Official Luthiers Forum!

This thread has really gotten fruity.

Soon to go nutty, lol.
Well, it is getting close to Christmas. Fruitcake, anyone?

_________________
Mike

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

Man, this thread got spicy. Anyway, everybody knows difference between a LP tone and a Fender tone is in the 3 X 3 headstock (good) vs. the 6-in-line headstock (bad). Someday I'm going to build a guitar out of stabilized cow poop just to prove the point!

_________________
David Morris

Just how is that done exactly? Compression and heat? Resin impregnation under vacuum?
Tell us!

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

Well, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

_________________
David Morris

OH, PUHLEEZE!!
Tell me, tell me, tell me.

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

I'll give you a hint. It involves a lot of bulls%!#.

_________________
David Morris

I've been accused of being a master bulls%!#er.
However, no one ever trotted out definitive proof.

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

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

Chris you are from the midwest and some of the largest feed lots in the world.....you of all people should know what a stable cow pie is. If it jiggles, it isn't stable!

Mike

Ageless advice from Harry Truman...

"Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day!"

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

The best way I can describe tone woods and their effects on tone is to look at the porosity of the wood and that should give you what tone it will have due how much distance the sound wave has to bounce back and forth through the wood. Such as mahogany, with a much more porous grain than say maple, will produce a warmer more bass sound due to the fact that the sounds waves have more room to oscillate, producing that sound.
Maple on the other hand has a tighter pore structure, hence the sound wave has less room to oscillate, so it will be more compact and thus will have a brighter sound to it.



That's what I have always thought in my head anyway, and makes sense in practice I believe. I dunno, I am sure someone will rip this to shreds.

i would say density and stiffness are the big factors; porosity, probably not really. but porous woods tend to be less dense than non-pourous ones, of course
the stiffness and density of spruce is prettymuch unmatched, thats why they chose it for airplane frames back before aluminum alloys

edit: i should have said "stiffness-TO-density of spruce".......

Just when this thread went from fruity,
to the s..ts,
Jimmy, makes sense to me!

The distinction you create by widening the pores will be offset by the added Helmholtz resonance from thinning the top in random, but determinate areas as determined by the formula:



That said, the theory warrants further testing. Fillippo, please post any pertinent results you find.



I'm sorry. These threads are a lot of fun for me.

_________________
David Morris

Well Filippo, that's called chambering, and I believe chambering is proven to give a more low end and resonant sound than non chambering, you aren't changing the genetic pore structure of the wood, merely how much wood is present. Are acoustics known to have less low end than an electric?

Additionally, if the amount of oscillation does not change tone in the ways I am thinking, why does a guitar string, which oscillates in the exact same manner as a sound wave have a different sound on a fender than a gibson? Does the fender not have a longer scale length which increases tension and the decreased oscillation provides a more snappy sound than the lower string tension of the Gibson scale.

Again, I am not concrete on all of this by any means, nor am I an expert, this is just what I am hypothesizing.

No. good experiment though!
Shot gun chambered guitar...
Wear ear plugs,

It would save a lot of time. Not to mention wear and tear on router bits, lol.

_________________
Mike

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

A:because of the wood types, wood shapes, hardware, and electronics that these strings are anchored to. in other words, the initial question that got this thread started.

I don't even know how to reply to this, I mean, it's not like I didn't attempt to explain that statement you picked one line out of, as well as why I think the different tonewoods have different sounds.
I'm gonna go pump a few rounds from my AK47 into some sapele I have and think about how best to reply.

Seriously though, it's all in fun and I have enjoyed filippo's as well as other guys theories as well.

Spread pattern of the shot WAY more important.
This is really getting silly.
I'm going out to do some binding.

Or shoot it a few more times.

_________________
Mike

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

Yes. Shoot the bulls%!# a few more times.

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

But seriously folks, if we are on theories then this is mine:
Every object will have a resonance frequency that is natural to that object. In the case of a guitar we might have what physics might see as several different objects all oscillating at different frequencies. (the neck, the body, etc.). So a guitar can be tuned, not the strings, the guitar. It's my theory that this is why 2 alike guitars can sound so different. Different individual pieces of wood, minute changes in shape, finish, etc.. Heck, even the torque on the neck bolts could change this. Think about it this way: If I have a guitar that just happens to oscillate all the individual parts at perfect pitch at say, a G note. All of the harmonics that resonate back out of the guitar when I play a G chord are going to be sweet right? Also any shared overtones will sympathetically resonate as well. That's a bunch of sweet notes resonating in harmony.
On the other hand, if the body naturally resonates at -10% of F#, and the neck resonates at + 20% of B, and the other parts all resonate at various different frequencies. well, how's that going to sound in comparison? Kind of puts a different twist on tuning a guitar, doesn't it?