Why Wood Matters | Rules of Tone: Episode 1 | PRS Guitars

[pipelineaudio]

Seriously, pretty soon there won’t be anything left according to these “experts”

Yeah those silly experts who believe in math and physics

 

[pipelineaudio]

And I wonder why if Jim Lill's work is so solid, why isn't he rich from making and selling guitars with plywood bodies and laminated pine necks?

In fact, I ask the "wood doesn't matter" crowd the same question.

And Jim really should grace with with his solid state copies of tubes amp since they perform equally.

Its like asking "If you believe cars work well with four wheels why aren't you giving four wheeled cars away?"

 

[7704A]

You okay Johnny ?

Johnny, are you OK?
So, Johnny, are you OK?
Are you OK, Johnny?

Johnny, are you OK?
Will you tell us that you're OK
There's a sound at the window
Neighbors playing Fane Crescendos, Johnny
The sound tears through your apartment
Hear the Pink Floyd on the Darkside
And then you ran into the amp room
You then turned up
It was your turn

Johnny, are you OK?
So, Johnny, are you OK?
Are you OK, Johnny?
You've been hit by—
You've been hit by an E power chord
Ow!

 

[pipelineaudio]

You can’t possibly expect anyone to take you seriously with a statement like that.

Funny how the side with no evidence is always the one to make statements like this. It would be painfully easy to show this phenomenon if it existed, but instead we get Ad Hominems

 

[thegame]

Funny how the side with no evidence is always the one to make statements like this. It would be painfully easy to show this phenomenon if it existed, but instead we get Ad Hominems

What “phenomenon”? That guitars actually sound different to one another, particularly ones with identical specs/hardware? Are you really arguing the point that not only does wood not make a difference, but that there is no difference?

 

[pipelineaudio]

Got any clips of your rig? What kind of tones do you go for?

Mine are pretty distorted and close to the examples Glenn gave. I think Glenn should have done cleaner clips, where you can definitely see (and easily measure) differences between pickups. But I think his point was for really high gain tones, and he seems to be right there, but I can't really think of why its true.

If you can't hear the difference between alnico and ceramic pickups,

I can definitely hear it in the cleaner tones, but at high gain, I can't abx between them and I'll wager, neither can you. I could set up a test with a small but painful wager if anyone is interested

I daresay it makes a lot of sense that all of your anti-tonewood arguments are based on whatever random dataset you arbitrarily choose to represent the effect tonewood makes

This is really close to Argumentum ad YouCan'tAffordium which you always see in mic pre shootouts, until I post live streams of signal sweeps through all of them

I'm of the view that wood of the same species varies enough to where there isn't a gigantic difference that's going to be consistent, but not that there's no difference at all.

This is probably true. If you pulped different species of wood and measures their characteristics you could probably get a difference. But that isn't how we build guitars. We build them in a way that for species to matter requires dendrochronology denial

The vast majority of the time, when people make the standard "I Fucking LoVe ScIeNce!" arguments about tonewood, it's because they don't have a ton of experience playing and recording expensive guitars, and pretend that their limited understanding of the physics is a replacement for it.

And there is the actual Argumentum ad YouCan'tAffordium. I have done nothing in my life aside from recording, guitars and everything else. That has always been my life, for decades, across a wide variety of genres with a wide variety of artists who are written about in guitar magazines and can afford whatever they want. The number of times I've seen George Lynch turn a rosewood humbucker guitar thru a ridiculously saturated Kascha modded setup into the sound you'd associate with a maple fingerboard fender strat with a single coil going thru a Fender Twin broke me of a lot of preconceived ideas real quick

This is an art. We make art. It's very possible we don't know everything that's going on, physics wise, thats going to have an auditory effect.

While that is true, anything we CAN hear is measurable, and the faith based side consistently refuses to provide those measurements while the reality based side is always happy to

I personally think PRS is overstating his case - I don't believe i can "hear" the difference between two different types of wood reliably... but at the same time, the "here's the science bro" argument is a fast track to getting everyone to roll their eyes at you and disregard your opinion, because there are a lot of players and engineers with massive, lengthy resumes at RT.

Rick Rubin believes in magical speaker cables which can and have been disproven over and over and over again. His resume is about as massive as it can get. And yet every time I have to work with him I have to rewire all the mains to use his magical speaker cables. Textbook Argument from Authority

And he is certainly not the only one like this

 

[pipelineaudio]

What “phenomenon”? That guitars actually sound different to one another, particularly ones with identical specs/hardware? Are you really arguing the point that not only does wood not make a difference, but that there is no difference?

I am stating the fact that species of wood does not have a sonic signature and further that any claim that it does is dendrochronology denial

 

[rsm]

Wood doesn't affect tone.
Pickups don't affect tone.
Amps don't matter, just the speakers.

Some of my reactions to these derpworthy statements, depending on my mood:

View attachment 408433

View attachment 408434

View attachment 408435

View attachment 408437

View attachment 408436

 

[7704A]

Yep, all of that was what I was getting at. If we can't agree on the Rosewood vs Mahogany acoustic guitars (otherwise made identical and lots of examples/samples not just two), which I know sound different and consistently so, then we can't even get to the solidbody discussion. It makes me doubt the validity of anything said after that, the testing/everything. If the testing can't 'hear' that then wtf kind of of testing is it? That's low hanging fruit.

A critical question is "how are you comparing them?" what evidence supports your conclusions? How well were variables controlled, tests conducted, etc.? Species of wood do differ in properties as far as I'm aware, but there is significant overlap due to variability. An interesting paper by a luthier:
https://pubs.aip.org/asa/poma/article/12/1/035001/994561/Wood-for-Guitars

I think it's freely available, since I clicked on it and read it no problem, but maybe it picked up a cookie from being logged in to my university.

 

[rsm]

Johnny, are you OK?
So, Johnny, are you OK?
Are you OK, Johnny?

Johnny, are you OK?
Will you tell us that you're OK
There's a sound at the window
Neighbors playing Fane Crescendos, Johnny
The sound tears through your apartment
Hear the Pink Floyd on the Darkside
And then you ran into the amp room
You then turned up
It was your turn

Johnny, are you OK?
So, Johnny, are you OK?
Are you OK, Johnny?
You've been hit by—
You've been hit by an E power chord
Ow!

 

[rsm]

Guess what? It sounds like a Strat.

https://www.fendercustomshop.com/custom-life/fender-custom-shop-builds-a-cardboard-strat/

 

[DanTravis62]

Mine are pretty distorted and close to the examples Glenn gave. I think Glenn should have done cleaner clips, where you can definitely see (and easily measure) differences between pickups. But I think his point was for really high gain tones, and he seems to be right there, but I can't really think of why its true.

I can definitely hear it in the cleaner tones, but at high gain, I can't abx between them and I'll wager, neither can you. I could set up a test with a small but painful wager if anyone is interested

No one is interested in a test, just post some clips and let everyone decide what they hear.

 

[DanTravis62]

@pipelineaudio see this is the problem, you think that since YOU cant hear the difference between alnico and ceramic pickups, you assume everyone else cant either - and to boot, you arre coming in blind, because you're new and have no idea how many tests, clips, and shootouts have been posted here in the past decade and a half.

You should probably use the search function - not only could i tell the difference between an 81 and 87, i've posted clips showing the similarities and differences between different constructions of the same magnets, and different variations of alnico.

Don't project your own lack of discernment on everyone else

 

[pipelineaudio]

@pipelineaudio see this is the problem, you think that since YOU cant hear the difference between alnico and ceramic pickups, you assume everyone else cant either -

Please show me where i made that claim. If I did I was in error

and to boot, you arre coming in blind, because you're new and have no idea how many tests, clips, and shootouts have been posted here in the past decade and a half.

This is a non sequitur

You should probably use the search function - not only could i tell the difference between an 81 and 87, i've posted clips showing the similarities and differences between different constructions of the same magnets, and different variations of alnico.

I'll check it out

Don't project your own lack of discernment on everyone else

Please show me where I did that

 

[DanTravis62]

I can definitely hear it in the cleaner tones, but at high gain, I can't abx between them and I'll wager, neither can you.

Please show me where I did that

That's where you did that

 

[DanTravis62]

@pipelineaudio you are regurgitating the same tired arguments everyone has debated (on both sides) to a stalemate for literally decades now.

If you really want to play to win, people need clips. Show, don't tell.

Especially as a relatively new face, you aren't going to convince people of your competence and mettle without backing it up.

If you've got A+B clips of tonewood or pickups (on either side of the argument) post them. If not, as you've seen, you're just gonna get mocked and dragged and "argumentum ad hominem" for coming in that hot without anything to back it up.

 

[JohnnyGtar]

That's where you did that

 

[pipelineaudio]

That's where you did that

You know what "wager" means right?
When I do these, I make sure the financial hit if I lose is painful enough that I'll refine my statements a lot better next time.

I lost HARD against Fractal Cliff's statements about the importance of dynamics in IR cabinets for instance and it got me to be a lot more careful

 

[pipelineaudio]

@pipelineaudio you are regurgitating the same tired arguments everyone has debated (on both sides) to a stalemate for literally decades now.

If you really want to play to win, people need clips. Show, don't tell.

When it comes to magical or religious beliefs, the burden of proof is on the claimant.

Especially as a relatively new face, you aren't going to convince people of your competence and mettle without backing it up.

My novelty is irrelevant, as I am the one asking for people to back up their claims, I'm not the one making claims that fly in the face of math and physics

If you've got A+B clips of tonewood or pickups (on either side of the argument) post them. If not, as you've seen, you're just gonna get mocked and dragged and "argumentum ad hominem" for coming in that hot without anything to back it up.

I'm ok with that. I'd like to separate the claims though

Claim 1: Hopefully we are all ok with the fact that a claim in different sonic properties based on species of wood in guitar construction (acoustic or electric) is ridiculous right?

Claim 2: Then there's the claim that different species of wood can have an effect on the electrical output of an electrical guitar. I think we can all agree that that has been debunked to death, and even if it hadn't it first have to clear the impossible hurdle of claim number 1

Claim 3: It can be identified beyond chance in a high gain tone which is an EMG 81 and an EMG 87. This is one I'd like to test. I'll try to post some informal ones without super strict control and if that looks promising, I'll try to make one closer to something like the JREF Million Dollar Challenge standard (without of course the million dollars). I won't be super surprised either way with this one, but I think it would be pretty interesting to show it to Glenn Fricker.

I'll try to do clean, crunch and high gain. I'm thinking high gain will be indistinguishable. Crunch seems like it will be extremely difficult to get consisten, but I could do it with the same string type excitation that you would use for safety testing hard drives or reciprocal saw blades, but because it wouldn't make any sound that is in any way musical to it, I don't think it'll be very easy to ear test it

 

[DanTravis62]

When it comes to magical or religious beliefs, the burden of proof is on the claimant.

My novelty is irrelevant, as I am the one asking for people to back up their claims, I'm not the one making claims that fly in the face of math and physics

I'm ok with that. I'd like to separate the claims though

Claim 1: Hopefully we are all ok with the fact that a claim in different sonic properties based on species of wood in guitar construction (acoustic or electric) is ridiculous right?

Claim 2: Then there's the claim that different species of wood can have an effect on the electrical output of an electrical guitar. I think we can all agree that that has been debunked to death, and even if it hadn't it first have to clear the impossible hurdle of claim number 1

Claim 3: It can be identified beyond chance in a high gain tone which is an EMG 81 and an EMG 87. This is one I'd like to test. I'll try to post some informal ones without super strict control and if that looks promising, I'll try to make one closer to something like the JREF Million Dollar Challenge standard (without of course the million dollars). I won't be super surprised either way with this one, but I think it would be pretty interesting to show it to Glenn Fricker.

I'll try to do clean, crunch and high gain. I'm thinking high gain will be indistinguishable. Crunch seems like it will be extremely difficult to get consisten, but I could do it with the same string type excitation that you would use for safety testing hard drives or reciprocal saw blades, but because it wouldn't make any sound that is in any way musical to it, I don't think it'll be very easy to ear test it

Great. Can't wait to hear the clips.