How does wood affect tone?

[LoneWolf121188]

Here's my reasoning: the vibrating part of a guitar string touches anything in two places: the bridge and the nut or a fret. Pickups then amplify the magnetic vibrations of the metal string into audible sound. So how does body/neck/fingerboard wood (which does not have a magnetic field, last I checked , or if it does, a VERY miniscule one) affect the tone at all??? I read a forum post on the jemsite boards about how one of the jems was switching to a rosewood fingerboard from ebony, and everyone was like "whoa, thats gonna change everything!!!" Im confused...

[Curtis P]

its the density, if you had a really soft wood it would soak up all the sound and be tone dead, but if you had a guitar body made out of ebony, or something really dense like that, it would make the sound bounce off i suppose, but if you had maple or mahogany then it has a good density and soaks in the sound, yet repells it

Curtis

[GregP]

Well, it's like this--

The nut and the bridge are still attached to the wood.

[frank falbo]

I had an article about 10 years ago in Guitar Shop about exactly this. You'll get a lot of responses because everyone believes it does affect the tone but not everyone can agree why. Basically your logic is right on, and GregP's answer is all there is to it. The pickup is hearing the string's vibration, but everything about the guitar is affecting the way the string will attack and sustain. The length of sustain and the frequencies that are dampened or enhanced are all attributable to the wood types. Now if you take a guitar with dead strings and replace the body with a maple one, keeping the strings, it will still sound dull and dead. So there are obviously other things at work like the bridge type and neck attatchment method that will affect things too, but if you're just looking for why does wood affect the way a pickup hears the strings, that sums it up. It doesn't change what the pickup hears per se, but it changes the way the string vibrates, which IS what the pickup hears.

[Scott Rosenberger]

That question has started so many flame wars I can't even count them all

[frank falbo]

Flame wars? Why you little... how dare you...Oh wait, you didn't actually disagree with me on anything

But seroiusly there doesn't really have to be any flames if we all agree that it does affect what comes out of the amp. To what degree and how, well, maybe we should just all keep that to ourselves.

[truerussian558]

id say the best argument is that the density of the wood affects the vibrations of the strings mechanicaly, by affecting certain overtones differenty. though i have no idea how but i suspect that is the main reason

[westhemann]

But seroiusly there doesn't really have to be any flames if we all agree that it does affect what comes out of the amp. To what degree and how, well, maybe we should just all keep that to ourselves.

that is the problem...you would be amazed(i know i am) by the # of people that claim there is no difference in types of wood used,when it is so obvious to the rest of us with ears

[westhemann]

id say the best argument is that the density of the wood affects the vibrations of the strings mechanicaly, by affecting certain overtones differenty. though i have no idea how but i suspect that is the main reason

i believe the same as you..the frequency response in different woods is ...different

but really not everything in this world has to make sense to everyone...some things you just accept because it is that way...and if it doesn't make sense to a certain person,then it is sometimes just because that person is wired to understand other aspects of the everyday world

[spirit]

I find myself reasoning this way: If all wood sounded the same, why aren't PRS making all their guitars out of MDF and just using a quilted maple veneer?

[bizzare]

I think that differnt types of wood would only affect the sustain, because pickups(on an electric guitar) are essentialy elctro-magnets which pick up the vibrating strings. Microhonic pickups however do pick up how the wood changes the sound.

Unplugged, electric guitars will sound different even if they are the same wood, the same as an acoustic.

Uhhh... please tell me if that makes sense BTW

[john]

the way i see it, the wood essentially acts as a damper between both ends of the string. therefore certain properties of certain wood give a different frequency response, the closest analogy is to that of a low pass filter.

wes, i think that coment about ppl who 'have ears' is a little silly to be honest. i dont doubt there are differences between wood, in fact i know there are. but to 75% of the earths population, that just isnt noticed. and to say that those ppl(i may be one of them) have no ears? seriously. i congratulate you and others who have such a good ear for music but i dont think people who are building their 1st 2nd or 3rd instrument should be too worried about their choice of wood. imo there are far more important factors to be worrying about if you are only learning to build. a poorly constructed instrument made of the finest wood would sound poor compared to a guitar made of the cheapest crap by the finest luthier in the world.

basically what im trying to say is that some people read too deep into the tone of wood question and should eb concentrating on other more important factors.

p.s i do not claim to be in any way decent at building guitars or wholly knowledgeable on the subject, just my €0.02

[john]

oh by the way im not trying to start an arguement, sorry if it comes across like that.

john.

[Andreas]

I believe that all of the guitar acts as a single system since it is one piece. That system has a specific fundamental frequency as each and every thing that has mass.

Now the string will vibrate at a given frequency and that frequency will "activate" the wood and start to vibrate it. The similar the wood fundamental is to the strings the more resonance it will have.

This means a heavy density wood will be of closer fundamental to the string and will have a brighter sound since more high frequencies (that are the ones that move less) will be allowed to pass.

The wood with low density will force those high frequencies to stop since as I said before move less and thus stop easier.

The bass frequencies are the longer wavelength (moving) ones so are not that easy to stop and will always pass but since they are lower in energy than high frequencies will die out faster, so the more high frequencies (denser the wood) are alowed to pass the longer the sustain but the brighter the sound. The lower the dencity the less high frequencies pass and thus lower sustain but warmer sound. Now that explained the vibration of the wood and not the string but as I said in the start the whole thing is one entity that vibrates as one. You can never have the strings vibrating differently than wood, unless they brake.

Of course there are more factors in sustain such as string mass, wood mass (not dencity) tension in strings, etc.

Umm..in a few words the wood acts as a filter (that was said before )

And as a side note...you can never predict the tone from the wood since wood is always differend even from the same tree. You make the guitar as good as possible (stronger = better) and the resulting tone will be unique and similar to other tones that the same wood make.

That is in my opinion and it is not writen in stone.

[skibum5545]

I agree with pretty much everything said so far. However, although not all maple will sound the same, maple has a distinct tone from wanut has a disticnt tone from mahogany. Some people with better ears than me can tell what it'll sound like using "tap tone", which in laymans terms means smacking your wood to see what it sounds like.

For instance: the walnut I used for my bass had a very "dark" tap tone, but was still crisp. That is reflected in the sound of the bass.

Like everything else, the only thing that is for sure about wood is that nothing is for sure about it.