Tonewood Poll

  • Thread starter Thread starter veji
  • Start date Start date

What wood your guitar is made of has an effect on the sound

  • Agree

    Votes: 85 87.6%

  • Disagree

    Votes: 12 12.4%
  • Total voters
    97
veji

veji

Active member
Had an intense debate with a coworker who also owns a few Guitarss saying that the wood your guitar is made of has no effect on the sound and that wood is purely just for looks only. I have owned guitars made of basswood, alder, swamp ash, walnut, maple, mahogany, and black limba and with the same pickups and thru the same amp all sounded different to me.
Do you think what wood your guitar is made of has an effect on the sound?
 
Plenty videos debunking the dogma. Sadly people have eaten up the "tonewood" marketing and even convince themselves they can hear a discernible difference. But of-course, they never provide a null test. Often instead resulting to personal insults or defensiveness instead which usually says enough about their belief system.

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It has an, albeit small, effect but playing around with capacitor values or using your amp's EQ has a far greater impact.
 
I had/have original composite Steinberger L; I have a Gittler Titanium (aircraft grade titanium and aluminum; no wood). They sound fine to me.

The guitar as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts IMO. It may matter more in hollow/semi hollow body electric guitars. I know my jazzbox has nothing mounted to the top except the bridge; tailpiece and pickguard are mounted to the side of the body and neck; the pickup is floating, mounted to the pickguard, and the volume and tone pots are mounted on the pickguard.

I recall the Fender Custom Shop made a Strat completely out of cardboard - except the hardware and electronics; everyone that played it and heard said it sounded and played like a strat.

if you want to pay more for tonewood, that's up to you, it's your money. If you hear, feel or see a difference, knock yourself out. Maybe get it relic'd too while you're at it. :yes:
 
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Always thought so. This sealed the deal. Same exact model guitar.
basswood/roasted maple vs mahogany/mahogany
They sound and resonate differently for sure.
Even my non-guitar nerd wife can hear it.

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Geo said:
It absolutely does but in a good or bad way is subjective.

If it didn't, Les Pauls would be made out of plastic.
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Guitars are being made out of plastic, fiber glass more commonly etc because folks have realized it doesn't matter.
 
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I had a buddy become a luthier and make me a few instruments. Most of them were kazoos. Our minds were completely blown at how much of a difference the wood made in the tone of the kazoos. Different woods have different grain structures and densities, and it absolutely effects the resonant properties.

I begged him to make a video of our experiments, but he never did.

Now, how much of an impact the wood choice has on the overall tone of electrical signals is debatable. There are so many variables in most of these signals that it's difficult to control them. Kazoos were pretty simple. Kazoos absolutely sounded different depending on the wood choice. The best way to figure this out with a guitar is to play them unplugged. Who did that?
 
interesting enough.. people who think it has no difference owns beautiful looking tonewood (koa, swamp ash, Quilted maple top on Mahogany etc) .. I would think they would instead play nonwood guitars made of concrete/plastic and just have a nice painting on top.
 
It has a small effect, and the lower the output of the pickups, the more noticeable the effect is.

What is mostly a myth, however, is that different species of wood have specific sounds - they do, but only in a very general way.

There's more variance between two pieces of wood from the same species.

The hardliners from both sides are really annoying, especially the Facts and Science™ midwits and the boomers who swear they can hear the difference between wood of the same species but different groves.
 
If Wood doesn’t matter then why do Les Pauls vary in tone and tactile response/resonance so tremendously from one to the other? And for simplicities sake, let’s apply that just to multiple guitars produced in the same year. E.g. sample a dozen 2023 LP standards (stick to the same model and series) in a store and all will sound and resonate differently. Same pickups, strings, finish, setup, electronics on all of them. What’s the ONLY variable between them? The WOOD! They all use the same species of woods but it’s down to those individual cuts of wood(s) in the instrument that gives each and every one of those LPs it’s own voice. Which actually, proves my point even more.
 
veji said:
Had an intense debate with a coworker who also owns a few Guitarss saying that the wood your guitar is made of has no effect on the sound and that wood is purely just for looks only. I have owned guitars made of basswood, alder, swamp ash, walnut, maple, mahogany, and black limba and with the same pickups and thru the same amp all sounded different to me.
Do you think what wood your guitar is made of has an effect on the sound?
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I have deaf coworkers too. Any material has a dampening factor and a resonant peak. Is it as pronounced in and electric as much as it is in an acoustic? No. An acoustic projects tone without the affects of pickups, circuits, and speakers, that impart their own emphasis on their perspective resonant peaks. @LPMojoGL @Shredsmcgee were just A/B ing a basswood/maple-pau ferro guitar with an Alder/roasted maple guitar with the same pickups last night and the differences were far from subtle. As those resonant peaks are added by the electronics, the natural resonant peaks of the guitars wood become less prominent, but still exist.
 
ghosty999 said:
Plenty videos debunking the dogma. Sadly people have eaten up the "tonewood" marketing and even convince themselves they can hear a discernible difference. But of-course, they never provide a null test. Often instead resulting to personal insults or defensiveness instead which usually says enough about their belief system.

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It's not like youtube videos and microphones are an accurate representation of the resolution of a real human ear.
 
veji said:
interesting enough.. people who think it has no difference owns beautiful looking tonewood (koa, swamp ash, Quilted maple top on Mahogany etc) .. I would think they would instead play nonwood guitars made of concrete/plastic and just have a nice painting on top.
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most guitarists are traditional when it comes to their guitars. Why most of the bigger makers stay with their traditional designs, because they sell more; even some models that have modern features are usually based on their traditional models.

If you're looking for something new/different you have to go to small builders; which is what I did for my Gittler. I also have an Eastman Backlund 400, Steinbergers,...
 

Paul Reed Smith Reacts to Statements That Tonewood Doesn’t Matter: ’What a Load of Crap’​


https://killerguitarrigs.com/paul-reed-smith-tonewood-load-of-crap/





Research Paper On the Audibility of Electric Guitar Tonewood

Conclusions.

The tonewood used in the construction of an electric guitar can have an impact on the sound produced by the instrument. Changes are observed in both spectral envelope and the produced signal levels, and their magnitude exceeds just noticeable differences found in the literature. Most listeners, despite the lack of a professional listening environment, could distinguish between the recordings made with different woods regardless of the played pitch and the pickup used.

https://acoustics.ippt.pan.pl/index.php/aa/article/view/2949/pdf_582
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