Electric Guitar and Tonewoods

[alnico5]

Great physics discussion! I maintain that on an acoustic guitar the string sets the guitar body in motion. There is a fine line here: if all the vibration passed from the string into the body you would have a very loud, very short tone. If very little passed you would get a prolonged but very low volume.

With a plugged in electric guitar, any string vibration going to the body is lost to the string, and thus lost to the pickup. The ideal electric guitar would have PUs isolated, with no loss of vibration to the body. (Take a look at how PUs are mounted on electrics. They are intentionally isolated in a pick guard or floating above a cut-out suspended by springs in a bezel. If wood really mattered, electric guitar makers would have decided 60+ years ago that direct mount was the only way to go.)

If I strum my acoustic guitar and then put my hand behind the bridge, the volume is dampened. If I strum my plugged in electric guitar and put my hand on the top NOTHING changes. The sound coming out of the speaker is not altered.

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Scotso

whoa....ok. So on an electric either the string vibrates over the pup or the pup vibrates under the string or both. That is the only way that mechanical energy is transformed to electrical. But then i have only have 6 yrs of undergrad and post grad physics with a focus on wave theory. I may not have had enough to understand you.

But you miss the point entirely: That wave energy exists prior to and separately from its being transduced. The transduction is only the preparation for it to be amplified, not how it is produced. Remember your physics: Transduction isn't creation of a wave; it is merely analog transformation of an existing wave from one form (physical, in this case) to another (electrical, in this case). Apply your physics here. First you must have -production- of a wave, physically, with all the attendant mechanical influences of a wave production system. Then you can have transduction.

Bob

[JeffreyAK]

The string vibrates however it vibrates, based on all kinds of parameters, and this is true of acoustics and electrics. Those vibrations couple to the air and push and pull the diaphragms in our ears, and what we hear depends on where our ear is relative to the guitar. A pickup is simply sensitive to how a string changes a magnetic field locally (in the vicinity of the pickup pole), so it's not quite like listening with your ear or a microphone, but not that different either. What the pickup "hears" depends on lots of factors, including especially where it is - which is why most guitars have multiple pickups, with the ones farthest from the bridge being most sensitive to the fundamental and the ones closest to the bridge being most sensitive to higher harmonics that are created by the string vibrations coupling to the body, neck, etc.

Really, this is how guitars work, any stringed instrument really. You might be surprised how different a guitar with an aluminum neck sounds, even though it has the same strings and pickups as the next guitar in the rack.

If you're familiar with physics, it's a coupled vibration problem, and what you get is a quasi-steady-state solution for the vibration of everything, that damps out in time as the stored energy dissipates.

[blue]

There is more going on. I certainly won't claim to understand it all. Or at all.

I do know that you will have a hard time finding anyone who has played a variety of Gibson models who will state that a Les Paul, an SG, a 335, or a 175 sound the same even when they have the same pickup set. With the same pickups they should if all that was going on was strings vibrating and interrupting a magnetic field.

In fact any guitar with the same scale length, and pickups should sound the same if it was just strings vibrating and interrupting a magnetic field.

[alnico5]

Should we delve into observational bias and the relevance paradox? I think my 335 sounds more jazzy than my Telecaster 'cause it just HAS to. My solid maple Carvin HAS to be brighter than my 335 'cause everybody says it does.

[blue]

Originally Posted by alnico5

Should we delve into observational bias and the relevance paradox? I think my 335 sounds more jazzy than my Telecaster 'cause it just HAS to. My solid maple Carvin HAS to be brighter than my 335 'cause everybody says it does.

Well I think a a tele can sound very jazzy. It's been used by many jazzers. It still doesn't sound anything like a 335. Steve howe sounds very different on his 355 than his 175.

If your maple carvin doesn't sound brighter than your 335 one of them is broken

[Zandit75]

Surprised this hasn't already been posted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oo2H-W7d6A

[redir]

Originally Posted by Zandit75

Surprised this hasn't already been posted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oo2H-W7d6A

And this sort of brings up a point I was going to make.

Lets take the argument to extremes. We are going to build two identical in shape and size guitars. They will just have one pickup in the neck position and one volume control. The pickups and electronics will be identical, same scale length, pickup location, same neck wood, hardware and so on.

One of the guitars will have a body made out of rubber, the other will be made out of aluminum.

Question. Will these two guitars sound exactly the same with the same strings gong through the same amp. Why or why not? If they don't sound the same then explain.

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Zandit75

Surprised this hasn't already been posted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oo2H-W7d6A

It's a fun video but have you noticed how little time they spent on the actual sound of the piece? They only had a couple of short clips of the clean sound of the thing and instead spent more time on highly processed (compressed and gained up) sounds. It doesn't sound like my Strats, by the way.

Bob

[alnico5]

Hey, what about tone plastic? A Stratocaster's PUs are floating in a plastic pick guard above the swimming pool cut with no direct connection to the wood. My Carvin's PUs are hanging inside a plastic bezel suspended by springs above a big hole, allowing them to fit flush. The plastic just has to matter, right? Have the best tone plastics been identified?

But seriously, I'm aware electric guitars sound different. IMHO there are many reasons to explain this difference and wood is an ultra-minor influence, if any.
Signing out

[JeffreyAK]

Perhaps we should talk of "tone carbon fiber" in acoustic guitars. And, cardboard is not limited to use in electric guitars either,





One can make guitars out of all kinds of materials, the point is that at some level the materials affect the sound in all these guitars.

[Scotso]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

But you miss the point entirely: That wave energy exists prior to and separately from its being transduced. The transduction is only the preparation for it to be amplified, not how it is produced. Remember your physics: Transduction isn't creation of a wave; it is merely analog transformation of an existing wave from one form (physical, in this case) to another (electrical, in this case). Apply your physics here. First you must have -production- of a wave, physically, with all the attendant mechanical influences of a wave production system. Then you can have transduction.

Bob

Maybe but I think you are mashing a bunch of stuff together to create a theory of what you believe you hear. I am all eyes/ears for your math though.

[blue]

Originally Posted by Scotso

Maybe but I think you are mashing a bunch of stuff together to create a theory of what you believe you hear. I am all eyes/ears for your math though.

Well it is all connected. That's one of the difficulties in trying to explain complex systems. For instance you can't explain climate without including solar activity.

Trying to explain electric guitar tone ONLY using what I referred to as "Idiots guide to pickups" doesn't explain the differences between a les paul and an SG with the same pickups.

Are you saying there is no difference between those two? Please, I am all eyes/ears to hear someone explain that using the "it's just an electrical signal" theory. Much like solar activity, just because we don't understand it doesn't mean you can leave it out of the explanation and be correct.

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by Scotso

whoa....ok. So on an electric either the string vibrates over the pup or the pup vibrates under the string or both. That is the only way that mechanical energy is transformed to electrical. But then i have only have 6 yrs of undergrad and post grad physics with a focus on wave theory. I may not have had enough to understand you.

Originally Posted by Scotso

Maybe but I think you are mashing a bunch of stuff together to create a theory of what you believe you hear. I am all eyes/ears for your math though.

Well sir, I have no more math to offer in support of my position than you have offered to dispute it. You've flashed your bonafides as a physics major to prove your worthiness in the discussion and demanded proof rather than offering any hard data about wave production.

I hate wagging my bonafides. But if were forced to, perhaps I'd mention that I studied recording engineering in college at the post-grad level and have spent the last thirty-five years as a recording engineer at the national level. That's half a lifetime in the field of creation, transduction, storage, and reproduction of sound. The first half of that was exclusively in that glorious, velocity-driven world of magnetic recording where every little adventure in acoustic recording involved four trips through magnetic transducers, minimum. Perhaps. But I really hate to trot out my bonafides.



But that's okay because neither of our disclosures proves that we know a hill of beans about anything, does it?

Bob

[Scotso]

Originally Posted by blue

Well it is all connected. That's one of the difficulties in trying to explain complex systems. For instance you can't explain climate without including solar activity.

Trying to explain electric guitar tone ONLY using what I referred to as "Idiots guide to pickups" doesn't explain the differences between a les paul and an SG with the same pickups.

Are you saying there is no difference between those two? Please, I am all eyes/ears to hear someone explain that using the "it's just an electrical signal" theory. Much like solar activity, just because we don't understand it doesn't mean you can leave it out of the explanation and be correct.

R u putting words in my mouth? I never said any of what you said. I was merely stating that I did not understand what the other guy said nor did I understand his logic. I am sorry you found my questions and comments to be offensive.

Of course different guitars sound different but it can be for a lot of reasons including different Ohms in pups, different positions of the pups, different heights of pups, manufacturing differences in strings even though they are the same brand, differences in how pups are attached to the guitar(spring vs foam vs pup ring difference vs vs vs vs.., differences in overall geometry of string and pup arrangement, etc etc etc and....wait for it...wood.

So please do not put words in my mouth that never came out and imply that I am an idiot.