Tube amps / Tonewood

[theElevators]

 

 

 

 

The first video about guitar amps really blew my mind... I mean I think I can always dial in my "signature" sound with any amp, unless it's uncontrollably overdriven or too boomy... But this is just fantastic.  Take that, you cork-sniffers! 

[MGW-Alberta]

That guy has been debunked a hundred times on other forums.

Just saying.

[codamedia]

On 1/3/2023 at 2:03 AM, MGW-Alberta said:

That guy has been debunked a hundred times on other forums.

Just saying.

 

Of all the things on the internet to debunk... a guitar player testing stuff and giving his opinion. 

He doesn't claim to know the answers, he's searching for them. 

[PierM]

 

[theElevators]

There are some topics that immediately divide the people into truthers and conspiracy theorists.  I think it's rather interesting to shatter that status quo, and maybe realize that we all have fallen victim to a scam perpetuated by the traditionalist thinking :)  Or maybe to make us pay way more for our gear than we should.  I bet you, there'll be a video of the same guy doing an analog amp v. modeled amp soon.. Aren't we all Helix users? 

 

Here's what I have gathered so far:

Re: tonewood: with a solid-body guitar and non-microphonic pickups, the wood, granite, glass, plastic or non-wood makes such an insignificant difference, that it can be practically ignored.  So, if you take the Gilmour Black strat, it can sound extremely similar to a well set-up Squier if you pull out the pickguard out of it and install it into that new body.  Why spend thousands of dollars on a custom shop guitar, if you can achieve extremely similar results if you have quality parts and build an exact same guitar out of the same components? 

 

If you have a hollow-body guitar, however, then obviously it feeds back, resonates and rattles differently.  And since every pickup is microphonic to a certain extent, the hollow body guitar has more acoustic-guitar sound mixed in.  A vintage non-potted or simply crappy pickup that is extremely microphonic will pick up things other than the string vibration. 

 

People listen with their eyes.  Light wood is bright, dark wood is dark-sounding.  Ultimately, IMO it's about playability and being inspired by your gear.  Plus there's familiarity with your gear--if you practice your guitar everyday, you know all if its characteristics and you begin to learn how to overcome all of its quirks, dead notes, warped neck, etc. 

 

 

[somebodyelse]

I'm using a Helix, so none of that cr@p matters to me.

 

When I fire up the old gear, then I'll care... maybe.

 

At the end of the day, I've got what I've got. It sounds how it sounds. Whether I think it makes a difference or not doesn't change how it sounds.

[brue58ski]

Some people can tell the difference and some can't. That's because we're all different and have had different experiences. Eric Johnson says he can tell the difference between different batteries and different guitar cord lengths. I cannot. Well, maybe a REALLY long and a really short guitar cord. People have witnessed him do this so it's probably true. I work in media and I see things that make me cringe that other people not only don't cringe, they aren't even aware of what happened. It's not a character flaw, it's just that I'm immersed in it a lot more. Regarding amps, as an example, I think a Marshall JCM800 and Fender Twin sound different. Especially when it comes to clean tones. You may be able to get them to sound close to each other with the amps controls and some pedals. But they sound different. If you can't hear that, then I don't know what to tell you. As far as guitars go, I would say the differences are more subtle but they are there in my opinion. There are always people that want to "shatter the status quo". Pot stirrers. Like to shake other peoples tree, etc. Just to legitimize their existence I guess. There's always someone that will think what you are doing, saying, thinking is wrong. It has rarely influenced me. I like what I like, think what I think and see what I see. And if you don't, that's OK. I would be curious to see if you took a Squier's electronics out and put them in a "normal" Strat if I could hear the difference. A Squier body is essentially made of a really really nice piece of plywood whereas a "normal" Strat is a solid piece of wood. My guess would be that the Strat would ring out more. But I'm pretty sure not everyone would perceive that. Especially new guitar players. I'll bet Eric could. You could argue that I would hear that because that's what I want. But that wouldn't be true. I want to know the actual truth, not what I think it is or should be. I do agree that people listen with their eyes. I have a Variax and was using the acoustic simulation. It's not even that good in my opinion but there was a person that was looking around on stage, trying to find the acoustic guitar player we have somewhere.  We did not.

[theElevators]

I also played this big outdoor music festival one time and played my Chinese Ignition Hofner bass, which sounds freaking sweet.  At the end of our set, a guy came up to me and complimented on the bass, saying it sounded phenomenal.  Then I told him it's a 300-dollar Chinese bass, and he immediately lost interest.  That made me LOL.

 

BTW, here's a recording with that amazing bass.  I love how this song came out, except a few double bass-drum things that the drummer did.  A plywood Chinese instrument into a vintage 1960's compressor, into Logic. 

 

[codamedia]

On 1/3/2023 at 1:56 PM, theElevators said:

At the end of our set, a guy came up to me and complimented on the bass, saying it sounded phenomenal.  Then I told him it's a 300-dollar Chinese bass, and he immediately lost interest. 

 

It shouldn't bother me when this stuff happens.... I know that.... but it does!

 

The recording sounds great... 

[MGW-Alberta]

A number of years ago, okay maybe a lot of years ago, I played in a country band for about 15 months or so.  Understand, country is not my usual genre but I joined the band for the experience of it and I'm not sorry I did.  I already had a fairly new American Standard Telecaster with an alder body and a maple board at the time and so I bought a second American Standard Tele with an alder body and a rosewood board as a backup.  The two guitars were one year apart in production; '95 and '96 if memory serves.  Being that close in production they both had the same stock pickups.  I came to the conclusion that the rosewood board Tele sounded different from the maple board Tele.  The differences I noticed were the same as one would expect from reading the now generally accepted attributes of those tonewoods.  There was also a difference in feel due to the coated fretboard versus the unfinished fretboard.  

 

Now .... I have posted this observation on other forums numerous times over the years and the responses have always ranged from "different woods have different properties" to "it's all in my head" but the one thing that cannot be explained is my perception of the difference.  You have to understand that in '95 and '96 I did not yet have internet service.  I did not have the preconceived ideas of tonewoods imposed on me by exposure to internet debates.  My observations were personal, genuine and unbiased because there were no external factors influencing me.  I am not going to stand here and insist that the differences were so significant as to be blatantly obvious.  In fact, I feel almost certain that no persons in those pub audiences could have ever possibly noticed the difference when I switched guitars but I did notice because it was my rig and me playing.  We could go on for days arguing about what the cause of those differences might be but it still boils down to ... the guitar itself made a difference; the pickups were the same; mass produced, machine made, identical magnet types, identical wind counts.  The whole idea behind modern guitar building methods like CNC machining, machine made pickups, etc. is for consistency.  Guitars of the same type are more consistent since the late 80s than they ever have been in all of history.

 

I am a pragmatist.  My philosophy is, "if it works, it's good."  I do not value gear because it is old.  I do not value gear because it is the latest and greatest newfangled thing.  I value gear if it works well, sounds good, is reliable and is appropriate to my needs.

 

There is a difference between woods.  I know it because I experienced it for myself.  It might not be a huge difference but the difference does exist.

[somebodyelse]

On 1/4/2023 at 4:41 AM, MGW-Alberta said:

A number of years ago, okay maybe a lot of years ago, I played in a country band for about 15 months or so.  Understand, country is not my usual genre but I joined the band for the experience of it and I'm not sorry I did.  I already had a fairly new American Standard Telecaster with an alder body and a maple board at the time and so I bought a second American Standard Tele with an alder body and a rosewood board as a backup.  The two guitars were one year apart in production; '95 and '96 if memory serves.  Being that close in production they both had the same stock pickups.  I came to the conclusion that the rosewood board Tele sounded different from the maple board Tele.  The differences I noticed were the same as one would expect from reading the now generally accepted attributes of those tonewoods.  There was also a difference in feel due to the coated fretboard versus the unfinished fretboard.  

 

Now .... I have posted this observation on other forums numerous times over the years and the responses have always ranged from "different woods have different properties" to "it's all in my head" but the one thing that cannot be explained is my perception of the difference.  You have to understand that in '95 and '96 I did not yet have internet service.  I did not have the preconceived ideas of tonewoods imposed on me by exposure to internet debates.  My observations were personal, genuine and unbiased because there were no external factors influencing me.  I am not going to stand here and insist that the differences were so significant as to be blatantly obvious.  In fact, I feel almost certain that no persons in those pub audiences could have ever possibly noticed the difference when I switched guitars but I did notice because it was my rig and me playing.  We could go on for days arguing about what the cause of those differences might be but it still boils down to ... the guitar itself made a difference; the pickups were the same; mass produced, machine made, identical magnet types, identical wind counts.  The whole idea behind modern guitar building methods like CNC machining, machine made pickups, etc. is for consistency.  Guitars of the same type are more consistent since the late 80s than they ever have been in all of history.

 

I am a pragmatist.  My philosophy is, "if it works, it's good."  I do not value gear because it is old.  I do not value gear because it is the latest and greatest newfangled thing.  I value gear if it works well, sounds good, is reliable and is appropriate to my needs.

 

There is a difference between woods.  I know it because I experienced it for myself.  It might not be a huge difference but the difference does exist.

I don't disagree with you - whatever the reason is, they're different. The reason doesn't matter.

However, pots are a lot more inconsistent than they've ever been, today. Pickups are not as consistent as you believe, especially wire and magnets, and when all said and done, wood is the most inconsistent part of the equation - no two pieces from the same log are the same, let alone from an entire species.

You can have two seemingly 'identical' (in every single respect) guitars that sound different.

The same is true of analogue amplifiers and pedals - there is an inconsistency in all the components they're made from AKA manufacturing tolerance, which in most cases is quite a wide tolerance.

 

At the end of the day, unless you have unlimited pots of money to swap and change things around, your gear sounds how it sounds.

[PierM]

The only thing that matters for me it's how an instrument feels in my own hands. Everything else, really, I couldn't care less.

 

I do have a big collection of guitars (from very expensive USA CS to cheap MiC), the only thing that I can really say it does differ, even between identical guitars, it's how they feels and react to my fingers. That's some sort of magics that can happen or not, doesn't matter how expensive, what wood or what pickup. My best instruments in terms of feeling, aren't the most expensive. It's a random thing, that I can't control in any way.

 

Since the electric guitar, like any other instrument, does interact with the player (affecting the quality of the playing), I will keep thinking this is the most important thing when I buy them.

 

Then, big variable when it's about electric guitars, it's what genre you do play and how you are processing your raw tone.

 

Tonewood it's just a waste of time. :)

[MGW-Alberta]

Years ago, this video was posted on guitar forums all over the internet as proof there is no such thing as tonewood.  The video was made in order to sell pickups but tonewood deniers used it to debunk tonewood on guitar forums.  It completely backfired on them and actually proved that what the guitar is made of has an affect on how it sounds.  Interestingly, it also has an affect on sustain.

 

 

 

[theElevators]

There's also the pickup height and angle that play a very important role in how your guitar "sustains" and how bright it sounds. 

 

I had my strat set up for that quacky sound for the longest time.  That meant pickups were pretty low.  Recently I decided to make it match my other guitar in terms of volume and tone.  All I did was raised the pickups and all of a sudden it completely transformed from the quacky twangy sound to a singing rich with harmonics rock machine....  the sustain increased too.  If you raise the pickups too high, then the sustain can actually decrease as the magnet interferes with the string at this point.  Sustain can be both electronic and physical, of course.  You can hear the strings vibrate, but if the pickups are too low it sounds dead.  There's a middle ground where it works optimally. 

 

If I were to describe in terms of tonewood cliches what a few turns of the screwdriver did... it changed my guitar from that maple sparkly immediate attack to a more resonant full-bodied chocolatey rosewood sound.

 

I was actually shocked... now that guitar could be used as a backup for my main axe.  Whereas before, none of my presets worked with it properly. 

[soundog]

On 1/3/2023 at 12:03 AM, MGW-Alberta said:

That guy has been debunked a hundred times on other forums.

Just saying.

I found the youtube videos on amp and guitar tone to be convincing, and the methodology sound. I hope they aren't faked or bs. Has anyone offered proof are a convincing argument on "other forums" that the videos are bunk? Or are people "debunking" because they can't take the truth or because they overspent on a false belief?

[MGW-Alberta]

The majority of the debunking I read about was related to the table and bench test where the body itself was removed from the equation.  The video implies that wood is no longer a factor because there is no body or neck but the two anchor points are actually wood and they are connected by 2x4 wood crossmembers.  Other points were made as well but I don't recall all of them.  If you're interested in learning more about the arguments you can do a search on TDPRI and TGP.  There were other forums discussing it as well but those two had the longest  threads with lots of debating back and forth.  

 

The cinderblock guitar video is a very extreme example of material selection playing a role but there's no mistaking that it does in fact clearly identify materials as a factor.  

 

My comments in this thread were merely intended to point out that many videos have been made arguing on both sides of the issue and there are always people who make fair and reasonable criticisms.  This is by no means the first time this subject has come up and the "pickups-only" crowd gets silenced in the end every time.  In my own experience I have heard some differences.  They probably would not be discernible in a recording or in an audience but they are apparent to me while I am playing.  My own belief is that the amp/effect combination plays the largest role in the final sound; ie: those things that come after the guitar in the signal chain.

 

 

[PaulTBaker]

I agree with PierM that the way a guitar "feels" in your hands is the most important thing for me.  I also have guitars of varying price ranges, but only because they "felt" good.  You can tell as soon as you put your hands on it if it is good or not.  Yes, sometimes all it needs is a change of strings and a good setup, but it still needs that feel.

 

That's why I can never understand why guitar places don't take the time to at least do a basic setup and maybe change the strings.  So many times I have picked up a guitar at places like Guitar Center, Sam Ashe, etc, and the strings were way off the neck and were rusty.... I know it's silly, but it drives me crazy!  (or maybe, I should be happy because now I have more money in my pocket :))