...Can we wrap this conversation up so we can start mythbusting tone wood already?
Like balls you will!! :0)
...Was thinking about this today. Maybe this is just the sign of the times? ...People re-sampling audio – reducing a guitar’s input to 0s and 1s, manipulating digitally, and stringing the resulting code back-together in ever entertaining ways.
Hey, my soul isn't stainless in this arena. ..I was doing a bit of recording yesterday, and I thought to myself ,“Self! Y’know what I need?.. I need me a male choir.. Yup! That’s what I need!”
So, I looked around. ...and snagged something called “The Orchestra” by Best Service ..an amazing piece of software really. Samples of everything “orchestra”, with a very decent engine you can use to manipulate those samples with. You know midi, you tweak the samples - feed the resultant racket into your Midi track editor.
Sounds JUST like the Real Thing!
I BET, you could get a REAL Violin, ....and one of those samples.... :0)
Midi..
Remember when midi first came out? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but you had an option of “OomPaPaa!” and “MeeeeMeee!” noises to craft creative excellence with.. :0/ ..Now? Violins. Pianos, Flutes Oboes, ...Guitars even – can’t tell them from the real thing!!! ...Because they are samples of the real thing, that you can manipulate in...ever entertaining ways.
Now, I’m sure there are people on this forum who have played a violin or whatnot with an orchestra – or a guitar even - and are mid-eye-roll as we speak...because.. You can sample whatever you like, the perfection in music is it’s nuances, it’s imperfections, it’s humanization. An instrument’s beauty is a culmination of the little things.
Being around more amps than good modelers, back in the day, we had a choice – good sound, or bad sound, and you would buy gear to get as good a good-sound as you could afford. The higher quality the guitar and amp the better the sound (always).
These days.. It’s more zeros and ones..
As to your original premise - You never did explain why taking the pickup out of one guitar, and putting that same pickup in another, creates such drastic differences in sound, using the same settings.
It can only be one thing.. ;0)
My issue with your premise, that IRs negate the importance of the instrument and all that goes into it, is just that. Lack of respect for the instrument.
...Now if you want to reduce everything to the manipulation of samples/IRs.. Shouldn’t we just be going the whole hog? Cut Guitars with their IRs out of the equation and replace everything with midi? Hey, you don’t even need a guitar to play guitar, you just hit a key, or draw little blocks into your DAW’s midi editor.. With a little tweaking, eq’ing, Sounds just like the real thing!
..Hell, we don’t even hafta tweak that sampled midi anymore, in Studio One 4 Professional (for example) – it has an option – get this - “humanize” .. it takes midi input and makes it imperfect in human ways.
Phhh ...These times we live in.
But..Remember when we just had a “guitar” and an “amp”.. and quality – what a guitar and amp were comprised of, and how you played it, meant something?
Here’s another conundrum for us to tweak on over a cup of coffee and a sugary donut.
“Tone is in the fingers” .. Is it?
.. Now, if, these days, guitars don’t matter, and samples (IRs) are the only things that DO matter.. then, it would follow that neither does how we uniquely play guitars. So, “Tone is in the fingers” .. is it really ..or do we have an IR for that now?
Here-be another question – YOUR rig gets struck by lightning one night before the BIG Show.. Luckily, the Gods smiled upon you, and you manage to scrounge up an amp and a guitar and a couple of stomp boxes. Do you hope you find a good amp and a good guitar and some good stomp boxes, or some crap bargain basement stuff?
Honestly....Which would you hope to find?
... All BS aside, My issue is simply this.. You seem to be negating the instrument, over the processing. It’s one thing to say “well., we have an IR for that”.. it’s another thing entirely to say that the instrument, what it’s made from, the engineering, materials and craftsmanship that goes into a guitar just doesn’t matter.
I play guitar, been playing for a spell.. A guitar, what it’s made from, how it’s put together, to me? ...well ..it really does matter..
A few years ago – before IRs - I used a programmable digital EQ and EQ’d all my guitars through my rig to sound roughly the same as each other. Never really worked out.. Some of my guitars are so-very different from one another – no amount of tweaking would iron out their lumpiness.. So! That didn't last long..
Then ..Why would you have “guitars”... if you wanted them to all sound the same?
Me? I much prefer to use guitars to shape my sound these days – “Old School”, you might say. But, I do ..I like to grab "a different tool for the job", when it’s called for .. Works for me. ...and I can do that because each guitar, and the sounds that they make, are different. ..They just are.
..and you can do all the literary gymnastics as that you like, trying to negate the instrument in favor of impulse responses .. But ..I would imagine that - generally - you may have a tough sell on your hands regarding your theory.
Because – well ..pretty-much to a man, we all play guitars. :0) ..and since there is nothing special about me, I would hazard a guess that many of us have noticed those differences between guitars, pickups, construction and woods, you seemingly haven't.
No doubt.. Just like today's Midi. ..IRs and samples are a wonderful thing.. Can be anyway ...But they are not All things. And just like that "Male Choir" 'instrument'" ... These things do not replace the real things..