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

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rstites said:
I really don't understand what you mean by "vibration passes past the ends of the string". If anything else is vibrating, it will be sympathetic with the string vibration - this includes the sound wave created in the surrounding air.

Standing waves are the only waves that can be sustained on the string. As noted in my initial post, there are more complex issues in any transients, such as when the string is first plucked.
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It's a mechanical energy transfer through the nut and bridge to the wood.

Anyway, my stance is woods have their properties in this context and effect the sound.
 
pipelineaudio said:
Did anyone actually do that?

Unless you are an elite guitar dealer, I bet I've heard, recorded and played a wider variety of guitars at any price range than probably most or all here.

Unlike many or most, I have done NOTHING in my life for money other than listen, record, modify and reproduce audio. From everyone from Amy Grant to Megadeth to Stevie Nicks. There was NEVER a money issue. No expense was spared when it came to making a lot of these albums. Down to changing drum heads every few takes, restringing guitars and basses after a few passes at most, sometimes keeping insanely expensive guitar techs like Michael Kaye on hand

I was never an accountant, a manager, chef, or tree surgeon or even played in a serious band standing next to a drummer and losing my hearing

I spent my whole life in the pursuit of the hows and whys of audio. And I had to accept when I was wrong. I had to care about whether or not my beliefs were true and commit myself to believing as many true things and as few false things as I possibly could



And even with that, its still an anecdotal fallacy the way so many of these "experience" based claims are.

If it exists it can be measured

If it can be heard it can be measured

So far all of the measurements fall on the reality based side of things and not the fantasy side
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pipeline.jpg
 
Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way? Wood species deniers, tell me what does change the tone of electric guitars?
 
rstites said:
All harmonics are based on the length of the string. They're relative intensity is based on the entire system, which does include the physical makeup of the supporting medium which includes the wood.
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And how far down the dB scale would you say that wood or lack of wood contributes to this system compared to the string itself and where on the string you are measuring? -40? -80? -120? because with the saturation levels metal players play at, that dynamic range gets shrunk real fast and yet we don't hear them
rstites said:
You need a citation to believe that different materials have different physical properties? Seriously?
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No. here is your claim "but one wood species can be distinguished from another readily."

"readily" is carrying a lot of weight. And I notice you switched "species" for "different materials"

How "readily" apparent is that difference in dB? again, -40? -80? -120? because with the saturation levels metal players play at, that dynamic range gets shrunk real fast and yet we don't hear them
rstites said:
I have a thought experiment for you. Do you believe here's a reason we use different species of wood for different construction purposes when constructing a building? If so, why? Perhaps it's because different species have different properties which are preferable for different situations because it turns out that they are constructed differently at the cellular (molecular) level.
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They do have different properties, but that doesn't change the overlapping ranges of those properties in species of wood that we make guitars out of
rstites said:
Those differences do include the intensity of the harmonics they will produce when they vibrate.
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Again, at what level? is it even audible? If it is it is RIDICULOUSLY easy to measure and show and yet nobody has been able to, why is that?

rstites said:
The same is true of the harmonics in a standing air wave in a column (pipes, organs, etc.). The material chosen to construct the instrument form does change the intensity (not frequency*) of the harmonics and therefore changes what we'd refer to as the tone.
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"material chosen" is doing a lot of work there. Thanks to Plank's law we can tell what amount, shape, dimensions or mass of one extremely specific material is needed to affect or impart a certain frequency or set of frequencies and at what relative level. "material" is very broad and could easily be replaced with another material to do the same thing, especially when we are talking about wood with overlapping properties like we use for building guitars.

Again, this would be EXTREMELY easy to show with tools you likely already have, and yet nobody has managed to
 
dead-pan said:
It's a mechanical energy transfer through the nut and bridge to the wood.
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Absolutely, energy is transferred. It will be transferred at the frequencies of the waves on the string. The extent to which that hardware and the underlying wood absorbs or reflects those various frequencies is why we get different tones from the entire setup. Everything has some affect on those harmonics. The question is just how much, as some are negligible and some are more pronounced.

dead-pan said:
Anyway, my stance is woods have their properties in this context and effect the sound.
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Absolutely. They have to because that's how sustained vibrations work. The only real question is the extent to which we can hear it, which certainly runs along a continuum.
 
dead-pan said:
Pretty sure standing waves are only a part of the waves created. Once the vibration passes past the ends of the string things get more complex.
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The induction pickup only cares about the string moving within its magnetic field.
 
pipelineaudio said:
And how far down the dB scale would you say that wood or lack of wood contributes to this system compared to the string itself and where on the string you are measuring? -40? -80? -120? because with the saturation levels metal players play at, that dynamic range gets shrunk real fast and yet we don't hear them
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The specifics of heavily saturated heavy metal sounds is really outside the discussion to this point. There are too many confounding variables at that point to make any kind of declarative statement.

The question of the sound intensity (dB) only becomes relevent once we've established that there is indeed a difference. As noted in my original post, I think that's a fair question but one that can only be answered in the lab with a standard, established setup.

pipelineaudio said:
"readily" is carrying a lot of weight. And I notice you switched "species" for "different materials"
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Different species are different materials. I didn't switch anything. The term for this area is material science, hence the name. Further, it opens up the conversation to other materials to allow someone to visualize the general situation before we focus back down to the particulars of the situation.

The first question should be whether different materials change the harmonic mixture of a vibrating string. It is simple to visualize a wooden plank in one case and a steel plank of the same dimension in another. If we both agree that those will produce different harmonics - eg. different sounds - than we have established that different materials do indeed change the harmonic content. Then the question isn't whether different materials change the harmonic content, but only to what extent based on how similar they are at the molecular level. Obviously, two species of wood are closer than either is to a piece of metal, but they not be identical and therefore will not support the same harmonics. (Given that wood various by particular longitude, soil, tree, and cut has a huge impact, it's impossible to make any kind of universal declarative statement, but we can work in ranges readily.)

pipelineaudio said:
Thanks to Plank's law we can tell what amount, shape, dimensions or mass of one extremely specific material is needed to affect or impart a certain frequency or set of frequencies and at what relative level. "material" is very broad and could easily be replaced with another material to do the same thing, especially when we are talking about wood with overlapping properties like we use for building guitars.
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Planck's Law covers the emission of radiation from a body based on its internal energy.

pipelineaudio said:
Again, this would be EXTREMELY easy to show with tools you likely already have, and yet nobody has managed
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It wouldn't be that hard to demonstrate if someone wanted to put the time and effort into it. There would be differences in the woods that can be detected by a decent spectrum analyzer. Then you could explore the question you asked above about the difference in intensity. If you do and write it up, I'll read it.
 
rstites said:
It wouldn't be that hard to demonstrate if someone wanted to put the time and effort into it. There would be differences in the woods that can be detected by a decent spectrum analyzer. Then you could explore the question you asked above about the difference in intensity. If you do and write it up, I'll read it.
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That's what I keep saying. And yet nobody ever shows it, they only are able to show it making no difference
 
Fart Ripper said:
This is an easy one, and hopefully settles things once and for all.

Why does a chambered guitar consistently sound different than the solid body version of the same guitar if the strings and pickups are the only thing that matters?
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Who says it does? And what’s the difference in sound? Btw difference is a subtraction operation.
 
TheBiggestJerk said:
Who says it does? And what’s the difference in sound? Btw difference is a subtraction operation.
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21:30 starts talking about the measurements taken when removing wood from a guitar. Lots of people could similarly replicate the experiment and come to the same conclusion.
 
pipelineaudio said:
That's what I keep saying. And yet nobody ever shows it, they only are able to show it making no difference
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What's wrong with this guys video?

He samples many guitars for measurements and he takes measurements as he makes changes to the same guitar. I suppose it could be a little more scientific in some ways but I think that's about as accurate as we have.
 
pipelineaudio said:
That's what I keep saying. And yet nobody ever shows it, they only are able to show it making no difference
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Then they did it wrong because the difference will be clear with a decent spec-a and a reasonable setup. I've run something fairly similar for university students in audio engineering before and even first years can manage this level.
 
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