Tone Wood? What Do You Mean Tone Wood?

[Maiden69]

Read the description of the woods used on that "pallet" wood,. By the way it wasn't a pallet that was sitting around, it was "pallete grade" wood, which is wood that is not pleasant to the eye,( ie. no figure ) . Oak and pine fir, which is not soft pine but the "harder" one.

I see there is nothing that I can post that will make you differ. May be once you atrat getting your hands on different guitars, or when you make a few you will then notice what a difference the wood does.

[GodBlessTexas]

The original Pallet Guitar was made of an old pallet. The link goes to the limited edition of 2000 Pallet Guitars inspired by that original guitar that is made similarly of common pallet woods, but not necessarily wood that was made into pallets. Going price on those is $10,000 USD btw. They look ok until you see the back, but has anyone actually heard how they sound? That's the real test.

To give you an idea, go to your local Taylor selling guitar shop and play a 614ce (top: sitka spruce. body: big leaf maple) and a 914ce (top: engelman spruce. body: Indian rosewood). The 914 is more expensive by a decent bit (about a grand at ~$3700), but the 614 has a more crisp/bright tone that really sings. Everyone I know who has done the Pepsi challenge with them has said the 614 is the better sounding guitar. The only real difference in those guitars is the woods used, as the bracing, body style, and electronics are all the same.

Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...

[sashimimi]

The thing that all of you are missing is that you are referencing acoustic guitars. Unless the poster started this topic in the wrong forum, then he was probably questioning about solidbody electrics. Using the acoustic examples is sort of weak, because as previously explained, the top is essentially the amplifer of an acoustic. Opposingly, i think wood will make a difference in solid bodies (but as previously stated) it will be very minute. Any way, please dont get mad at me, i think the way i wrote things may have came off cocky but it was really not meant to, in any way, offend anyone.

[Myka Guitars]

This topic of tonewood is the toughest thing to discuss in the age of solid state and modelling amplifiers where the tones are mostly generated by the amp. Get an articulate tube amp (or a decent studio quality sold state amp) and you can hear the differences. And be sure if you go tube to use sonically transparent tubes, not the cheap ones that came with it. Electronics that do not alter the fundamental voice of the instrument are very rare and this alone makes this discussion almost meaningless. As if the electronics were all there was to electric guitars. I wish, they would be cheaper to make. By definition pickups add nothing to the tone. They simply pickup what the string is already doing. Pickups are also like filters. They color the sound but do not produce any of the light.

But anyway...

To start of why don't we propose a definition:

tonewood: Any wood that produces a tone when mechanical energy is applied to it.

Not all woods are tonewoods. Some woods (guitars) no matter how hard you hit (play) them just thud and the sustain is zero. Other woods (guitars) will sustain and ring almost endlessly.

How about a thought experiment? If you attached a guitar string to a board of wax how would it sound? Do you think the wax would provide a good structure for the string to vibrate and sustain? Or do you think that the wax would dampen the string vibration? Do you think it would amplify it and resonante? How much of the string vibration would be absorbed by the wax? How about steel? Plastic? Wood? Balsa wood? Ebony?

thedoctor's lens analogy is a great one because the material the string is attached to will either absorb, reflect, dampen, amplify, filter, etc. the string energy passing through it. No one really knows what a string sounds like since you need to attach it to something to hear it. The softer and less dense the material is the less energy it takes to vibrate it. It then sends those filtered vibrations into the string attached to it. The harder and more dense the material is the more energy it takes to vibrate it and the more energy is maintained in the string. Hard woods reflect energy more efficiently, that's why they make brighter guitars. A hard maple guitar will sustain for days but don't expect a warm bluesy tone from it.

If you need to test this out then make one LP entirely out of hard rock maple and another entirely out of mahogany and see what happens.

~David

[thedoctor]

Actually, I see the underlying issue of wood-selection being a different issue when applied to accoustics versus electric guitars surfacing here. The wood of an accoustic has to be able to filter and transmit the vibrations all on their own cause an amp is not involved in the actual processing. That and the structural aspects of an accoustic guitar make some woods unsuitable. Swallow all that and you cannot overlook the fact that it has to have some degree of influence over the vibrations of a magnetically-read string on an electric, even a solid-body. It's not like the wood is MAKING the sound. It is simply influencing it. Like the camera filters, it cannot make the image but it can color it. Some of the dumbest film/filter combinations work the best for me when using an SLR. I just use what works for me and don't ask why. I don't think a double-blind test is required to see if wood effects a solid-body, what woods do what to the sound or if a given wood has a distintive attribute, sonically. Follow the sound. If you like the sound of an ash Strat, build yourself an ash Strat. If you like an oak Invader, for it's sound OR smell, build an oak Invader. Strings are the subject, pickups are the film and the body is the filters.

[Myka Guitars]

It's not like the wood is MAKING the sound. It is simply influencing it.

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It is doing both. While the wood needs the string energy to produce sound it still is making sound, that's why it is called tonewood. Different species resonate differently (hence the filter analogy) but the wood does resonate and that gets transferrred to the strings and subsequently picked up by the electronics. The camera filter analogy only works perfectly for the pickup concept. But filters don't add, they filter out. Because of this I think it falls short of explaining what is going on with the string to wood relationship.

The strings when plucked produce mechanical energy in a complex bundle of waveform form data. This energy then excites the woods of the guitar into resonance. While each piece of wood does this differently the wood actually does vibrate and this energy is filtered back into the strings. Put a pickup under it and this is what you hear. Strings are made of metal and they sound bright and metallic. If it was just the sound of the strings you hear you would never have attributes like warm, rich, and full. It is only the wood that adds this. In this sense they are more than a filter, they boost as well. The energy from the strings gives the wood something to boost and it does this with it's own signature.

[Southpa]

I just strung up and played (unplugged) my maple tele last night. Man, when its resting against your stomach it will just vibrate your guts loose! The harder and denser the wood the faster sound vibrations travel through it. This guitar is a 1 piece maple body with a bolt on maple neck. I expect higher natural tones and a bit more sustain than the mahogany guitars I've built so far.

[crvrotkvica]

Hi guys,

I`m wery new to this forum, and please forgive me for rusty english,

I`m just making my first guitar and I`m using wood I could find, so I have some pretty old and dry wallnut for body (Solidbody guitar I have been making) and I`ll use already made neck as I still do not have much tools, in fact I`m building it at my appartmant with hand tools only for now. I would like to have some light colored transparent top on my guitar. I first wanted to put some thin and nice not too agressive grained plywood as top, but I have never seen any non amateur guitar made with anything plywood. Do anyone has some sudgestion or idea how to just paint top of my wallnut body to became light and worm in color or find propper nice not too grained wood at small quantities, at my country it is difficult.

Also what do You think on wallnut as body wood?

As I have been playing lot of different basses and guitars in past 15 Years, mainly just bass or guitar straight into amp, no effects, my gradation of what shapes the sound is:

for righthanded player,

Right hand technique, amp, strings, size and material of pick if he uses it, type of pickups, how well combination neck+body+bridge is joined together, types of wood, bridge material, left hand and after that how many pieces of wood are used to make the guitar. As most of You are expirienced luthiers in comparation with me, what is Your oppinion of this list?

Best luck to everyone

[Primal]

I would steer clear of any type of plywood at all costs. What country are you from? You could get any number of woods, but I would probably suggest maple for the top. I build my bass out of walnut, with three 1/4" stripes of maple in the neck to add some stiffness. Walnut, coupled with my music man pickup, have me a very mellow, warm sound. Walnut would be a very good choice for a bass.

As for your list, the only problem I see is, in my opinion, the bridge material. I would probably rate that a lot higher on the list, maybe after the pickups.

Welcome to the forum, by the way!

[crvrotkvica]

... I build my bass out of walnut, with three 1/4" stripes of maple in the neck to add some stiffness. Walnut, coupled with my music man pickup, have me a very mellow, warm sound. Walnut would be a very good choice for a bass.

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I have been playing Warwick wallnut bass it`s among best I have tried, but I`m building something like a tele not bass, with odd pickup configuration (tele neck pickup + humbucker sized p90 at bridge) and wallnut body with some kind of top. Actually I can find fir or pine for top but it has very ugly grains, and maybe a pear.

And I`m from Serbia. We have lot of wood but almost everything good is being exported, when You go to lumbermill they do not want to sell less than cubic meter, and carpenters are trying to make me use their cutting services and not just sell wood, so one 1/2x1/2 meters board of some nice wood is being priced 20-30 Euros at them (or at least at first 8 I have asked)

Well maybe I`m just too inpatient if I look longer for some nice peace something will come up. And maple is rare in here, I`ll certenly will not use it. what about locust tree, I can get that

have anyone expirience with it?

[Primal]

I have been playing Warwick wallnut bass it`s among best I have tried, but I`m building something like a tele not bass, with odd pickup configuration (tele neck pickup + humbucker sized p90 at bridge) and wallnut body with some kind of top. Actually I can find fir or pine for top but it has very ugly grains, and maybe a pear.

And I`m from Serbia. We have lot of wood but almost everything good is being exported, when You go to lumbermill they do not want to sell less than cubic meter, and carpenters are trying to make me use their cutting services and not just sell wood, so one 1/2x1/2 meters board of some nice wood is being priced 20-30 Euros at them (or at least at first 8 I have asked)

Well maybe I`m just too inpatient if I look longer for some nice peace something will come up. And maple is rare in here, I`ll certenly will not use it. what about locust tree, I can get that

have anyone expirience with it?

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How much walnut do you have? If I were you, I would just glue two pieces together and have an all walnut body.

[javacody]

Pear wood could probably be substituted for Maple. It was good enough for Stradivari.

[orgmorg]

The camera filter analogy only works perfectly for the pickup concept. But filters don't add, they filter out. Because of this I think it falls short of explaining what is going on with the string to wood relationship.

No, thedoctor is on the right track here. The wood is important because it affects the way the string vibrates. Different levels of density, oils, and other factors dampen certain frequencies, and therefore they do not show up as much in the magnetic field the pickups are reading. A lot like the passive tone control.

Other properties of the wood reinforce certain freq's as well.

Rosewood and ebony are both very dense, but rosewood is considered to be warm sounding, where ebony is bright. Why? Rosewood is also more oily, which dampens higher frequencies.

[Primal]

The camera filter analogy only works perfectly for the pickup concept. But filters don't add, they filter out. Because of this I think it falls short of explaining what is going on with the string to wood relationship.

No, thedoctor is on the right track here. The wood is important because it affects the way the string vibrates. Different levels of density, oils, and other factors dampen certain frequencies, and therefore they do not show up as much in the magnetic field the pickups are reading. A lot like the passive tone control.

Other properties of the wood reinforce certain freq's as well.

Rosewood and ebony are both very dense, but rosewood is considered to be warm sounding, where ebony is bright. Why? Rosewood is also more oily, which dampens higher frequencies.

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What he was trying to say is that the camera filter analogy describes how wood only removes certain frequencies from the sound. In reality, wood adds to the tone (magnifying certain frequencies over others, etc).

[orgmorg]

Well, sorta, but no, the wood does not, nor can it actually add any energy to the mix. All the kinetic energy is coming from the string being plucked. Nothing short of a preamp is going to actually amplify any of it, that is to say, add amplitude to the signal. Reflect, yes, dissipate, yes, probably a lot of other stuff, too.

I know this is nitpicking, but I think it is important here to recognise that this is a passive effect, rather than an active one. Yes, the wood affects the tone, but it does not actually add any by way of actively boosting anything.

[Primal]

Well, my response wasn't worded very well.

But since we are getting technical, then technically, the would *could* amplify certain frequencies. For instance, the resonance frequency of the wood could amplify that frequency in the guitar string. Now, before you mention kinetic energy, think about this. It could be seen as a conservation of energy. The vibrating string vibrates, producing the kinetic energy that causes the body to resonate. This resonation (lets say 100Hz) would then theoretically boost the 100Hz frequency of the vibrating string.

Who knows, maybe I just BS'ed something there, haha.

[crvrotkvica]

Thanks to You all, I`ll probably try with pear or maybe something will come along

[Digideus]

Well, my response wasn't worded very well.

But since we are getting technical, then technically, the would *could* amplify certain frequencies. For instance, the resonance frequency of the wood could amplify that frequency in the guitar string. Now, before you mention kinetic energy, think about this. It could be seen as a conservation of energy. The vibrating string vibrates, producing the kinetic energy that causes the body to resonate. This resonation (lets say 100Hz) would then theoretically boost the 100Hz frequency of the vibrating string.

Who knows, maybe I just BS'ed something there, haha.

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Dunno, you may have the right approach. Its well documented that Mahogany has more bass response than say maple, and that maple sounds bright in comparison. What would be useful for everyone is a list of general tonal qualities of different woods. I know that its not going to be exact, but noobs would learn quickly what woods do what to the sound. Perhaps a Mod could pin such a post in the reference area of the forums?

what do you lot think?

[orgmorg]

Like this? http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=15379

But since we are getting technical, then technically, the would *could* amplify certain frequencies. For instance, the resonance frequency of the wood could amplify that frequency in the guitar string. Now, before you mention kinetic energy, think about this. It could be seen as a conservation of energy. The vibrating string vibrates, producing the kinetic energy that causes the body to resonate. This resonation (lets say 100Hz) would then theoretically boost the 100Hz frequency of the vibrating string.

Actually, that's about what I was trying to get at, at least the part about conservation of energy. There is not actually a signal boost in that 100hz band, but it feels like there is one. In your model, the 100hz waves are being reinforced by the "tuning" of the wood structure, keeping that frequency going in the string's vibration. Similarly, when you listen to the unamplified guitar, it sounds much louder than just a string vibrating, because the string is driving the wood. Air is the poorest conductor of sound. If you took the cone out of a speaker, it would not sound too good either. The cone is there to push air. When you place the butt of your electric guitar, or tuning fork on the table top, you are giving it a larger area to transfer it's energy into sound waves. The energy was all there when you plucked the string or hit the fork, but now more of it is being converted into an audible form.

Any time we select a certain material, use it in a certain way, add a piece of hardware, etc., we are affecting the way the energy from the string reaches our ear. In an acoustic instrument, this is a relatively direct relationship. In an electric, it is a bit different- you have to realise that the way the string drives the wood doesn't necessarily affect the tone you hear from your amp. But the wood IS being set into motion, and that in turn does affect the way the string vibrates.

FWIW, the term "tonewood" almost always makes me cringe. I feel it is valid in some cases, such as "mahogany is a warm tonewood", etc., but to say that one wood is a tonewood and another is not, is really misleading. I don't know where the term originated, but it has come to be used in a rather snobby way, as if some luthier/deity has certified this particular chunk of wood as "tonewood" and anything less is stovewood.