Tonewoods explained

[Greywolf]

A client ask me about wood properties .. here is a good starting place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonewood
( Her question are Spruce and Pine good woods for electrics, the answer ..Sprice is king for Archtops and Acoustics , pine is too soft and was used on early Fenders because Leo was cheap)

Holding to Paul's and Les Paul's perspective .. the denser the wood , the less subtractive it is to the strings vibration .

My easy rules of thumb ..the harder the wood the brighter the tone , and the more air in the body , the more air in the tone .

 

[theDeepender]

Personally, I think you are right on. There have been lists made that describe in more detail the sonic characteristics of tone woods. I just don’t remember where I saw them right now.

That said, there are many on the web (don’t think you’ll find many here) that would take a bullet defending their position that wood makes no difference at all. They, in my opinion, have issues…

 

[Greywolf]

Paul has stated many times it does...and my 41 years as a Luthier agree ..Wood makes a BIG difference .
The neck wood is the most crucial tone wise as that's where it all starts. One of the reasons I have a large collection is for clients to play as many wood combinations as possible when deciding what they want . Same with my Wood library . I love having them tap test a 4x4x4' Cocobolo neck billet ... it rings like a Marimba , I have 1 pernambuco neck blank .. same story

If any of you are passing through the ATL , drop me a line I'd be more than happy to share a cup of tea and wander through tone land .

 

[László]

Tonewoods matter, and I agree that it all starts with the neck (and fretboard) materials.

Long experience tells me that everything matters, and as you say, it’s a process of subtraction, not much different really from the concept of subtractive synthesis, where filters, modulators, and resonators operate on the waveform along with ADSR envelopes.

In the case of the guitar, the things that create the filtering, modulation, and envelope are the woods and hardware. I think of the strings and electronics as the oscillators.

It’s just an analogy, and of course, no analogy is perfect, but it’s how I think about these concepts as a synthesist.

 

[Bogner]

I Agree The Woods Matter. I Also Agree The Neck And All It Entails (Woods, Fretboard And Nut Material, Break Angle Of The Headstock, Etc Make A Massive Difference). If I May Get A Bit Off Track Here Briefly....Frequency Is Everything. Everything We Are And Do And That Is Around Us Is Frequency. I Would Be Very Curious To Know How The Guitars/Woods/Etc That We Like Relate To Frequency. As People, We Have Our Own, Unique, Individual Frequency. I Wonder How Or If That All Ties Together With The Instruments We Like And That Sonically Appeal To Us. For Example, If 528hz Is Your Frequency It Would Be Cool To Have An Instrument With That Frequency. Maybe They Can Measure Woods Like That? I Have No Idea But I Would Be Curious To Know More About This Type Of Thing And If The Favorites Of My Collection Are In A Similar Frequency Spectrum.

 

[Greywolf]

Guitars all have their favorite resonant frequencies , tuning for a specific would be a task

 

[Bogner]

Guitars all have their favorite resonant frequencies , tuning for a specific would be a task

Agreed...It Would Sure Be Cool If We Knew And Could Measure That Information Though. Or At Least The Thought Of It Seems Cool...LOL.

 

[Greywolf]

The technology exists and has for a long time to measure it, and luthiers have ben tap tuning acoustic tops since the Stradivari days ..for solid bodies I suspect Paul could or has gone down that rabbit hole.

 

[Jcub]

With respect to Stradivari, peer-reviewed studies have shown that the idea that old violins (like the Stradivarius) are preferred to modern violins is incorrect - https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1405851111. The underlying studies cited in this review article are interesting. Here is one quote from the review article:

“What's going on then? Why does the folk belief that old instruments sound better persist? A cognitive explanation is that this phenomenon represents the influence of top-down processing, that is, expectation-driven perception, as opposed to stimulus-driven perception. Top-down processing was perhaps most compellingly demonstrated by Stroop (4) and later by Biederman et al. (5), and Palmer et al. (6). More recently, top-down processing has been demonstrated in the reading of musical notation (7), emotion regulation (8), and in the restoration of speech intelligibility among cochlear implant users (9). Top-down processing is well known to change perception, as demonstrated in a number of visual illusions, such as Kanizsa's illusory triangles (Fig. 1) (10). . . . In short, simply knowing that an instrument has a certain pedigree or history could activate expectations for its sound that cause neural circuits—even lower level sensory-perceptual ones—to behave differently than they would without that knowledge. We may really believe that they sound better, even if there is no acoustic difference in the distal world.”

 

[aamefford]

There is specific instrumentation for doing this. It’s used in aerospace and turbomachinery at a minimum. Basically an instrumented hammer and sensors placed on the item in question. Tapping in different places and moving the sensors around allow the device home in on the resonant frequencies of the item under test. I don’t know if this is used in luthier work.

That’s all I’ve got!

 

[Screamingdaisy]

I'm in the "everything affects everything else" camp.

Honestly, I don't know why some people can't tell the difference between different wood types. I've run into too many examples of being able to identify what a guitar is made out of just by playing it. I've also installed the exact same pickup in numerous Les Pauls with all of them retaining their same basic sound independent of the pickup attached to it, so IMO the idea that the pickup dictates the sound is foolish.

PRS presents an interesting opportunity to try out different woods in more or less identical guitars. I noticed it the first time I picked up a Custom 24 and thought it reminded me of an SG. Turns out it was a solid mahogany Standard 24. Had a similar experience with a CE24 (old version) due to the maple neck. Not that I thought it sounded more Fender, but it had a different attack envelope than what I was used to with a mahogany neck.

It's not really an argument I care to win or loose. If someone doesn't believe in wood it makes zero difference to the decisions I'll make about my gear.

 

[theDeepender]

 

[deathworlder]

A client ask me about wood properties .. here is a good starting place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonewood
( Her question are Spruce and Pine good woods for electrics, the answer ..Sprice is king for Archtops and Acoustics , pine is too soft and was used on early Fenders because Leo was cheap)

Holding to Paul's and Les Paul's perspective .. the denser the wood , the less subtractive it is to the strings vibration .

My easy rules of thumb ..the harder the wood the brighter the tone , and the more air in the body , the more air in the tone .

What are your thoughts on cocobolo? I've read quite a few luthiers who say it's the ultimate rosewood, comparing it to the quality of Brazilian rosewood of days gone by.

I'm trying to get a better understanding of density vs hardness vs oil content.

Cocobolo is harder, denser and oiler than other available rosewoods.
Did Brazilian rosewood from the good old days share similar characteristics?

 

[Greywolf]

Cocobolo for my ears is the preferred rosewood . Brazilian is amazing , I just find Coco a bit more pleasing to my ears.

I have several of both In regards to the Old vs New .. There have been Master Luthiers at many points during history , a real Strad is just amazing , I've been lucky to hear a few. Bob Benedetto, Jim D'Aquisto made some magnificent instruments ..

While good woods are essential , it is the hands of the Master as with playing that make all the difference.

 

[xxxadixxx]

@Greywolf in your view, how do you view the impact of tone wood when played with gain? That is where I get stuck. I can see the case for clean tone because the guitar provides a larger portion of the response. In the case of a heavily distorted signal it would seem to be less impactful because the signal itself is being changed electronically. It is difficult for me to wrap my head around the difference in neck woods (for example) when my signal is going through a boost, EQ, into an SLO. With that being said, I would be 100% on board with the idea of it being significant if I were playing into a clean Twin Reverb or something. Am I thinking about this incorrectly or missing something?

 

[Greywolf]

you are correct . The more you mask the original signal with ANY processing , the less evident the sonic differences show.

If you are into heavily processed tone , then it is logical that you would gravitate towards the least subtractive materials.

 

[Screamingdaisy]

On the subject of gain,

IMO... It still matters. Garbage in = garbage out.

Gain amplifies and exaggerates frequencies. It can't boost what isn't there. If the guitar is missing mids or highs or lows, it can't magically invent them. It can modify what's there, but it can't create something out of nothing.

Now... being realistic, how important is wood in the grand scheme of things? I think that depends on the individual, the mix, how picky they are, etc. As the sound of the amplifier starts to take over and become more dominant, things like attack envelope, compression, sustain, harmonics, frequency balance, etc are still important.

At this point is anyone going to listen to your high gain tone in a mix and go, I think he's using a maple neck with a cocobolo fingerboard? No. But, maybe you have multiple guitars and prefer the response of one over the other and how that specific guitar makes your amp behave... and maybe that guitar just happens to have a maple neck with a cocobolo fingerboard.

That's why I'm in the everything affects everything else camp. The end result is the sum of everything up until that point.

And, lets face it. I don't think most of us think about this all that hard. I either like a guitar or I don't, although I seem to have a preference for guitars that sound/respond a certain way, and those guitars seem to have common materials/hardware for some reason...

 

[dogrocketp]

Organic response is always the best measure of a guitar. If you like the way it sounds, it’s a good one.

 

[Bogner]

 

[László]

With respect to Stradivari, peer-reviewed studies have shown that the idea that old violins (like the Stradivarius) are preferred to modern violins is incorrect - https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1405851111. The underlying studies cited in this review article are interesting. Here is one quote from the review article:

“What's going on then? Why does the folk belief that old instruments sound better persist? A cognitive explanation is that this phenomenon represents the influence of top-down processing, that is, expectation-driven perception, as opposed to stimulus-driven perception. Top-down processing was perhaps most compellingly demonstrated by Stroop (4) and later by Biederman et al. (5), and Palmer et al. (6). More recently, top-down processing has been demonstrated in the reading of musical notation (7), emotion regulation (8), and in the restoration of speech intelligibility among cochlear implant users (9). Top-down processing is well known to change perception, as demonstrated in a number of visual illusions, such as Kanizsa's illusory triangles (Fig. 1) (10). . . . In short, simply knowing that an instrument has a certain pedigree or history could activate expectations for its sound that cause neural circuits—even lower level sensory-perceptual ones—to behave differently than they would without that knowledge. We may really believe that they sound better, even if there is no acoustic difference in the distal world.”

Here’s the thing:

In the end, it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether a listening panel can correctly identify the Strad. It’s irrelevant.

It matters whether the person playing the Strad is inspired to make his or her best music.

Music is art. Whatever works for the player, works. Whether the big deal about the instrument is or isn’t imaginary is hardly the point.

It might be extra inspiration. Maybe you’ll play better. That would be a good result.

It’s like playing Jimi Hendrix’ actual amp. Or Jimmy Page’s LP. That’s provenance, right? Might give you an extra special inspiration for a session or a show.

Personally, I think the interplay between the hands, ears and brain when producing a note varies from instrument to instrument. Some are more ‘that’ than others.

It ain’t science. It doesn’t need to be science. Just roll with it.