does it matter how many pieces of wood a guitar body is made from?

[duceditor]

On a serious note... can anyone quantify why wood type, or the resonance of the wood, or the number of pieces a guitar is composed of, has any impact on an "electric" instrument?

Yes. The initial vibrations would likely be identical but sustain and timbre are a feedback process between the body (meaning all of the none string and non-electric parts) and those strings.

The easiest way to see this is to compare a solid bodied instrument with a semi-solid and a true hollow bodied guitar. (Say a Les Paul, most ES models and the true thin bodied hollow ES330) All can have identical PUs -- say Gibson `57 Classics -- but they will sound and play with a very noticable difference.

This is also why some solid guitars with otherwise identical specs will sound and feel different from one-another. The grain of the wood -- its resonance -- makes a small but to some noticiable difference.

-don

 

[angry tele]

I don't know a crap ton about electronics, but from what my friend who is an industrial electrician has told me the tone pot and capacitor make a low pass filter to basically block out certain higher frequencies. I know the Sprague caps I put in my Squier are marked "K" which mean they have a tolerance of +-10%. He also said depending on the pot brand that pots can have a tolerance of +-5 to 10%. How much do those tolerances play in the difference of sound between two of the same model? I know I have plugged in two of the same guitar back to back and could hear an audible difference.

the plus or minus is relative to the stated value. It doesnt change. for example if the value on the label says .022 it will actually be plus or minus 10% of .022. Thats all it is, a tight tolerance (1%) is great if you need the exact stated value but most dont.

so say you have 10% +/- .022 caps in and you change them and the sound changes. Its because the value has changed as much as 20%. (say the first cap is 10% less than .022 and the new one is 10% more) but still 20% of .022 is what? .029? (50% would be .033 I dunno im not good at the maths-its not much.

same with pots. my Gibson are 500K but when I measured them they read 490 and 536. if i changed them I might end up putting in 540 and 480, not a big deal. a temperature increase of 1 or 2 degress will change a value too. So these super tight tolerances are kind of silly/overkill. But its very cheap to find 5% =/- caps, so theres no need to use 20% ones to save $1.

 

[Help!I'maRock!]

semi-solid

:hmm:

 

[duceditor]

:hmm:

Does your image mean... "huh"? ;-) If so... Most thin bodied "hollow" electric guitars (such as Gibson's ES series) appear to be arch tops, even to the point of having acoustic "f holes." But in fact only the wings -- the part of the body that you can look into via those "f holes" are hollow. The center is as solid as a true "solid body" such as a Les Paul.

Although appearances can be deceiving one can usually tell the difference by the attachment of the stop bar. A true hollow body requires a trapeze bridge or equivilent. I.e., the string tension has to go to the back end of the guitar. Semi-solids (or semi-hollow body if you prefer) most often have the stop bar screwed/bolted right into the guitar top -- or actually, through it into the solid piece underneath.

It has become common to attach the bridge to a small block between the guitars top and back even on a "fully hollow" thin bodied electric. It used to be (and still is on some models such as the reissue Gretchs) that the bridge simply sat on the guitars face. Why the change? I do not know although I suspect it is because it is simply easier than adequately bracing the face to accept the tension without buckling.

In any case having a true hollow body -- that is a guitar who face is free to vibrate freely -- changes the sound and feel of the guitar greatly. It becomes sensitive to the amplifier and thus gives the player one more tool to use to craft his sound.

It also can be a huge nuisance - especially when volume levels rise -- going into uncontrollable feedback. That is why they are relatively uncommon.

In the early days of rock even "loud" bands rarely needed more than 40 watts for each instrument. In the photo below, taken in 1965, my own group, The Abstracts, played entire auditorium concerts with such "underpowered" amps.

In the photo above I (the guitarist in the center) am playing a Guild Starfire -- a semi-solid guitar. But in earlier concerts played using the same amplification and volume level I played a true hollow ES125TDC (see my avitar). Only with the passing of time and greater experience did I realize what I had traded away when I went from hollow to semi-solid.

-don

 

[fretmonster]

My belief is yes it does matter, i.e., a guitar body with fewer pieces will sound better than one with several, all other variables being equal. My sensibilites are now that three Pieces (or even four pieces in some circumstances) with the big piece in the center are OK but more than that not so much. For me, the quality of the wood is foremost, and the number of pieces secondary.

The worst Strat I ever owned was a Korean made Dillion. It was a sunburst model covered in thick poly plastic and appeared to be two or three pieces max. I tried everything with this guitar to bring out the tonez (trem block, nut, neck and boutique vintage vibe pickups) but nothing worked, it still sounded harsh with little sustain. The problem was most likely the fact it was made of Chestnut (not a noted tonewood) and who knows how it was cured, to say nothing of the thick finish.

The second worse Strat I ever owned was an MIM special made for a sponsored act. The pin-up girl I got it from said the Fender rep told her it had an MSRP of $1600, yeah right, whatever!! Like the girl it was a knockout though with beautiful figured maple neck. It looked like a Deluxe with a tort pickguard but minus the tacky gold hardware and low quality tuners (mine were Fender stamped). This guitar played like butter but was uninspiring through all my amps. I changed out the nut and the trem block and played with the pickup settings but it still sounded about like that concrete block in the video above. The stinger for me came when I picked up a 93 MIM Fender Squier Series for cheap on Craig's and it just completely devoured the fancy one in the tone department. I took another look at the opaque finish on the custom job and found five or six distinct seems. Long story short, I found another Fender Squier Series Strat on Craigs that sounded much better and negotiated a trade. People forget that until the early 2000's all Fender bodies were made in the US - the same bodies were used on both.

I should mention that I have a pre-2000 Gibson and Hamer that have one piece backs and really don't discern much of a difference between them and my others in the tone department, although they are both exceptional guitars. So for me it is a factor but only when you get into the butcher block range. Not really a fan of plywood bodied guitars, as it relates to tone either.

 

[Virtual Pariah]

I'm going to say that on the whole it doesn't, because pickups don't work that way.

If you mic'ed a few electrics, the density of the wood and the physics involved may allow for some differences, but pickups themselves don't work by the same processes as a mic does.

Then once you add in a warm amp, some cabling between amp and guitar, possibly between head and cabinet, the EQ settings and all that.

Then the drummer,
Then the bassist,

Nuance in the guitar itself is lost, now you are using the tone shaping properties of the amp's circuitry.

 

[Elias Graves]

Does your image mean... "huh"? ;-) If so... Most thin bodied "hollow" electric guitars (such as Gibson's ES series) .... what I had traded away when I went from hollow to semi-solid.

-don

No, it's just the term "semi solid guitar"...

Well, you see there was this guy named John watt...


Oh, I'm not sure what to say about John watt. But he had a thing for a semi solid guitar. It was gonna change the world if I remember.

 

[duceditor]

I'm going to say that on the whole it doesn't, because pickups don't work that way.

If you mic'ed a few electrics, the density of the wood and the physics involved may allow for some differences, but pickups themselves don't work by the same processes as a mic does.

Then once you add in a warm amp, some cabling between amp and guitar, possibly between head and cabinet, the EQ settings and all that.

Then the drummer,
Then the bassist,

Nuance in the guitar itself is lost, now you are using the tone shaping properties of the amp's circuitry.

You point about the guitar's sound being just one factor in an often complex chain and mix is certainly valid. But the same could be said about a Stradivarius in a full orchestral recording. Would I notice the difference if it were played by the 2nd violinist? Probably not. But by the soloist in, say, the Brahms Violin Concerto on a DG close miked recording? I suspect yes.

Also there is that factor of the strings vibration themselves being influenced by the rest of the instrument. They are -see the discussion in the "Hot Or Not? Ibanez ASR70" thread. No instrument is entirely inert. Nor, in most cases, do we wish them to be. Overtones are created when certain frequencies excite the non pickup, non string, portions of the instrument and vice versa where certain frequences fail to excite or even damp those frequencies.

That is why nut material matter. And bridge material and design.

Eric Clapton, for instance, would not approve a Strat to bear his name with that had either a live floating vibrato bar or one with a fixed stop piece. The sound that he favored could only be created with a blocked off floating vibrato..

The point is not that a guitar can only sound good set up that way but that such a change made a difference that was important to him.

Some Tele players favor one bridge design over another -- and the combination of brass and steel seems important to many. Same with the maple fingerboard vs one made of rosewood or rosewood vs ebony on a Gibson instrument.

Yes, if you load up your chain with enough pedals or over drive the tubes or diode circuits those subtleties can be lost, just as adding a lot of salt can hide the carefully blended and balanced flavors of a good marinara sauce. But that doesn't mean the such careful choice of ingredients and spice blending itself never matters.



-don

 

[thecornman]

No I do not believe it makes a difference in the sound of an electric guitar at all.