shemihazazel
Fractal Fanatic
Pickups make a HUUUUUGE difference. When I got a new guitar in the spring, it came loaded with a Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge. It sounded like hot garbage with my presets no matter how much tweaking I did.
seems at least possible that the type of wood would promote/detur the vibration, and reflection of that vibration of the string, and as such, change the signature/effect/interruption imparted on the magnetic field of a pickup... but so far as I know no one has proven or disproven this.....I still believe most guitar players do not understand the difference between pickups and microphones. They have magnets in them. They "pick up" what your strings are doing. They don't pick up what wood is doing because it's not made of metal. Hence - tone wood is not real. Most people will change strings when they swap out pickups - that string change made a bigger difference in tone than the pickup change.
Of course pickups make a difference - single coil vs humbucker vs passive vs active... but most of time people switch out very similar pickups to their guitars like f.ex. replacing their Gibson PAF style pickups with some other PAF style pickups just like what I did the OP. The difference is a couple of decibels of pre-EQ. Try simulating this by placing an EQ block in front of your amp block and scoop out the middle frequencies by 1-2dB and you'll have an understanding of what that difference will be. For me that kind of a difference "doesn't matter". That being said - all my guitars have proper pickups in them.
Take the strings off of your guitar, plug it in, and crank up your amp. Now tap on your guitar. What do you hear?I still believe most guitar players do not understand the difference between pickups and microphones. They have magnets in them. They "pick up" what your strings are doing. They don't pick up what wood is doing because it's not made of metal. Hence - tone wood is not real.
I still believe most guitar players do not understand the difference between pickups and microphones. They have magnets in them. They "pick up" what your strings are doing. They don't pick up what wood is doing because it's not made of metal. Hence - tone wood is not real. Most people will change strings when they swap out pickups - that string change made a bigger difference in tone than the pickup change.
Of course pickups make a difference - single coil vs humbucker vs passive vs active... but most of time people switch out very similar pickups to their guitars like f.ex. replacing their Gibson PAF style pickups with some other PAF style pickups just like what I did the OP. The difference is a couple of decibels of pre-EQ. Try simulating this by placing an EQ block in front of your amp block and scoop out the middle frequencies by 1-2dB and you'll have an understanding of what that difference will be. For me that kind of a difference "doesn't matter". That being said - all my guitars have proper pickups in them.
If you can't hear the HUGE difference between the pickups in this video you should see an ear doctor.
Sort of. The strings are mounted to the body. As they vibrate, they transfer energy through the hardware into the body, and the body vibrates with its characteristic resonances (press the back of a guitar against your ear and play it; you'll hear the wood vibrate with radically different EQ from what you hear directly off the strings).I may be wrong, but I expect that wood choice wood behave a bit like an ADSR that affects different frequencies differently.
I expect you're right.If you were to build a guitar out of hard cheese, I don't expect it wood sound very good.
Infinitely? Objectively, no. But there are certainly larger factors in the tone of a solid-body electric guitar.So many factors go into a guitar tone that is of infinitely greater importance then the wood of your guitar.
All true.New strings are a factor, pickup height is a factor, the pick you use is a factor, how you pick your string is a factor, the effects you use are a factor, your amp is a factor, your cabinets or IR's are a factor, how do you feel that day is a factor.
The body affects the strings and what you hear. The word "tonewood" is an artificial construct.Tonewood? That's between the ears. Does the body vibrate with the strings? Sure. Does it have an impact on the overall sound. Probably. Is it as great as tonewood believers make it out to be? Not at all.
A knife that cuts both ways.We are not objective creatures, we do not perceive reality in an objective way. We don't even perceive reality at all. All we perceive is a reality that our mind constructs for us. We are the stars in a movie that plays in our brain. This is why some people when faced with even overwhelming evidence to the contrary will still continue to adhere to their old beliefs. Because when faced with the invalidation of everything they believe in they would rather double down and construct a new reality.
I still believe most guitar players do not understand the difference between pickups and microphones. They have magnets in them. They "pick up" what your strings are doing. They don't pick up what wood is doing because it's not made of metal. Hence - tone wood is not real. Most people will change strings when they swap out pickups - that string change made a bigger difference in tone than the pickup change.
Of course pickups make a difference - single coil vs humbucker vs passive vs active... but most of time people switch out very similar pickups to their guitars like f.ex. replacing their Gibson PAF style pickups with some other PAF style pickups just like what I did the OP. The difference is a couple of decibels of pre-EQ. Try simulating this by placing an EQ block in front of your amp block and scoop out the middle frequencies by 1-2dB and you'll have an understanding of what that difference will be. For me that kind of a difference "doesn't matter". That being said - all my guitars have proper pickups in them.
Here's a video showing that the bass response disappears with less body material.
Something funny, though, is that the person making the video says the difference isn't that big to him. But not only do I hear appreciable differences (the less body, the thinner, twangier the sound, the quicker the note fade-off), but the frequency analyzer demos (at around 8:38 in the video) plainly show that the less body material there is, the less bass there is and also that the bass decays faster.
I love how ear doctors get recommended in these conversations when the people making the biggest hit records in the industry are old enough to have age based hearing loss and not only that - they've been listening to loud amps all their life. You'll never hear me praise my hearing even though I am personally confident with it - I've had it tested a couple of times and I have a really good frequency range but I believe it has nothing to do with understanding good guitar tone. I pity the fool who thinks they have better hearing than everyone else - most of the times they're the ones who in reality aren't confident with their hearing. I much prefer measuring differences and having actual proof of something rather than try and make a case based on my personal feelings on the matter. Feelings aren't reliable - feelings change based on the color of the wood or based on what you had for breakfast. And once again what "matters" or not is subjective. I didn't say "there's no difference". That's very different from something having such a small difference that it doesn't matter to me personally.You should take the advice to visit the ear doctor