The importance of the body of a guitar

The guy in the video in the first post had the guitar lying on a table... Bad way of doing such a demonstration!
 
Users do on their vids.
Not Youtube's fault! But yes, they do so and there should be a way to burn their fingers while doing it ;) Keyboards and mice, that don't just illuminate when it's dark, but catch fire when old mp3 is being used.
 
Then again, when will you EVER be able to dime a 100w stack in a concert hall when most of us can't even make it past the small bars stage. ;) In my experience on this board people that actually play in concert halls don't post on forums, at best only their techs do.
That comment was from some big player. Angus or Keith or someone in a rig rundown type video some years back.

Those days are long gone for output volume.

Earlier comparisons to religious beliefs is exactly correct regarding this subject. It moves past science into an article of faith, and no amount of reason or physics can dissuade the persuaded.
 
That comment was from some big player. Angus or Keith or someone in a rig rundown type video some years back.

Those days are long gone for output volume.

Earlier comparisons to religious beliefs is exactly correct regarding this subject. It moves past science into an article of faith, and no amount of reason or physics can dissuade the persuaded.

Ok, where's the hard science on this? Where are the studies?
 
Ok, where's the hard science on this? Where are the studies?
Edit-
Some was posted earlier.
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/21/5395

Bottom line is it doesn't matter. I'll upload a clip, and you think you can tell me what the neck is made of? Or the body. What nut material is present?That's absurd.

The strings suspend between a nut and a bridge or a fret and a bridge. A magnetic field produces the signal to the amp.

This crap has been beat to death. Believe what you like. I don't have the time.
 
Last edited:
Edit-
Some was posted earlier.
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/21/5395

Bottom line is it doesn't matter. I'll upload a clip, and you think you can tell me what the neck is made of? Or the body. What nut material is present?That's absurd.

The strings suspend between a nut and a bridge or a fret and a bridge. A magnetic field produces the signal to the amp.

This crap has been beat to death. Believe what you like. I don't have the time.
This subject 😀
 
Edit-
Some was posted earlier.
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/21/5395

Bottom line is it doesn't matter. I'll upload a clip, and you think you can tell me what the neck is made of? Or the body. What nut material is present?That's absurd.

The strings suspend between a nut and a bridge or a fret and a bridge. A magnetic field produces the signal to the amp.

This crap has been beat to death. Believe what you like. I don't have the time.

How do you conclude from these that bodywood isn't important? This seems to me about difference between old and new instruments.
 
How do you conclude from these that bodywood isn't important? This seems to me about difference between old and new instruments.
Those studies were posted earlier by another. There is no study on this subject. At least not that I've ever seen. These would deal more with the "magic" in vintage instruments so many vintage instrument dealers claim. Seems to still stand in the realm of psychoacoustic phenomena.

There are some trying to obtain funding for such a study in the interest of sourcing alternative woods for environmental impact. But nothing ongoing AFAIK.

The wood of an electric guitar is of zero concern to me after 26 years of playing them and several dozen bought and sold.

The same arguments go for tubes, cables, capacitors, conductive metals. Even the owners of artisan metal toy tops argue about the materials, and what they impart.

There are industries that rely heavily on the mythos of materials magic. They've invested heavily into perpetuating them. $5k phonograph cartridges are a great example.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

When I want a darker tone, I turn down the Tone knob. If I want brighter I turn up the Treble or use a boost. The only materials I'm curious to understand are bridge, fret, and nut materials; those which make contact.
 
I've made the experience that the whole construction of a guitar (neck through body, glued neck, screwed neck, mass of body and neck, ....) has some influence to behaviuor of the guitar like sustain or playing on high frets..(if well built - no deadspots - proper frets and setting)...
Maybe for totally clean sounds the influence is a bit higher than for gain or highgain sounds.
But the main influence to sound or tone is the PU and the fingers of the player and the AMP and Speaker..not the wood itself.

Also I agree that the mythos of materials of other equipment is true...
It does'nt matter if you use a 10$ or 50$ cable as long as the cable is well built and the damping (resistor) is low (especially with active PUs you can use an old clothing line wire ;) ). Or capacitors or tubes. (The electronical values has to fit the circuit, thats all, or metal resistors in signal chain have lower noise than others, but they are also cheap)
Also I use inexpensive PUs around 10-15 $ that sounds great. It is the magnet and the coil that matters (electromagnetic values), not the price or the brand. And they sound better on my guitars than the 100$ XYZ PU I had too, because the values of the PU do fit better to my guitar and playing.
OK, some parts are important, especially the mechanical ones... cheap potis or PU switches causing crackles after a while or stops working surely within the Gig ;)
The point is for me that you really can have a inexpensive guitar that sounds great and that many of the things you can buy is more marketing than real value or benefit. And the wood itself has the lowest influence of the tone.
The guitar should fit to your hands and playing style to have a good tone because you really play relaxed and have fun and do not fight with the guitar (neck shape, frets, scale, strings, action and so on...)
 
There are some trying to obtain funding for such a study in the interest of sourcing alternative woods for environmental impact.
This has been done by the European Leonardo project.

https://sites.google.com/site/leonardoguitarresearch/
https://sites.google.com/site/leonardoguitarresearch/research-report-lgrp

They let experienced luthiers build acoustic guitars with local woods and compared them to traditional build guitars.
The people testing were all classical trained professionals.
They did double blind tests.

Conclusion:
Experienced guitar players and listeners were unable to distinguish T’s from NT’s at better than chance levels. All blind tests show that it is possible to make equally good sounding guitars from both Tropical and Non-Tropical Woods.
Results:
When guitarists and listeners could see the guitars, and they knew from which woods they were made, we see a very strong difference in sound perception: ± 50% fallback for the Non-Tropicals compared with the same Non-Tropicals in the ‘blind’ testing (from 50% blind to 25% non-blind, Fig 1)
Conclusion:
Sound perception is strongly influenced by aesthetics and preconceptions of what are the ‘best’ woods for making guitars. Prejudices play an important role in what guitar players and listeners think sounds good or bad.

In this regard, I always urge people to watch this:
Audio Myths
 
How do you conclude from these that bodywood isn't important? This seems to me about difference between old and new instruments.

I posted those links in the first place. It's true that those works do not deal directly with guitars, but they do illustrate a point: in those works, musicians are unable to tell apart with ears and hands a mythical instrument regarded as the quintessence of luthery. If people are unable to distinguish an instrument thousands of times more expensive yet they put their money on it and are praised to the skies... well, I see that as a chance that we guitarists are also influenced by the same effect in some of our appreciations.

When guitarists and listeners could see the guitars, and they knew from which woods they were made, we see a very strong difference in sound perception: ± 50% fallback for the Non-Tropicals compared with the same Non-Tropicals in the ‘blind’ testing (from 50% blind to 25% non-blind, Fig 1)

This is the heart of it all.

Our minds play powerful tricks on us. We listen with our eyes -and our wallet- to some extent.

That being said, I could agree with most of the points made about sustain and dead notes. Those are measurable. But although I know nothing about guitar building, I understand there are many variables also involved in that. That's why I said "construction quality" in the first place instead of "wood quality" when we started talking about sustain.
 
This has been done by the European Leonardo project.

https://sites.google.com/site/leonardoguitarresearch/
https://sites.google.com/site/leonardoguitarresearch/research-report-lgrp

They let experienced luthiers build acoustic guitars with local woods and compared them to traditional build guitars.
The people testing were all classical trained professionals.
They did double blind tests.

Conclusion:
Experienced guitar players and listeners were unable to distinguish T’s from NT’s at better than chance levels. All blind tests show that it is possible to make equally good sounding guitars from both Tropical and Non-Tropical Woods.
Results:
When guitarists and listeners could see the guitars, and they knew from which woods they were made, we see a very strong difference in sound perception: ± 50% fallback for the Non-Tropicals compared with the same Non-Tropicals in the ‘blind’ testing (from 50% blind to 25% non-blind, Fig 1)
Conclusion:
Sound perception is strongly influenced by aesthetics and preconceptions of what are the ‘best’ woods for making guitars. Prejudices play an important role in what guitar players and listeners think sounds good or bad.

In this regard, I always urge people to watch this:
Audio Myths
Also missing my point entirely . It's not about telling the difference between two different species of wood , it is about an instrument that is harmonically balanced or not.
 
Edit-
Some was posted earlier.
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/760
https://www.pnas.org/content/114/21/5395

Bottom line is it doesn't matter. I'll upload a clip, and you think you can tell me what the neck is made of? Or the body. What nut material is present?That's absurd.

The strings suspend between a nut and a bridge or a fret and a bridge. A magnetic field produces the signal to the amp.

This crap has been beat to death. Believe what you like. I don't have the time.
Don't make ignorant pronouncements and then say you haven't the time to listen to why you are wrong.
If this where true putting a single coil pickup on a Les Paul would sound exactly the same as a Strat. Obviously this is utter BS.
 
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