New Video with Paul

Don't think I've seen this posted yet. Worth the watch.


A subject that came up in this video was the “tone wood” issue. Paul talked about the importance of how long the wood “rang”. When I toured the factory, his second in command led the tour and snuck us into Paul’s wood library. He picked up a piece of neck blank stock and knocked on it, and it rang like a bell. He said that the room was full of wood just like that, along with some jaw dropping body blanks.
 
A subject that came up in this video was the “tone wood” issue. Paul talked about the importance of how long the wood “rang”. When I toured the factory, his second in command led the tour and snuck us into Paul’s wood library. He picked up a piece of neck blank stock and knocked on it, and it rang like a bell. He said that the room was full of wood just like that, along with some jaw dropping body blanks.
Yeah, that’s really cool, I’ve seen him do that in some other videos. I really enjoyed the story about the violin makers, checking out his wood supplier stock, tapping on blanks and they ended up picking out wood for backs of violins that ended up all being from the same tree. I don’t believe the violin makers knew the number system the wood cutter/supplier was using to identify that the blanks they picked out were all from the same tree. That’s what I got out of that without Paul spelling it out for us.
 
Enjoyed the video was very interesting where he talked about trying to get a bone nut to work in a Trem guitars , plays to the feeling I got changing the Fiore nut from bone ( stock ) the a traditional PRS nut.
To be honest I would love to get an honest answer about changing to more vintage non locking tuners and Nitro finishes , and bone nuts on PRS guitars. I would think its market driven, but for me at least some of these things seem like a step backward.
That said it seems Paul and Co are very much about tone, so we will see what is next :)
 
Ahh, tonewood. The debate out there originates from offence taken against perceived opportunistic branding and pricing. A narrative is then concocted around the false flag (but catchy) soundbite “acoustic tone does not affect magnetic pickups” and presented as science.

Quite an egoistic and petty origin for something that will outlast the last star in the universe. If you listen to the cosmic winds then, you will still hear the murmurs…
 
A buddy of mine that brought me a Tele to work on tried to pull me down a similar rabbit hole. I had demonstrated for him that the body on his Tele was very resonant; perhaps more resonant than any solid body I’ve ever had on my bench. He started on, “The wood makes no difference at all. Once the signal gets to the amp, it’s all the same, and the amp can turn it into anything you want.” I was a bit startled and offered that the amp can only mold and amplify the signal you give it. You give it a crappy signal, it amplifies a crappy signal. After I finished with his Tele, he was delighted with the way it played and sounded through his rig that he brought along for the test; then he asked if he could plug my PRS into his rig. It didn’t take long before he said, “I really love this guitar.” I resisted the urge to point out the obvious proof of my previous statement, and just said, “Well, it is a PRS…”
 
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A buddy of mine that brought me a Tele to work on tried to pull me down a similar rabbit hole. I had demonstrated for him that the body on his Tele was very resonant; perhaps more resonant than any solid body I’ve ever had on my bench. He started on, “The wood makes no difference at all. Once the signal gets to the amp, it’s all the same, and the amp can turn it into anything you want.” I was a bit startled and offered that the amp can only mold and amplify the signal you give it. You give it a crappy signal, it amplifies a crappy signal. After I finished with his Tele, he was delighted with the way it played and sounded through his rig that he brought along for the test; then he asked if he could plug my PRS into his rig. It didn’t take long before he said, “I really love this guitar.” I resisted the urge to point out the obvious proof of my previous statement, and just said, “Well, it is a PRS…”
Yup people just can’t seem to get it.

Where does the signal come from? It comes from how the strings vibrate.

Where does acoustic tone come from? It comes from how the strings vibrate.

It’s not about acoustic tone being able to affect electrical/magnetic signals, or not. Nobody ever said the two were related in that manner.

Rather it’s about the fact that acoustic tone and electrical signal come from the same source - string vibration. They’re essentially twins, replicas of the same source.

If there’s agreement that acoustic tone is affected by wood, it is because string vibration itself has been affected by wood. It must then follow that electric tone is affected by wood.

I would actually contend that material of construction matters even more for electric guitars, because the pickups themselves get vibrated by the guitar body, adding that airy woody quality to the tone. Think knuckle rap but on a small micro scale.

Oh well. Be happy if you know how to appreciate electric guitars for what they really are.
 
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