail it.
In broad strokes, a piece of wood that rings like a bell, stands a much better chance of ending up as a musically responsive bass. Alternately, a dead sounding piece of wood is guaranteed to result in a dead sounding bass.
Every now and again we end up with a bass that sounds magical, so we work backwards and try and figure out why that was.
Every now and again a bass just doesn’t work the way we had hoped and we do the same, we work backwards to try and figure out what went wrong with the formula so we don’t repeat the mistake.
Overtime, we’ve been able to achieve more consistent results from bass to bass while increasing the overall musical quality, which to me means response to touch.
If we took the approach that wood doesn’t matter and just used lumber as it came in, our end results would be all over the map instead of consistent and gradually improving.
In broad strokes, a piece of wood that rings like a bell, stands a much better chance of ending up as a musically responsive bass. Alternately, a dead sounding piece of wood is guaranteed to result in a dead sounding bass.
Every now and again we end up with a bass that sounds magical, so we work backwards and try and figure out why that was.
Every now and again a bass just doesn’t work the way we had hoped and we do the same, we work backwards to try and figure out what went wrong with the formula so we don’t repeat the mistake.
Overtime, we’ve been able to achieve more consistent results from bass to bass while increasing the overall musical quality, which to me means response to touch.
If we took the approach that wood doesn’t matter and just used lumber as it came in, our end results would be all over the map instead of consistent and gradually improving.
For acoustic instruments. Yet to see any evidence beyond assertion that it does so in solidbodies.
Obviously you missed the study I mentioned earlier. which as I said has been referenced multiple times in these various tone wood back and forths. No, I don't feel like digging through the forum now to try and find it. Not sure how you would have missed it, if you've been following this stuff. There are other examples that have been put forward as well. But beyond that ... if you don't hear it, that's fine. It's a bit much to continually assert that others don't hear a difference.
We know how this goes. Seen it all before, several times over. But no harm in keeping an open mind, right? Perhaps people are hearing something different from you - we know that can happen in various contexts.
I've seen ONE posted earlier, but it was pretty poorly done. And it was ONE. The whole point of the scientific method is that various people/groups repeat the same experiment to make sure that the results are repeatable. When I've seen several that are better done, then I'll take it as a given. Not holding my breath.
I can assert I can run a mile in 2 minutes. Doesn't mean I can. My assertion provides no actual evidence. If assertions were all true then every guilty criminal would simply need to assert they were innocent, and then it would be true, wouldn't it in your logic?
It would be nice to have multiple examples ... it's not exactly a high priority area of study. All the various studies, demos, etc. I've seen on this subject, either pro or con, have some kind of imperfection, though the one I'm mentioning was reasonably good - blind test, random participants, multiple iterations of the test ... LARGE majority reliably hearing a difference. It is what it is. I'll say again that a good part of this is simply experiential, like the GE Smith snippet I posted - the guitar "snaps back" when you play it, not exactly a quality easily subjected to scientific experiment
, but there it is for all to hear. And so on.Not seeing that either. Without evidence it falls back to confirmation bias for almost all people.
I'd put that video in the realm of confirmation bias too. Didn't impress me at all.
I don't see how a majority of people repeatedly hearing a difference in the amplified sound between various pieces of wood (not knowing one another) amounts to "confirmation bias". It's just, is there a difference between these two pieces, or not? Confirmation bias ...? 'Splain that one to me, Lucy.
Bloomfield's guitar "snapping back" = "confirmation bias", again? If you can't hear that quality in the sound there, I don't know what to tell ya.
As Smith says, "They don't all do that." And they don't. Again, a matter of experience to hear and to have heard this.
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Keep believing what you want, and coming into it 'knowing' that woods have different tones in solid bodies, or that you heard what you were told to expect with that Tele clip is confirmation bias. Pick that Tele from a bunch of other similar units, blind. The whole 'you can't hear it' is simply a pejorative to dismiss someone else's experience, when you have not proven yours beyond your assertion that you did.
Particularly when they are trying to sell you something.
No, one hears the "snapping back" quality in Bloomfield's Tele as GE Smith plays it before he names it as such - he plays a number of licks, enjoying it, and then gives comment. And it is a similar sound to that heard in numerous Bloomfield examples. It's not confirmation bias to recognize the nature of that sound as it occurs (then to have GE confirm that yeah, he's hearing that in it.) Also not confirmation bias to have played a number of other Teles, most of which did not quite have that snap to them - simple experience. I don't know if you play guitar much, but it's pretty recognizable when it's there.
To turn it around, you telling me that I don't actually hear what I hear is itself "simply a pejorative to dismiss someone else's experience". If you want to get into that.
And ... it's you yourself whose statements are to the effect that you don't hear it, I'm just going off your own comment.You still didn't address the nature of the supposed confirmation bias in that study. But whatever. Believe what you want.
And then you're able to hear what it is he's telling you he hears. Right. You can say you heard it before then, but that's just your assertion and doesn't mean a whole lot.
