Official Luthiers Forum!

I've built five of these with everything from this highly figured, spongy, spaulted maple top to a simple, barely figured, very hard maple top....and I can't tell a difference between them. And I've got a pretty good pair of ears. I think moving from maple to myrtlewood and verawood, as I have planned, could result is a subtle difference but I honestly believe the choice of tops on the guitar isn't ever going to matter much tonewise until the string vibrations are ALLOWED into the wood by using a much less massive bridge.

Brass is dense...and its dead weight increases its mass moment of inertia (best defined as a reluctance to change velocity). The string vibration meets the mass of the bridge and the small amount of energy carried by the string doesn't overcome the inertial mass of the brass....so the vibration remains in the string and not much is transmitted into the wood.

With a much lighter bridge...more vibration will transmit into the wood....which will flavor the waveform....which travels back into the vibrating string. Sustain is affected some but not as much as people think as long as the relationship between the nut and the bridge saddles remain STABLE. Rigidity is the key to sustain, not just mass. Mass in guitars is thought to create sustain but only because more mass generally creates more rigidity. My guitars sustain quite nicely yet they weigh only about 6 pounds with all the hardware. The sustain is a result of a good nut fitting, a stable, rigid neck, and a tight neck/body joint. The necks are cocobolo fretboards with the neck being a laminate mostly of maple and sapele....rigid. The body joint is very accurate and tight....and is glued under good clamping pressure.

Designing a bridge, and a guitar that allows the wood selection to flavor the tone is my main focus with my electrics. So far, I've only scratched the surface of this but getting the bridge very rigid but very light and developing the chambers and geometry of the wood just under the bridge is the key...I believe. Allow the string vibration into the wood and direct that vibration to the chambers to get them ringing....that's the ticket. Once I understand how to do that...the number, shape, and wall thickness of the chambers will come into play and the wood selection will make quite a bit of difference in the overall tone of the guitar.

I hope I live long enough to find out about all this.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Remember a guitar product from years ago marketed as the "FatHead"? It was a brass plate shaped like a Tele, Strat, or Les Paul headstock with all the correct tuner holes - although a bit smaller. They made them for basses, too. You had to remove the tuners, install the plate, and then reinstall the tuners...

I sold and installed a LOT of them by demonstrating them with this simple trick. I had the client strum (or pluck) the instrument unplugged, noting the tone and sustain of the note. I then clamped the FatHead to the peghead of the instrument, and asked the client to again strum or pluck. The instrument was always noticeably louder, and the sustain was noticeably longer. Cha-ching!

This is not to say that large brass bridges or even whole metal guitars sound better - we still want a woody sound, right? So I don't buy the notion that metal is a "dead weight" on an instrument, or that it keeps the instrument from absorbing the energy of the string. After all, brass is a very musical metal - ask any horn player. Aluminum - not so much, even though TonePro is doing a lot of business these days selling aluminum bridges and tailpieces.

I had a client who owned a Les Paul and a hardtail Stratocaster, and he had me install a Kahler vibrato on the Gibson, and a Floyd Rose on the Fender. He noted a reduction of his Strat's woody tone after I installed the Floyd in comparison to his Les Paul's slight change in tone. He thought having that big block of brass mounted on his Strat was a bad thing. But I reminded him that I had to take A LOT of wood out of the Strat (originally a hardtail) to install the Floyd. THAT was the diff in my opinion.

I think just having a great selection of tonewoods working together in harmony with selected musical metals like brass are the real arbiter of tone and sustain. Remember that old adage.... more than the sum of its' parts. No hard and fast rule applies, the maker explores and experiments to make his decisions.

Oh, yeah - I would NEVER put a chamber under the bridge. Just sayin'.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Do this.

Take a medium sized C-clamp and clamp it to the headstock (without wrecking it ). Then tape off the handle so it doesn't rattle.

You're going to get the same effect as the brass plate. Probably a better effect actually. The reason is because you added weight...which increased the moment of inertia at the end of the neck...which stabilized the relationship between the fulcrums (nut and saddle) on your vibrating string...which contained the energy of the vibration to within the string.

As the tone of a plucked string fades it is dissipating the energy imparted to it by the pluck. Dissipation increases rapidly at the intial pluck when there is instability of the two fulcrums. If you were to able to string a string up on a twelve ton granite slab and then throw the whole thing into a vacuum chamber...chances are pretty good the string would vibrate for an hour...but it would quickly take the shape of a pure tone after the pluck...and sound like an occilator.

Brass isn't musical unless it's made into a musical shape. In a horn air resonates the thin brass of the endbell as diffenent frequencies are emitted. In a bell the striker makes the entire thing resonate at its prescribed frequenty. A brass plate fixed to a headstock does neither. It's the dead weight of the brass that increased the sustain and amplified the string by not allowing the quick dissipation of the string energy.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

You say tomayto, I say tomahto.....

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Hey now, this is some good stuff! Great information, now I'm learning something.....

Interesting topic,
once again!
I've been pondering this subject for 30 years.
I've built regular slab gits, and lap steels out of,
1-maple strat, with a maple neck, 2-chambered koa, 3-maple 1 piece, 4-1 piece redwood, 5-walnut/redwood body/redwood neck(with rosewood support bar),
6-mahog back/maple cap, 7-fir body with koa neck.
My conclusions are that the body wood doesn't matter as much as the neck wood.
Weight and stiffness and density add sustain.
The maple strat has a brass bridge, and a brass plate on the back as a string catch,
and it has a steel square tube truss rod.
That thing will sustain forever.
I think the neckwood has more to do with tone,
and the pick-ups are the most important.
Still in the dark tho...

Uh, no. They can't hear what's not there.

An electric guitar still starts as an acoustic. A Les Paul sounds fat and chunky acoustically, and then again once plugged in. A Strat or Tele is bright and glassy both ways. What I'm getting at is that whatever the guitar sounds like plugged in, pickups will not create any extra tones. They filter, or color the tone - but do not add.

So, important yes - most important, no.
It all starts with the wood.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I think the two most important aspects of electric guitar building are scale length, and pickups, and they work together.
If you build a Les Paul with a solid alder body, maple neck, and fretboard, it will sound like a les paul because of the scale length and the pickups.
If you build a strat with a mahogany body, maple top, mahogany neck and ebony fretboard, it will sound like a strat because of the scale length and pickups.
Putting two humbuckers on a strat doesn't make it sound like a Les Paul.
Putting two single coils on a Les Paul doesn't make it sound like a Telecaster .
If you made a Telecaster with 3 single coils Strat pickups, it would sound like a Strat.
If you make any of these neckthrough, the tone will darken, though it will still be recognizeable for what it is.
I've done all these things to see, and this is my conclusion.

Wood is largely irrelevant, as long as it's not ply, so I stick to the standards.
It's the scale length plus the electronics that make 99% of the difference.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Funny.
I posted a reply that kinda said what you said Git-Wisp.
i got off-line before it posted.
What I said was if one built a guitar out of whatever kind of wood,
then changed from hummers to single coil,
it would make a way bigger diff than if one used the same pick-ups in a guitar built of a different wood.
Even a radically different wood.
The "tone monkey" quest goes on.
Good thing!
By radical, I mean a maple body compared to a maple/mahog body.
I know this, because I've done it!
I am a "tone monkey"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tone gets me high like a kite.
Beats drugs.

I SERIOUSLY disagree with you.
If wood doesn't make a difference, why in the hell are you even messing with wooden guitars?

3/4 of an inch in scale length transforms from Strat to Les Paul? BS. What do you say about PRS with a 25" scale length? Or baritones?

And where do P-90's fall in your equation? How about Dano lipstick pickups? Give me a break.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

You can disagree all you want, but disagree with what I actually wrote, please.
I didn't say that 3/4 inches alone makes all the difference.
Nor did I say we shouldn't build guitars out of wood.
However, great guitars have been made out of practically every species of tree on the planet large enough to make a guitar from.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Okay, you can use plywood if you want, a lot of companies do. It'll still sound like a guitar.

Did you put telecaster electronics in your telecaster? Also, the stamped steel bridges have an effect on the magnetic flux field, giving the bridge pickup a certain "Sizzle".

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Naw, I know you're serious, I just have never heard a plywood guitar I've actually liked.

If you used Telecaster electronics and also a stamped steel bridge, that's why it sounds like a Tele, probably. Maybe Allen's right and it's all due to the electronics, although I still feel that the scale has a very noticeable effect.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

So if this is true, why doesn't changing the bridge to a milled brass unit make the Tele no longer sound like a Tele?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Not criticizing anyone, but I hear "a tele sounds like a tele, a strat sounds like a strat, or a les paul sounds like a les paul "all the time.
Which tele? which strat? which les paul? i have played so many examples of each of these guitars that sounded very different from one another that it's not even funny.
Sure, there is a sound, or aspects of tone, associated with these guitars. But there is such a wide variation within a given group that I think there's a lot more going on than we would like to admit.
It's easier to say" this makes it sound like this, that makes it sound like that," etc, than it is to admit that there's a lot about tone that we still really don't know.
I have been playing and doing tech work a lot longer than building, but I think it'll be a long time(if ever) before I truly know what makes one guitar sound different from another, much less what makes a particular model have this or that sound.
i think every part or aspect of a guitar makes a difference in the overall tone you get.
And i think it's even more important how those parts are put together.
To me, it boils down to doing my level best to build the best guitar I'm capable of at the present time. I believe in paying attention to every detail, and I'll let the guitar sort out what it wants to sound like. More than likely, it won't be anything like I expect. However, IME, if I pay close attention to the process of building, it'll sound good.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

You are all using generic terms when describing "timbers".....

Here is an informative article I wrote a couple months ago which clarifies and especially demystifies a few points:

http://www.facebook.com/notes/hufschmid-guitars/sound-and-species-demystification/210890445643824

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http://hufschmidguitars.com

The first thing I see when I look at the guitar is the substantial neck joint & the strings appear to be really close to the body. I would try to do some work in those areas to try to free up some tone.

Clarifies and demystifies?
Sorry - just more of your opinions and some serious hairsplitting... no real data.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Here is some of my data.
My fav is the walnut burl cap one,
but they all sound great,
just different from each other.
The fiddle maple cap sounds almost tele like,
the redwood one has a S.D. pup mounted to the ring,
the walnut one has the pickups screwed to the redwood back.
The S.D. pup sounds like the EMG pup,
even tho they are mounted differently.
Both are around 14k ohms.

As FZ once put it so eloquently, "Shut up and (build) your guitars"

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"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
See the most insane first guitar build: http://www.virgilguitar.com
http://www.youtube.com/VirgilGuitar

Because there's still the scale length, and also the Telecaster pickups in play. It'll still sound like a Tele, just a less sizzly one.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I say this to clarify what is being discussed and work toward using common terms.

There seems to be no standard way to describe "tone". Some folks use it as a broad term incorperating all aspects of what a guitar does when a string is set in motion . Others may take tone to mean frequency spectrum ,and not consider the attack, sustain, decay and release as part of the tone. Tone and response can mean two different things but are so intertwined that most folks lump them together. To really get to the essence of what makes one set of specs different when using the same design, one must try to break apart the sound and listen to every aspect.
You may get a guitar that sounds very much like another but has a very different response.
Another thing to consider is how the guitar is being used. We all know high volume and alternate tunings can change things in a hurry.
Please add your take on it.
Brett

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How long is that in luthyears?

I frequently say, "takes all kinds" (to make a world).
My Dad quickly retorts, "No, there IS all kinds".

Maybe this fits this subject. Ya'll tell me.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I just came in da house from working on one, so there.
Yellow Siris Weissy.
Man that stuff is weird.
I hope it works!
Chris, I don't know if that really fits this thread, but I like it!
Did Stuart give up?

i believe on most of Zeppelin's 1st record, and some later songs(like some stuff off of In Through the Out Door), Page used a tele.....do you guys think it "sounds like a tele"? i don't, really. couldve been anything to my ears...
i think the guitar player's touch has more to do with tone than anything else, with electric guitars, followed by amplifier type/settings.
in my opinion the only real "unmistakable" electric guitar tone is the "out of phase" settings on a strat, and thats due to electronics, not wood