Ending The Tonewood Debate (Electric Guitars) #guitar #guitarist #prs

[emmettyoung]

jim lill has a video where he has literally just the same pickup and it sounds identical.

[harpdc]

I wish more people could admit to themselves that they like pretty maple tops because they look pretty. If you prefer a rosewood fretboard because of the way it feels or the way it plays, then absolutely go for it, but pretending that it has a meaningful effect on tone is just silly.

[PippPriss]

I have multiple guitars with Seymour Duncan SH5, as they are my favorite pickups. Granted, they all have different things to them - one is wound by Maricela Juarez, a vintage one, one has a gold cover, one is a relatively new one.

All guitars feel and sound different, both acoustically and through an amp.

Now you say, tonewood does not matter. Glenn Fricker however says, the pickup does not matter.

So, where does the difference comes from? Who am I to believe? Am I falling for the placebo effect? I don't think so, because I definitely prefer other guitars for other purposes.

There seems to be a fallacy of black.white arguing these things.
It's not, that you have to buy exotic woods to get the best out of it. But Strats with machined, and thus technically pretty much identical pickups will do sound different, depending on if the neck is made completely out of maple or other woods.

Standing firm on Jim Lill's side only, without differentiating, and taking his incredible small sample size (basically a single strum) and sell it as a full-informed research, is as foolish as taking "Mr Car-Salesman Reed Smiths' " word as pure gold.

There certainly will be nuances to it. One simply has to ask if the price is worth it.

[mikesmoviemadness]

I have two swamp ash guitars, one with a flamed maple top, one a solid body swamp ash. Both passive pickups, both the same necks the only difference being the fingerboards.

There is a slight difference I can hear with the maple top one, but it’s very minute.

I just think if you’re asking a guitar maker about tonewoods, they have different ears. Their ears can hear that sonic difference, but if you’re asking a regular guitar player they can’t hear any difference.

But even a guitar maker like Aristides, they developed Arium to mimic tonewoods. So while they don’t use actual woods, they even know tonewoods make somewhat of a difference.

[MarkedForJazz]

What guitar is that!? I've been on the hunt for a semi-hollow tele-style with 2 p90s!

[paulpennington-mvrt]

Ha ha. I wish my thoughts could make a difference here, but that wont happen!
I've built guitars from lots of different materials (even wood) and i think whether it is old growth Ash or particle board... It is gonna be negligible once it is plugged in. It's just an aural fact
But, unamplified, things are switched up big time.
A tele i made out of a 50's hutch (even had a similar nitro finish of a blonde '51- had to take it off though) had the most toney acoustic sound i have ever heard...
{hence WHY early tele's/strat's are sought, & bring big bux!}... It was sick!!

But a particle/OSB unamped reminded me of a concrete slab~ but amped was cool.
Anyway, pick your battles, this one is hardly worth a debate. 🎉🎸

[WillMoon]

Warmoth has literally done this and it's probably like a 5% difference in actual tone.

[LIKEFUNK]

The fact is different timbers are going to affect how any electric guitar sounds even passively, even the same model and make by the same builder using the same timber from a tree for the body or neck will have a slight difference even with the exact pickups and hardware used put into the test, in order to test properly it must share the same pickup/s, because even pickups can slightly vary too from the same factory build also.
Timber is grained and no two are identical, that also makes a subtle difference, it's not possible to identify the subtle differences via a Youtube video/audio playback test or example, wood is stethoscopic and does affect how the strings resonate and respond when strummed or picked or plucked etc, -some pickups and body designs are made sometimes to be fractionally microphonic fractionally too....make no mistake about it! further consideration is the substance the finished instrument is presented via likewise, it all makes a very minute and often unnoticed difference, the only thing that doesn't make any noticeable change to the tone is the colour, but!!! it depends on how thick the paint/lacquer is applied also at the point of completed fun pondering that! your welcome!

[iridios]

Man you don't even need the same body shape and same electronics.
Put 10 to 20 guitar in the double blind test - no one can differentiate them. 😉

[oacikgoz]

There IS a difference, but it’s so minor that it’s not worth considering for “good tone”. For the most part tonewood is a big myth IMHO for TONE. It makes a difference however in terms of sustain/resonance/feedback and feel (neck).

[blainetrahan]

Tone wood is BS. It’s all about the electronics, amp and the way you play.

[drewdee]

If you cant at least heat the differences between maple and rosewood fretboards, you may just not have a good enough ear 🤷‍♀️
different types of wood have different densities that resonste differently, it aint rocket surgery. Will the audience hear a difference? No probably not, but for the other 99% of the time you spend playing guitar, YOU will hear the difference and thats ultimately what matters

[jamesmarkham]

Tonewood is foolishness. Everyone knows it’s the SHAPE of the wood that defines tone. Les Pauls are round and have a round warm shape. Flying vs are pointy and have a sharp attack. Now v’s and explorers are both pointy but since the explorer is longer it has more sustain. 😂

[Blackdiamondprod.]

This has been done HUNDREDS of times! Also, physics, you know, exists.

[gerardoto]

I used to think wood didn't matter coz it is an electric guitar. My first electric guitar was a strat copy made of plywood. I thought it sounded right, until I played a guitar made of solid alder and I could hear and feel the huge difference wood has on the tone coming from the amp.

[flppr]

Rhett did it recently with different necks.

[wasteddude]

Not here. Not today. Okay. It’s going too far, too long. So lets end it.
There are varying degrees of output, hence size, of guitar manufacturing facilities. Ranging from 100% carbon fiber acoustics with various wood top alternatives, through all sorts of hybrid combinations, to full on, traditional acoustic and electric guitars.
Whether individual artisan luthier or global corporation, everybody has standards. Someone walks into a forest or lumberyard. But, top to bottom, there are commonalities in turning a tree into a guitar. They all manage inventories in a garage, or a climate controlled warehouse.
At some point, an individual takes some wood home. Or some bean counter recommends mass production measures to cut costs in resourcing, transportation, manpower, minimum acceptable quality (e.g., Epiphone and Squier) among many other factors.
But nobody… nobody… ignores the wood. Even a dollar conscious corporate jackal checks on their inventories of wood. People get laid off before cheap particle board gets stacked in those warehouses. The bigger the mass production corporation, the MORE the wood matters.
Larry Luthier and Wall Street Willie, both supply their inventory with woods meeting specific standards. What kind, when and where was it grown, under what conditions, who vouches for it, I want to see the data, how much is available… How much does it cost.
The bulk of inventory is selected wood based on factors like “age”, “resilience”, etc... Climate control warehouses mill and stack specific woods for specific purposes. Man-made, or composite woods are preferred to numerous naturally occurring woods deemed unusable.
Wood matters to every builder of guitars, acoustic and electric, as well as concert high end instruments of a caliber described as “precious” and “priceless”; Violins, violas, cellos, basses, the woodwinds, clarinets, oboes, and bassoons, etc…
Harmonics, resonance, vibration, frequency, all the elements emoting the character of sound are aided by the woods chosen for each part of an instrument’s function. And to the very moment you read these words, nobody has replicated the Stradivarius since the 1730s.
Some see no logical way to connect wood’s influence in an electric system. Perhaps it is subliminal. But you can’t mock the sound of a guitar made of pencils glued together, then turn around and say wood doesn’t matter. That’s obnoxious hypocrisy.
Do strings matter? Why do so many fixate on a certain brand and gauge range? Why do I prefer twenty-four jumbo, stainless steel, ball-end frets? I play a lot of guitars without them. Does everyone’s guitars have the same neck thickness? What isn’t a subliminal influence?
Oh, you mean specifically a direct influence on sound. How many pickups do you have? How strong? What brand? Are all your guitars the same? Pedals? Amps? Oh, you mean not electric. What kind of pick do you prefer? But let’s get back to the wood.
Electric guitar manufacturing facilities have sections for stacks and shelves of select woods chosen for specific reasons. Mass production giants, famous for cost cutting, continue to favor select woods. Individual artisan luthiers care the most about the woods they use.
If wood matters so much to the professionals who make electric guitars for a living, I trust their judgment. There are about forty-nine types of Mahogany, but many are nearly extinct due to popularity for furniture and musical instruments. So the types used today are different from the types used in guitars in the 1940s or 1950s.
Talk to me after you own an acrylic guitar and when you’re able to tell me about your tour of a wood guitar manufacturing facility which has significant distribution. Until then, you really have no basis in knowledge and experience to take the anti “tonewood” debate position.

[JagoAlessi.]

Actually, how electric guitars sound unplugged has a lot of impact on how it will sound when it's plugged.

[peacefulruler]

This is idiotic. Everything affects the tone, so if you keep the necks and pickups the same, yeah, probably not that much change. But no one would put Strat pickups in a mahogany SG.

It’s the sum of the components but wood density and porosity does matter according to physics. Even two bodies made of the same wood but different weights makes a difference in tone.

It’s only the newbs with no playing ability that waste their time on nonsense like this. Experienced guys who have owned many guitars know the difference.