Sapele Vs Mahogany

[Guest bartbrn]

Well, this is the best yet!

It is physically impossible for two wood instruments to create the exact same "sound", unless they are played in a vacuum.

If guitars, clarinets, kazoos, glockenspiels, conga drums, tubas, or any other musical instruments are played in a vacuum, they make NO sound -- a vacuum is a complete absence of air (or any other wave-carrying medium), and without a medium like air or water to transmit the sound wave to your ears, there is NO sound -- maybe you've watched too many Star Wars where you can hear explosions in space?

There are more properties to sound than frequency.

Yes. There are TWO properties to sound: frequency and amplitude. If you have more properties to spring on a breathlessly-awaiting acoustic engineering field, let's hear 'em (sorry). Since I'm ignorant, tone-deaf, stupid, wrong, wrong, wrong (sounds like a band name from the '80s), and now, according to your wisdom, "flawed," please explain the terms other than frequency and amplitude that sound possesses, because I want to check these terms out online and try to drag myself out of the morass of ignorance you people seem to think I'm wallowing in. I may get the hang of the physics of audio yet, and learn the magic secret of how solid-body guitars -- and ONLY solid-body guitars -- are able to transcend acoustical physics.

bartbrn's experiment is flawed since there is no constant.

Please, help me out of my ignorance here -- here's the description of my proposed experiment -- please enlighten me as to how you've come to the conclusion there are no constants. In fact, the only VARIABLE is the wood: everything else is a constant.

1. Pick a string, a tailpiece, a bridge, a nut, a tuning machine, and one simple, very clean pickup like the Lawrence Keystone.

2. Using the same string at the same very accurately chromatically tuned pitch (say 440.00 Hz which produces an A, standard tuning for the 5th string of a 6-string guitar), and the same tailpiece and bridge device, nut device, tuning key, pickup, precise scale length and distance from the string to the pickup pole piece (always using the same pole piece), and a simple single-wire-and-ground connected to a very precise oscilloscope, and, finally, a mechanical plectrum that insures the string is picked with exactly the same force at exactly the same angle of attack, affix this one-note-generating device to many single kinds of wood, many combinations of wood, some bolted together to emulate a bolt-on neck, some dove-tailed and glued to create a set neck, with the "body" and "neck" shape all exactly the same dimensions for every combo (including a neck-through, or body and neck all one piece, and the tailpiece, bridge, nut, and tuning key all in exactly the same place, and measure, at the greatest possible resolution of the O-scope, the wave-form that results: attack, peak, decay, overtones, all the harmonic spikes and valleys.

NB: All experiments conducted with the "guitars" in the same fixture, preferably in the playing position of upper bout at the top, lower bout at the bottom, "quitar" centerline perfectly horizontal -- strings picked when a guitar is on its back vibrate -- and interact with the pickup -- differently than a string picked in the "playing position."

3. Finally, do the same experiment with the exact same setup affixed, in the exact same relationship of all parts to one another, to a solid piece -- same size and configuration as all the wooden constructions -- of lead, soft as possible without compromising the ability of tailpiece, bridge, and nut to keep the string in correct and unmoving intonation..

There is more than one way to skin a cat though.

Probably true, but you haven't delineated any of them here.

You can already mathematically prove that no two wooden solid body guitars will produce the same sound. Thanks Einstein!

Please let me know where I can find that mathematical proof.

You just need to monitor brain activity in a controlled group of test subjects when exposed to different combinations of sound properties. Most of that data is already available.

Really? That's exciting news! Where, exactly, is this "already available" data, and what is subjective about the "brain activity in a controlled group of test subjects when exposed to different combinations of sound properties?" What would those "different combinations of sound properties" consist of, exactly? What properties, what combinations?

Anyway, yes humans are physically capable of distinguishing the difference in "sound" between two unamplified solid body guitars in some cases.

Well, having provided exceptionally cogent, methodical, and rock-hard-data-supported pronunciamentos, your offhand dismissal of any arguments to the contrary -- "Anyway, yes humans are physically capable of distinguishing the difference in "sound" between two unamplified solid body guitars in some cases" -- closes the case. If you say it's true, it must be true.

Wait, did you say "in some cases?" Uh oh....

[Guest bartbrn]

sorry, are you saying that bridge/nut materials do or do not make a difference to tone. if you are saying they do not make a difference, thats fine (although i do completely disagree of course )

Not at all -- I'm saying that everything that represents the end-points of the vibrating length of a string: saddle and nut, or saddle and fret make, some contribution to sound, simply because they affect, though in very minor ways, the vibration of the string, and that goes especially for a fretted string, as you're not just changing the vibrating length when you fret a string, you're also stretching it's length by a very small amount that is probably tonally detectable by instrumentation.

If you are saying they do make a difference i would have to question why you think those materials do, but wood doesnt.

I refer to my previous comments about the coupling that i believe exists in an electric guitar. i would say this coupling is clearly evident as you can feel the body vibrating. To me it seems that if the body is vibrating it must be the string that makes it vibrate, which is why i think there is a clear link between materials used to hold the string, and the way the string vibrates. I illustrated this before with the extreme example of coupling a string to a rubber or steel bar.

I agree with you, but I don't. Yes, of course you can feel vibrations through the neck and the body of the guitar, so those vibrations exist. But how would those vibrations make a difference in the sound of a solid-body guitar when the sound production of such a guitar is a ferrous string vibrating in an electromagnetic field that creates a signal in the coil windings? Vibrating wood has no effect on electromagnetic fields; only a ferrous object passing through that field has an effect. Try this experiment: remove the strings from your solid body guitar, and plug your guitar into your amp, with the amp's gain set pretty (but safely) high. Now wave popsicle sticks or bamboo skewers (the handiest and cheapest workbench tools in the world, btw!) over the pickups at approximate string heights (you could build a little wooden fence to keep the sticks the right height). Hear anything? Hold a skewer between thump and forefinger of one hand (or in some kind of flexible rubber mounting, and twang the other end so the skewer moves fast and maybe even oscillates. Hear anything? You should really use noise-cancelling headphones connected to your amp for all these tests, but especially for the next part: put on the noise-cancelling headphones, and have someone else -- preferably behind you or you blindfolded so you can't see them -- tap (with finger pads and/or fingernails) on the body, the neck, back, front, wherever (except, of course, on the pickups themselves -- hitting a polepiece or ferrous cover is going to produce small eddy currents, which will induce a signal, and you'll probably hear it. But have the body tapped all over, raising a hand every time you hear something so your "lab assistant" can correlate taps with actual perceived (through the headphones) sound, taps that produce no perceived sound, and perceived sounds that can't be associated with any taps. It's a crude, but useful and enlightening experience.

[avengers63]

Bart, you're really reminding me of this guy:

[Our Souls inc.]

I'll confound you one better ...

the SAME guitar can sound different depending on WHO is playing it.

If wood made no difference to the tone of a guitar, we'd all build out of the cheapest wood possible ( I already do )

Gibson certainly wouldn't spend the extra money on tonewood blanks if a LP could be recreated using Paulownia.

Sure you can *build* a LP out of paulownia, but it's not gonna sound like a Gibson.

Wood affects the way the string vibrates, as does EVERYTHING in the strings path, how hard its plucked, where its plucked, what its plucked with, where its fretted, the density of your fingers, the bridge material and last but not least, shoddy workmanship.

I won't do a half page diatribe, as my postings are my opinion and if we're ALL wrong, it won't make me lose a bit of sleep.

But if you think wood doesn't affect tone, you're wrong, in my opinion.

[Ripthorn]

Bart, a couple quick observations. First, here's an even simpler experiment to verify the differences woods can make. Take slabs of each kind of wood. Make sure they are the same dimensions. Mount one in a test fixture (a bolt through one corner would suffice). Attach a shaker to one edge of the top of the piece and an accelerometer on the edge of the other side of the top. Excite the shaker with a swept sine wave with low modulation through a wide range. Take the impulse response using the shaker. Do this for each piece, compare output spectra, and whammo, you have your hard scientific proof.

Second observation: Of course the wood doesn't effect the magnetic field, but it is actually changing how the string vibrates whether there is a magnetic field or not because it is changing the boundary condition on the ends of the string, so a piece of wood with different response characteristics WILL change how the string vibrates, though the extent to which it changes relative to another piece of wood depends on how radically different the response characteristics are. I think you were simply misunderstanding the physical phenomenon that was responsible for the change. I am not trying to put you down, I'm merely stating that from a scientific standpoint, the cause of the alteration of the string's response is not electromagnetic, but mechanical. I spent years studying and conducting research in acoustical physics and have done experiments with the structural response characteristics of different materials. Now, can YOU hear the differences between pieces of wood? That is the bottom line question here and YOU are the only person who can say what YOU do or don't hear, I'm just speaking from the scientific side of things.

[WezV]

Firstly bart - let me say i am enjoying this, and i genuinely hope you are too

anyway - on with the show

Vibrating wood has no effect on electromagnetic fields; only a ferrous object passing through that field has an effect. Try this experiment: remove the strings from your solid body guitar, and plug your guitar into your amp, with the amp's gain set pretty (but safely) high. Now wave popsicle sticks or bamboo skewers (the handiest and cheapest workbench tools in the world, btw!) over the pickups at approximate string heights (you could build a little wooden fence to keep the sticks the right height). Hear anything? Hold a skewer between thump and forefinger of one hand (or in some kind of flexible rubber mounting, and twang the other end so the skewer moves fast and maybe even oscillates. Hear anything?

either you missed/purposely ignored my point - or you are trying to discredit me by making it look like i suggested wood had a direct effect on electromagnetic fields. What you suggest doing would be a fun experiment for primary school students! I suspect you know that i was not suggesting wood could have an effect on electromagnetic fields... its a nice debating technique - if a little obvious

I am going to come back to the knock test in a minute as i feel its worthy of further discussion, but for now i guess i need to clarify why the body(and neck) wood vibrations are important.

I am glad you concede that the things touching the string can affect the way it vibrates in some small way. But my point about the body vibrating was really to highlight the finite amount of kinetic energy you introduce to a string when you pluck it.... you accept the body vibrates so i am going to assume that you accept some of the strings energy is transferred to the wood

This leaves us with 2 options:

1)all materials interact (absorb, transfer, reflect etc...) with that energy in the same way - therefore the result will always be the same. the string will continue to vibrate in the same way and therefore sound the same

2)all materials interact (absorb, transfer, reflect etc...) with that energy in different ways depending on there structure (i reckon stiffness is the prime variable there, but weight, density etc are worth considering) - therefore the result will be different with different materials. this will influence the way the string continues to vibrate (is its energy dissipated through the material, or passed cleanly through it) so things will sound different

now, the knock/tap test

earlier you said

Try this experiment: remove the strings from your solid body guitar, and plug your guitar into your amp, with the amp's gain set pretty (but safely) high.

do i do the knock test with strings off as well? I am assuming the reason you want us to remove the strings is that you know full well that tapping on the body will pass vibrations into the string. I would say that demonstrates quite clearly that the way the body vibrates can influence the way the strings vibrate - but most of us dont play guitar with a hammer so lets move on

anyway, thats not my main point here. when you suggested the knock test i immediately thought of the guitars i have worked on where it was not true - where a knock on the wood would be amplified - admittedly this is usually due to microphonics in the pickup, but i reckon that it tells us something. Microphonics happen because energy from the string vibrating is passed through the body into the pickups. If the pickup has a loose wind or moving parts they will vibrate - this directly influences the electromagnetic field and causes the squeal of microphonic feedback.

not what we are after, but it demonstrates that the pickups are also vibrating, this varies depending on how they are mounted (yet another variable in the big picture, but microphonic pickups are still microphonic if you direct mount, use tight Vs loose springs or rubber tubing)... the pickups still vibrate with the body to some degree no matter how you mount them, you cant usually cure a microphonic pickup simply be mounting it differently (I say usually only because a loose baseplate microphonic may be cured by foam underneath the pickup)

this demonstrates that what you have is not:

a ferrous string vibrating in an electromagnetic field

it is more accurately described as 'a ferrous string vibrating in a vibrating electromagnetic field' - and the vibrating magnetic field gets its vibrational pattern from the body (which i would suggest has filtered vibrations from the string in different ways depending on its structure)

i honestly dont think thats the main reason why body wood influences tone - but i do believe its one of the reasons.

[masterblastor]

Well, this is the best yet!

If guitars, clarinets, kazoos, glockenspiels, conga drums, tubas, or any other musical instruments are played in a vacuum, they make NO sound -- a vacuum is a complete absence of air (or any other wave-carrying medium), and without a medium like air or water to transmit the sound wave to your ears, there is NO sound -- maybe you've watched too many Star Wars where you can hear explosions in space?

That is my point exactly. The only possible way for the sound created to be equal is the absence of sound. Sort of like the only way for two fingerprints to be the same would be the absence of fingerprints.

Yes. There are TWO properties to sound: frequency and amplitude. If you have more properties to spring on a breathlessly-awaiting acoustic engineering field, let's hear 'em (sorry). Since I'm ignorant, tone-deaf, stupid, wrong, wrong, wrong (sounds like a band name from the '80s), and now, according to your wisdom, "flawed," please explain the terms other than frequency and amplitude that sound possesses, because I want to check these terms out online and try to drag myself out of the morass of ignorance you people seem to think I'm wallowing in. I may get the hang of the physics of audio yet, and learn the magic secret of how solid-body guitars -- and ONLY solid-body guitars -- are able to transcend acoustical physics.

Frequency, Wavelength, Wavenumber, Amplitude, Intensity, Speed, Direction !

Please, help me out of my ignorance here -- here's the description of my proposed experiment -- please enlighten me as to how you've come to the conclusion there are no constants. In fact, the only VARIABLE is the wood: everything else is a constant.

1. Pick a string, a tailpiece, a bridge, a nut, a tuning machine, and one simple, very clean pickup like the Lawrence Keystone....

see my next response

Please let me know where I can find that mathematical proof.

In simple terms. Sound is waves of pressure created by the movement of energy through matter. If the matter is changed, even in the slightest, the result is different. e=mc2

Really? That's exciting news! Where, exactly, is this "already available" data, and what is subjective about the "brain activity in a controlled group of test subjects when exposed to different combinations of sound properties?" What would those "different combinations of sound properties" consist of, exactly? What properties, what combinations?

Frequency, Wavelength Wavenumber Amplitude Intensity Speed Direction

The united states military and various research groups have done extensive research on the human body's ability to interpret sound. Note I say the "human body's" ability. All human interpretation of sound is not sourced at the ear drum. Sound, especially in the higher range can be detected from waves of sound passing through the body.

Well, having provided exceptionally cogent, methodical, and rock-hard-data-supported pronunciamentos, your offhand dismissal of any arguments to the contrary -- "Anyway, yes humans are physically capable of distinguishing the difference in "sound" between two unamplified solid body guitars in some cases" -- closes the case. If you say it's true, it must be true.

I said in some cases because the difference in sound produced by an electric guitar may or may or not always be percievable by a human. Can a human hear a dog whistle? Yes, the person blowing the whistle can sometimes hear it. Other sound is produced in the act of blowing the whistle, like the vibration of the cheeks or air bouncing back off of the blowers face. A person 15ft away may not be able to hear it. So do i think you are correct? No, I know you are not considering a guitar will actually sound different to the person playing a particular insturment than one standing next to him for similar reasons.

I'm not trying to bust your balls man. most people in their first year of their <insert field> Science Major go through this. Your experiment is too complex, try to find simpler ways of providing the same results, that's all I was saying.

Edited February 16, 2011 by masterblastor

[WezV]

if i ever get around to owning one of these i promise you i will set-up some consistent string plucking machine and some frequency analysis

http://www.teuffelguitars.de/english/guitars/birdfish/tonebars.htm

would be a nice way to control a hell of a lot of the variables - somebody buy me one

[Guest bartbrn]

Bart, you're really reminding me of this guy:

Reminds me of me, too! Except I'm not saying anyone's "wrong, wrong, wrong... just wrong;" I'm saying I don't see any rigorous, scientific data to support any of these "this wood sounds different from this other wood in a solid-body guitar" statements as measurably-proven fact, and there's certainly no doubt, given the Musicians hear what they hear, and play what they play, just as painters see what they see, and paint what they paint, and the hearing and playing are not always recognizable (to others) as the latter being related to the former, just as the seeing and painting are not always recognizable (to others) as the latter being related to the former. I know that sounds like gibberish, but I don't know how else to express it. I'm speechless, for once.

[Guest bartbrn]

if i ever get around to owning one of these i promise you i will set-up some consistent string plucking machine and some frequency analysis

http://www.teuffelguitars.de/english/guitars/birdfish/tonebars.htm

would be a nice way to control a hell of a lot of the variables - somebody buy me one

Thanks for this link -- I wish there were some sound samples (impure though they may be!), but these are some of the most beautiful pieces of design -- especially guitar design, which tends to be boringly orthodox -- I've ever seen! If it's good enough for Henry Kaiser...

BTW, beautiful workmanship on those Telebuckers. Not crazy about the stickers, but that's just my taste -- are those bodies bound, or is it just the reflection?

Clean, clean, clean!

[Prostheta]

Eric Johnson claims to be able to tell the difference when his amp gets a new fuse. I certainly couldn't tell the difference, but who's to say that he can't? It's a medical fact that some people have more acute senses than others.

My internal drama (like an internal dialogue but with actors, staging and cheap lighting) screams some kind of Spın̈al Tap-ish vignette here. Cue Eric Johnson storming offstage in an uncommon fit of pique.

[WezV]

BTW, beautiful workmanship on those Telebuckers. Not crazy about the stickers, but that's just my taste -- are those bodies bound, or is it just the reflection?

Clean, clean, clean!

yeah, they are both bound in white, but the edges also have a round over to increase comfort over the usual bound teles -so there is a little reflection from that

i was going to type something about perceiving there to be binding, but that i couldnt be sure it was really there without doing scientific tests to prove it actually was binding (sorry - couldnt resist )

[guitar2005]

I read the article. * yawn *

It seems to completely contardict everything it says somewhere along the line.

... and for a guy who believes you can't tell the tone of a certain specie of wood, you sure build every guitar out of "perfectly quartersawn sapelli!!!" usually with a "Crazy figured top!!" .

My point being that you yourself are predisposed to using a certain type of wood because you beleive you'll get a certain tone out of it . ... but I thought each piece varies?!?

My point is this, I use certain types of wood because I KNOW what tonal range to expect of them.

Build me a "dark" sounding solid maple guitar. I double-dog-dare you to. I don't think it can be done without serious manipulation of the electronics.

The very fact that you say "stiffness" has to do with brightness,means you beleive that I can expect a brighter tone out of Ebony than I can from Pine.

... oh, we build out of way more than 3 types of wood, too.

So, yes, I consider myself to be intelligent, and yes I found the article to be a bore.

Completely agree.

There are certain ranges in tone/behaviour of a wood species that you expect.

The article reminded me of Alex of Zach guitars.

[kpcrash]

Eric Johnson claims to be able to tell the difference when his amp gets a new fuse. I certainly couldn't tell the difference, but who's to say that he can't? It's a medical fact that some people have more acute senses than others.

My internal drama (like an internal dialogue but with actors, staging and cheap lighting) screams some kind of Spın̈al Tap-ish vignette here. Cue Eric Johnson storming offstage in an uncommon fit of pique.

To add to the Spinal Tap theme - EJ also claimed to have sold his soul to the devil for his talent at one point

This is a great thread. I will agree strongly with the statement regardless of material/hardware/voodoo, etc. - any guitar will sound a bit different based on who is playing it. It's just that simple - I'm sure if 5 or 6 of us got together for a pint and had one guitar and one amp between us, each person's rendition of the same song would sound slightly different. Thank God for choices in guitars! Otherwise, thanks to all for a very interesting read.

[Prostheta]

What do you mean *one* pint? That's a traditional English lunch.