Neck & Body Woods & Their Effect On Tone.

[biliousfrog]

OK...first off, I have used the search function & I understand the basics of how woods effect the tone of an instrument. I just wanted to go over some things that I haven't found a definitive answer to.

What I was wondering was how much influence neck woods have over the entire tone.

As an example: Two guitars, both made in the same way.

1 - mahogany body, mahogany top, maple neck

2 - mahogany body, maple top, mahogany neck

For the sake of this thread let's assume that the carve top of both guitars is the same amount of wood as the necks.. I know that it doesn't really work but this is just for the sake of a discussion on the topic.

Here's the breakdown of the wood mass:

body: 50%

carve top: 25%

neck: 25%

My question is: which guitar would bring out the sound of the maple most & how would that effect the overall sound?

I'm not looking for a theoretical answer, I could make a good guess myself, rather an informed answer from experienced luthiers & players who have experimented with different wood combos.

[Mickguard]

I'm not looking for a theoretical answer, I could make a good guess myself, rather an informed answer from experienced luthiers & players who have experimented with different wood combos.

It's just that....this kind of thinking seems like a dead end to me.

Anyone who pretends to give you a non-theoretical answer to this question will just be blowing smoke up your ass. Now, you may like that, in which case, I'm sure someone here will be happy to oblige you.

But there are so many other factors involved, that scratching one's head over the effect of wood on tone just seems like a waste of time.

I'm more interested in other things, such as:

Is the wood easy to work with? Does it look the way I want it too? Is it strong enough (for a neck, for example), etc.

Yeah, I know, not helpful. Sue me.

[fryovanni]

My question is: which guitar would bring out the sound of the maple most & how would that effect the overall sound?

I'm not looking for a theoretical answer, I could make a good guess myself, rather an informed answer from experienced luthiers & players who have experimented with different wood combos.

A good guess is the best you can do(that is the goal of luthiery). Every single piece of wood is a little different. How each piece of wood effects tone also varies a great deal with design(including hardware and electronics). The general concepts you have read are probably pretty good rules of thumb. Keep in mind it is an electric instrument, and the effect of the wood is much slighter than if the wood was the primary generator of sound. I am betting you have read just what I have said though in other posts. So you probably want the definative Ed Roman responce. I would rather not lie to you.

Since a lot of this comes down to perception. Go try out guitars with similar designs with different woods, and see what you make of it. Then take two guitars made of the same wood with different designs, and see what you make of the difference. I think you will note design has a much heavier hand in the sound of the instrument.

Peace,Rich

[Drak]

I agree. Anyone tries to tell you there's an answer to your questions, I will know of a half-dozen people who will completely disagree with them.

Long story short, there is no answer to your question, but there are a million people out there who think there is, and are all too happy to offer you their smoke and mirrors pillow talk .

I have seen this question asked a HUNDRED TIMES if not more over the years, over and over and over this type of question gets asked again and again, and the answer is the same as it always is, that wood is different from piece to piece, even from the same tree, building techniques count for a percentage, and all the other factors involved just muddy up the waters.

Neil Moser is a HUGE believer that the NECK WOOD is THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR in the guitar.

But I know many other professional luthiers who COMPLETELY DISAGREE with him.

...so go figure...

[biliousfrog]

LOL.....why am I not surprised at the responses so far

What got me thinking was a video from the Gibson factory where they explained that gluing the mahogany neck to the mahogany body gave the effect of having a solid piece of wood. I didn't quite buy that but I got what they were aiming at.....the strings vibrating along a solid mahogany path. But then I thought, what about gluing a different neck...say, a maple one. Never mind the glue joint, those two are never going to act like one piece of wood because they're completely different species.

...just got me thinking & wondered what people's views were & why, not necessarily the definitive answer.

[Drak]

I agree, I find a lot of humour in reading all these different philosophies where everyone thinks they have a corner on the tone market, and that corner usually involves the way THEY build their guitars.

Imagine that!

It's sort of like the cart leading the horse, where someone builds a certain way, THEN finds some wonderful meaningful reason why it's better than everyone elses.

I've seen this many many times and I laugh every time, it's just marketing really IMO, and I take it as simple advertisement hyperbole and not a scientific reality.

Take it all with a large grain of salt and you'll be OK.

[Supernova9]

You know, the more and more I hear this kind of debate (and it's very very often the maple/mahogany one), I'm more tempted to try and build two identical guitars (except for the change you listed) for this very reason. Purely for my own learning, I don't think there's an exact answer, but one of the things that gets me most excited about building guitars is the opportunity to try and test new things. Like how an LP would sound if you used a Wenge cap instead of maple, or making a strat with a bocote neck/ziricote board instead of the usual maple/rosewood or maple/maple.

Luthierie isn't a science, I think it's an art. Yes, some elements require precise dimensions etc, but the constantly varying nature of construction materials (wood), means that you can't analyse it down to percentages. Kind of like cooking, there's no one recipe for a great-tasting dish (or great sounding guitar), but the most fun I have cooking is when I experiment with new ingredients and see what happens. Ok, there may be some times when it doesn't quite taste right, but using my past experience making food, I know what flavours can work together to try and save it by say adding a few herbs. I reckon it can be the same for guitar building, building up experience, and building on tried and true guitar recipes (like the old Maple/Hog body, Hog neck Gibson recipe!). I know that's pretty much repeating Drak and Rich, but figured I'd throw down anyway

Hmm, after my semi-related food comments, I'm hungry...

[fryovanni]

You know. An interesting observation or maybe comment on how design/wood/and final product relate. You can take a hanful of acoustic guitars made with mahogany back/sides and a sitka top/bracing, ebony fretboard, ebony brindge. Made by a manufacturer that does a very good job of reproducing their instruments. Each one will sound a bit different. Now an acoustic really speaks to how wood effects tone, but much as in electrics(were design/pickups**amp play a huge role). In acoustics design, and construction are the primary factors in sound. However although the wood is not primary, it certainly is a factor. If you can get the first 95% of the sound developed by design sounding great. That last 5% is what can make a guitar amazing and unique.

I add these comments because I don't want to discount the value of wood selection. I would hope that as a builder I strive to achive better instruments. As I learn and improve I try to keep the importance of aspects of my work in perspective. My focus is mainly on my building skill(and that includes proper handling of the material I build with) and design. I pay attension to what differences I notice in different species of wood, but it is usually more of a side bar(slowly developing favorites/opinions on workability and tonality).

I find that when I started builing I looked at things much as if I was ordering side dishes off a menu to create a dinner. Now I look at things more as a whole product. I think that is a natural evolution. As I was learnig how each part worked to begin with and thus the added focus.

Peace,Rich

[erikbojerik]

Lutherie is much more an art than a science because most of the people doing it are artists rather than scientists. It's a bit like saying France is full of French people. There are definitely ways to quantify the answer to such questions (most of them akin to how engineers quantify the frequency response of speaker cabs), its just that artists are much more interested in finishing and playing the instrument rather than setting up controlled and reproducible experiments.

At the same time, what Rich and Drak and others have said is right on. Start with a strat neck, loaded strat pickguard, and 10 unfinished strat bodies that you've milled from a single plank of mahogany. Note the similarities and differences. Then do it with 10 identical strat bodies that you've milled from 10 different planks that came from the same tree. Repeat with 10 bodies from 10 different trees. That's a start.

But even then, you can't really quantify anything unless you get into measuring stuff like resonant frequency, Q, elastic modulus, density, and most likely some measure of frequency response. For each body. Reproducibly (measure 10 times on one body and calculate your standard deviations). Only then can you get an idea of how ONE species of wood behaves. THEN you can get into the differences between species. And THEN you can try to explain to an artist how all those numbers translate into what he hears (good luck!).

It's do-able, just hasn't been done.

If you want to get a taste of this, look up Alan Carruth on the MIMF and read some of his topics as they relate to acoustic guitars.