PRS is a good example of the wood’s effect on the tone. I’ve owned several PRS guitars made of different grades or types of wood, and they sounded the same - bland.
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So if wood type makes no difference in tone...
- Thread starter bdplaid
- Start date
PRS is a good example of the wood’s effect on the tone. I’ve owned several PRS guitars made of different grades or types of wood, and they sounded the same - bland.
Not sure I agree here - you are making assumptions such as and I paraphrase - " any difference beyond a minimum standard doesn't matter " . It's not meaningless if someone with much better hearing than normal can hear it or if a machine / mic can distinguish and present that difference . I wasn't referencing the " quality " aspects of the potential differences either . That debate is obviously always open to my or your tastes and can truly never be answered universally as anything more than an opinion .
The people who boutique build at the high end are not constrained as much by market forces as commercial builders . They have tendencies to use certain woods in general for certain parts too . They also spend an awful lot of time perfecting their craft / skills and tend to very picky about particular pieces of wood within species . Seems like they have a pretty firm opinion that some woods are better sounding than others . Of course , they must take into account how the wood "looks " too as it is an important aspect in their business but my understanding is they will try and start with the best sounding piece they can find . Perhaps that's a naive assumption on my part - ask them if you doubt it .... Kelly
Most people who claim to have much better hearing than normal, fail to be any better than others when tested blind.
Given how vastly different technique and processing can make an individual instrument sound I stand by the statement that any difference so small it requires stupidly precise instrumentation to detect is meaningless.
Because guess what, any difference that small will be inaudible using a bass amp, or PA system, or when recorded, or in a room with background noise because all these things will not allow that level of fidelity.
Everything that is connected to the entire process affects tone. The wood, the pickups, the cables, the amps, speakers, any pre-amps and pedals... Everything. It is well documented that when struck, different woods emit different sounds. All pickups are microphonic to a point. If you tap on the pickup with your finger you hear it through the amp. You could isolated the strings from the pickups and then play the strings and the pickup will reproduce the sound by virtue of microphonics. Most of the time the effect on the overall amplified sound is subtle. But it is there. Simply plucking the strings in different ways or at different positions along the string alters tone in a big way.
It could also be because people don't have any clue what each wood is supposed to sound like. If I show regular people two mass spectroscopies, and ask which is water and which is alcohol, the result will be people just guessing and half the time getting it right and half the time getting it wrong. But they will look very different. You need give people a reference.
For the record, I don't care whether tone comes from wood or not. The study is just dumb. It looks good on the surface, but it doesn't measure anything.
I think you would get the same results if you played an A and a G and asked people to say which note they heard. There is a difference between an A and a G, but it would look like just randomly guessing in this type of study.
Not if variation from one piece to another of the same species is 2%.
Hard Maple is twice as soft as Rosewood and Ebony, so that makes sense.
For some reason, many people (for years and years) seem to mentally equate the darker wood as warmer.
Obviously, lots of people believe what they are told, not necessarily what they may or may not hear.
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Then we end up debating what is a " difference " that actually matters . To my understanding - the OP's question was "Is there a difference ? " - a much easier question to analytically , answer . Of course there is . Your answer is it doesn't matter at some point . In essence - the tree falls in the forest - does it matter whether you hear it or not - apparently not in your world - it does however matter to that ill fated squirrel that passed underneath just as it fell . He probably , wishes he hadn't heard it .... Kelly
people have a lifetime of reference of listening to "typical" guitar woods. If you get no difference between those and ones people have never heard a guitar made out of before, what other conclusion can you get than the differences between wood types acoustically are small to non existent. Using other species of wood clearly doesn't produce a different sounding guitar.
Actually not as easy to answer as you think. Why is there a difference?
Is it how tight the bridge screws are? How flat the wood under the bridge is? The slight twist variation from neck to neck? Slight difference in the composition of the steel in the strings? Slight difference in the size of the strings because the machine had worn between the batches? Slight variation in mass of the bridge? variation in the neck pocket? Different paint thicknesses. Different paint colour(If you are billy corgan).Difference in amount of metal left after dressing the frets? Difference in thickness of fretboard after levelling it? Thickness of the body? how smoothly the body had been sanded?
And finally, variation from species to species or just from tree to tree which would be there even in the same species?
Unless you quantify all these causes you can't say anything about the difference a different wood makes.
But ultimately it doesn't matter because it mostly stems from people thinking " I will sound like X if I get a golden bass that has TONE" rather than "If i practice for the next 10 years I will have TONE"
@crazyBassClown, yours is a fantastic series of clear, logical and absolutely irrefutable posts.
It'd be a great credit and value to this site, and to the Internet in general, if the mods parsed this thread down to only the OP and your posts, locked it and posted it on the home page and at the top of each forum sticky'd forever.
Thank you.
It'd be a great credit and value to this site, and to the Internet in general, if the mods parsed this thread down to only the OP and your posts, locked it and posted it on the home page and at the top of each forum sticky'd forever.
Thank you.
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I have heard millions of B notes. I cannot tell a difference between a B and a D. There may or may not be a difference between guitars. Again I don't care. The study just doesn't prove or disprove this. It did take a lot of work. I commend them.
Given we are on a musicians board I call BS on that. You may not be able to name a B or D played on it's own without context but I absolutely guarantee that if I played you a B and then either a B or a D you could tell me if the 2 notes were the same or different. Almost all people can.
Similarly most people couldn't identify the type of wood, but should be able to identify if it is the same or different sounding.
That's not how the study worked if it is indeed the one I am aware of. They built a certain number of near identical guitars then played them blinding the listened who just guessed what they heard. They didn't ask if it was the same or different guitar.
In every one of these blind studies that I get to listen to audio, I always walk away with two conclusions.
1) Both samples sound different.
2) I don't know which is which.
You can call BS. I cannot tell what note I'm hearing without a reference. I play this game with my wife all the time. I have no clue what note I'm hearing. I also cannot reproduce any note with my voice even with a reference.
I think a proper study would have positive and negative controls (like a banjo and the same guitar). It would just ask: same or different? But they never do that. They blind you and say: spruce or cedar. For that type of study they would need to play the spruce and cedar enough for you to be familiar with them, then ask you to identify them.
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There's low effort trolling, and there's low effort trolling. And then there's starting the tone wood argument up again.
You must factor in the resonance of the hollow body compared to the resonance of a solid body.... How come hollow bodies sound different from solid bodies? Hmmmm?
go for what you like..I prefer solid body instruments for feel and debth of sound..I have owned 2 hollow bodies in my lifetime and just couldnt bond with them..but enjoyed playing on them from time to time..... How come hollow bodies sound different from solid bodies? Hmmmm?
