your favourite guitar related daydream :D

So we all have been fooled bout the whole guitar concept... All we need is two rigid ends... and anything plays like a guitar..ain't it?

 

Yes.

Do you seriously believe that you will directly HEAR the wood resonate when the guitar is being played through loud amplification?
The pickups are supposed to not vibrate with the wood - otherwise it leads to acoustic howling (due to feedback).

The strings vibrate between two "fixed" ends - the degree of fixed end determined by the rigidity. The strings create a change in magnetic flux - thus pickups "pick up" the vibrations. And your amp + speaker reproduces it.

There is nothing magical or voodoo science about all this.


And now the caveats - the two ends of the string are not really rigid. The wood or metal base/frame does flex a little. And the two ends are not infinite mass, and the string is not mass-less. The pickups are housed IN the frame, and thus it does vibrate along with the body.

How much of all this is really audible and people can distinguish?
Electric guitar is NOT an acoustic instrument. We don't have hollow wood to improve the resonance. We don't USE wood's vibrations to pickup the signal.

 

Inspite of what you said in the end, t looked disappointing. The old connect between guitars and wood almost destroyed by technology.

Now you could have a group of strings flexed between two rigid ends, and some pickup, and emulate a guitar, but it'd be difficult to play.
):

 

@alpha1 : i really think that there should be a scientific study on how wood density (which might be considered as a loose measure of it's hardness) affects the 'tone'.

 

and sustain has everything to do with the rate of dissipation of the strings energy..and the 'softer' (i might even use the term less dense...and if i assume P) the volume of all guitar's body to be of a fairly equal measure..then i might even be able to use the term 'lighter') the wood is (which acts as the rigid support) the faster is the rate of dissipation of energy by the strings. Even the cross sections of the strings are a factor. I think this is stuff that's worth some experimental data.

@rickkkyrich: man i really really loved the tone of that 'guitar' that jack white was shown to be making in the opening scenes of 'it might get loud' maybe you have loved it too

 

Do you think the large time manufactures would actually be interested in an ABX (double blind test) study to check the effect of wood on the amplified tone (perhaps with some overdrive too)?
Do you think the self styled experts would be interested in conducting such a test?
Do you think a majority of "yes man" followers of traditions/norms would actually believe the results of such a test?

Of course as I already mentioned, things do affect the vibrations. But how much of it is humanly perceptible?
Its like someone claiming to hear the difference between a 320 kbps mp3 and an audio CD and an SACD.

 

The subtle differences doesn't matter to us but they do to many guitarists...

 

When we do blind test, we test the limits of human perception.
It doesn't matter whether the person is a guitarist or a drummer or a nerd.

 

Good guitarist or any good musician has a very good ear. They hear what doesn't really bother us...

 

Am I suggesting to exclude the musicians from the blind test?

 

Well the way the string vibrates depends on the body.
And those vibrations are caught by the pickups
So the body does effect the sound to some extent(like sustain)

 

I don't think so

 

Electronically produced sound was, is and always will be artificial.

Its like the difference between wooden and plastic/metal speakers. Wooden speakers always sound richer.

 

I'd like to resign myself to the fact that we all live in a matrix

In order to answer this question...apart from a psycho-acoustic test...I think that the electric guitar really really deserves a thorough engineering analysis (by independent experts maybe? ) to dispense off a lot of bullshit regarding 'tone'...or a combination of both maybe ?
I once read a paper which deals with something like 's/s vs tube sound'...I can't really locate the paper right now on the internet...but I will try to post a link so that everyone (if they already haven't) can take a look. It's a really interesting paper which combines engineering analysis with psycho-acoustics

 

In hi-fi domain there is a lot of "audiophoolery" related BS being created by the manufacturers and the self styled experts.
And propagated by the "yes men".

Tube vs SS doesn't matter in hi fidelity music reproduction, yet people make a big issue (and big bucks) out of it!

 

I had the same doubts and i cleared it for once and all. Different woods sound different to me, even in high distortion settings. There is a clear distinction in the frequencies amplified. I tried this out using my Peavey Vypyr 75 amp using my Sennheiser HD595 headphones through the headphones out on my amp. I then first used my Ibanez S570b(mahogany) on the same preset and then a Ibanez RG350DXZ(basswood). Both have the same pickups so no issues there. First i did a listening test. I had my friend play both the guitars while i was looking away so that i could not see which guitar was being played. I noticed a difference so to further check if it was just a whim of mine i recorded both the guitars using the USB record out on the amp. Then i analysed their frequency spectrum using a spectrum analyzer and found their response to be differing but not by much though. But to me that little made the difference.

 

now that really is cool..but imho there's not enough evidence there to suggest that the difference in sound is purely due to the difference in body wood..hell i have seen guitars having the exact same model numbers sounding different in the same settings but what you did there definitely is substantial man