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Actually I witnessed such an experiment. 2 identical guitars were built, one with HHG wherever possible (even the FB and headplates were glued to the neck w/HHG), one with Titebond. Same guitar model. Tops, B&S side sets, necks, FBs, everything selected to be as identical as it is possible in Nature. Tops and backs looked (and sounded) like they came from the same flitch (maybe they did) and were voiced identically.
About 2 months later when the guitars were set-up and strung up, there was a blindfold test (a dozen people, all builders, nobody except one person knew which one was the HHG guitar).
Both guitars sounded exceedingly similar, as expected, except one had this hard-to-define "more". Subtle, yet obvious after going back and forth between the guitars a few times, but a little more responsive, a hair more overtones, yet a tad more clarity and so on…
After trying the guitars (and not voicing any opinion out loud before everyone was done) everybody without exception agreed on which guitar was the best sounding of the two. No doubt, no argument.
Guess what? It was the Titebond guitar…
So, according to conventional wisdom, Titebond sounds better, no?
The Titebond one had maybe .020" more saddle height than the HHG one. Did that almost irrelevant more torque on the top make the difference? Or rather the normal and usual differences between builds? Both?
That settled the argument once and for all for me.


It reminds me of something called "the psychology of previous investment". It's only human!
During the test mentioned before, one builder involved with HHG really wanted to guess which one was the HHG guitar before comparing the two (It ought to be the better sounding one… but what "if"?). That was the main question for him, to know, and obviously would have skewed the results…

Seriously IMO the advantages of using HHG have nothing to do with tone but lie elsewhere.
Besides marketing hype and epistemic arrogance, of course…

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I've heard that Hesh. I read that sudden loss of vision is another complication. Apparently it's a syndrome known as "gluing yourself blind"
Terry

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

So?

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

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Good points Tony and I agree completely.



I agree with this statement too. But...... some of us are sneaking up on where we use HHG in our guitars. For me it is a never ending effort to incorporate more and more HHG where it makes sense and for the qualities that you correctly in my view indicated. So although somewhat half assed for now we are learning and some of do agree with the benefits of HHG use for many, many things in building. Good post Tony!



Very good points Todd as well. There will always be the argument that some of the highly prized vintage instruments used HHG but...... that was all they had to use back then and technology and time has provided us with alternatives.

The serious marketing mojo point is clearly being demonstrated by the recently announced Martin "Authentic" series where Martin triples the price of a D-18 partly for the use of HHG.......AND they say so too..... They are keen to the market perception that what was used in vintage instruments will command more bucks now. Very powerful indeed.

One of my favorite contributors on the OLF is Al Caruth. I have consistently received the impression from Al that no matter how good the science - test reports do not always jive with what the human ear perceives. Much of what we call "tone" is not measurable with current science. This has to be frustrating to Al but I have yet to see him take a test report as the final word on all things.

Laurent gave an excellent example of how two guitars made a group of people feel. And of course the points that two pieces of wood from the very same billet can vary widely in tonal characteristics is also very valid IMHO. With no offense intended to my pal Laurent there is also the issue of group dynamic and what was done to completely isolate all participants from any information pertaining to the preferences of other participants.

But do you think that ultimately a players satisfaction with an instrument will indeed be based on a very subjective impression of how that instrument makes them feel? You know, good old feelings, why we as individuals have preferences that vary widely from the perceptions of others. How do you measure this? How do you account for someone having a bad day, a congestive cold, a personality that may suck and they won't like anything or won't like it in advance for prejudicial reasons?

I have a very unscientific preference for light weight guitars and this is based on not only what I hear but even more so on what I feel. Lighter weight guitars where the entire guitar acts as a system, what Tony mentioned, provide me with a physical sense of the vibrating instrument that a heavier guitar will not. Almost a bone conduction thing and no jokes about how I hold the guitar please....

Very good thread folks - thanks!

The way you guys split hairs is amazing…
A guitar sounds like a guitar, right?
I tried to describe this experiment as clearly as possible and yet… But hey, take my word for it, or not… I specified both guitars sounded INCREDIBLY similar, differences were subtle. If hide glue had a positive tonal influence I assume somebody would have heard it. BTW the majority of participants, myself included, expected the best sounding guitar to be the HHG one.
So what group dynamic? Just another day in a shop. Nobody cared much, after all…
I mean I love that stuff, shellac, oil varnishes, animal glues, traditional methods, Buck chisels… I'm all about that, but let's not live in a fantasy either…
And by the way this whole thing about "poor sound memory" is pure BS. Where do you guys get that stuff?
Every talented musician I know has an incredible sound memory, and is so fussy about sound, it's pathological. Everything is remembered. And yes it's subjective, but yet incredibly accurate.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Laurent wrote:
"Actually I witnessed such an experiment. 2 identical guitars were built, one with HHG wherever possible (even the FB and headplates were glued to the neck w/HHG), one with Titebond. Same guitar model. Tops, B&S side sets, necks, FBs, everything selected to be as identical as it is possible in Nature. Tops and backs looked (and sounded) like they came from the same flitch (maybe they did) and were voiced identically.
[snip]
So, according to conventional wisdom, Titebond sounds better, no?"

How were the plates 'voiced'? I did a similar experiment where the only difference was the shape of the 'ring' type modes in the 'free' top plates, and the two guitars sounded different. If the plates in your experiment were voiced using 'tap tones' you would not know the mode shapes, and I'd expect some difference due to that.

One of these days I'm going to make a pair that really does match, and then, at least, we'll have some idea of what's needed to do that. Until then, I'm sceptical whenever a 'matched pair' is cited, even if I built them!

Al, the plates were voiced with tapping, checked and re-checked. Exceedingly similar in tone and stiffness, couldn't tell them apart.
I think you're missing the whole point, so do a lot of others.
This kind of experiment is never done to prove that Titebond "sounds" better than HHG. Almost everyone comes from the assumption that HHG must "sound" better. Because there is so much hype and narrative fallacy.
If we thought that Titebond "sounded" better then we would need to repeat this kind of experiment until a HHG guitar was found to sound better, and then repeat again and run averages.
And probably find out that glue type (at least between HHG, Titebond, Elmer's, LMI etc.) doesn't have much to do with tone (my opinion here…).
But the point is not this. If HHG really has such an influence on tone, then a 1st test like this would clearly demonstrate it, especially on 2 instruments an average guitarist couldn't tell apart, by tone or by look.
On another hand, anybody knows when Martin switched from HHG to white glue (to take a large scale example where averages quickly show)? Pretty late, 1965 from what I've read. I never hear about that difference between pre or post-1965 Martin guitars…

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

This thread is 3 days and counting...about what every quarterly controversial HHG thread has run over the past few years. It seems like every time a new person asks or becomes excited about using HHG, the doubters and cynics emerge with the demand for sonic superiority. Dudes... it's just a choice folks make to use a good, quality, reliable glue that provides great adhesion, won't creep over time and may transmit sound better than modern glues.

As I stated some time ago...the blindfold test has always been inconclusive for me. I use it for the benefits already stated...but most of all just to piss off the doubters and cynics now!

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

From what I've heard, Martin switched first to white glue (such as Elmer's) at least until the '80, and then TB.
On the issue of cold creep, that maybe the real advantage of HHG over TB.
But is cold creep really an issue with TB for a guitar?
IME (limited I will admit) I've never seen it. Whereas I've seen a fair amount of slipping/unglued bridges, FB extensions and braces with white/yellow glue due to exposure to heat.
I've also seen a fair amount of vintage HHG guitars with loose bridges and braces, no difference here.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Laurent,

I think I get your point that it is extremely hard if not impossible to hear differences between glue types,
and I don´t argue with you about that,
but this part of the test that caught my eye.
If you are to hear differences between glues, shouldn´t you try to make parts as close similar than possible,
then put the tops together but NOT voice them at all after glue up.
If there were differencies, aren´t you evening them out when voicing the tops to be similar?

I am a hot hide glue addict................you ever tried sniffing this stuff.....
Anyhoo, I just think an instrument made from wood should be as natural as possible without plastic between the layers. TB intruments sounds great, hhg intruments sounds great. I use it only for the reason I stated, and the aroma it leaves in the air.

Larent, I would be interested to know, where the folks separated from each other while the test was conducted. I mean no contact or communication until completed?

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

Well Chuck, it's still a little painful for me to recall the events, they're still fresh, but I'll try.
In a word: yes, no contact or communication altogether.
It seems we were all arrested at a Guitar Center, although none of us had anything to do with GC. A couple of teens had nothing to do with guitar building at all, just bad luck or attitude I guess… Anyway, after being blindfolded, shackled and thrown in a giant soundhole for a couple of month we were all flown to a naval base called 'Ritmo.
There we were thrown in individual cells with 20th century acoustic music blasting night and day. The lights never went out. On the individual cell monitors they also played footage of Franklin TB glue bottles being crushed by hooves and skins in mini-skirts. Some prison guards even urinated in 1 gallon TB jugs (half-empty) in front of the prisoners.
Being not religious myself I didn't care, but I know a couple of guys lost it after a week. They also blasted sheets of carbon fiber with repetition rifles, I never understood why… Just for kicks maybe?
After a couple of years some of us were selected for the test. You can say we were "ready"… At this point I had started hallucinating on a regular basis. Nevertheless all of us stuck to our guns, so to speak… We didn't give an inch: we knew that if we admitted to having used TB they'd use it to keep us locked forever and we'd never get out (everything was recorded). One of the kids passed away after one too many waterboarding sessions. No family or relatives, they figured nobody would care or ask anything…
Anyway after lobying by a couple of well connected families and a foreign government intervention, a few of us got out. The lawyers are figuring out things between a settlement and a public apology, but we're not holding our breath.
I am glad it is over, but my family doctor says I'm in denial of my PTSD so…

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Laurent wrote:
"I think you're missing the whole point, so do a lot of others.
This kind of experiment is never done to prove that Titebond "sounds" better than HHG. "

So why, then, did you present it as if it were a test to see which glue sounded better? I agree with you that unless you really can make matched guitars repeatably, a test like that won't tell you much. You have to go at it statistically. But what, exactly, was the point of the test you did?

Fillippo:
Making a matched pair is, in a sense, a test of how well we know how the guitar works. I built the first pair in an effort to check out what changed with 'playing in', but, since they didn't sound the the same, I didn't do the rest of that experiment. Instead, I learned that there was something I didn't understand about controlling guitar sound; the importance of the shapes of the 'free' plate modes. If I control that, along with everything else, will I end up with 'matched' guitars? There's only one way to find out.

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I didn't present it as anything actually, please re-read my description!
I'm not the one who ran the experiment either. I assume the intent was to find out if any difference could be heard due to the 2 glues used.

I disagree with your statement. I get the sense reading stuff around here that every single guitar is vastly different from the next one. Well, not really.
Especially in a production setting where attention is paid not to exacting dimensions, but to consistency of sound and feel. Yes sure, regularly some guitars stand out. But on the whole the guitars with exactly the same specs sound pretty similar and are nearly impossible to tell apart. Unless two guitars are A/B'd a bunch of times (which we did for the test described).
If HHG improved the tone so much -because it dries crystal hard, is a good tone transmitter, blah, blah, blah…- according to the hype, then one would have noticed it.
It was actually the opposite. Does it mean that TB sounds better? No, of course! Glue has nothing to do with it -or nothing measurable by a set of trained ears, at least-, which was the conclusion of this test for anybody who had a bit of critical thinking left in their minds…
I mean I'll gladly use HHG, I'm not emotionally involved with glues, so far…
But I wonder what the reactions would have been if I had written that the HHG guitar was the best sounding one… Something like this?

-Huh, huh, told you so!
- Of course, I knew that
- Same here, noticed the HUGE difference when I switched to HHG!
- No argument here, obvious from the outset!

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Laurent my friend I suspect that if your original post had made the point that the HHG guitar was clearly and universally thought to be sonically superior hairs would still have been split and factious divisions would have resulted anyway.

Some folks are more comfortable here just waiting for others to offer information and then sit back and pick it apart. In some cases these are folks who rarely proactively offer any new subject matter to be vetted favoring to participate in an entirely judgmental manner.

There is a huge difference in challenging the ideas of another and getting personal about it as it seems to happen all to often in not this thread but others.

My apologies to you if this seemed to be the case here. I can tell you that as a veteran of having a sore ass at the OLF in time one just learns to thicken up and also consider the source. As I am sure that you know at the end of the day we are all going to go off and do as we wish anyway much as you have and you are now producing some very outstanding guitars.

It's great to have you back here on the OLF.

And I found your story above about the "extraordinary rendition/audition" to be very funny indeed.

Laurent Brondel wrote:
"Glue has nothing to do with it -or nothing measurable by a set of trained ears, at least-, which was the conclusion of this test for anybody who had a bit of critical thinking left in their minds…"

I'm inclined to agree with you, except that so many people _think_ it does. Certainly, as Feynman said: "The easiest person for you to fool is yourself". But what if there's something to it? At some point we'll need to do the experiments, if only to lay the ghost.