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http://www.recordingproject.com/bbs/vie ... 192#551192

An audio clip of guitars #4 and #5. I'll get pics up pretty soon but I thought you might find this interesting.

Both guitars are identical...being built from stem to stern out of the same boards. The major difference is that one of them is highly chambered and the other is a solid body. The solid body weighs almost ten pounds and the chambered guitar...just under six and a half.

See if you can discern any tonal difference between them. I can hear a subtle difference but only when I compare the very last plucked chord in both passages...and that could be attributable to the way I played it. There really isn't much to point to trying to spot a difference.

Let's hear some theories on why there isn't far more of a difference in these two tones.

_________________
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

I'd say the 2nd one has a slightly more pronounced clarity in the upper range. Smoke?

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

What....you want a definition?

A tiny bit of black dye in the nitro to smoke up the clear....a little. Turned out nice.

Or are you guessing which one is the smoke guitar? The chambered. But I'm not telling which of the clips is which....yet.

_________________
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

if they really are the two guitars, as described(and not a trick!), then i am amazed. they sound identical to me. but, you recorded them direct in, through a compressor and stuff right? no amp, no mic?maybe the software and processing erases the differences. or, if they are really high output pickups, then the pickup magnet doesn't allow any of the natural timbre to come thru...?

Are they both the same scale length, and do they have the same types of pickups?

Just read your description in the sound clip page.

My theory is that they have the same pickups and same scale length, and it doesn't hurt that they have the same type of bridge.

The guitars SHOULD sound nearly identical with only a subtle difference between them.

I'm guessing the second one is the chambered one because the first one seems to me to have tighter bass, and the second seems to have stronger mid frequencies, although it is difficult to tell on my laptop.

Nice tune, by the way!

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

I think I heard a little fuller bass on the second one,
so I am guessing that's the chambered?
Thanks for posting this, Stuart.

Yeah.

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

I must point out, however, that the difference between the two is VERY subtle, almost undiscernable.
The difference could easily be the wind and magnet strength of the pickups, which likely have variances between them, even if they are the same model. Minor differences in electronics in my opinion would have a greater effect on the tone than chambering one body over another.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

Hmmm, maybe I'm the only one to hear a substantial difference? I ran it through my big set of studio speakers though, not through a computer speaker set up. The first guitar is great, I mean that. Really nice sound. Excellent and substantially more bass resonance, crisper on the overall mids and top and just more sustain overall. The second guitar sounds good. Not as good as the first though to my ears. It sounds a lot like the first but as if it was run through a compressor. The bass is less, the top has a tiny bit more sparkle but only in the highest freqs, the rest not as clean, and less sustain at all frequencies. Sorry, you did ask for a comparison, that's just what my ears are hearing.
I'm assuming all the settings were identical on the guitars and input systems? So my question would be which one is the chambered one? I'm thinking the first?

Clip one is the chambered....the solid body was second.

_________________
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

So, what direction you heading after this test?

back to what i always originally thought: it doesn't matter what the heck you make a solid body out of, just matters what pickups you use, how you play it, and how you dial your amp!

Like nitro.

_________________
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

How does comparing a chambered guitar to a solid body prove your point about building guitars from different materials? I'm quite certain that the neck wood and the relative stability (rigidity) between the nut and bridge will have some effect on the tone. I once thought chambering would make a profound difference but this experiment proved that untrue. Pickups, of course, will have the most profound effect but if the wood does anything at all to flavor the tone then the pickup selction becomes far more important. I'm certain that if I throw some Strat pickups on these guitars it will sound more like a Strat...but this guitar will never sound JUST like a Strat.



I have some very nice blanks of Port Orford Cedar...enough to make two bodies and two necks. Cedar is so fundamentally different from the Sapele I've been using that if it doesn't thoroughly prove or disprove nyazzip's point...I'll be dipped. I'm going to mount a set of P-Rails in one of them and a set of Seymour Duncan's recommended as replacements for a PRS in the other one. Then I'll put the same PRS pups in one of my Sapele guitars. That'll give me a full range of pickups and wood selection in order to answer this question.

_________________
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

Makes me want to make a bolt on neck,
with an mdf body,
and hear how that compares with another build,
with the same pickups.
Wouldn't take that long,
and I could use the neck on another build.
Hmmm...

...well, i figure chambering would simulate a solid body of much lower density/different wood, or have a much more dramatic effect on sound than mere differing wood species. but maybe not.

I'm curious as to what "Just like a strat" would sound like, considering they all sound slightly different? (Just to throw some fuel on the fire ). I certainly think if you threw strat pickups in these guitars it would definitely sound stratlike, at least as stratlke as any other strat. What's the scale on these two guitars, just out of curiosity?

Also, if you really wanted to test and see, you might consider making a guitar identical to the ones in these soundclips, with the same pickups and hardware, but made with the Cedar.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

two questions:
1)what pickup location was used in the recordings(bridge, neck, etc); and,
2)what was the resistance of said pickup(measured in ohms)?
[or, 2A)what brand/model if you don't have that datum?]

also in the interest of "science" ,curious as to recording interface/signal processing/software.
thanks for the clips

last addendum....the brain/ear has a very short memory regarding sound; instead of playing a 30-40 second schpiel, then playing another, and trying to compare them that way, it would be more enlightening to play a few seconds/a bar, then switch back and forth A/B, and so on. i'm thinking like a "call and answer" type of recording between the 2 guitars, maybe one panned left, the other right.... BUT it might get difficult for listeners to keep track of the switches, when the wave graphics are not availabe
just trying to contribute and learn here, not trying to disparage or anything....i find this interesting
cheers

Stuart-How did you decide how to chamber the body on #1? Did you rout all the areas that were available space, or was there a particular plan for sizing, shaping and placement of the chambers or what? I just ask 'cause it sounds GOOD.

Sorry I missed this earlier.

I took care to design each chamber to have its own unique shape and area....on the theory that each chamber will have its own resonate peak frequency if each chamber is different. The theory further goes that each of the nine discreet resonate peaks will have 1/9th the amplitude realtive to the fundamental tone compared to a single resonate frequency of a single chamber.

So there are nine distinct, sealed chambers. All connecting, common walls are .175" thich and the outside edge is .2" thick. All the chamber bottoms follow the outside contours of the front and back surfaces and they are .2" thick.

So basically, all the wood that could be removed was removed.

The thing I notice the most after playing the both more is that the chambered guitar has a more even frequency response. The solid body seems to be weaker in the mid-tones than the highs and lows.

_________________
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

The Seymour Duncan P-Rails were switched to use just the P90 coils on both pick-ups...all available tone and volume.

Each coil of each pickup on eight pickups were measured. I numbered each pickup and then measured them and chronicled the results but then failed to write down which pickup went into which guitar. So that was stupid...but it doesn't matter.

All P-90 coils measured between 13.3K - 13.4K on the bridge pickups. All P-90 coils measured between 7.2K - 7.3K on the neck pickups.

The only reason I measured them was to determine whether or not the aluminum rings I made would have any noticable effect on the output. There was no difference between any of the sixteen coils when measured with or without the aluminum covers.

Direct into a Line 6 Pod XT Pro...Yamaha MG 166CX board...Audigy 4 card...Cakewalk Sonar. I used minimal chorus and reverb and just a tad of compression. No EQ.

_________________
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