Does wood really affects the sound?(electric Guitar)

You sure about this? Experience and Physics tells me otherwise.;)

Hmm, but my personal experience and physics tells me that. I guess I should have included 'YMMV'. ;)

Using the same gauge of strings of the same brand, I always find it harder to bend on a strat. Tension is definitely higher, for me that is.

And also yes to the fact that strats always sound louder and more powerful. But with all the other factors weigh in, the ability to quantify that significant becomes slightly muddy. But yes, it's what I believe.

YMMV.

;)
 
actually longer scale gives ur guitar higher tone freq , brighter and higher tension, :D
but .. louder and powerful no i think .. its just a sound charasteristics

shorter scale has.. lower tone freq , lower tension, warmer , easier to bend... when u play on 24" guitar (standard tuning)... it feels like u play drop tunings on 25,5" ^^ the sounds ... the feels ... (Dark sound)..

the wood it self plays important role on a guitar...
ebony produce bright tone.... brighter than rosewood
maple's also producing a bright tone too
rosewood produce warm sound....
 
a general thought, wood by itself, doesnt make sound. So whats the deal with different sounding wood?

how does the density of wood, interact with the vibrating strings, across the instrument body, which prolly result in some resonnance when vibration meet density and how does this resonance when pickup by the pickup, still ensuring its characterisitc is being preserved, when being changed from electrical voltages to sound signal that we hear in the end, thru the amp?
 
And also yes to the fact that strats always sound louder and more powerful. But with all the other factors weigh in, the ability to quantify that significant becomes slightly muddy. But yes, it's what I believe.

Not so much YMMV, but pure physics.

Imagine your strat tuned to E, then played thru an amp. Then, detune it to Eb, and play it again. Notice it gets a wee bit louder overall. Mainly because, with slightly looser tension, the string, given the same force at both tensions, vibrates at a larger amplitude at Eb than E, cutting the pickups mag fields wider, generating a higher voltage output at the jack. The amount of disruption of the field correlates to the volume produced at the end.

If you're talking about acoustic terms, then yes, the strat is louder, but not because of the tension, but because of the routings in the bodies directly below the strings, especially the spring cavity on the back, making it almost like a sound hole of an acoustic.

That's why, plugged in, a Les Paul for some odd reason, always sounds louder than a strat with the same humbuckers.
 
how does the density of wood, interact with the vibrating strings, across the instrument body, which prolly result in some resonnance when vibration meet density and how does this resonance when pickup by the pickup, still ensuring its characterisitc is being preserved, when being changed from electrical voltages to sound signal that we hear in the end, thru the amp?

The wood changes the characteristics of the vibrations produced by the strings, and in return, influences the way the strings vibrate themselves. This change affects the way the pickups are being cut and sensing the vibrations, generally producing different multi-level harmoncs and hence a slightly different tone.

Simplest way, play a Mahogany acoustic vs a Rosewood acoustic or a Koa Acoustic. They all sound different, even though they're the same specs and same dimensions.
 
thank you, thats a good explanation which prolly should benefit some of us or anyone reading.

Sounds logical to me/

Heh, interestingly, for threads like this(could be here or elsewhere), theres usually more "i hear/i read somewhere" thoughts then why and how kinda argument. Not that i think "i hear" thoughts aint ok, but somehow the "bias-ness" of the way our hearing is, always made me really skeptical of things, without something subtiantially scientifically to back up.

Anyway, back to topic.
 
a tone knob has nothing much to do with the inherent characteristic of wood density nor resonance of wood that affect the inherent sound of the instrument

a tone knob is just a simple frequency filter that shunt high freuency to ground while letting the low pass thru( on instrument). And anyway, the tone knob on the instrument only attenuate, which, again, is a weakness..
 
But it's still one hell of a watch and it get's a lot of attention. Especially if your boss wears the same one. Instant conversation starter.

Not really, it's not... I have a Panerai. It's not much worth discussing when you're sitting next to a Richard Lange or a Chronometre Soverain. The Panerai is mainly a Unitas 6497 or a ETA 7750 modified. nothing really special. Their in house movements are also ok... not really that high end. You're paying mainly for the trend and the popular name. It's what Rolex was in the 80s.
 
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Sounds logical to me

Honestly, it's mainly evident when you have more than one of the same type of guitar, but with different woods, then you'd notice the difference. But i've come to notice that there are a lot of tonally simlar woods where one or the other doesn't make much diff. Alder/Ash is one. Korina/Mahogany is another. Basswood seems to be so far the one i've tried with no alternative.

That's why the EBMM Axis Sport BFR is so attractive. It's basswood with maple top AND mahogany toneblock... Whoa... Tonefest!
 
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i donoe but to me i can see how wood affects the sound of acoustic guitar as its a direct vibration-affect-sound, but electric guitar? the pickups pick up vibrations of the strings, no? how does the type of vibration of the STRINGS affect tone? hmmm... correct any part of this if wrong, though.
 
Not just vibration of the strings.

Think of pickups as microphones (technically, they are). When you use a microphone, in a quiet room, chances are that the sound will be different from using the microphone in a noisy hawker center. The mic picks up sounds from the air around it and in the end, the sound you hear gives its characteristics, which will allow you to say , "hey, this is recorded in a quiet/noisy place" (with all other factors being constant).

Pickups on electric guitars work work the same way. In fact, it becomes more critical as wood is solid, and physics dictate that sound travel faster, stronger and better through solids than through gas. So every sort of influence the characteristics of the wood has over the vibration that resonate from the string will be picked up easily. Remember, the pickups are resting ON the wood itself, so sound is traveling through wood straight to the pick up itself.

Hence, electric guitar sound = string to pickup + string to body to pickup + string to bridge to pickup + string to neck to pick up + etc etc...
 
How about this for a better understanding... take your hi-fi speaker for example... let's just say you have 3 type of speaker... 1) plastic material 2) plywood material and 3) a solid wood material...

The sound from each one of them will be different if all else are built are to the same spec... generally speaking, the trumpet inside the speaker are electronic but the sound reflected from the walls of wood that house it will be different. am i right?
 
thanks THOA, but im still wondering HOW the pickup actually pick up the signal. man, after some time playing the guitar and so much gadget talk, i dont even understand the pickup. so paiseh.
 
thanks THOA, but im still wondering HOW the pickup actually pick up the signal. man, after some time playing the guitar and so much gadget talk, i dont even understand the pickup. so paiseh.

Think of it this way. You know that a pickup generates a current when the string cuts the magnetic field right? This is a basic law of physics found in electronics. The field is cut when the strings pass through the fields, and the transducer (the coils in the pickups) start to generate a electrical current. That's why output of pickups should ALWAYS be measured in the form of mV and not DC resistance.

So, other than just the strings vibrating, since the body is also vibrating from the string's force, so is the pickup! the pickup will move along with the body and different woods, different qualities will actually cause the pickups to produce different harmonics. Add all those harmonics up, and you get sort of a standing wave that sort of defines the tone.

The tone could also be a matter of phase differences in the electrical current (nothing to do with in-phase or out-phase wirings of pickups). This is when your basic trigonometry comes into play. What's the phase angle of that wave? I don't know. you could capture it on an audio monitoring device in a professional studio. That's how sometimes they decide to "space out" the sounds on a recording so that 2 guitars don't come together to generate mush. They change the phase angle.

That final resultant tone is processed by the amp, and produced by the speakers as sound. That's partially why different speakers also produce tonal variations. The ability to interpret changes from speaker to speaker.
 
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