The Subtractive Theory of Tone

The Subtractive Theory of Tone

  • The little things DO make a difference

    Votes: 16 84.2%
  • I'm not convinced

    Votes: 3 15.8%

  • Total voters
    19

rugerpc

A♥ hoards guitars ♥A Soldier 25, DFZ
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The subtractive theory of tone is an important plank in Paul's Rules of Tone.

I get it. I agree.

But there are those who don't.

Here's your opportunity to make your respectful case for or against the theory.
 
I abstained. Not because I don't have an opinion, but because I think both. I do believe that the little things matter, but I'm also not convinced that they all matter, or matter that much. Here's what I do know:
I do not have blind devotion to Paul, or PRS
I am a consumer
I believe in spending my money on quality products
Over the years, I have had guitars by Hondo, Acer, Kramer, BC Rich, Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, Jackson, Charvel, Ernie Ball, G&L and PRS.
I currently have one EBMM, one Fender, and multiple PRS.
I have many PRS because I FEEL like they are the best for me. That is based solely on how they feel in my hands.
I trust that Paul has a vision and is passionate about his craft. I don't know that I feel that way about any other manufacturer.

Having said that, I put my trust, and therefore my cash, in his hands. Until that trust is broken, he's got my business. To this point, I don't see anything close to an action that would make me look elsewhere. I honestly don't believe other companies act in the same way as PRS does, unless we start talking about boutique builders. Even then, for the most part, communication is more than lacking from some of those sources. That's not something I've ever encountered in my dealings with PRS.

If you want to waste your time and energy bickering about blue vs. orange grommets, have at it. You're missing the point, and wasting energy that should be spent playing, or helping a little old lady cross the street. Be thankful for how good you've got it.
 
Important to remember that Paul is in a privileged position.

He can spend all day tweaking one element of a guitar and listening to the effect.

He also plays and hears more guitars in a day than most of us do in a lifetime.
(of course as the guy who runs a fairly sizable company I'm sure he doesn't do this every day, although it appears he does more of it nowadays than he did for a while there)

Anyway, that volume of experience gives Paul a perspective that few of us civilians have. As civilians go, I've played a LOT of guitars. Moreover I've had some excellent mentors who have helped me develop my listening skills. (hearing details of guitar sounds is very much a learned skill, btw) Based on my experience, I agree in broad principle with Paul's premise that the elements that contribute to the sound of a guitar are essentially subtractive, although I'd characterize it more as a recipe with a lot of ingredients. The issue I have with the Principle of Subtraction is that the logical endpoint of it is some sort of objective "perfection," i.e., an instrument where nothing detracts from the optimum performance.

Unless you're talking about a particularly spectacular violin (and, even then...) I don't think objective perfection, or "the best" exists. There's only a relative "best" -- best of show, whatever. And even then that assumes a common set of criteria which I doubt is ever really the case when we're talking about guitar (or violin) players.

Anyway, I like that Paul continually strives to tweak each part of the recipe. AFAIC the guitars show it.

I'd also observe (again based on experience) that there are other guitar builders who gone even further back to the basics in terms of questioning accepted elements of guitar design and coming up with strategies to obliterate elements that have traditionally been an Achilles heel or a major subtractive element. Exhibit A: the bridge on Ken Parker's archtop guitar.
 
Actually, even Paul agrees that it is probably impossible to reach "perfection", as evidenced by his Ted Talk.

His personal goal seems to be to approach perfection incrementally as far as possible, understanding that the laws of physics will thwart the ultimate goal.
 
Actually, even Paul agrees that it is probably impossible to reach "perfection", as evidenced by his Ted Talk.

His personal goal seems to be to approach perfection incrementally as far as possible, understanding that the laws of physics will thwart the ultimate goal.

Yeah, I think this is right on.

Certainly with the guitar there's an inherent inefficiency: the instrument has to make do with a seriously limited amount of input energy -- a pluck of our finger or with some little chip of something, and that's it. Well, unless it's electric and the amplifier is up loud enough (and/or nearby enough) that the sound waves add some energy to the equation. Unlike, say, a violin-family instrument where there's a bow, or a wind instrument where there's breath.
 
I believe a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So the guys who say you can only get great tone with a great amp probably have played through a wide variety of amps, and are right about that. And the guys who say you can only get great tone with a great guitar are probably right about that too.

And the guys who say cables don't matter have never played without cables...er, well, electric guitar without cables.

Now I realize that that didn't really answer the question, but I will also say that that model applies at an increasingly more fine level -- guitar -> tonewoods, frets, action, bridge, nut, etc., so yeah, I guess I completely agree with Paul's model.
 
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I agree with the fundamental concept that everything matters, but I also believe that results in guitar building are not always predictable.
 
Important to remember that Paul is in a privileged position.

He can spend all day tweaking one element of a guitar and listening to the effect.

He also plays and hears more guitars in a day than most of us do in a lifetime.
(of course as the guy who runs a fairly sizable company I'm sure he doesn't do this every day, although it appears he does more of it nowadays than he did for a while there)

Anyway, that volume of experience gives Paul a perspective that few of us civilians have. As civilians go, I've played a LOT of guitars. Moreover I've had some excellent mentors who have helped me develop my listening skills. (hearing details of guitar sounds is very much a learned skill, btw) Based on my experience, I agree in broad principle with Paul's premise that the elements that contribute to the sound of a guitar are essentially subtractive, although I'd characterize it more as a recipe with a lot of ingredients. The issue I have with the Principle of Subtraction is that the logical endpoint of it is some sort of objective "perfection," i.e., an instrument where nothing detracts from the optimum performance.

Unless you're talking about a particularly spectacular violin (and, even then...) I don't think objective perfection, or "the best" exists. There's only a relative "best" -- best of show, whatever. And even then that assumes a common set of criteria which I doubt is ever really the case when we're talking about guitar (or violin) players.

Anyway, I like that Paul continually strives to tweak each part of the recipe. AFAIC the guitars show it.

I'd also observe (again based on experience) that there are other guitar builders who gone even further back to the basics in terms of questioning accepted elements of guitar design and coming up with strategies to obliterate elements that have traditionally been an Achilles heel or a major subtractive element. Exhibit A: the bridge on Ken Parker's archtop guitar.

Well thought out and argued and I completely agree.

I am not 100% sure what Paul's theory of subtractive tone is; I haven't heard him talk about it.

On the other hand, I know very well what subtractive synthesis is, what the filters and envelopes do to the signal produced by an oscillator, and how to operate a subtractive synthesizer.

If you think of the pure note produced at the vibrating string, you have your oscillator. The parts of the guitar then act to subtract and shape, and even add resonance and harmonics, to that oscillating string. This is a thought I expressed a long time ago on another forum, or maybe here, and someone said, "That's what Paul Smith says, that a guitar is a subtractive device."

In synthesis, we talk about the effect of various tiny transistors on the sound of the synth much the way that guitar people talk about whether this pedal's germanium transistor sounds as good as that later copy of the germanium transistor - that measures the same, and should sound the same, but doesn't. No one can satisfactorily explain why. But most folks seem to accept this and move on without much argument.

In a similar way, people know that a Fender doesn't sound like a PRS doesn't sound like a Gibson doesn't sound like a this or that. All the brands of guitars, and all the different models, sound different. We have all experienced this. It's there because lots of small differences in construction add up.

The wood? Is it the neck tenon? Is it the scale length? The thickness of the headstock? Etc. On a macro level, two builders can make a solid body, mahogany and maple, set neck, stop tail, guitar and yet the guitars will sound different. Why?

Well, people like Paul Smith investigated the micro level. Maybe there are differences there, as with the transistor in my earlier example. Maybe the material used for the bridge mattered; maybe the paint mattered; maybe the type of wire used for the pickups mattered; maybe the metal for the fret wire mattered; maybe the type of plating on the bridge pins mattered...

I can say without qualification that the McCarty that arrived yesterday does not sound the same as the McCarty I bought in 2001. It sounds different. I personally think it sounds better, too, but that's beside the point. It sounds different. There are a lot of little reasons it sounds different, and the little reasons add up to something that to me, sounds better.

That's enough for me to say that Paul's ideas about tone, ideas that he's still developing, are good ideas. He's more likely than not, correct.

I can clearly hear the difference between my old McCartys and the new ones. I don't need to take the guitar apart to test the theory and substitute other parts. That's Paul's job, and he's done it well.

"Yeah, but it's mostly the pickups that are different."

Fine, I say (even though the headstock, tuning machines, bridge, plating, nut, paint and who knows what else are also different).

Why do the pickups sound different? The very thin wires used to wind them? The little magnets that are in them? The materials used in the bobbin? How the wire was wound? Et cetera. Et cetera. These are small things no one argues about any more, we can easily hear them because pickups are big, macro parts of guitar tone. However, they're also built on micro principles, just like guitars. They're made from lots of parts. And each part matters.

The tone of the guitars prove the point - because the point is the sum of the parts.

If you hear the difference in the tone between a PRS and some other guitar, great. If you bought one, you've done so presumably because it sounds the way you want a guitar to sound. It comes closer to that tone in your head. In the Great Guitar Election, with hundreds of brands competing for your money, you voted with your wallet about the tone, and whether or not you like Paul's theory about these tiny little things, you still did what he wanted you to do, namely, play his guitar instead of someone else's guitar.

If you bought one for looks and not tone, you bought the guitar with your eyes, and you've proven another of Paul's theories - that most people buy with their eyes.

If you bought one because it feels right, you've done so because yet another of Paul's theories is that a guitar has to feel right, playable out of the box.

If you bought one because it smells good, you're pretty weird. I don't know if Paul has a theory on that. ;)
 
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I don't think it matters. To me, some of much is said on the subject if gibberish from a technical perspective. It's fine and dandy to try to "explain" things in pseudo technical terms but it's not really much more than an analogy. That's fine. An engineer or a physicist would try to define the guitar "system" and develop sufficiently good models to not only explain, but predict the effects of woods, joints, pickups, etc. And that model would never have enough fidelity to be useful...so that isn't any better.

So we have a really good guitar maker who started out using tried and true formulas of the masters of yesteryear who then developed great instincts based on decades of directed trial and error to improve on the product.

The bottom line though is that PRS guitars sound, play (and look) better than most other guitars, to me anyway. And I suspect it is because the people at PRS sweat all manner of levels of detail....some percentage of which matters, and some percentage of which doesn't. If a theory of subtractive tone helps inform them on how to make a great product, it doesn't matter to me. They could decide that they need to paint the guitars only during certain phases of the moon, and it'd be fine with me. I doubt that it'd matter, but it indicates that they are really serious about defining a process to make the best instruments.
 
I don't think it matters. To me, some of much is said on the subject if gibberish from a technical perspective. It's fine and dandy to try to "explain" things in pseudo technical terms but it's not really much more than an analogy. That's fine. An engineer or a physicist would try to define the guitar "system" and develop sufficiently good models to not only explain, but predict the effects of woods, joints, pickups, etc. And that model would never have enough fidelity to be useful...so that isn't any better.

So we have a really good guitar maker who started out using tried and true formulas of the masters of yesteryear who then developed great instincts based on decades of directed trial and error to improve on the product.

The bottom line though is that PRS guitars sound, play (and look) better than most other guitars, to me anyway. And I suspect it is because the people at PRS sweat all manner of levels of detail....some percentage of which matters, and some percentage of which doesn't. If a theory of subtractive tone helps inform them on how to make a great product, it doesn't matter to me. They could decide that they need to paint the guitars only during certain phases of the moon, and it'd be fine with me. I doubt that it'd matter, but it indicates that they are really serious about defining a process to make the best instruments.


This post gets my (un)official seal of approval!! :)

Well, apart from the bit about a system model never having enough fidelity - as an engineer, I resent that ;-) But I do not doubt that a sufficient model has not yet been developed (there wouldn't be much point from a financial perspective, as about needed versus gain). And I have a feeling that many model predictions would drown in variance of parts. I expect that this, however, would also be true of empirical methods, and is (could be) a point in and of itself.

But right on about the rest - that's exactly how I think about this. The technical side interests me for reasons other than the musical side (academic interest), but I really don't see a conflict between the two.

I do not doubt that there are differences between two almost identical guitars - I just doubt we have the data/insight/whatever to make a distinction between what is the cause of these differences. This is why we should choose guitars on basis of tone and playability rather than specs, when possible... And when having to go by specs, go for what is generally regarded as the "big wins" - i.e. what is generally accepted as being the main contributors to tone. But of course guitarists are a contentious lot... :)

In the end, I don't think that only the attention to detail is the cause of PRS' success - it's also the PERCEPTION of the instruments as being the pinnacle of attention to detail. In this way, yes, it's part of the marketing of the product. I do not doubt the company is aware of this, and that they use this in their communication. This is not nefarious in any way, because I do not doubt that it's just for show. I think they truly believe what they preach.

OK, enough tangentiating (yes, that is now a word).
 
I am not 100% sure what Paul's theory of subtractive tone is; I haven't heard him talk about it.
Perhaps oversimplifying, but the essence is that you want to minimize the things that subtract from the sound.

And I think Aristotle has it right. I'm always curious what PRS is going to try next. I have some great guitars and the next little thing isn't likely to impact me, but it is still an interesting subject.
 
Perhaps oversimplifying, but the essence is that you want to minimize the things that subtract from the sound.

I think that's a corollary, not the main theory. The main theory is analogous to Les' description of synthesizer voicing. Basically, you start with a string stretched across two fixed points. You pluck that string with fingertip, fingernails, a chip of (whatever), and the string vibrates. Everything on the physical structure of the guitar itself subtracts energy from the strings' vibration in one way or another, the net result of which is, generally speaking, a filtering of the sound. So that's the starting point, the basic assumption from which everything else follows.

From that perspective, yeah, in some respects you want to "minimize the things that subtract from the sound" -- e.g., if maximizing the duration of the strings' vibration ("sustain") is a goal, which it certainly is in PRSh's worldview, you want to minimize anything that makes the strings' vibration die out more quickly. But you might also want the filtering to happen in ways that "sound good" in which case you might want to filter some things a little more strongly, i.e., increase something that subtracts from the sound in a certain way, maybe to reduce the response in some part of the frequency spectrum relative to the response in other parts for a more balanced voice.
 
I think that's a corollary, not the main theory. The main theory is analogous to Les' description of synthesizer voicing. Basically, you start with a string stretched across two fixed points. You pluck that string with fingertip, fingernails, a chip of (whatever), and the string vibrates. Everything on the physical structure of the guitar itself subtracts energy from the strings' vibration in one way or another, the net result of which is, generally speaking, a filtering of the sound. So that's the starting point, the basic assumption from which everything else follows.

From that perspective, yeah, in some respects you want to "minimize the things that subtract from the sound" -- e.g., if maximizing the duration of the strings' vibration ("sustain") is a goal, which it certainly is in PRSh's worldview, you want to minimize anything that makes the strings' vibration die out more quickly. But you might also want the filtering to happen in ways that "sound good" in which case you might want to filter some things a little more strongly, i.e., increase something that subtracts from the sound in a certain way, maybe to reduce the response in some part of the frequency spectrum relative to the response in other parts for a more balanced voice.

Yes! As demonstrated by Paul's (or the company's - can't remember where I read it) description of the 85/15, which has a bit of reduction in the lower low mids.
 
There are many great guitar make's out there And I've been lucky to play a few, but when I look at the attention to detail and build of Paul's guitars I honestly believe the consistency is second to none. taking care of all the small things adds up to the end product. I've always been concerned if the Gibson / Fender etc will suit me if I were to buy online. I don't have this concern with a PRS and to put my money where my mouth is i'm in the process of doing so with a very good retailer from America and for that reason that's why I personally believe it does matter.
 
I agree and disagree... there are little things that i believe do make a difference, but they're major little things. I don't believe for one second when I see people talking about things like felt backing on strap buttons or the type of screws used to attach components make any difference at all.
 
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