Wood

[Californiaman]

Here ya' go gentlemen.

The mother of all mohagany slabs.

It can be yours. You just have to pick it up, or have it delivered.

 

30-year-old mohagany

[badbluesplayer]

Good to have you back!!

 

Don't worry, Neo's not back.

[pippy]

Good to have you back!!

Have a peek at the date.....

 

 

P.

[Dave J]

There are many variations on the "Mahogany" theme.

There are numerous tight-grained woods grown around the world that can be pore-filled and sanded.

They can then be painted translucent red, and look like Mahogany.

 

To think that there are boats making monthly trips from Honduras to China would be silly.

 

Betcha a dollar that the wood used in Epiphone production is grown someplace close by.

Philippines, maybe?

 

To say the wood has been grown someplace close by, huh. I live in a forestry based community located in south western British Columbia Canada (to those in the USA that is the Greater north west). Over the last several decades because of the global economy the local mills have been down sizes and the raw timber has been shipped by the freighter load to China. Not only that but we have a manufacturing plant in our town that specializes in guitar blanks for the Asian market.

 

So in other words that wood can come from any where..

 

Does one sound better then the other, that depends who is putting there heart and soul into playing the finished product.

 

Davej

[Notes_Norton]

IMHO on an electric guitar, if it matters at all, it matters to an extremely insignificant degree - in other words, for all practical purposes wood doesn't matter.

 

Why?

 

The magnetic pickups are not microphones. If they are wound properly, you can mute strings, and yell into the pickup and your voice will not come out the amplifier speaker. The pickups work on the interaction of metal moving through a magnetic field which induces an electric current into the coil and sends it to the amplifier to be processed.

 

True, the guitar itself will be vibrating a bit, changing the distance between the pickups and the strings, which in theory should distort the pure sine wave produced by the vibrating strings, but especially with a solid body guitar, this should be a tiny percentage. And in engineering, anything under 10% is usually completely insignificant.

 

Then once the signal leaves the guitar it is going to go through any combination of FX pedals, pre-amplifiers, amplifiers, and speakers, each of which will distort the original signal. No electronic device is completely transparent.

 

I have two almost identical guitars. A Gibson ES330 and an Epiphone Casino. Since the top of a hollow body guitar vibrates more than the body of a solid guitar does, the vibrations of the body, and therefore the effect the wood has on the sound of the guitar should be more pronounced on these guitars.

 

Since they are archtop hollow body guitars, they are also acoustic guitars. In acoustic guitars the wood does matter and when played acoustically, the Gibson sounds much better than the Epiphone. Better wood, nitro finish, and whatever else makes up the acoustic-ness of the guitar.

 

Plug them in and the Epiphone with aftermarket pickups sounds quite a bit better than the Gibson. Different pickups have more effect on the tone of a guitar than the wood. And since the pickups are magnetic and not microphonic, that makes a lot of sense.

 

So I've said this for years, and despite the opposition from the believers in wood, I continue to say, "Tonewood - Smonewood"

 

But of course, you have a right to disagree.

 

Notes ♫

[rct]

IMHO on an electric guitar, if it matters at all, it matters to an extremely insignificant degree - in other words, for all practical purposes wood doesn't matter.

 

Why?

 

The magnetic pickups are not microphones. If they are wound properly, you can mute strings, and yell into the pickup and your voice will not come out the amplifier speaker. The pickups work on the interaction of metal moving through a magnetic field which induces an electric current into the coil and sends it to the amplifier to be processed.

 

True, the guitar itself will be vibrating a bit, changing the distance between the pickups and the strings, which in theory should distort the pure sine wave produced by the vibrating strings, but especially with a solid body guitar, this should be a tiny percentage. And in engineering, anything under 10% is usually completely insignificant.

 

Then once the signal leaves the guitar it is going to go through any combination of FX pedals, pre-amplifiers, amplifiers, and speakers, each of which will distort the original signal. No electronic device is completely transparent.

 

I have two almost identical guitars. A Gibson ES330 and an Epiphone Casino. Since the top of a hollow body guitar vibrates more than the body of a solid guitar does, the vibrations of the body, and therefore the effect the wood has on the sound of the guitar should be more pronounced on these guitars.

 

Since they are archtop hollow body guitars, they are also acoustic guitars. In acoustic guitars the wood does matter and when played acoustically, the Gibson sounds much better than the Epiphone. Better wood, nitro finish, and whatever else makes up the acoustic-ness of the guitar.

 

Plug them in and the Epiphone with aftermarket pickups sounds quite a bit better than the Gibson. Different pickups have more effect on the tone of a guitar than the wood. And since the pickups are magnetic and not microphonic, that makes a lot of sense.

 

So I've said this for years, and despite the opposition from the believers in wood, I continue to say, "Tonewood - Smonewood"

 

But of course, you have a right to disagree.

 

Notes ♫

 

It's exasperating to see our world come to this. I've had people tell me to my face they can tell honduran from madagascaran mahogany by listening.

 

rct

[pippy]

It's exasperating to see our world come to this. I've had people tell me to my face they can tell honduran from madagascaran mahogany by listening.

 

rct

The 'Wood' argument which I believe is the biggest nonsense is the myth of Brazillian Rosewood.

 

By the time the completed neck-unit of a Les Paul, say, has been glued and jointed to the body, what used to be a thin slab of wood has had 22 relatively deep slots cut fully across its width and a significant quantity of wood removed from 9 of the resultant sections in order for the inlays to be fitted. Any 'Tap-Ring' the wood might have had originally will have pretty much disappeared completely by this stage. It's glued - very strongly - to the mahogany lump which makes up the bulk of the neck mass. The mass of the actual 'board by this stage is, relative to the mass of the rest of the wood which makes up the guitar, a tiny percentage.

 

Yet some people say they can tell a guitar with a Brazillian rosewood board from that with any other species of rosewood 'board. Personally, I doubt it very much indeed.

 

And, as has been said before, by the time the Drummer and Bassist kick in.....

 

P.

[rct]

Tap Tuning started as a joke. Nobody ever thought anyone would run with it the way it has been run with. Tap Tuning, as applied to guitar blanks, was a joke, and nothing more. Unbelievable how quickly tap tuners came out of the woodwork.

 

rct

[retrosurfer1959]

Wood makes some difference I don't think it's huge on and electric guitar but it's there slightly, On electric guitars I think a lot of the wood is cosmetic and better guitars get built with higher end wood. But I have some great sounding guitars built of lucite, Metal and even carbon fiber and they all sound very good. Now on and acoustic the wood is second only to the quality of the build itself, cheap acoustic guitars sound a certain way and it's not the same as a high end well built guitar.

[daveinspain]

I don't believe that wood would matter that much in the tone of a solid body guitar. Aesthetics is another story. Wood matters very much in the beauty of a guitar that has a stain, natural or burst finish. A solid color guitar could have any chunk of wood under it and sound great if it has good electronics and set-up...

[martinh]

Thinking about this in physics terms, the wood does have some effect, even in a solid body instrument. If we start with a string being plucked, the vibration of the string is going to eventually subside for three reasons: The first is energy lost to external friction between the string and the air surrounding it; the second is "internal friction" in which the string energy is converted into heat within the string by stretching it, and the third, which we are concerned with, the loss of energy in the vibrating string because it is transferred to the body and dissipated.

This is, of course, critical to the tone of an acoustic instrument, in that the sound is created by this transfer of energy from the string to the top. However, even some acoustic makers believe that the construction of the instrument is a far more important factor than the wood, Bob Taylor famously made a very good sounding acoustic from the remains of an Oak shipping pallet that was used to deliver materials to his factory, just to prove this point.

In an electric, the entire idea is to dissipate as little energy as possible into the body, hence the sustain of an electric instrument that an acoustic cannot achieve. However some energy is dissipated, and the resonant frequencies at which the body moves, dissipating or reinforcing certain harmonics, will have an effect.

That said, I think it's highly overrated. Although I would suspect that many board members could tell the difference between a Les Paul with and without the maple cap when given two instruments side by side, I doubt that many could pick one or the other without another instrument to compare against. By the time the instrument is in a mix on a recording, I doubt that one in 500 could identify the type of body wood used. There are just so many other factors that go into tone that have a larger contribution.

[rct]

In an electric, the entire idea is to dissipate as little energy as possible into the body, hence the sustain of an electric instrument that an acoustic cannot achieve. However some energy is dissipated, and the resonant frequencies at which the body moves, dissipating or reinforcing certain harmonics, will have an effect.

 

Here is where I part ways with most guitar players, but not most makers. My experience has been that in the overall equation of what makes my guitars sound like my guitars, the same amp(s) and the same guitar(s) will sound sometimes dramatically different when different players play them. The body of the guitar player, the way he or she plays it, grip, strength, and that one undefinable thing called "will", those things make far more difference in the apparent sustain and tone of an electric guitar. My main amp knows when I am in front of it with my Tele, and it responds exactly the same each and every time, and with my Les Paul, Strat. Put someone else in same spot, same kn0b settings, same guitar, same song, it is an entirely different amp. I will the guitar and amp to do the things I do with them, all guitar players that ever pick up my brick tele and stand in front of the much maligned Prosonic can not and do not get what I get out of it, their will is directed in different ways at different equipment that they have mastered the use of.

 

When I was 17 and a little too schm0ked up if you get me, I was visiting Great Southern as they were getting ready for a show at our local college. Mr. Betts was just sitting in a lawn chair, canna Bud in his right hand, Marlbl in his left, let the four of us plonk at the white les paul you see on some of the records back then. We sounded like 17 year olds trying to play a guitar that had strings like bridge cables aboutta halfan inch up from the twelfth fret, it was impossible to play. He, unplugged, half loaded, squinting through marlbl smoke, sounded like only him can sound. It was profound for me. It was when I understood, after 6 years of playing, three of them in bands, I understood why guitars sound like they do. And that when you KNOW yer sound, when you find it, and then you take advantage of it and you refine it and you love it and protect it, you become much more comfortable with yourself playing the guitar. Suddenly you don't even consider the latest pedal, you don't even think about getting three more choruses. You just play, knowing what to expect and learning to enjoy what you, yourself, bring to whichever guitar and amp you are using.

 

Wood, pick material, relative positions of the stars, they all have about the same impact on what comes outta the amp. You have far more than most people would care to acknowledge, and I don't know why they won't.

 

rct

[martinh]

Here is where I part ways with most guitar players, but not most makers. My experience has been that in the overall equation of what makes my guitars sound like my guitars, the same amp(s) and the same guitar(s) will sound sometimes dramatically different when different players play them. The body of the guitar player, the way he or she plays it, grip, strength, and that one undefinable thing called "will", those things make far more difference in the apparent sustain and tone of an electric guitar. rct

 

I agree completely When I was running a small studio in the 90's, I would often "have a quick go" on the rig that an excellent player had left set up while the band went to lunch, dinner etc. My experience was that a combination of amp and instrument that sounded great with its owner playing it often sounded like hell when I used it.

This is why, although I find the "gearhed" discussions facinating from a technical standpoint, I think the effect of equipment in general is way overrated. I've had more than one young friend explain to me that their album was cut using " a fifty year old tube mic preamp , a 1957 tube amp and a vintage sixteen track two -inch machine, and mastered onto a four track that came from Abbey road" - (someone actually told me this with great pride) and yet I can only listen to it twice because the songs and playing are average.