Reacting To THAT Tonewood Video | What Does The Air Guitar Test Prove?! 

When I play my solid body electric guitar, I am typically standing with the guitar pressed against my stomach. Following this video's analysis of Jim's air guitar, I understand now that the vibrations of the guitar are transmitted to my belly, and back to the guitar and strings again, and transmitted to the pickups. Nothing can compare to the epic resonance and sustain of my belly fat.

What he proved is that the "tone wood" is far, far less important than online forums (and youtube videos) want to make us believe and that you can influence the actual sound of the guitar way more by just changing the pickup height. We should focus more on how the instrument actually feels and if we, the guitarists, resonate with it. I stopped caring about "tone wood" a long time ago. I care only about the look, the stability of the neck, if the frets are somewhat level and if the guitar stays in tune. These components are important because they decide how often I will pick up an instrument.

I've been playing & recording for 30 years... and could not hear a difference in his examples. Maybe I don't have golden ears or something but I would not bet on myself in a blindfolded test. Then even i a full mix situation it wold be impossible for me.

Yeah, I think it was a pretty objective test to see where the tone was. It sounds like you misunderstood the point of the videos by Jim. Jim did a stellar job by not influencing his audience by sharing his opinion on any of the results, just steadily removing more and more until there was a minimum. The side by side comparisons really opened my eyes to the fact that you can get very, very close to a tone you're seeking with just electronics and a setup. I consider this a myth busted on the "magick" of tonewoods.

"chime" "spongy" "rubbery" "overtones". Can you measure it? Perceive it in a blind test that you don't know previously etch which guitar is which? What part of the wave shape produces it? Funny how the good tonewoods are coincidentally the ones that the big brands had cheap and available in early production.

Yes, it proved that for many people, long held myths in their heads are impossible to abandon.

In 25 years playing a lot of different guitars I realized that the difference only exists to your ears mostly...in the band mix, on a recording session or a live gig, pleople (even musicians) can't tell anything about that...I still remember when everybody used to say "Man, check this 59 Les Paul tone Jimmy Page has on this record" and years later everybody was "wtf?" when Jimmy came out and said he had recorded a lot of that with a Telecaster...it doesn't matter...spend your time playing the gear you have 😀😀😀

Man, you’ve built your brand as an expert on extremely subtle differences in guitars and Jim Lill just handed us all enough evidence to say confidently that nothing matters as much as a simple electronics swap & making sure your pickup height is set right. I get that you have to protect yourself and your business, but you’re wrong on this. We were all wrong on this. The super squire guys were right all along

Well his test quite clearly showed that the pickup distance to string was FAR more involved in tone than the wood. i.e. your difference in tones in your experiment and most out there is far more to do with non-identical pickup placements than they are wood tone. When you DO isolate that part, you can realize how meaningless it is.

I had korean squier with ply body and it "sustained for days"...must have been some hand selected toneplywood

Jim's video proved what I have been saying for years. The characteristics (tone woods) that affect the sound of an acoustic guitar are not the same for an electric guitar.

LOL, "I spent too much on electric guitars over the years so I need to try and refute that claim." Besides that, running it through an amp means you can twiddle with all sorts of knobs, slide pedals in between... the wood doesn't matter a single damn. At all.

It wasn't really an air guitar? Dude, he could've anchored the strings on a sidewalk and results would've been the same. Larry Lashbrook made a concrete guitar sound good.

I like the attitude of "I'd like to visit Jim's shed and play the workbench guitar", completely missing Jim's point that nothing outside the pickups matters, and you can just as easily recreate the workbench guitar at home with a right pickup. I wonder: do the Honda engines add to the tone? Come on, you can't just ignore that important part! If you use Harley V-twins, do you get warmer, bassier tones? What if you get a turbo motorcycle engine? Basically 18 minutes of a man on copium.

Yet the point is Jim Lill was willing to put countless hours into this experiment. Nobody else on YT (I've seen) has gone to these lengths. He's bordering genius! He at NO TIME said that the tones were "identical". His "air guitar" and your definition is a matter of semantics. Kris you are on a different page with your response. What Jim was illustrating and what you are illustrating are different subjects. A great player is going to sound great on a cheap guitar (Jack Pearson). I think that Jim would have killer tone if he gave a concert with that 'kit' guitar. He's a super musician and a fabulous player. People are not listening to subtilties in the tone they are listening for the player to knock their socks with skill and feel. The guitar is not what makes a player great, It's the player that makes the guitar great.

Hi Kris, love your videos! You were talking about the physics of string oscillation/vibration, dampening effects of different parts of the guitar etc. Actually Prof. Zollner (Professor für Elektroakustik UTH Regensburg) wrote an extensive book about the "physics of the electric guitar" where he really went into detail regarding all different parts of the electric guitar and their influence on the tone. There are countless measurements of almost all aspects of the tone (attack, sustain, harmonics and so on). Eventually he concluded that the by far most important component of the tone are the musicians fingers. Tonewood etc. had almost no impact whatsoever (when the tone was generated through pickups). Of course this all changes when you play the guitar unamplified. Maybe it would be interesting for you to check out his book - an english translation is still online. And do not understand me wrong - I hear the differences of the tone in your videos when changing pickups or electrics in your guitars. However, I think the human brain often hears what it wants to hear... At the end the most important thing is to just make music with whatever you have at your hands and not to worry too much about the wood or so... (just my opinion) - and in your case Kris I really doubt that your wonderful playing would suffer by using an identical Tele with a just a different tonewood. Stay tuned!

The reason why the way he did his video is better is because it is easier to be consistent with those simple chords and licks that he played. When you complicate it more, it is likely to change each time you play it. He also has a video on sustain. It makes very little difference.

tone wood is the biggest myth ever bought by guitar players. Jim's test was bullet proof

In an electric guitar...It comes down to having a guitar that has no loose parts. A loose saddle, or nut, or tuning machine, or neck, or a crack, will dampen vibration etc...A more dense wood might allow the string to vibrate longer creating more sustain. The feel of a guitar might make a person play differently. Feel is important to the player. The actual sound coming out of the amp is probably 99.9% electronics. The tone is the strings, the pots, caps, the pickup height etc...If you can play a string exactly the same on two different tele's that you swapped the strings and electronics and the rest of the hardware on, it'll sound exactly the same. It really doesn't matter what kind of wood, or paint etc...that you use. Sustain is how long a string vibrates. That's not tone though. A modern electric guitar does not have microphonic pickups. The pickups don't pickup tone, they only pickup vibrations through a magnetic field. You can have more sustain with different wood, but not different tone. It's going to be the exact opposite with an acoustic guitar though. As an electrical engineer, I worked in electronics for decades. Different guitars will feel different, and different size strings will feel different, that may make a player play differently and that will affect tone. A walnut neck will not make a string sound differently than a maple neck. If you can talk into your pickups and hear it come out your amp, then your pickups are microphonic and picking up sound. Put a microphone in front of your electric guitar and run it into your PA, then you're picking up tone.

There is a huge mistake in this video. You say that they sound differently because of how the wood dampens the sound. But that wouldn't change the tone. And if you look for maximum sustain and think that the tone get somehow reflected back into the strings, wood is a terrible choice in the first place.

Were the nuts identical when you swapped the necks? Did you re-use the strings, or use fresh sets? I think that all factors in.

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact." - George Eliot

The problem with arguing that the wood can have a dampening effect is that the pickups aren't firmly attached to the wood - typically either being on springs or sponge. So the miniscule difference in vibration due to the wood is massively outweighed by the randomness added through connecting the pickups to the wood. So that either has an effect on the sound, or demonstrates that such randomness makes no difference. Also his argument want that wood does nothing, but that the impact of the wood is so small and unpredictable that spending money on expensive 'tonewoods' is pointless. You're as likely to get a great sound from basswood or palletwood then you are from 1000 year old bog oak and curly flamed butterflywinged tiger eye maple. They just look nicer.

Wood might have a tiny little effect on the sound. But to me it's too little to worry about. In the end there are a trillion factors that influence the sound objectively that I don't waste time on this topic anymore... 🤷‍♂️

This one comes from a piano player... It is fun how guitar community discusses, explores and presents different opinions on this particular matter in a simmilar manner as flat-earthers do to round-earthers and via versa. At least one could say that this eternal "fight" is providing hours of entertaining content. (?)

"Jim said" this and "Jim said" that and "I don't agree with what he said". Jim never said anything supporting nor denying anything . He simply did the experiment and let the audience come to their own conclusion. By you stating "He said" you make it sound as if he wanted to disprove the whole Tonewood and Pickup debate when thruth is he is just curious what the results would be. Because it PROVES something that contradicts your beliefs, you count it as an argument. The only one arguing is you with yourself. Appearantly you are in denial and unable to cope with the results. If I were Jim I'd be telling you not to be putting words in his mouth. I had never seen your channel before his video and I can tell you right now I will not be subscribing nor will I ever in the future. I have no respect for someone who claims someone said something that was never said.

Tonewood is about "does wood species affect the tone" in electric guitars (probably, I guess to a tiny degree, who knows) and can you create a scientific "metric" for each wood species' tonal properties. No definately not. Some mahogany is bright, some is dark some is farmed 20 thousand miles from another piece of mahogany and in different climates....same goes for maple etc. So if you cannot create a baseline, or metric (very easily done if I was possible) that each wood species sounds a certain way, then the whole concept of tone wood is garbage. Remember tonewood is about wood species, certain species of wood are supposed to affect the tone of an electric guitar, in a specific, measurable and repeatable way. It isn't about if wood does, it is about if different species of wood variety have a different and varying affect on the tone. And if this is measurable, for this to be a scientific certainty. It isn't.

What's obvious is that ANY guitar (as long as it is structurally sound) with your favourite pickups and electronics, pickup placement, setup will take you 95% in the direction of your dream guitar. The differences are much less than 10%.

Jim’s video experiment proves conclusively that when it comes to electric guitars “tone wood” is all marketing. Wood species and quality absolutely makes an important difference in acoustic guitars but not in electric guitars. All the tone with electric guitars is created from the pickups, strings, pick or fingers and the musician playing the instrument. I have electric played guitars made of old skateboard decks and depending on the pickups, strings and scale length they can sound like a Tele, a Strat or a Les Paul. It just depends on how you create the axe. Tone wood is complete and total bullshit when it comes to electric guitars. You can make a guitar out of solid lucite, plexiglass or glass and make it sound like any guitar made of any wood. It’s a fact, and Jim just illustrated that. If you have any other opinion, you’re just fooling yourself. If you take two identical Tele’s for example and one has a rosewood finger board and the other has a maple fingerboard you will not hear any difference. It’s simply visual aesthetics, and marketing to justify a specific price point.

The only thing with your statement is that strings never touch the wood. Even when fretting, the strings are in contact with is the fret, so stating that the rest of the guitar will dampened the string is incorrect; the nut, fret and bridge. Also, I think people insist on tone coming from wood because of acoustic guitars, in which the whole guitar body is the amplifier. Even the main purpose of the electric guitar was to avoid the resonance of the acoustic guitars. People just like to justify what the pay for with whatever they can think of, without thinking

For me though, the way i see it, is if you want that "sound" of a particular guitar, you have absolutely NO NEED to spend the 10k USD to achieve it. Go for the particular pickup/electronics configuration and you're 90% there. The 2x4 and the table guitar is definitely a radical take, but for people just looking for an "almost" Gibson LP means they just need the Gibson pickups, a Les Paul copy (either Epiphone or HB, or whatever is cheapest but have the same body construction) and now you have a 90% Gibson LP but on 10% the price.

I didn’t perceive any appreciable difference between the guitars. They were *practically* identical. Not 90% - *99.9%* . At least, to the listener in a recording. Or at a moderately loud gig. To *the player* - who can hear the acoustic quality of the guitar? It’s appreciably different. The lack of relevance to metal players results from the fact that they have *zero* interest in the acoustic tone of the amplified guitar: the amplified volume alone is going to drown out the acoustic effect, never mind the distortion. So, sorry Kris. Big fan. I totally get that as an accomplished player in so many genres you have an intimate relationship with your guitars - and you hear every nuance in the tones of the guitars you play. But really, the difference in the *recorded* tone - or, rather, only the *amplified* tone… was/is/always will be negligible. I’m pretty sure neither of us could tell the difference in a blind recorded/loud amplified test. And even if we did hear a difference, it would not be worth talking about. Conclusion: tone wood (and any other structural tone factor) matters *to the player* . Which is fair enough. But it doesn’t matter in a recording or an amplified live performance (excepting a *very* intimate one). I salute you sir as an artist and connoisseur of tone. But I disagree that there is a “difference” that matters to someone listening to a recording or at a loud gig. With the deepest respect, the difference then is practically zero. You could play a fence post with the right pickups (including string distance from the pickups) and amp - and no one would know. You wouldn’t enjoy it as the player. The guy sitting next to you might wince. No one else will know you’re not playing a vintage LP/Strat etc.

My feeling is this: perceived differences amongst two or more identical model guitars can be just as significant as the perceived differences between one with a rosewood vs maple fretboard.

My opinion: Tonewood and the resonance that occurs while playing does matter for the player ALONE. For everyone else all it matters is the magnets and the copper wire wound around it at either end of the signal chain. Love your videos Kris, Thank You!!!!

Is this guy for real? Guess when you've lied to yourself for years you start convincing yourself that you hear differences. If its so obvious.. get this guy in a room with someone and have him do a blind test. 100% he will not be able to tell them apart.

What Jim's video showed me is that a majority of an electric guitar's tone is contained in the scale length, pickups and pickup positions, more than the wood. The guitars in the video don't sound identical, but they are close.

Re: necks - while it is impossible to verify what the exact setup was during your experiment, I would imagine that the difference you're hearing can be, at least to some extent, attributed to the changes in guitar setup and possibly distance between the strings and the pickups. Jim Lill's "loose neck joint" part of the experiment does, in my opinion, further disprove your argument.

Yeah we'll have a look at the concrete stratocaster mate. That's right the concrete Strat, guess what it sounds like a Strat, who wood have thought. It's rock solid sounding Strat, probably designed for hard rock ha.

If he cant hold the 2x4 and thus press the strings the same way, its kinda hard to sound 100% the same...still sounds close enough for a guitar player...for a scientist or someone interested in selling tonewood guitars it could sound different i guess

I'm convinced that you could have the same sample playing over 12 different pictures of wood/neck combos in a YT video, and "tonewood people" would still say they heard a difference when their favorite wood showed up. It's like wine tasters thinking the same bottle of wine tastes different because they were rating three different samples of the same wine labeled "budget," "mid-range," and "high-end."

It proves that tone is in the electronics instead of the wood.

What you're saying about the physics of the guitar is true, of course. It's impossible that there is absolutely no effect of the wood on the way that the strings vibrate. With the amount of variables that are in this system (pickup type and height, string height, strings, nut, bridge, electronics, and tolerances of the parts etc.) it is extremely difficult to determine what kind of effect one single part has. But by completely removing the body, Jim proved in a very scientific way (the most scientific I have seen so far) that the wood has an extremely small effect on the tone of an electric guitar. You can't argue with that. Additionally, the strings aren't even in direct contact with wood. They have a far bigger interaction with the nut and bridge. So it's reasonable to assume that those parts are be far more important to how the strings vibrate. Would be interesting to do some tests about that.

There was another video that reacted to the same one, he talked about the difference between a real tangible difference in tone vs a micro-difference in tone (I can't remember his verbiage). I think this video starts to get into differences in tone that might not actually matter all that much. Some of these comparisons that you say are different are only different when in a direct a/b. Listen to them even 20 seconds apart and you couldn't differentiate those tones, vs say listening to a gretsch and an SG 20 seconds apart you almost certainly could.

It’s so interesting. You said something in this video that reminded me of this really cool old guy I knew back in the mid 80’s that taught me how to setup my own guitars and do re-fretting, pickup swaps, jack and pot swaps, soldering and other important maintenance. He was a true luthier. He built handmade acoustic guitars and even violins. Anyway, he told me not to ask the wrong questions like “what guitar parts and woods GIVES me the most sustain?” Instead, to ask “which guitar, parts, woods etc, takes sustain away slower”. He said no guitar gives sustain. It only takes it away at different rates. That made me think a lot about the subject over the years. As always, awesome video, man!

I’ve seen two videos on this so far and find them interesting. Me personally, I think it’s what ya hear in ‘your’ ears and are happy with that. It’s the minor things that you are looking for in sound. How a guitar reacts to your playing. The bystander will rarely hear what you’re feeling or hearing. It’s a personal thing more over than a pronounced thing.

It's amazing that you can listen to his audio with a sample rate of 44100 Hz and 32 bits per sample and honestly say you can tell a clear difference from one to the other. Do you really think you could do it with a blind sound test? I've been a guitarist for 58 years and I couldn't tell the difference between the three. You clearly have a much better ear than I do.

Just for laughs. In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner.

When I was at college in 2001, I was on a guitar building course. The tonewood argument got raised many times, so we decided to test the theory. We cut neck pockets into 5 different pieces of wood which were identical in dimension. The same pickup, hardware and strings etc were used on all 5 tests. The neck was the same one for each. We even built a jig to strum the strings exactly the same each time. The signal was sent through some spectrum analyser software and recorded. The comparative data showed almost undetectable differences in the signal between each wood (and could just have been down to margin of error). From that day, I never believed the tonewood myth. Some people will, even after hearing of that experiment, still swear that they can hear the difference. There is no telling some people. They hear what they want to hear, or will not admit that have been wrong for so many years. (Edit: spelling)

Tone wood is a myth created to justify over priced guitars and to increase profits. That dudes tests were rock solid.

I appreciate and respect your opinion but have some points to make. I think the whole point of the original test was to put things in perspective and proportions. And it did help to understand what are the things that make up 90 percent of the tone, and what are the things that might influence 2-3 percent of it. To say now that you can hear the difference its fine- you might have incredible hearing, but you'll agree that the difference that you hear is only dealing with the 2-3 percent stuff. So as you said- the difference is there and we can say that its not important to us. On the bigger picture now- how would you consider these differences alongside other factors like playability, weight, looks ect.? The whole idea is to help us be in proportion with how much effort energy and attention we give to stuff. Cheers and keep up the good work!

I think we can all agree on: It's not Guitar playing, it's Guitar feeling! Cool Video Kris!

this dude didn't just drink the koolaid, he's swimming in it.

YES! It is not an air guitar! Glad someone said it

Kris - Love your playing and the tones you use so appropriately for all the playing examples. I also agree with every single thing you said. Haven't looked through the comments, likely many others have already said these things, but I'll just add them from my perspective, Much of the effect of the supporting structure influences the dynamic response. These effects are indeed masked by exclusive use of bridge pickups and lotsa crunch. Your use of neck pickups and nuanced playing definitely identify you as someone acutely sensitive to these properties of dynamic response. In fact, these can only be assessed by actually playing a given guitar, not just listening to the resultant "tone." Regarding the effects of the player, I mean, geeze... where someone picks, how hard they pick, shape, flexibility, hardness and mass of the pick, how much in-out deflection they create relative to side-to-side, when they pick, what position their left hand goes to to play the same notes - I could go on and on. My perspective comes from years of studio work, decades of teaching at the college level, and my position as owner of a high end pickup company. It would be in my best business interest to pretend that pickups are all that matter on a guitar. Instead, I gotta tellya, I can't make a 25-1/2" scale guitar respond like a 24-3/4" one, can't make a rosewood board respond like maple, can't make a set of 11's respond like a set of 9's - again, I could go on and on. Perhaps most importantly, all this stuff needs to be experienced by a player regarding their style and approach. I guess for some people, wood, hardware, etc. really don't matter for them.

Having watched this video, the one he’s reviewing and having done some carpentry and starting out doing some luthier work I am of the view that 99% of the tone is in the electronics and it’s positioning relative to the strings, and 99% of the playability of the instrument is in the craftsmanship and setup. What you do want in your timber is sufficient strength and dimensional stability through moisture/temperature changes.

Invoking "physics" to backup your theory without actually doing the math to prove it is bad science, and your practical tests are imprecise and opaque. You've succeeded in getting the comment drama you wanted however, so kudos for that.

What I suspect we can all agree on, is that the best guitar is the one we enjoy playing most and that gives us the sound and performance we want. Now if one guitarist gets that without considering the materials and another fixates on grain direction, density and timber species, so be it. None of us should loose sleep if others don't agree with our opinions here. For myself, I'm sure I hear sound differences related to guitars that come from somewhere other than just the pickups but I wouldn't go as far as saying which part or wood species has any specific effect. If we view other people's suggestions as just possibilities for us to explore, we can all build our experience and maybe one day find out what works for us.

Honestly I think Jim Lill's test was pretty good. I'm not going to claim his test was perfect, but he did the most scientific test I've seen yet. To prove him wrong I would like the see an equally scientific test that can demonstrate differences based on the variables.

My main gripe with the whole tonewood thing is that people, both players, stores and manufacturers (looking at you Paul Reed Smith) like to try to reduce each component's importance down to a sort of finely tuned and controllable variable, stuff like, "if you make a guitar out of mohagany you will get this X tone, but if you make out of Alder you will get that Y tone", almost as it were building a gaming PC and choosing the parts one by one, which I think is just hogwash. Nowadays, whenever I pick a guitar I ask myself four things: 1) Is it well setup? 2) Does it hold tune? 3) Does it feel good to play? 4) Does it sound good? And done, people should going crazy about the super minor details because it is really hard to measure. An electric guitar is a very complex instrument build of a variety of materials that are all interacting together, so it's just dumb to try and look at each component in isolation. The original video is great because it really helps opening people's eyes about it.

I think Glenn did an awesome job at destroying the tonewood myth, by offering blind tests. And he did a ton of tests with clear tone, not just with high gain/distortion.

I always appreciate a response video but this really doesn't offer any counterpoint other than "nah man". Types of wood matter when they function in resonating sound such as in a hollow body acoustic. In an electric they serve a structural purpose only. The reason we use hardwood is because it is lightweight, very strong, easy to manipulate and comparatively inexpensive. Beyond videos like Jim's, we need only look at the marketing to debunk this myth. The most sought after tone woods are always the most expensive ones. Why? Nature doesn't work that way. The best sounding wood could just as easily be from the most abundant trees. Instead the mantra driven by snake oil marketing is that somehow, by some divine influence, the rarest trees also happen to sound the best as a solid body guitar. The crux of your argument is the damping effect of the wood, effectively how thew wood is absorbing some of the energy imparted by the strings into the fixed posts. Okay, but If it had such a dramatic effect in shaping tone, we could simply change the tone by having longer or shorter bridge posts as more or less surface area will increase the amount of dampening. What about factors external to the guitar? One could play with their shirt off and press the guitar against their body to increase the damping effect, or wear a metal breastplate to resist the transfer of vibrations. What about the guitar's hardware. Surely then there must be 'tone frets' and 'tone metals' that impart vibrations more easily. Why aren't the frets and bridges made from tone wood also if they were so crucial to the guitar's overall tone? Why do we paint a guitar with paint and lacquer which would certainly impact the tone? Why aren't solid body guitars drilled with holes and stuffed with rockwool to help dampen the sound? The answer is if they mattered, it would be a common element in the guitar making process. Lastly, at the end you mention Glenn and Ola for playing heavily distorted amps and all the filtering and compression. All amps are loaded with capacitors that shape the sound, clean or distorted. Then the current is sent to a speaker in a resonating box that creates the desired sound. A box that is made of plywood or MDF. There are so many variables in the plucking of a string to the sound coming from a speaker that the miniscule difference in wood density of a structural component is all but negligible.

A new set of strings vs an old set of strings have even more influence than the wood on a solidbody electric guitar to my ears.

I think it’s a sum of all parts. I think wood stability, playability, electronics/pickups and looks should outweigh specific species of wood. Acoustic instruments are an entirely different thing.

Thank you for making this video and actually using technical information to explain why different wood in guitars makes a difference on sound quality. 👏👏👏I'm in the tonewood camp as well. You explained it perfectly. I had the same impression about the "air guitar"; it is definitely a work bench guitar. The other concern that I have about his comparisons was that he didn't allow you to hear the guitar sounds for very long. He also did not use audio spectral analysis to show the sound waves produced by each guitar. That's how you do a scientific comparison. Ever notice how great guitarists will play an electric guitar without plugging it in to an amp to hear the natural sound of the guitar and determine its quality without amplification? That's more evidence to support tonewood theory. 👍👍👍

Love it how videos like Jim Lill's instantly trigger the desperate reactions of every single piece of the giant puzzle of marketing. But that's fine, you (me, all of us) are necessary in the end.

The Gittler Guitar is entirely made of titanium with zero wood in it, or any kind of body to resonate with whatsoever, and it sounds exactly like an electric guitar. (By that I mean, listening to one being played, you would never once think to yourself "damn that guitar has no tone wood! I can tell this!") IMO it's not the last 5% of what affects that makes someone prefer one guitar over another -- it's the 95% that involves the exact pickup types, the strings being used, the setup (play height, proper intonation etc,) the amp circuit design, and the speaker. Preferring a wood types in an electric guitar likely has much more to do with preferred weight/desnsities for feel and natural appearance aesthetics than it does sound -- or at least, that would be the more honest thing to admit. I have a 2003 Steinberger Spirit and a friend has a Fender Strat. I didn't care for the tone of my Steinberger's stock pickups, but liked my friend's Strat, so I bought the same pickups and put them in my Steinberger. These two guitars share absolutely nothing in common, but when we played the two side by side, they sounded 99% the same -- identical, without splitting hairs. All that dictated preference from there was the form factor in terms of which one you'd want to pick up and play. Nothing wrong with liking certain woods for how they feel and look, though. Like, I personally love rosewood fretboards for how they look. I never once thought about choosing one because it'd sound better.

The only reasonable response to anyone's claim that "tonewood" is a key component to a guitar is: "prove it". Everyone is constantly ratting off vague nonsense despite a complete lack of evidence. Every time someone shows one of these statements to be false, they just move the goal posts or make their claims even more vague. In your own video that you showed the clips of, you can clearly see that you're strumming those les pauls in different places - one a little closer to the bridge than the other, which will make far more difference in the sound than which type of wood the guitar is made of. Jim's video went FAR beyond what anyone claiming the importance of "tonewood" has in terms of putting those claims to the test, and while there are plenty of small points to nitpick, he pretty solidly knocked down all of the major claims that manufacturers and gear snobs make without evidence every day. Plain and simple.

Why have i not seen this video until now? THANK YOU! I have been arguing almost exactly this, until im blue in the face, for yrars now. I would also like to add that inspiration also effects your tone, and im going to be much more inspired by a beautiful instrument than i am by a 2x4. Therfore MY tone will much better on a PRS core than it would be on a First Act with the same pickups, because im so excited to be playing that gorgeous guitar. Even if they both had the First Act's pickups because im still more excited by the core!

The workbench had the best tone, because the attachment points were the stiffest. That means that the strings transmitted very little energy to them. There was a guy who compared his best LP with a steel support beam in his cellar. The "beam guitar" sounded significantly better. Of course, it's hard to play the cellar, especially on live stage, so it's not very practical. However, it proved the point.

For me. 5% tone change doesn't matter squat. You can change the amp, change the speaker, move the tone pot 10 degrees. I would be more interested in how it plays and feels.

My take on this: the physical parts of the guitar (construction, wood, weight and resonance frequency) dominate the dynamic part of the sound, i.e. initial transient and sustain. The electronics (pickups, tone circuit) dominate the 'steady-state' frequency response. Part of this 'controversy' is probably that it is much easier to demonstrate and capture the huge differences electronics make, while capturing the dynamic response is much harder (and is easily dismissed as subjective).

I have never been convinced the wood in an electric guitar played enough of a roll for me to care about. Jim's video pretty much proved the point for me anyway. The strings vibration area is isolated between the nut and the bridge. Acoustic guitar is a whole nother animal, the wood plays much bigger part. I'm sure the debate will never end but I thank Jim for actually putting the work in and showing the results.

The player can feel and hear very subtle differences that are completely lost on and irrelevant to the listener. Heck, most non-guitarists can't even differentiate the sound of a Les Paul from a Strat.

Guitarists listen with their eyes. The fact is, and I'm speaking as an instrument builder, the moment you put a mag pickup on something the body disappears. If you are playing piezo pickups, the game changes a bit. However electric guitarists are not playing contact pickups.

Fair points Kris. I do believe Jim's video however really did prove that the tonewood affects much less of that "last 10%" of the overall tone than we all initially thought.

If a guitar’s components changes the vibration they would change the frequencies also, not just the tone, and that would be measurable. I have yet, despite all these claims of people hearing, a lot of difference, to see scientific proof, measurable reproductive, without the shadow of a doubt proof, based on controlled tests, that indicates that a species of wood has an audible impact on an electric guitars sound. Any woodworker would tell you that a specific species of wood can be very different, board for board, which is why acoustic instrument builders spend a lot of time finding woods with the right character. You do not simply pick up a piece of wood, based on species and make a great instrument, there is A LOT of factors, it’s not just about cedar, or spruce or rosewood.

Well, this can get complicated, especially if I go into the actual science in any kind of depth. Put as simply as possible, the differences in the frequency's that woods vibrate, are so very small that the human ear couldn't detect the difference at all. So when it comes to a dampening effect, the amount lets say Maple would dampen the vibrations vs. the amount Basswood would dampen the vibrations, would not be big enough for the human ear to hear. At best, we are talking less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of your over all tone could be affected by what Kris believes plays a big roll in your tone, and that is if it worked that way at all. In a Tesla coil you have two coils of metal, and when you put a charge through one coil, a charge is induced in the second coil even thought the coils do not touch one another. It's the magnetic fields that causes the charge in the second coil to be induced in a Tesla coil. Now when you play a string on your guitar, the sound the strings make can cause other strings to vibrate, we call this sympathetic ringing. Even though its different forces from the Tesla coil, where one is magnetic and the other is sound waves, the effect is actually close to being the same. So you play your string, and other strings can (depending on the frequency of the string played) start to ring. Now, the same thing goes for the wood though, the wood your guitar is made out of will vibrate in response. But just like in a Tesla coil, the material the second coil is made out of, has no affect on the first coil. So the wood does not affect how your strings vibrate, but the frequency of the strings vibrations will affect how your wood vibrates. You are not passing vibrations directly from the strings and into the wood, but rather inducing the vibrations you feel in the woods. Get it? Now in the video Kris is reacting to, it had a fella trying to figure out where the tone actually comes from. That video showed very conclusively that the tone comes from mostly the player and amp and the pickup and the pickups placement along with the pots and such. That video also disproved the idea of tonewood, even if we use the dampening explanation Kris used in this video, the video being reacted to disproves it. I understand there are two possibilities here, one is that Kris believes personally in the concept of tonewood, and two being he doesn't but wants to use the concept to sell guitars. For the sake of not offending folks, I lean to the idea that he actually believes that wood plays some important roll in the tone, as I am forever the optimist and want to see the good in people. Now about the two by four guitar, the pick attack was different for sure, and you can kind of hear it, but any player who has played should be able to tell the difference between pick attacks after they have played beyond a certain point, and that was obvious. The tone its self though, didn't change beyond pick attack, though if you are looking for something I guess that is where you would focus. The two by four guitar sat differently on his lap, so it would have been insanely hard to get the same angle of pick attack as he had on his Teles.. Knowing the difference between induction and a single closed system when it comes to guitars, has always been a struggle for folks. The concept of tonewoods has been around for a very long time, this is mostly due to two driving factors, first it sells of course, and two the general ignorance of folks when it comes to the actual Science involved. So I don't believe in the whole tone wood thing.. because Science .. Funny how I can say the same thing Kris said in this video, but Ill do it without the suppressed laughter. Sorry if this seemed snarky, my goal is only to put out there what I think on this, and this was the very very very short of what I think about this response video and what Kris said. I hope all is well, good day and good luck :)

If someone did a blind test of different “tone woods,” they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if all the guitars had the exact same specs besides the wood. Body, neck, doesn’t matter. There’s literally no way you could tell the difference

Love your video. We often mistaken SOUND with RESPONSE of a guitar. (And this is my opinion) like you said. Sound comes from pickups. Responses comes truly from wood. Still the differences i hear slight differences in a LP, but honestly? They both sound great, and if you think of that in the context of a mix wouldn't mind play any of the 2. Whatever is comfortable. It's ok to disagree sometimes, as long you make sweet music.

Love your good natured and greatly informed comments, thx!

Jim really did a good and amazing Job. But I have to agree with you here. Tonewood doesn't make as much of a difference in sound as the whole debate makes it sound like. It really comes down to minor details and feel that doesn't come through in a mix, but it makes you want that specific guitar. I'm also in on that Workbench guitar idea, with the tables doing the vibration. Stay safe Kris 😁

Totally agree with you. After that video I still think wood is important part of guitar and those x% that influence the tone are damn important.

I'd love to see someone do a blind test, just to see if it's really possible to someone spot that 10%

I've only looked through a few comments, but one thing I haven't seen other people mention is that your picking hand was in different positions on each of the tone tests, particularly the first one with different bodies. Picking noticeably further towards the bridge will brighten your tone. The first neck also saw your hand further up the neck, but the second and third were close to each other and sounded identical.

This is one of those debates where it doesn't matter what anyone says or what "evidence" either side produces; everyone just believes what they believe. Personally MY ears don't notice a difference in woods in any of the videos I've watched that claim to prove tonewood is a thing. So either my ears aren't great or the people saying they can hear a difference are deluded or lying. At the end of the day, I don't think it matters. If you believe in tonewoods and you're willing to spend the money on nice woods and that makes you happy, that's great. If you don't and prioritise pickups or amps or whatever, and THAT makes you happy, that's also great. If you think tone is all in the fingers and just practice your nuts off all day and THAT makes you happy, that's great too. Just do what makes you happy and stop worrying about what other people think about guitar manfacture.

i think the time has come to talk about tonewood in amp heads, i find birch wood grown at the highest altitude of the Swiss Alps help my amp sound sweeter than ever before

Sort of reminds me of the story I heard about Billy Corgan talking about how the colour of the paint affects the tone. Okay. Whatever, dude. What about the intonation on a telecaster? It isn't perfect, but people make great songs playing them. If someone is chasing tone with the wood or colour of their guitar, save your time and practice more.

Remember, the signal from the pickup to the speaker travels at the speed of light. Any vibration of the wood travels at less than the speed of sound due to wood density. The reason musicians wanted a solid body electric guitar was to eliminate the effect of the wood. They were trying to eliminate feedback caused by the hollow body electric guitars.

How does ‘damping’ the string vibration change the ‘tone’? It would only affect the sustain…unless you somehow selectively dampen various harmonics?

1) The very fact that you can bend strings demonstrates that the pressure and movement of your fingers fretting the strings has a much larger effect on the strings than the vibration of the neck, including dampening (a slide will cause dampening too, but less than your fingers). This means you can only hear the effect of neck (and body) dampening if you don't touch the strings and let them ring freely, as soon as you're touching the strings that will dampen the strings much more than any part of the guitar itself. 2) Then there is the fact that dampening is what limits a guitar's sustain, you can't have both "great tone caused by the wood's dampening characteristics" and "great sustain caused by reducing dampening" so if your guitar has both there is something wrong with your theory. 3) Dampening reduces overtones, so if you think the air guitar is "practically overtone free" that's exactly the opposite of what's happening, there is less stuff to dampen the strings and reduce overtones so if anything the air guitar produces louder high overtones (resulting in a "hollow" or "ringing" sound).

How do you get a lot of sustain? You prevent the energy from being released from the strings to the body so that the string vibrates longer. What properties does a guitar need so that the wood has an audible influence on the sound? A high level of efficiency in transferring vibrations to the body and back to the string. Only then can the wood influence the tone. By its own sound, interfering with that of the string. So you can't have both. Sustain and resonance contradict each other. It's just physics, not mumbo-jumbo. No matter what wood. If the string is not vibrated again so that the sound can be transmitted to the coils by induction. Then no 1000-year-old tropical wood that was carried 5000km through the jungle by blind children will help you. There are also all sorts of psychological effects, that hinder you from getting an objective answer. Confirmation bias. Belief bias. Backfire Effect. Endowment effect. Bias blind spot. Cheers

I was so delighted with Jim Lill's video and testing protocol and when I saw your video's title I came loaded for bear, ready to dump on you for being a naysaying beauty-destroyer. but wait a second, noooo! I'm the naysaying beauty destroyer for having thought that. what is beautiful about your response is that you totally accept, respect and admire the work Jim did, and then give a very honest and thoughtful view of what it really could mean. the idea of 90% or even 95% of the sound being the same but then something different being contributed over the top makes a lot of sense to me. perhaps this is simplistic but could that be analogous to fundamental tone plus overtone and undertone series? and the decay patterns and all that ... so how could we go back to Jim and say lookit this was (literally) beautiful conception and testing - is there a way to record this stuff and then visually analyze the tone? then maybe we can reconcile the Kris and Jim ideas. also, hats off for pointing out that the air guitar, no matter how enjoyable a concept and implementation, is actually a workbench guitar. like many great ideas I didn't think of, as soon as I heard it I thought "of course, everybody knows that!" :)

the benches on the "air" guitar were actually connected with boards, look at the far left and right in his video. so they actually were transmitting vibrations.

Hi, I'm so happy I've "bumped into" your video, even if it's one year after it came out ! I've seen Jim's one, and I've seen many people using it as a statement in social media. That affected me a lot, because I was thinking right the same as you. He's work doesn't prove that tonewood is a myth. It proves that pickups and pure vibration are the most important thing in distorted tone. I've studied Physiques, and your totally right about vibrations. The material the strings are binded to add or substract harmonics to the vibration, which gives a great part of the tone caracteristics. That's also probably why metal guitarists agreed to Jim conclusion. For a signal that is distorted a lot by a High gain amplifier, the soundwave will be amplified and compressed a lot. So the main signal will be affected, but the harmonics as well. And as they are compressed a lot, they are going to parasite the main note, that will result in a messy and less plaisant sound. THat's why, for better metal tone, you need the more neutral guitar you can find. Less resonance you have and better will be the result, which is not at all the same in blues or any style with clean or crunchy tones.

The tone may be in the air but the feel is in the wood.

I think Jim Lill is a SONIC RELATIVIST . He starts with the conclusion that "it's all the same" and then creates an elaborate video to prove his point. And no surprise about GLEN FRICKER agreeing with Jim Lill's conclusion. Fricker thinks Harley Benton gear is just as good as the expensive stuff. He can't hear tone because it's all buried in distortion.

A note on a thing that seems crucial to me but is never mentionned : the way an instrument vibrate/resonate is feel by the player, particulraly in the neck, and this feeling you get (when you look to the west...)have a direct influence on the way you play and therefore the way your guitar sounds

It proves, again, that wood does not matter in a electric guitar. Plain and simple. The test swapping the pickups of the two LPs was nice but it wasn't as meticulous. And even then, the differences were very very minor. I probably wouldn't tell them apart in a blind test.

That's why I rather shoot for good pickups and strings...as long as the neck and body are comfortable.