Tone Wood and Resonant Frequency

[CaptainMoto]

Papa,
My recording set up is:
Guitar - Pedal Board - Amp - Rock Crusher Recording - Computer
So yes, It goes thru the amp but, the signal that I recorded was not effected by the speaker.

The longest sustain came from my Semi Hollow I35.
#2 was the Blade Carbon Fiber guitar, which is only about an inch thick but yet, is also hollow.
#3 was the Bergen Strat, which has an alder body with maple neck.

 

[MikeS]

Wow! when I read the subject I was fully prepared to have to wade into a war of name calling. This has been remarkably civil. Well done!

 

[OG_Blues]

Papa,
My recording set up is:
Guitar - Pedal Board - Amp - Rock Crusher Recording - Computer
So yes, It goes thru the amp but, the signal that I recorded was not effected by the speaker.
.

What is important in a test like this is that the guitar is not affected by the speaker, i.e. no induced sympathetic energy to enhance the sustain. Is that what you meant? You also have to be really good at creating equal picking energy on each test, or results can be skewed. The variations in the mechanical aspects of tests like this are what make it difficult to do in a really scientific and meaningful way, but one can deduce some level of differences this way. Did you test at a variety of frequencies by any chance to see if there was any noticeable difference? Your results do not surprise me - actually, not much surprises me when it comes to this stuff, however......
I was working on a MIM Strat last night that I plan to sell. I put new tusq nut on it because the factory plastic nut had been very poorly cut - all slots badly off to one side. Although I didn't even think to do any before / after testing, but it seemed immediately evident to me that the guitar had noticeably more sustain after the new nut was installed - I did not expect that, nor was I "looking" for that result, but the fact that I noticed it at all makes me think it was significant.
Interesting stuff this is.
Tom

 

[HotLks]

Somewhere on this forum is a link to a cardboard Strat. Here it is again:

Hear it starting at 2:22. "Sounds like a Strat" they say. Admittedly, I have not found much in the way of sound tests on this guitar. I don't know how to fit this into the paradigm we're trying to formulate here. The cardboard (paper) should be a real sink for vibration, and it has a lot of air which is not contained like on an acoustic, which probably does not resonate with string vibration.

Seems to me that the cardboard guitar isolates pickups better than most other materials. I wonder what the sustain is like with it.

I'm glad getting this subject right doesn't have any serious implications for us Blues players.

See you down the road!

 

[mountain man]

Somewhere on this forum is a link to a cardboard Strat. Here it is again:

Hear it starting at 2:22. "Sounds like a Strat" they say. Admittedly, I have not found much in the way of sound tests on this guitar. I don't know how to fit this into the paradigm we're trying to formulate here. The cardboard (paper) should be a real sink for vibration, and it has a lot of air which is not contained like on an acoustic, which probably does not resonate with string vibration.

Seems to me that the cardboard guitar isolates pickups better than most other materials. I wonder what the sustain is like with it.

I'm glad getting this subject right doesn't have any serious implications for us Blues players.

See you down the road!

I remember this video. I still want to know what kind of spray strengthener was used? An epoxy? A superglue of some sort I'm sure.

Something to stiffen and strengthen the paper to hold the 250 psi needed would also add the ability to resonate.

 

[PapaRaptor]

Papa,
My recording set up is:
Guitar - Pedal Board - Amp - Rock Crusher Recording - Computer
So yes, It goes thru the amp but, the signal that I recorded was not effected by the speaker.

I was thinking in terms of either:

1. Recording through a DI with either no amplifier or with any amplified audio played through headphones, or:
2. Recording through a DI or mic'd amplifier, where some level of amplified audio would be present in your test lab (or music room).

In the second case, I would expect the sustain to be longer than the first case. With any increase in volume in the amplifier, the amount of sustain would also increase. Even in case 2 with a DI box, you are recording the guitar pickup output, but that output would still be affected by the energy from the output of the amplifier. Obviously, barely audible output from an amp would likely produce identical results to case 1, but with the amp at the modest levels I use for my practice, they would affect (increase) the sustain on any semi or hollow bodied guitar.

 

[CaptainMoto]

OG,
Right, not a very controlled test but, an example of real life playing.
I only tested one note (open E) for the neck and bridge on each guitar.
Before the test, I was expecting the carbon fiber guitar to produce the longest sustain.





Papa,
I guess you could say I was in condition #1, no amplified audio, the amp signal passes thru the recording out function on the RockCrusher Recording devise.

 

[CaptainMoto]

Wow! when I read the subject I was fully prepared to have to wade into a war of name calling. This has been remarkably civil. Well done!

Hey Mike,
Thanks for checking in on us.
We're all behaving.......what else would you expect?

 

[Norfolk Bill]

Yes thanks daddy , im waiting for the "im not angry ,just disappointed "

 

[mountain man]

Wow! when I read the subject I was fully prepared to have to wade into a war of name calling. This has been remarkably civil. Well done!

The ignore feature is a big thread saver I think!!

 

[Norfolk Bill]

ignore feature??? sounds like that would ruin the whole experience

 

[mountain man]

ignore feature??? sounds like that would ruin the whole experience

I really like it. It was long overdue.

 

[Norfolk Bill]

not quiet sure what it does , i shall investigate

 

[aleclee]

Ah, the age-old topic of tone woods.

While I pretty much moved on from his guitars some years back, I think that Paul Smith has a pretty good understanding of makes an electric guitar tick. He had some pretty solid mentoring from Ted McCarty and has spent a lot of time and money on R&D. One of his favorite maxims is "everything affects everything". Wood matters. Finish matters. Pickups matter. Shape matters.

The key to making a great guitar is to treat it as a system rather than a collection of components. Some of our benchmark designs are happy coincidences...most of them, more likely. When people try to build a dream parts-caster with all sorts of exotic materials, the results often disappoint.

What's lost is the interplay between the pieces. I remember the days when sustain was the holy grail and mass was thought to be the key. People relished their 12 lb Les Pauls and added more mass with brass nuts and brass bridges. The science behind that approach was replaced with a new truth that resonance, not sustain, is the end all be all. Next time you turn around, conventional wisdom says pickups are all that matter since they're amplified instruments.

What's the truth? To me the truth is that there's no objective standard of beauty. Beauty can be a happy accident or it can be manicured at the molecular level. In either case, there's no sure recipe. Where companies like PRS are excelling is in making things consistent: of the six PRS I've owned, I bought five of them sight unseen. Of those, only one wasn't a great guitar and, ironically, it was a "handmade" '89 model. I say they're great guitars but I've sold off half of them and somewhat ignored the others because they don't appeal to me as much as the others.

One of the wonderful things about guitars is that they're more tactile than most other instruments. Plucking strings, fingering strings, it's arguably more intimate to play a guitar than about any other instrument. Something so very personal is going to be inherently subjective. Tone woods matter. Pickups matter. At the end of the day, everything matters and if you're lucky, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

 

[KiloMike]

A semi-hollow or full hollow body sounds different because the body (and pickups) vibrate relative to the strings.

Paparaptor, that is an excellent explanation, but I have a question about the above statement. I would expect that the hollow-body sound would be much more due to the resonance of the body feeding back energy at unique harmonic frequencies to the strings, rather than the pups vibrating in relation to the strings. I would think that the sustained vibration of the body would tend to be amplified on the strings at any frequency which happens to be a natural harmonic of the note being played (like soldiers marching in step on a bridge can cause it to vibrate at its natural harmonic), whereas the vibration of the pups wouldn't tend to increase in relation to the strings. Is there a way to isolate the two in order to see how much the pup vibration contributes to that tone we love?

(I'll return to lurk mode. I know more about physics than I do guitars, and that ain't saying much! )

 

[Al Holloway]

One of the wonderful things about guitars is that they're more tactile than most other instruments. Plucking strings, fingering strings, it's arguably more intimate to play a guitar than about any other instrument. Something so very personal is going to be inherently subjective. Tone woods matter. Pickups matter. At the end of the day, everything matters and if you're lucky, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The one I play the most is the one I built. Is the best player or sounder probably not but I built it. All the perfections and all the imperfections I ut them there. We have a connection.

cheers

Al.

 

[PapaRaptor]

Paparaptor, that is an excellent explanation, but I have a question about the above statement. I would expect that the hollow-body sound would be much more due to the resonance of the body feeding back energy at unique harmonic frequencies to the strings, rather than the pups vibrating in relation to the strings. I would think that the sustained vibration of the body would tend to be amplified on the strings at any frequency which happens to be a natural harmonic of the note being played (like soldiers marching in step on a bridge can cause it to vibrate at its natural harmonic), whereas the vibration of the pups wouldn't tend to increase in relation to the strings. Is there a way to isolate the two in order to see how much the pup vibration contributes to that tone we love?

(I'll return to lurk mode. I know more about physics than I do guitars, and that ain't saying much! )

I agree with you completely. The amount of movement of the pickups compared to a vibrating string is very small. Part of the point I was trying to make was that any vibration of a pickup on its own without a string (or other magnetically disruptive device) reasonably close is kind of like one hand clapping. But the idea of the body (and pickups) moving relative to the string is something you can demonstrate relatively easily. A pickup wired connected to an amp (assuming the pickup isn't at all microphonic) can be tapped with a piece of wood and you will hear nothing through the amp. Put that same pickup in a hollow guitar body and tap on the body of the guitar and you will definitely hear a thud in the amplifier. You can do this even with the guitar strings completely damped.

Of course, when pickups are microphonic, those ideas have to be re-thought. A pickup that is essentially inductive should in theory only pickup relative motion (or the disrupted magnetic field) of the movement between strings and pickups.

Much of what makes a hollow body or semi sound the way it does is the energy transfer between the strings into the body. Any resonant peaks in the body will be transferred back through the bridge to the strings. The frequencies that the guitar body doesn't reproduce as well will disappear more rapidly from the signal, since there isn't any "encouragement" given by the guitar body.

It's pretty easy to demonstrate that it's not just pickups that determine the tone of an electric guitar. PIckups are without a doubt a huge factor. But quantifying how much of an individual guitar's tone characteristic comes from pickups is difficult. You change a dozen different pickups in a 335 style guitar and it will continue to sound like a thin, semi-hollow bodied guitar. You can use humbuckers or P90's or even single coils and they will each sound different, but it will still sound like a thin bodied, semi-hollow guitar.

 

[KiloMike]

I agree with you completely. The amount of movement of the pickups compared to a vibrating string is very small. Part of the point I was trying to make was that any vibration of a pickup on its own without a string (or other magnetically disruptive device) reasonably close is kind of like one hand clapping. But the idea of the body (and pickups) moving relative to the string is something you can demonstrate relatively easily. A pickup wired connected to an amp (assuming the pickup isn't at all microphonic) can be tapped with a piece of wood and you will hear nothing through the amp. Put that same pickup in a hollow guitar body and tap on the body of the guitar and you will definitely hear a thud in the amplifier. You can do this even with the guitar strings completely damped.

Of course, when pickups are microphonic, those ideas have to be re-thought. A pickup that is essentially inductive should in theory only pickup relative motion (or the disrupted magnetic field) of the movement between strings and pickups.

Much of what makes a hollow body or semi sound the way it does is the energy transfer between the strings into the body. Any resonant peaks in the body will be transferred back through the bridge to the strings. The frequencies that the guitar body doesn't reproduce as well will disappear more rapidly from the signal, since there isn't any "encouragement" given by the guitar body.

It's pretty easy to demonstrate that it's not just pickups that determine the tone of an electric guitar. PIckups are without a doubt a huge factor. But quantifying how much of an individual guitar's tone characteristic comes from pickups is difficult. You change a dozen different pickups in a 335 style guitar and it will continue to sound like a thin, semi-hollow bodied guitar. You can use humbuckers or P90's or even single coils and they will each sound different, but it will still sound like a thin bodied, semi-hollow guitar.

Of course! (I was looking for a head-smack emoji, but couldn't find one!) That makes perfect sense. I never considered the vibration of the pups. Great example for demonstrating it, too. I guess that would tend to enhance, to an small degree, certain natural frequencies of the body, which would be unique to every guitar and add to its unique sound.

There is so much good learning that can be done here for nerds like me that are new to the guitar world!!!

 

[jackderby52]

My scientific approach; Do I like the tones I hear?? Yes=Buy, No=Next… Simple really...

 

[PapaRaptor]

There is so much good learning that can be done here for nerds like me that are new to the guitar world!!!

I'm not so sure what I'm putting out is actually worth learning. I'm neither an Electrical Engineer nor an Acoustic Engineer, just some guy whose curiosity about minutiae knows very few boundaries. I spend far too much time thinking about things that are of little or no consequence. I should be practicing guitar...