I want this!!!

[IPLAYLOUD]

Gibson wishes that they could be anything REMOTELY like Nike.
Nike is #1 by 1,000,000 miles in it's category.

[djetz]

I made no such claim. I'm asking about what underpinning your claim has.

I'm interested in audio physics, and whether there's any provable basis in various claims that are made about guitars in particular and musical instruments in general. My experience - I must have played hundreds of guitars over the years, and I've owned a couple of dozen - tells me that there's usually no big difference between guitars that sell for hundreds of dollars and guitars that sell for thousands. And there is definitely no big difference between brand names and generic names. OK, that's opinion, and endlessly debatable. However, I think we can all agree that a good player with a decent cheap guitar always sounds better than a mediocre player with a top-of-the-line guitar.

Some years ago, I found some tests that had been done by acoustic researchers into the resonant qualities of the laminates that are used in speaker cabinets. The results were that most of the claims of superior and inferior laminates were imaginary - different wood varieties produced very little measurable differences, and the only noticeable difference was between solid wood laminates and particle board. The actual measurable difference being that particle board dampens higher frequencies. The differences between laminates was statistically insignificant. The differences between solid woods - one piece - was larger, but still small: a few percentage points in various parts of the audio spectrum. I'm dredging this up from memory, so I can't say for sure what the exact wood types were, other than they were common guitar woods, maple was in there, mahogany, birch, poplar, and a few others. But we're not talking about solid wood, we're talking about laminates.

Drums are made of the exact same laminates as semi-solid and hollowbody guitars, but the point of drums is to boost (or dampen) specific frequency ranges, so the results for drum tests aren't as applicable to guitars - a guitar is meant to have a much wider frequency response than a drum. With guitars, I've seen spectrograph tests of resonant qualities between different models - there's not a lot of information, but there is some. From what I've seen, there's a very good reason why those sort of results aren't used in marketing: there's no real difference. If Gibson (for instance) could show you the results of a spectrograph analysis of a waveform from one of their guitars and compare it to brand X and there was a big difference, it'd be in their ads. It isn't. Their ads are all about opinion, not science. With that in mind, it's also important to know the difference between independent research and sponsored research - sponsored research has a problem with what they call "confirmation bias".

In acoustic instruments, there are obvious differences between waveforms that do show up on a spectrograph. I've seen much more comparison between acoustic guitars than electric, because there really isn't an important amount of difference between different models of electric guitar with the same basic design. I've also seen a fair bit of comparison between classical stringed instruments, particularly the viol family - the differences show up in tests. Cheaper violins have spiky response charts, better violins have a smooth curve. Acoustic guitars, similar. With electrics, in the comparisons I've seen, the differences are very small.

It would probably take me all day to find examples, and I've already spent an hour writing this much, so you can either spend the time tracking down examples for yourself or take my word for it. You asked what evidence I've seen, I've told you about it rather than tried to show it to you which would be even more time-consuming for me. I don't know how familiar you are with scientific method and acoustic physics - I'm no expert, but I understand enough of it to follow the methodology and interpret the results.

Anyway, all of this will mean nothing to someone who has pre-conceptions about woods and guitars. If you're convinced that a Gibson is significantly different to, say, an Epiphone, then it doesn't matter what the science says. Pay the extra money, enjoy your guitar, and I'll enjoy mine. The important thing here is to find a guitar that works for you and play the hell out of it. Just don't sneer at cheap guitars, because they work fine for me, and I personally enjoy getting good sounds out of something that cost about 20% of what some people think they have to pay.

[JazzBlaster]

well said! just thought I'd add this...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is3VE-qL ... re=related

[luau]

Thanks for taking all the time to make the post djetz. I'm a bit confused on one point.. you say that with acoustic guitars, you've seen some differences. Do you only mean straight acoustic guitars with solid tops/sides/backs?

The only real preconception I have is that there are a lot of wildly varying opinions and precious little objective evidence available to actually back any of them up, and that when you prod people for the reasons they think they way they do, they get testy. I have no vested interest one way or the other. The thing that I find difficult to reconcile when I consider the wood-doesn't-matter crowd, is how two different guitars of the exact same construction (electric, hollowbody, whatever, same wood species) can sound so different. If wood doesn't make a statistical difference, then why is this so?  As long as you've been playing, I'm sure you've experienced playing two guitars that are the same model, year, and so on, and have noticed that one sounds recognizably different than the other. What do you chalk this up to?

The only thing in your post I'd disagree with, and it's basically unrelated to the discussion (or should be anyway), is the content of advertisements. Science and numbers don't generally sell things. Those are only features. It's the benefits, real or imagined, that sell things. An ad with waves and data just isn't going to sell guitars like an ad with a superstar going "I play Gibson because I want the best". If someone walked in with the wave ad, any exec in his right mind should not only not run the ad, they should fire the guy that brought it to their attention. Gibson may, or may not, have that kind of information.. I have no way to know. What I do know, well, heavily suspect, is that they would be fools to use it in ads no matter how much the results favored them.

[djetz]

Fair comments, Luau, though I have actually seen science based ads, including waveforms, in guitar ads - but only acoustic ads, and very rarely. I used to have a pile of old guitar mags, but I gave them away so I can't locate an example easily. I seem to recall Yamaha proudly comparing their instruments to vintage Martins.

I haven't seen any tests of hollowbody archtops that I can recall, but I've seen a lot of work done of classical instruments, which are built in a comparable way. Most of the testing is done on viols. I've read books on Stradivari and his instruments, for instance, and histories of classical instrument makers in general. There is a lot of really interesting (to a nerd like me) information about instrument construction from the classical world. Folk instruments - and I include rock in the "folk" tradition rather than the "classical" tradition - don't get nearly as much attention. It's a bit too lowbrow for research grants, I suppose.

I do agree that two instruments that are built to be exactly the same can sometimes be wildly different. The only explanation for that is that it's a crapshoot. Most of the time you'll get average results, occasionally you'll get one that sings or one that farts. Obviously there are reasons for that, but pinning down what the exact reasons are in a particular case is not so easy. One thing I will say, though, is that there seems to me to be just as much chance of an outstandingly good or bad guitar at all price points.

I don't say that "wood doesn't matter" - but I think it matters a lot less than most guitar players think. One thing that seems important to me is that people talk about body wood all the time, but I believe that neck wood actually has more impact on sound. The body, on a solid body guitar, is basically dead weight. The neck is what resonates. Play a chord, let it sustain, you can feel the neck throbbing in your left hand on a good guitar. Do the same thing and lay your right palm flat on the guitar body - far less vibration.

I suspect that apart from scale length and bridge type, the fact that Fenders have maple necks and Gibsons usually have mahogany necks is far more important than that they have different body woods. Strats built with the woods that Gibson traditionally uses for bodies still sound like strats, if they have maple necks and a 25.5 inch scale. Fretboard material doesn't seem to matter much.

In terms of importance to the final sound of an electric guitar, body wood is way down the scale compared to:

The amp (duh)
Strings
Pickups (and other electronics)
Neck wood
Basic design (ie the shape of the guitar body, scale length, bridge design, etc)

...and I don't think finish makes any appreciable difference to the sound of an electric guitar. It does make a difference to the look and the feel, and I think that's why people get so obsessed by it, but in terms of sound I do not believe that anyone can hear a difference between two identical guitars with different finishes. If you were to refinish a guitar that you owned and were very familiar with, you might hear a small difference, but that'd be due to familiarity with the subtleties of the instrument.

People have done blind listening tests with things like different body woods and different finishes, and from the results I've seen, nobody has been able to consistently hear a difference. The people who claim there is a sonic difference between things like basswood and alder, or poly and nitro finishes, get very quiet when it's actually put to the test.

[djetz]

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/powerhousetwins.html

Interesting article from UNSW - it's about the testing of two identical violins, one heavily used and the other kept in mint condition. I think it's relevant in that the people tested could not hear a difference, and apart from the owner of the used violin could not even tell the difference while playing them blindfolded.

I like the way the author says "We can imagine several ways in which age and playing might affect violins" before going on to prove that the differences in question are, in fact, imaginary.

[like children]

well said! just thought I'd add this...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is3VE-qL ... re=related

Cool guitar!

[mynameisjonas]

People have done blind listening tests with things like different body woods and different finishes, and from the results I've seen, nobody has been able to consistently hear a difference. The people who claim there is a sonic difference between things like basswood and alder, or poly and nitro finishes, get very quiet when it's actually put to the test.

yeah, i'm also convinced even the most experienced guitar sound expert couldn't tell which is which in a blind test with an alder and a basswood body of the exact same shape with identical neck/pickups/amp settings. however, there definitely are noticable sonic differences between different body woods if you play unplugged. i've swapped the necks on my jazzmasters around lots of times to come up with the best sounding combinations, and the bodies (which are all alder by the way, at least i think they are, one might be ash) sound very different with the same neck. of course, plugged in these differences aren't as apparent, and neither are the differences between the necks.
but with electric guitars, it's not just what comes out of the amp that matters, the way they vibrate against your body when you play them is pretty important too. it's what makes one guitar fun to play and another boring and uninspiring. and i think the body plays a bigger part in that department than it does sound wise. at least with solid bodies.

[northern_dirt]

The feel of the neck and playability has almost always determined my guitar purchases over the sound of the guitar..
Cause well, I can always change the sound

[JazzBlaster]

The feel of the neck and playability has almost always determined my guitar purchases over the sound of the guitar..
Cause well, I can always change the sound

+1

I have realy small hands