3,968 posts
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Post by salteedog on Aug 23, 2018 12:25:19 GMT
Yup, in some respects there are a lot of complexities involved even though electrically guitars are very simple circuits. If you fancy some maths ('hard sums' as we used to call them in school) have a read of this paper which discusses the electromagnetics of a guitar pickup. puhep1.princeton.edu/~kirkmcd/examples/guitar.pdfI did learn some interesting things reading it:- And
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Post by DerAlex on Aug 23, 2018 12:34:44 GMT
Thanks for the info gents. Sounds like one hell of a can of worms. And now: what is the relation between pickups and tonewood? (Imagine the scene from 'Life of Brian' while reading: He said tonewood! )
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Aug 23, 2018 12:35:23 GMT
Thanks for the info gents. Sounds like one hell of a can of worms. Do not ever open your pick-ups. You don't want to know what's inside
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Aug 23, 2018 12:45:19 GMT
Thanks for the info gents. Sounds like one hell of a can of worms. And now: what is the relation between pickups and tonewood? Worms in tonewood. Now we're in trouble…
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Post by Deleted on Aug 23, 2018 14:26:43 GMT
Thanks for the info gents. Sounds like one hell of a can of worms. And now: what is the relation between pickups and tonewood? (Imagine the scene from 'Life of Brian' while reading: He said tonewood! ) Out of all the guitars I owned those with Basswood had best sustain! Pickups do their thing but relation between the hardness of neck wood and body might affect the sustain considerably. Hate when the sustain decreases fast or like on my HB 35 Plus almost dies. Gives a "thump" sound over 12th fret and dies! And this one even has Gibson style bridge known for giving good sustain. Mahogany neck and body ain't for me. Actually guitars with lacquered necks where wood is invisible ain't for me!
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1,773 posts
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Post by MartinB on Aug 23, 2018 16:17:49 GMT
My Cort VX-4X was mahogany body, 3 piece mahogany set neck in black gloss sparkle, standard tuners and a tone pros adjustomatic bridge and tail piece and had fantastic sustain!
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Post by reekytars on Aug 23, 2018 16:54:22 GMT
Tonewood and sustain are weird things.
I like ash bodies. And alder.
@chedapapa says his basswood bodies have the best sustain, yet basswood is a rather 'soft' wood. Shouldn't ash, mahogany and maple have better sustain because of their higher density and 'hardness'? The density of alder is comparable to basswood, yet I prefer alder. But would I be able to actually hear the difference? Maple and some types of mahogany aren't too different in density either, yet one can hear differences in body and neck material!
Isn't MusicMan routing out and replacing the body part beneath the pickups with a mahogany core to enhance the sound on some of their models?
Anyway, I digress. I am currently looking at Bentons with ash bodies
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1,773 posts
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Post by MartinB on Aug 23, 2018 17:03:39 GMT
I think the thing is there is so much variation in all the constituent parts of a guitar, including the wood which as a natural product can have massive variances, particularly in the stock a budget builder will be using. And then inconsistencies in production. I realise that there will be efforts to minimise the impact of all this but my opinion is still that you have to evaluate guitars on an individual basis. I don’t know what any of the tolerances are.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Aug 23, 2018 17:23:09 GMT
If all these woods were causing significant differences in the end product, manufacturers would rule those out which can lead too far from the desired result. They are not stupid and they had 60 years to learn from mistakes and make measurements.
They learned, too, that a significant part of their target audience likes to believe in whatever is thrown at them, so they take good care to advertise any wood they use as if it were something special. They do not have to say how, collective fantasy takes care of grasping at the implied straws and makes idol material of the woods used in their favourites models while denigrating those they like less. This man's alder becomes that man's mahogany. It doesn't need to make sense but it creates in two men a fantasised sense of value to justify their spending more money on their favourite thing. It's all good business.
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Post by DerAlex on Aug 24, 2018 7:43:23 GMT
Out of all the guitars I owned those with Basswood had best sustain! Pickups do their thing but relation between the hardness of neck wood and body might affect the sustain considerably. Hate when the sustain decreases fast or like on my HB 35 Plus almost dies. Gives a "thump" sound over 12th fret and dies! And this one even has Gibson style bridge known for giving good sustain. Mahogany neck and body ain't for me. Actually guitars with lacquered necks where wood is invisible ain't for me! My LP Junior copy from FGN has also a basswood body - and I abolutely love it. Great great guitar, very resonant, killer tone with the single P90. A complete beast. And there were so many forum´ers which label basswood as "inferior" - it´s really laughable. They better should tell MusicMan as they have very expensive guitars made out of basswood. Maybe it is not well suited for Nitro coatings as then dongs could be more frequent than with harder wood types. But with a Poly coating this is not a problem (at least if you don´t abuse the guitar and get cracks in the Poly).
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Aug 24, 2018 7:54:22 GMT
Out of all the guitars I owned those with Basswood had best sustain! Pickups do their thing but relation between the hardness of neck wood and body might affect the sustain considerably. Hate when the sustain decreases fast or like on my HB 35 Plus almost dies. Gives a "thump" sound over 12th fret and dies! And this one even has Gibson style bridge known for giving good sustain. Mahogany neck and body ain't for me. Actually guitars with lacquered necks where wood is invisible ain't for me! My LP Junior copy from FGN has also a basswood body - and I abolutely love it. Great great guitar, very resonant, killer tone with the single P90. A complete beast. And there were so many forum´ers which label basswood as "inferior" - it´s really laughable. They better should tell MusicMan as they have very expensive guitars made out of basswood. Basswood is light and as good as any other wood for guitars. Ibanez has been using it for decades. Prejudiced fools in forums would tell you that the round earth is an inferior theory too.
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Post by reekytars on Aug 24, 2018 9:50:18 GMT
Hey, there are even people who build guitars out of beech!
And though poplar (even lighter and less dense than basswood) is often used for matches, veggy crates and the likes, a burl poplar or 'birdseye' poplar top on an electric guitar can be one of the most gorgeous things.
I DO believe that the wood used has a significant influence on tone and sustain, but that significance isn't influenced as much by the type of wood used as it is by the quality of the wood.
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3,457 posts
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Post by LeoThunder on Aug 24, 2018 10:09:16 GMT
This guy has mounted a pickguard in 9 guitars made out of different woods. I hear differences in each but would never call them significant. It's a subtle shade of the same colour showing that all these species are perfectly fine to be used as far a tone is concerned. How they react to weather conditions or the passing of time can be a different debate.
I suppose the qualities of the wood, such as its density, which is a variant of its age and growth speed, or the level of humidity it retains are more important factors in determining how they will perform as guitars.
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Aug 24, 2018 10:41:20 GMT
Oh-damn-it. They missed a huge opportunity to remove some questions here. The biggest one being, why didn't they use the SAME pickguard and pickups on each guitar to eliminate any possible differences in those elements. Then all we'd have to worry about would be the separate components of each guitar! That was a shame. All the same it as a brave stab and differences could certainly be heard. As reekytars says, this may be less to do with the tree than the qualities of that bit of the tree and it may be that each tree has a greater percentage of consistency of those qualities than another tree. Now they need to go round swapping all the necks and do it all again.
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