Is "Tonewood" really a thing? 

at best, I believe the wood affects resonance and sustain in electric guitars. It's not even the species of tree. It's the density of the wood used, which can vary not just between tree to tree in the same species, but also different parts of the same tree.

Here's some proof: Jon Bon Jovi: “I was in the room with Jeff Beck when he took a guitar out of a cardboard box, with a rented amplifier and no pedals and created that sound” Jon Bon Jovi was interviewed on the Howard Stern Show recently and was asked to quickly pick his favorite guitarist. His answer? “Jeff Beck.”

I care more about the tone coming out of my amp, speakers, and my assortment of pedals than I do what comes out of my guitar. For the guitar itself, I care far more about the playability, comfort, ergonomics, weight, the shape, the tuning stability, and the looks before I care about even the pickups. Tonewood is the absolute last thing on my mind. Hell, I don't even think about it.

Paul Read Smith's many claims are largely marketing speak aimed at the dentists who buy his guitars. These kind of people want to hear all that flannel about the tone wood of the guitar they are going to hang on their wall in their man cave, so they can repeat it to their friends instead of demonstrating whether it might be true, by y'know... actually playing the goddam thing. That's always been the case; as a guitar manufacturer, he's not alone in that, but he is inclined to make more of a big deal about some of the stuff he says being irrefutable than most other people have. That is at least until he changes his mind about such things, for example... Go back in time a bit and you will find PRS stating that he uncompromisingly makes their guitars with set necks because it is a superior guitar construction method. Now this may or may not be true, but you will note that these days PRS guitars have screw-on necks. PRS changed to that method because it's a bit cheaper and easier to make guitars with screw-on necks, which is of course why Leo Fender did that in the first place in 1947, but you obviously won't hear PRS saying much about that one in terms of how that might impact the guitar's tone, despite his guitars now having switched from what PRS originally claimed was a superior method of construction which he used to claim he would not compromise on. Now to be fair, the advent of affordable CNC manufacturing has made accurate precision wood-cutting no longer something which requires hours of craftsmanship to achieve. We can see the evidence of that in the fact that nowadays you can easily find a sub-two-hundred quid guitar with a beautiful set neck. If you go back to the Seventies, Eighties and early Nineties, there was no way any cheap electric guitar was going to have anything other than a screwed-on neck, because it didn't require much precision to cut out a screw on neck which would fit in a body pocket with a wide tolerance, whereas back then, making a glued in neck required a lot more hand-finishing. Nowadays thanks to CNC cutting, whether a manufacturer goes for a set, or screw-on neck, is not so much a question of vastly differing economics as - glue setting time aside - largely a choice. The ease with which close tolerances can now be achieved, means a screwed-on neck can have a really snug fit into a body neck pocket, which if well secured, makes it not too different from a glued in neck in terms of its ability to resonate anyway. So... Personally, I'm waiting for Paul to come out and say that despite eschewing the set neck method, PRS guitars are nevertheless superior owing to their use of the special 'tone screws' (TM) they exclusively use to fix the necks on their guitars.

So far, I think you are the only one that hits the nail on the head for this as far as the nuances of the argument. None of the things that effect the sound in an acoustic transfer to an electric. The sound doesn't come from moving air around, it comes from electromagnetism. It's an electric signal translated by wires, capacitors, potentiometers, resistors, etc. My nuanced opinion is where the guitar touches the player effects how the player interprets the quality. The weight and balance effect how you play. The quality of wood effects how the guitar is constructed and stays together. The worst part of the argument is people don't even all agree on what "tone" means.

Does it make a difference? Yes. Does it MATTER? No. It doesn't matter because the pickups, mic + mic location, speaker, amp EQ and house PA filter out a bunch of freqs. In the room, your amp sounds different depending on the axis and proximity to you or your audience. Recorded, you slice and dice the frequencies to sit in the mix no matter what species of wood. Tonewood is marketing, just like how McDonalds says that their burgers are 100% Beef. Having said all that, if Paul wants to believe it, good. I don't want him to one day go: "Well, since my customers don't care about quality wood, I'll just make everything out of plywood and save myself the money and hassle of sourcing it." The wood doesn't affect sound much but you still want some decent craftsmanship and sexy wood grain.

My personal reasoning is: PRS guitars are very clever looking. PRS guitar play very well. PRS guitars are very expensive. However, PRS guitars are not so sonically recognizable that you would specifically call it out on a live or recorded performance. Would Jeff Beck sound better had he used a PRS? How much does tone wood matter? Not too much.

Why no one compares 2 equal guitars within the same year/month of manufacture (I mean the same brand/model made on the same factory)? The answer is: because it ruins wood theory. I've never heard identical guitars, they are all different.

Stumbled upon your channel. Great video. I respectly disagree. As a small guitar maker I can assure you that the wood makes a noticeable difference. For example, guitar #35 is made from maple both body and neck. Guitar #38 is Osage Orange and a maple neck. Both necks were made from the same log. Both guitars use Seymour Duncan JB in the bridge and Classic 59 in the neck, both use CTS potentiometers and Orange Drop 47k capacitors. Same bone nut, fret wire, knobs, bridge and tailpiece. Both use the same Stringjoy wound nickel strings of the same sizes. Multiple guitar players who have played both guitars through the same amp, no pedals, have noticed a significant difference. The maple body is brighter, the Osage Orange definitely darker. With all this said, great video.

More interested in the weight. When I have it hollowed out there is so little "tone" wood it makes no difference to the wood used.

I'm not a tone wood guy either but quality guitars come from the marriage of the parts. Wood is a part... but pickups, frets, playability... all worth more than the species of the tree cut and the method of crystallization.

I think PRS guitars are amazing. They are among the best quality guitars you can buy, and I thank Paul for making the SE range so us regular people can afford to buy one of his amazing instruments. But Paul's arguments in favour of tonewood were just plain bad. If tonewood is indeed a thing, Paul did a very poor job of supporting that position.

There is an audible difference among the clean tones between different woods, even though the effect is small. Your tone is much more influenced by factors like the pickups, speaker, amp, and whatever effects you’re using. That said, the psychological effect is gonna be way more influential than the wood. Everyone has their preferences, and there are pros and cons to even the slightest of changes. Chapman did a video on it forever ago that pretty clearly demonstrates the difference between two woods (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OLxE8iDWD_w.htmlsi=C9k1no59djx8jdP-)

I think Paul has let the fumes from paint and he's own farts get to his head

My red Squier CV 50s Strat (Indonesian, _very_ light weight, whatever the wood is) is a good guitar, but I recently compared it against a 1996 Alder-bodied Korean-made model, and with neither guitar plugged in, there's a noticeable difference in tone and resonance. The Alder bodied guitar is much better.

Tone wood is just a furniture wood, only a design and look, if we talk about electric guitars. Anyways, I prefer guitars that don't look like expensive furniture.

Tonewood is a myth invented by someone who wants to sell you their guitars. The honest truth is "Tonewood" is in your fingers and the way YOU can play your instrument. I have seen poor folks with a broomstick and some piano wires nailed to the broom-stick and they played that "guitar" in an amazing way. Want more proof? Grab an all acrylic made Stratocaster and play it for awhile. Go and play Jack White´s red guitar made out of plastics. Whatever "tonewood" really means, usually concerns to wood acoustic guitars, but then again, we all have seen acoustic guitars made out of bamboo wood, and even others made from carbon-fiber or plastics. They all also sound amazing. It all depends on how good you can play your guitar and how well it was set up.

Strats sound like strats. That ugly "clan clan". Plenty of different woods and they all to "clan clan". That being said, I love Blackmore's clan clan.

Ok your not a luthier so.... if you can't hear the difference you don't have ears. I bet you think a class A tube circuit doesn't make a difference either. OK so I have been a master luthier for 40+ years. Different woods sounds different form each other period. The cleaner and flatter the response of your pickups the more you can hear differences in the design including what the wood contributes. Wood is NOT the biggest factor in what it sounds like but it does mater, unless you have a Telecaster the pickups for those are basically a resonate circuit. They may as well be a band pass circuit, thats why Leo Fender thought the wood does not mater. If you like the Telecaster then ok wood does not mater. That is not the case for every solid body electric guitar. The modern Piezo or hand-wired pickups can capture more of what is there like the difference in a class A,B or D circuit A,D having less TIM distortion than a more dampened B circuit. BUT at the end of the day tone is in the fingers, how you play is the biggest factor.

Thanks for watching - let me know your thoughts on the whole tone wood argument

Luthier clickbait

yeah , that prs guy is an genuine pain in the ass guy , don't like him nor his guitars

For my acoustic guitars sure. For anything with a pickup, I couldn't care if the body were poured out of concrete.

Tonewoodentologists will never stop believing that magnets sense wood. Its sonic gnosticism and they have a religious conviction.

Why is this guy just yapping without doing any tests? What a waste of time.

PRS hasn’t learned about tonewoods yet, the most sterile & dead sounding overpriced guitars ever

reed paul smith the snake oil salesman