A new Study suggests wood type has little effect on guitars' sound
Study suggests wood type has little effect on guitars' sound
Study suggests wood type has little effect on guitars' sound
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Yup, science. It's rudimentary, but relatively solid controls were used. I'm not surprised by the result, but curious how top plates might fare in a similar analysis. 
Hmm. Interesting. This has never been discussed before..
Hmm. Interesting. This has never been discussed before..
It's been discussed to death, and beyond. How often is a scientific study done on it?
I'd be curious if/how the top wood effects the tone as well. It would also be interesting to have some guitarists seated at a normal audience distance to hear the difference, or lack thereof, of the projection of the instruments. IME, that's the biggest noticeable difference between an expensive acoustic guitar, and a cheaper one.
Not surprised "sound quality and playability" were judged the same across woods. Playability has nothing to do with the wood, that's how well the instrument is built and set up by the maker. "Sound quality" doesn't have much meaning either. A bassy, warm guitar can have excellent "sound quality" played solo or mic'd but get completely lost in a bluegrass jam where a midrangey guitar that sounds harsh by itself not only cuts through between the bass and the banjo, but sounds very "sweet" in a band context.
More useful ratings would have been based on difference in tone and volume. Was one guitar consistently judged more bassy, more trebly, louder, quieter, etc. I think results would have shown there were differences. I'm not sure if there are more results not included in the article. I would hope there were. It's possible the article may only be presenting the results that conclude we don't need to be cutting exotic trees down when guitars can be made from local abundant woods.
As far as acoustic top wood goes, it's the same thing as back wood, but multiply the difference several times. I've always said aside from the design, 90% of the tone and volume of an instrument comes from the top. Totally made up statistic but probably not too far off the mark. The top makes the general tone and timbre, the back/sides color it a bit.
For example, great instruments can be made from both Red and Englemann Spruce, but depending on the tone you want, one is going to be a much better choice, a much better "starting point" than the other to get that tone.
More useful ratings would have been based on difference in tone and volume. Was one guitar consistently judged more bassy, more trebly, louder, quieter, etc. I think results would have shown there were differences. I'm not sure if there are more results not included in the article. I would hope there were. It's possible the article may only be presenting the results that conclude we don't need to be cutting exotic trees down when guitars can be made from local abundant woods.
As far as acoustic top wood goes, it's the same thing as back wood, but multiply the difference several times. I've always said aside from the design, 90% of the tone and volume of an instrument comes from the top. Totally made up statistic but probably not too far off the mark. The top makes the general tone and timbre, the back/sides color it a bit.
For example, great instruments can be made from both Red and Englemann Spruce, but depending on the tone you want, one is going to be a much better choice, a much better "starting point" than the other to get that tone.
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"Study suggests nobody in the audience cares what kind of wood the guitar is made out of if they can't dance to the song."
The original article is quite nice! Effect of back wood choice on the perceived quality of steel-string acoustic guitars: Invalid Link Removed.
Unlike the rather clickbaity news item suggests, it really goes into acoustics and psychoacoustics and even the building process (smell of the wood!). Some physical measurements were done and sound rating was well-defined so not just asking a bunch of guitarists 'how do you like this guitar?'
Differences between woods are nicely visualised and it's great that there's attention for more sustainable resources.
Unlike the rather clickbaity news item suggests, it really goes into acoustics and psychoacoustics and even the building process (smell of the wood!). Some physical measurements were done and sound rating was well-defined so not just asking a bunch of guitarists 'how do you like this guitar?'
Differences between woods are nicely visualised and it's great that there's attention for more sustainable resources.
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No way!! But a tort pickguard makes any bass sound better!
Not too surprising, but yeah, let's see them take the same guitar back, sides, and neck, and and change top plates (where most of the sonic difference lie) and see if their conclusions hold.
They didn't say that they sounded the same, they said they got roughly equal averaged rankings - those are 2 very different things.
They didn't say that they sounded the same, they said they got roughly equal averaged rankings - those are 2 very different things.
Yeah, a perennial topic.
All I can tell ya--regarding the matter of wood in solid body basses--is that I once owned two Sadowsky Metro Vintage fivers, built within a couple years of each other. All the hardware was the same, the design, pups, preamps...the same. Same strings on them. One was ash/maple, the other morado/alder. And they sounded distinctly different.
All I can tell ya--regarding the matter of wood in solid body basses--is that I once owned two Sadowsky Metro Vintage fivers, built within a couple years of each other. All the hardware was the same, the design, pups, preamps...the same. Same strings on them. One was ash/maple, the other morado/alder. And they sounded distinctly different.
Gee...You mean all the work Ted McCarty did with sandwiching different woods, ending up with maple and mahogany for the Les Paul, you mean all those different woods he tried all sounded THE SAME??? Well I’ll be...
It was probably due to using different straps.
ROTFL
The title of that article should have read "The back wood has a negligible effect on the sound quality and playability of an acoustic guitar". Notice it said nothing about the neck or top (I guess they included the sides with the back) or other instrument types. It's well known that the back is important in violin family instruments because a soundpost couples the top and back together, in fact the setting of the soundpost makes a huge difference in the tone (and in many cases the volume).
The title of that article should have read "The back wood has a negligible effect on the sound quality and playability of an acoustic guitar". Notice it said nothing about the neck or top (I guess they included the sides with the back) or other instrument types. It's well known that the back is important in violin family instruments because a soundpost couples the top and back together, in fact the setting of the soundpost makes a huge difference in the tone (and in many cases the volume).
For me, the difference is in individual specimens; you'll know it when you play it. When I cannot try before I buy due to the nature of internet transactions, I prefer quality tone woods simply to reduce the chance that I'm getting a dud. But I don't really know that's what makes the difference.
I thought this was a pretty good test, don’t know if it’s been posted here....
From the article:
"Additionally, when 31 of the guitarists were asked to identify which instrument was which based on its sound and feel, they had considerable difficulty doing so"
It's not just sound quality, they also had these guys try to pin the tail on the donkey, and the results sound about as accurate as pin the tail on the donkey. These are trained ears, if those ears can't match the tone to the wood consistently, that calls into question if there is any consistency based on wood type, the early indication is there is not.
Further, remember that you can take a note, strip out the fundamental, play the resulting note back, and the human ear/brain combination replaces the missing fundamental. The physiological response of our ears is the same as if the fundamental was present. This isn't subjective, or a collection of subjective responses, this is an autonomic reaction outside our conscious control.
So our ear/brain combination is perfectly willing and capable of lying to us about what we are really hearing. If we can fill in the missing fundamental, it's far more likely we're adding warmth that isn't there when playing mahogany, and bite that isn't there when playing maple. This is all subjective, and we have an objective finding that our ear/brain combination is capable of amazing levels of deceit...
Lastly, why don't these guys just run everything through 'scopes and other objective measurements? If there is something in the wood that actually changes the sound, how is it no-one has managed to measure that? IF our tools don't have the resolution to determine that such a difference exists, why would we choose to believe that our ears do, particularly when we know they can lie?
Frankly, the whole topic of tonewood should be banned here. It's just another damn religion, which we don't talk about here.
I don’t always buy into science. It’s always comes down to who paid for the study and how they want to lean with the results.
My case and point being that I have to identical Lakland 55-94 basses with the exception that one is alder and the other one is Ash. When I’m playing solo they sound the exact same. However, in the mix with a band the Ash has a lot more ‘balls’ then the alder.
My case and point being that I have to identical Lakland 55-94 basses with the exception that one is alder and the other one is Ash. When I’m playing solo they sound the exact same. However, in the mix with a band the Ash has a lot more ‘balls’ then the alder.
The article is about the comparison between several species of wood to demonstrate that it makes sense to opt for more readily available resources instead of tropical hardwoods. They did find differences, but they were small enough to draw such a conclusion. The guitars that were built were acoustic steelstrings and every other variable was kept consistent. I think this is a sound (ha!) study, extensively discussing plenty of aspects of (perceived) quality.
It does not mean that results can be generalised for anything other than back woods for a steelstring acoustic (maybe not even from another luthier). It definitely does not say anything at all about tonal characteristics of different woods in solid body basses!
It does not mean that results can be generalised for anything other than back woods for a steelstring acoustic (maybe not even from another luthier). It definitely does not say anything at all about tonal characteristics of different woods in solid body basses!
