String-thru & Wood Selection

[Dugz Ink]

First, let me apologize; I am a geek. Not a pocket-protector nerd... more like a high-tech headbanger. Therefore, I over-think everything. And I ask a lot of questions. So I aplogize for constantly bugging you guys.

With that said, I have another query. But first, the situation.

I ordered a bridge, thinking it was a top-loader. OOOPS! It's a string-thru. That's a cool mistake, but I didn't plan for it. So now I'm planning... and I have an idea to run past you guys.

Instead of putting the ferrules into the Poplar back, I was thinking about something like this:

By setting the ferrules into Black Walnut heartwood, they would be less likely to pull deeper into the wood. By angling the side-joints, I strengthen the joint two ways 1) more surface area to dissipate the force, 2) a wedge design to compress the Walnut against the adjoining Poplar.

Now the big questions:

A) Will the Walnut be a better "tone wood" for the attachment point, or would the Poplar be better?

Does an increase in surface/joint area increase the transfer of sonic energy, or decrease it?

(I told you... I'm a geek!)

Any opinons, advice, or couselling is appreciated.

D~s

[www]

I don't know the scientific answers to your questions, but I do like the walnut idea. It shouldn't effect the tone much, maybe a little brighter. I think it will look good.

B is just too scientific for my intellect (or lack of same).

[!!METAL MATT!!]

OWWWW now you made me think and I smell smoke

any way I realy like the Black Walnut idea hear's some of what I think!!

A) Will the Walnut be a better "tone wood" for the attachment point, or would the Poplar be better?

I think the Walnut is the better tone wood but that depends on what sound you like

Does an increase in surface/joint area increase the transfer of sonic energy, or decrease it?

huh to much for me but Ill go for a 50\50 chance and say yes it dose increase the transfer of sonic energy thingie I guess no just kinding I realy think it dose

!!METAL MATT!!

Edited October 27, 2004 by !!METAL MATT!!

[PerryL]

Mind if i cut in here and ask why we should use ferrules in the first place.

If you put extremly Hard Wood in there, wouldn't that be durable enough to hold the strings and transfer the string energy better than steel ferrules?

Oh, You DO mind, Sorry, I withdraw my question.

[skibum5545]

Well, wood, albeit strong, is still weaker than steel. The steel won't scratch, ding, and compress over time. As long as they are put in tightly, there shouldn't be a problem with sonic transfer.

As to the original idea, I really like it. Make sure it's a tight fit, though, and you're not just making up for a bad cut with a lot of glue; that'll kill your tone.

Here's an idea: What if you were to use a block of macassar ebony instead of walnut? It'd look really pretty, and get you sustain up the wazoo, and that's exactly where you want the sustain, anyway. Up your wazoo.

Heck, with ebony, you probably wouldn't need steel ferrules 'cause it's so dang hard already!

Let us know how it goes!

[Page_Master]

i had this idea as well. but i am not going to use it because my resources aren't low. i think it is a good idea though. i answered your questions in the order of B then A for specific reasons:

B.) the piece of walnut will be glued in. (i don't know if there is scientific proof for this but) glue may dampen the tone. because there is a rather small surface area of walnut and poplar marriage (compared to a droptop) the walnut may not resonate the poplar as well, so you may not get a long sustaining round tone. but i am not really sure about this, this is what i think will happen. i would imagaine that when any 2 or more pieces of timber are laminated, the more surface contact of the pieces, the more "sonic energy" or tone you're gong to get out of it.

A.) walnut transfers tone better than poplar, because it is harder. but because you aren't using a solid piece of walnut and/or poplar for the body, it will not sound solely like either and you may not get an increase of tone at all. you will get a mixed body tone rather. with this in mind, i say mixed instead of combination because this idea is rather unorthodox. i think a maple top on a guitar adds a combination of tones and because there is a large surface area, this will further increase tone. that's probably why it is done. if your method is put in practice, i think it will still sound good. but it may not increase the tone as such, just make the guitar sound different.

in conclusion: because there is a low surface area of walnut to poplar marriage, this method may not be tone effective.

i have no practical evidence of this, this is just an hypothesis.

[RGGR]

If hardness is factor, why not ditch the ferrules to begin with and replace the whole walnut wood piece with machined piece of metal, replacing the ferrules and wood insert altogether???

Just a thought.

[Dugz Ink]

I appreciate everybody's opinions and ideas.

I would like to try an extremely hard wood... or maybe even brass... but I'lll hold off for now. This is my very first project guitar. If it works, then I'll spend more money on future projects.

By the way, The Balck Walnut was free. I have about 40 pounds of nice "scrap wood" that I got from a friend who used to work at the Benjamin Sheridan stock factory. All the more reason to just use the Black Walnut for now.

D~s

[javacody]

I agree wholeheartedly with Page_Master. You will have a layer of glue between where your strings anchor and the rest of your body. It may actually severely limit how well the body vibrates. However, what if you use a thinner piece of walnut (say 1/4" by 1.5" x 3")? The ferules would be in both the walnut and the poplar and there would be way less glue involved. It would also be easier to get a tight fit with a smaller chunk of wood (in my opinion).

You may also just get a small bar of steel or brass, and use that instead of ferrules (someone here recently did just that).

[tirapop]

I doubt it will make much difference. Most of the energy transfer is going to be through the bridge.

The big thing about string-thru is the break angle the strings have over the saddles. With a top-loader, the break angle (the change in the string angle as it crosses over the saddle) is small. The force the strings apply on the saddle and on the body are relatively small. Geek-toid: the force a string applies to a saddle is twice the string tension times the sin of half the break angle (that assumes there's no friction between the string and saddle). The bigger the break angle, the bigger the force on the saddle. The shallower the angle, less force is driving vibrations into the body.

Energy is stored in the string between the nut/fret and the saddle in kinetic energy: the mass of the string moving back and forth (in little circles and figure-8s). Think about the string between the saddle and the ferrule/chunk of walnut. How much energy is stored there? It's in tension, so energy is being stored. But, how much is that tension changing? Not that much, so, it isn't putting much energy into the body. Some of that is due to friction over the saddles. I have a Tele with a top-loading bridge. Pluck a string and put your finger on the string just to the neck side of the saddle and you feel almost all that energy damping out under flesh. Pluck the string and put your finger on the string between the saddle and the stop end of the bridge and you have almost no effect on the vibration of the string.

Think about how the load the ball end of the string is putting on the guitar being reacted. It's pulling straight up. What's pushing back? There's a component of the bridge load that's pushing straight down. The load from the string-thru is putting the chunk of wood between the ferrule/chunk-o-walnut and the bridge in compression. Think of the greatest tone wood... now imagine it's 1"X3", 1-3/4" thick. Whack on it with a mallet... what kind of tone and resonance would you get? I think you're getting most of your tone from the wood between your bridge and the neck (and the wood/metal running up the neck to the nut/tuners).

Edited October 29, 2004 by tirapop

[Drak]

Have you people absolutely and completely and utterly lost your collective minds and all sanity thereof thinking that a piece of wood on the backside of a guitar is a bona-fide TONAL consideration?

Have you all coasted off of the roadmap of sanity?

We're talking about PIECE OF WOOD!!!!

If you need to make a backer plate for your ferrules, then do it, and stop worrying about what TONAL considerations it will have.

IT HAS NONE! IT'S NOTHING BUT A PIECE OF WOOD!

I mean, is this a serious reality check to someone here?

Real players would just laugh and ask you to pass the joint....

This is not aimed at Dugz Inc., but everyone who actually offered a 'TONAL' (cough cough) answer...

[frank falbo]

Well, I would've put it more kindly and gently, but Drak's right. The break angle and downward pressure is what drives the body. Unless the ferrules are attatched through rubber or medium density foam, there will be no difference. Just use the ferrules in the poplar, and recess them a little. That way if they compress the poplar a little it won't affect your finish. The easiest way to do that is to first drill a shallow hole with a brad point drill bit that matches the outer rim. Then proceed with the rest of the hole, matching the knurled shaft.

[Dugz Ink]

You will have a layer of glue between where your strings anchor and the rest of your body.

Why would it have to be glued? The stop for a TOM isn't glued onto the posts; it's just held in place by string tension. The design (in the first post) would actually strengthen itself as tension was increased, due to the wedge design... at least until the flat top of the Walnut completely bottomed out against the body.

Most of the energy transfer is going to be through the bridge.

That's something that I have been trying to rationalize in my mind. A lot of people say that a string-thru provides more sustain... but the bridge is effectively stopping the string energy at the points of contact. It would be different if it was like a TOM bridge, where you only had one point of contact; vibrations could continue paste a single point. But not two points... unless the second point was a perfect harmonic to the vibration that was on the opposite side of the bridge.

The biggest gain I see with the string-thru is the way is shifts the direction of the tension, which reduces the tension on the tail of the body by transfering it through the middle of the body. But I could be wrong.

And that's why I ask so many questions.

This is not aimed at Dugz

Thank you for not torching me; I ask because I don't know.

I keep reading about different woods affecting tone, and how mixing woods can affect tone, so I'm asking any/every question that comes to mind.

It sounds like mixing woods could make the final tone A) the tone of the two woods added together, the average tone of the two woods, C) the tone of the two woods minus the tones that are absorbed by glue, or D) all the above.

The biggest thing that I'm learning is that there are a lot of opposing opinions, and I may have to spend a few years just expirementing with various bodies, and swap the neck/pups/bridge to see which body sounds like what.

As for this project, I may buy a piece of metal (1" x ½" x 3½") and set it up in place of the 6 individual ferrules. That would disperse the force of the string-pull over a larger area, which would reduce any wood compression. Or I may just use the 6 ferrules and see if they pull into the body.

D~s

[Drak]

Actually Frank is right and I apologize for going off the deep end.

It just drives me -crazy- when people ask about the most inane things affecting the tone of a guitar.

So I'm sorry.

[javacody]

Come on Drak, everything on a guitar effects its tone. It's just a question of how much. Although, I think you've made your opinion clear on the matter! LOL

Depending on the size of the block and the amount of glue, I personally believe that vibrations would be damped, somewhat. Maybe its a negligable amount?

[lovekraft]

Drak, you're my hero! It was getting a little deep in here, thanks for the reality check! It was starting to sound like a Gear Page discussion (no offense to anybody who hangs out on the Gear Page, but if you've ever been there, you know what I'm talking about).

If a black walnut tree falls on a poplar tree in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

[westhemann]

Depending on the size of the block and the amount of glue, I personally believe that vibrations would be damped, somewhat. Maybe its a negligable amount

?

pfft!

drak is right.the only thing you should be considering is structural integrity in this case

why does it always come to this viewpoint?i am telling you a tight alphetic resin glue joint transfers vibration just fine...i mean really the glue is almost nonexistent....

not that it even applies here.

[javacody]

Yeah? Prove it. Until you can prove it, you are just stating an opinion, correct?

I've never seen a group of people overreact to folks stating their opinions, like in this thread. I thought a forum was about discussion? Open and free discussion? Not certain folks jumping all over certain other folks when they disagree?

Edited October 28, 2004 by javacody

[westhemann]

Yeah? Prove it.  Until you can prove it, you are just stating an opinion, correct?

I've never seen a group of people overreact to folks stating their opinions, like in this thread. I thought a forum was about discussion? Open and free discussion? Not certain folks jumping all over certain other folks when they disagree?

actually you just overreacted,not I.

you prove your opinion first

by the way...how many set neck guitars have you built with tight joints to compare the tone to your similarly built neck thru or bolt on guitars?

i am not trying to be rude.i would just like to know the depth of your experience.you are not just quoting ed roman are you?

i know you will ask so i will tell you i have only completed 2 set neck guitars and 1 neck thru...i have an ibanez neck thru as well to compare.

i learned after my first set neck that fewer glue joints were not the key to god like tone.slight difference in tone due to the proportions of maple and alder being different(since a maple neck thru has more maple of course)

i was quite pleasantly surprised at the great tones i was getting from my "toneless" glue joints

what i figured out was that in the tight joint...the fit was only leaving a super thin line of glue in(about the thickness of one layer of human skin)the rest was squeeze out...alphetic resin is strongest that way...in a tight joint,unlike epoxy which requires a slight gap(or so all the epoxy bottles reccomend)

so how much of a tone sucker do you think that super thin layer of glue is?you tell me.more than a metal ferrule?less?

or is it just a DIFFERENT tone?do we even care?

tell me

[javacody]

I pretty clearly state that what I say is MY opinion. Here is what you said:

drak is right.the only thing you should be considering is structural integrity in this case

why does it always come to this viewpoint?i am telling you a tight alphetic resin glue joint transfers vibration just fine...i mean really the glue is almost nonexistent....

You presented your opinion as fact. That is why I suggested you prove it. I don't think I'm overreacting. I guess you missed some of the other posts in this thread.

But hey, whatever?

[westhemann]

I guess you missed some of the other posts in this thread.

hardly

reread my post...i added some more

You presented your opinion as fact.

why yes...yes i did.so what?i didn't say "neck throughs suck" or something goofy like that,so who REALLY cares if i am confident in my realizations which i based on my experiences.

when i first came here i thought i knew better than those who had built more than me...guys like rhoads tried to tell me the same things i am telling you and others,and yet i still thought i knew better.it didn't take but a few experiences to tell me they were right in the first place.

so go build a good,tight set neck guitar....or take a string thru and do what dug is talking about without the glue,play it,then take it apart and glue it and tell me the difference.

[Dr. Jabsco]

now your just arguing over semantics

if its a well built guitar, a small frikkin glue line wont make a bit of difference (to the human ear).

so give it up

[crafty]

If a black walnut tree falls on a poplar tree in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? 

<snotty voice>

Good Lord...you must be the dumbest member of Project Guitar. Everyone knows that Black Walnut trees fall to the south and Poplar trees always grow to the north of Black Walnut trees!

And even if they DID fall to the north, which is STILL IMPOSSIBLE, surely that river two miles away (as the crow flies) would drown out all but the mid and bass frequencies generated by the sudden collision of the walnut cellular structure with that of the poplar's bark. Water is a major component of Titebond glue and we all know that glue just kills your tone to the point where no one can stand to listen to you play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with your fancy MXR Yngwie Malmsteen Overdrive into the Crate Blue Voodoo half-stack in your Mom's basement. I think the moss growing on the wood would have an effect on the overall tone and you can't account for the little things like ants, termites, and butterflies flapping their wings.

</snotty voice>

Just trying to lighten the mood...I think everyone's taking themselves a little too seriously again

[www]

Just trying to lighten the mood...I think everyone's taking themselves a little too seriously again

It didn't start that way, did it DRAK?

[Dugz Ink]

This is what I get for asking a stupid question....