Tone Wood Tester: One guitar to test them all 

what a sweet kid im glad that you not only made him feel included but that you kept his input in the video, i hope to be a father like you someday

Message heard loud and clear. Every time I play onstage I will make sure I am resting my guitar against the stage wall for maximum tone.

This video gets a like for the interaction with your son alone. I love that you invited him in and didn't shew him away! Good job in the Dad department!

8:29 Baseline 8:53 Mahogany 9:16 Poplar 9:37 Swamp Ash 10:05 Canarywood 10:25 Reclaimed Doug Fir

I love that you had your son come on and explain his perspective and theory. I applaud your parenting and craft. I aspire to be a luthier myself.

DOWNLOAD THE FILES AND PERFORM YOUR OWN TESTS HERE: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QCHNdrYuIPo2J6nLaGx-drsSx6yQ1W6J?usp=sharing To save you some reading here's the consensus of comments: Some people hear a difference, some don't. Difference hearers agree they are small and a lot of you want me to make a strumming machine and record spectral analysis (pedants! lol) Here's the conclusion I hope you reach with me: Don't get suckered in to paying more for or thinking a guitar is inferior if it isn't made of specific wood. PLEASE think twice about where the wood comes from, who had to cut it down, how fairly they were paid, the environmental impact etc. Remember, elephant ivory used to be cool to use, too... Be on the right side of history.

If you wanted to get super extra nerdy, you could build a cradle to hold each guitar, with a spring-loaded plectrum arm that could strum the strings in the identical way, with identical force every single time. That might help the internal validity of your sustain and resonance data. Great video, thanks so much!

Thanks for this! You just proved what I've been thinking for 30 years. I've been playing daily since 76 and I can't tell a difference from wood alone on electric guitars. Acoustic is totally different! The wood makes a huge difference!

Your son stole the show. Man I applaud your parenting. That's the way my dad taught me. Looking back after 40 years I am so thankful he took the time to explain and capture my interest.

If there's one thing I'm sure about after watching this video, it's that tonewood won't save you when the guitar is out of tune. :P

Dude you gotta patent the neck and body blank shapes because this is genius. You could sell necks with all the critical components and body blanks for tone separately so buyers can pick their preferred tone wood. Honestly it really is genius and it's got commercial potential.

I think the people complaining about strumming position and velocity/force kind of justify the point that you shouldn't care that much about tonewood. If you're a human being playing the guitar and human error makes such an impact on the results, it kind of negates whatever difference there is in tonewood to begin with. I'm not saying there isn't a difference, I'm just saying if there is a justifiable difference between two types of wood, it's got to be obvious enough that the human element is being outweighed by it. Otherwise, all you have to do is correct for the difference with technique.

Currently 3d printing a guitar and watching this video made me way more confident in actually wanting to complete the project. Nice work!

I love RU-vid for allowing me to see this kind of comparison and thanks for the sheer amount of effort to produce this video. Nice job!

Just great! Please continue this "tonewood" series and include weird materials. Plastic, metal, cardboard, rubber etc. Your son is great too, you should be proud. Good job man!

The info I’ve gathered from several different tests like this is the following: there is a difference in frequencies and sustain, BUT it is so infinitesimally-small that the player’s strumming, or a simple nudge of a tone/EQ knob can accomplish or obviate with minimal effort. In other words, it doesn’t matter! Great job on the guitars!

Just built a new computer. Decided to make the case out of maple so my Spotify playlists would sound snappier.

Great, now the tone wall debate begins.

Best part of the video is seeing how you interact and talk to your son. He seems like a great kid and you are a good dad including him in your work and inviting his opinion. As for the results I am not all that surprised that the differences between woods are extremely subtle. Of course real guitar construction is not always that simple and straightforward, most of my nicer guitars have combinations like mahogany body base + figured/carved maple tops, but I think the conclusion of the wood choice only making subtle differences in output, sustain and tone with all else being equal is probably fairly accurate. One suggestion though to have made the baseline test a little bit more interesting and accurate though would to have recorded 3 or 4 chords like Open E, A barre (5th fret), C barre (8 fret) and E barre (12 fret) so you could get at least a little data on the wood response at different frequencies. But you did a good job with the testing based on a single chord for comparison.

Sounds like a tenth of a turn on the tone pot would cover the range of all "tone woods" in existence for an electric guitar.

I'd bet pallet wood would blow all those away!

4 min in and I liked, subbed, commented, and put the bell on. I can already tell that your channel is amazing. You are so thorough and creative.

That system is a sure winner. I remind us all that this is electric guitar. Acoustic is a different beast what comes to properties of any wood.

Your son has an amazing grasp on sound technology for his age. Smart cookie that one!

You genius, this might be the future of guitars. Maybe in the future we can buy all the shapes we want and just carry a neck with pickups like these

Incredible brother. But, I couldn’t stop thinking about the business opportunity here. You sell me a really well built core with great pick ups, bridge, pots, switches etc. And then offer every shape, color, finish, etc. For me to mount my core in. You could even offer custom designs. Maybe it’s already been mentioned or maybe it’s already available in some form and I don’t know about it....but just the thought of being able to do this I find unique and exciting....get the idea to the patent office.

Make a body out of ramen noodles and superglue. 🎸

Use some plugin to run a Fourier transform, or FFT, on your recorded audio. This will make a graph showing you the distribution and amplitude of frequencies in your recording, and it will show you visually if there are differences in tone and harmonics. I think the fact the bridge wasn't sitting directly on the body makes a huge difference. Metal is the best sound transmitter in this entire guitar.

I'd say get in touch with Adam Savage to build a robot that can strum precisely at different velocities to get an exact reading on how each performs at different volumes. I'd love to hear each of them recorded acoustically with a nice condenser mic, and a contact mic on the body as well. Awesome work with a very creative solution!

08:29 Baseline 8:53 Mahogany 9:16 Poplar 9:37 Swamp Ash 10:05 Canarywood 10:25 Reclaimed Doug Fir 10:46 Solid Core door 12:26 MDF

I rewatched this and realize that you did a stellar job Tim. The reality is that through an amp, with other instruments and natural reverb, and drunk guys yelling, you cannot tell. Pickups, density and stiffness seem to be the big influence. Again, brilliant work.

I think that the biggest dependency is likely on your neck piece as it contains the entire length of the string. If you look at how waves are transmitted in a physical medium or even electric waves, you see that when a wave hits a surface that has a lower resistivity, part of the wave goes into that material and part of the wave reflects back. As the resistivity increases (as the guitar gets more hard) more of the wave reflects back, meaning more energy stays in the string. So if the neck has give, energy from the string will vibrate the neck, if the neck has no give, the string will keep more energy and will vibrate at a higher amplitude and longer (that is my theory). Ultimately the magnetic field of the pickup is not being affected by the material in the wood, the sound is purely happening between the string and the pickup. The wood as just acting as a dampener.

What a cute kid. You must be a really proud dad. Mahogany, Canary, Doug Fir and Ash sounding the same was an eye opener. The MDF one actually sounded quite good. From this video I have concluded that volume and sustain are affected by wood but tone is only fractionally affected except if you have a poplar guitar. Would love to see the same test with different types of lacquer on the bodies. Paul Reed Smith needs to watch this video. 😉🤣

Your son has better decorum than people I know in their 20's.

The design and build here is brilliant. Patent that before someone takes it. So good. I really enjoy your vids. Also, your son made this video soooo awesome. That kid is amazing. Cheers.

I have watched half a dozen times but get never tired of this upload! Love your channel!

Magnificent. I cannot wait until Adam Savage gets wind of this and brings you onto Tested for a maker interview.

Wood type makes all the difference... to the bank account.

Would be useful to put it through a frequency analyser to see if it changes the overtones of notes

probably the most interesting tone wood test. since you use the actual same neck pick up and strings. you can actually see if it makes a difference.

When I was a kid, at the same age as your son, I don't even know what the guitar is. Until I'm 20 y.o. I know the guitar very well and I play guitar with my soul, but I still don't even know that the wood can be affecting the tone of a guitar very much. Even the wood is the core, not only the pick-up or the bridge. But your son, your son... He can explain everything that I know just 3-4 years ago (21-23 y.o. I'm 25 now).

The change in tone a wood gives to a guitar vs another available guitar wood, is like having a tone control that rotates one degree. The other variables that affect tone have such a greater effect, that isolating the wood change is very difficult, and its significance pales in comparison to the other variables you can control that affect tone. The wood choice's significance is in looks, weight, sustain, and player comfort.

Great video, this makes me excited to build a guitar using reclaimed wood without fear of sound quality. Thanks for the great video.

Best video I have seen so far on "tone wood" well done!

From computer baseline 13:09 Mahogany 13:18 Poplar 13:30 Ash 13:41 Canary 14:06 Doug fir 14:16 Solid core door 14:27 MDF 14:41

I thought Formica® was good; then I tried Corian®, then compressed concrete, then polished granite, then Corsican Marble. With every increase in hardness and mass, I gained sustain, but I missed warm, resonant tones. I finally found the dulcet, velvety tones of blended/compressed Fruit Bat Guano & Mongolian Pony Manure!! My guitar sounds great, but for some reason nobody likes to play with me much any more!! The only gigs I ever get are outdoors, in a moderate breeze. They are only Indie Rock, where I occasionally fracture my skull with a Shure 55SH, or Punk, where I wipe boogers on my pants-leg and shake my goodies at my frenzied audience.

Make a guitar body made of epoxy resin containing various materials (ball bearings, gravel, air pockets). It would be interesting to see if the sound changed between additives.

One of the better tests I've seen, it's nearly impossible to account for everything. The only thing that surprised me is your surprise that they all sound nearly identical.

Since there, clearly, is a difference if a body is attached, and the wood type doesn't matter that much, How much does the SHAPE of different bodies matter. A test of the same wood, but different shapes...?

really smart kid

This was ALMOST perfect. One thing....well, two things, really: 1: you need to rig a strummer which will strum with the exact same pressure and speed and angle of attack every time, as well as the same spot on the strings. 2: you need to strum it OPEN. because slight variations in how hard you press the strings and how far your fingers are from the frets will affect the sound.

I subscribed because of this video. Mainly because of the skill you have at making guitars and how many you've made out of different materials

I am 61 years old - I've been playing and thinking about woods since I was ten. I went into engineering as a way of making a living. Having given this considerable thought I would like to give a simple breakdown of why the density and to a much lesser extent grain patterns in the wood of a solid body guitar influence the sound. The guitar is made of four components plus strings - the neck, the nut, the bridge, and the body. Some really great analysis is indicated on several videos - these explain what the string does after it is plucked and how the harmonic content is created. If we had infinite mass on the body and neck that harmonic content would be unaffected by the body or the neck - it would be consistent and without external influence. But we have components that vary in density, geometry and interface (neck-body joint). All will influence the string response. The neck is like a beam cantilevered off of the body, the body is the anchor. A neck can be fat or lean - this will influence how it responds to string vibration. The thicker the less it will vibrate and affect harmonics on the string. The strings are anchored at the nut and the bridge. Both the nut and the bridge transfer the string vibration to their anchor points. So the nut is the transfer point for the neck and the bridge is the transfer point for the body. When plucked the string vibrates and harmonics are created down the length of that string. That vibrational content is transferred through the nut to the neck. If the neck were infinite mass it would not influence the harmonic content of the string. But the neck has mass that is easily influenced, vibrates and injects that vibration back into the string via the nut with its vibrational response. The density (wood species) of the neck and the thickness or stiffness will determine how the strings are influenced. The same thing happens with the bridge. It transfers the vibration of the strings to the body, the body resonates and that vibrational response is transferred back through the bridge to the strings, which then affects the harmonic content of the string vibrational pattern. Everything that goes into the strings is then transferred to the pickup. It is a system. It is a recipe of parts. Different woods and geometries for the body will vibrate differently in response to the string vibration, the same with the neck. Nothing on the guitar is isolated from the other parts. It would take infinite mass of the body and neck for influence on the strings to reach zero. Do you feel the body of your guitar vibrating when you pluck a string or strum a chord? If the string didn’t transfer its vibration to the body you would feel nothing. If the body is vibrating, do you think that is isolated from the strings? - If so, how? It is a system of moving parts, each with its own vibrational characteristics, each influencing the other. The neck and body also share a joint and they influence each other. Let’s look at construction. Neck - body interface (joint) will affect how those two affect each other. A set neck with lots of surface contact (long tenon Les Paul) will allow those two to vibrate separately and together better than a joint that has less interface. One is not better than the other - they just produce different sets of outcomes at the strings. Different woods (densities and therefore different responses) between the body and neck will have different outcomes at the strings. A solid single wood type body will behave differently than a body constructed of two or more woods with different densities (Les Paul). A maple neck on a Les Paul will sound different than a mahogany neck. A rosewood neck on a Stratocaster will sound different than a maple neck. A neck-through will sound different than a set or screwed on neck. A partial neck-through (as in the tonewood test unit) will respond different to either a set or screwed on neck or a whole neck-through. A neck-through represents the same wood density through the length and the body woods added to it will have considerably less influence on the sound of the strings because the bridge transfers to that neck wood directly and the side body pieces (wings) are only responding to what the neck wood sends to them - and that response has to travel back through the neck wood through the bridge and back to the strings. The body wing vibrational influence is minimized through that transfer. In the partial neck-through again the bridge is mounted to the neck wood and although the mass of this neck wood is less than a full neck-through due to it being a fraction of the body thickness it still influences the passing of the body’s tonewood vibration back to the strings; less of the tonewood’s influence will come across at the strings. In a Les Paul the maple cap is fully bound to the mahogany tonewood and both influence the sound at the string - each wood’s characteristic resonance comes through because the bridge anchor reaches both woods. Each wood species has a very specific grain type and density range and will have response or resonance that matches that range. Some guitars made out of the same wood sound better to the player than others. One guitar might be put back by a player just to be picked up and purchased by another as the “one” that “hits” it. Most of that is due to wood density - some of it is in the electronics and a minor portion by the quality of construction - but that variation is very slight and mostly fixable. The woods used on a guitar vary in density. Maple is much more dense than mahogany. Each species of wood has a range of densities that are determined by growth - the more water the faster the growth and the density drops in the range proportionate to the growth rate. To a degree the grain structure affects density in woods like mahogany because the grain is open (porous) and where large variations of grain occur the density in a region of the tree will vary proportionately. One piece of mahogany having consistent grain will have consistent density and resonance where another piece having significant grain pattern changes will have an inconsistent vibration pattern. I have seen mahogany pieces with severe changes in grain structure that seemed to resist vibration. This I attribute to cancelations caused by inconsistent densities through the piece impeding the natural vibration (resonance) due to higher grain density, or impedance, in a portion of that piece. To put it simply - it is a dead piece of wood. This accounts for the variations we see in instruments using mahogany. Woods like alder and maple are closed grain woods and have little variation due to grain pattern changes. Growth rate determines wood density in these trees. Faster growth (lots of water) lower density. Each wood type has its own density range. Eastern hard maple is much denser than western big leaf maple. Both are considered dense compared with alder or a similar wood. Summing this up - the woods, shapes of body and neck, joint type, and the pickups and electronics all affect the sound coming out of the guitar. It is a recipe. I liken it to what goes on in the kitchen and I prefer to think of guitars as unique in sound from each other. To me the song will dictate which guitar to use because it should serve the song and enhance it. I have heard incredible combinations of different guitars over the years; I have heard guitar selections that made no sense. I like to think this was the engineer rather than the player who made the bad choice. I think this is how a guitar works - and I have been thinking about it since I carved my first neck at eleven because it was too fat for my fingers. At fourteen a dear friend’s father who really positively influenced my first band was trying to convince me that given the same pickups a guitar made out of concrete would sound the same as one made out of mahogany. I really think he was just giving me something to think about. I did. Thanks Norm.

Danelectro used to make the bodies out of masonite, and that is like prehistoric MDF. Best tonewood? Aluminium.

How can people not hear the difference? Especially the mahogany, it is so brass. The Ash was a little more muddy. The poplar sounded nice. Fir was the worst, imo.

Your son is awesome man. Reminds me of me and my boy. I always try to get him to think and bounce ideas of him and all that. And now he's off to college. Couldn't be prouder.

Loved this so much. A strumming machine and blah blah blah may be somewhat more thorough, but I think you've produced a very effective and efficient test method. Well done.

Thank you very much for this test. It is a really good attempt to make a scientific comparison. Your solution of the drop in neck/pickup/bridge unit is brilliant. That said, I think a bolt on neck with a separate drop in bridge/pickup unit would be better. It would eliminate the direct connection of the neck to the bridge. My theory is that the nut (or frets) and the bridge saddles are the two take off points for the strings. That is where vibrations are transferred to the body. In this case, it’s effectively a neck-thru design with body wings of different materials.

I really like how the poplar sounds -- seems like the solid core door has the longest sustain? The sum total of them all though? Whoa -- that's rich!

This is such a cool experiment. The modular guitar design was so clever. Bravo.

Based on the wall test, OSB is great tone wood.

I think the tonewoods don't make that much of a difference it's best to spend your time learning how to play better? An equalizer will make your tone brighter or darker

Damn, wish you'd tuned that thing before you started!

Good demonstration. I will just say that after Eddie Van Halen slap together a guitar made from defective junk parts before an audience of 1000+ in the 70s, I concluded to get s guitar that feels comfortable and sounds good to me. It's all in the fingers of the talented artist.

Woods make a bigger difference in acoustic guitars IMHO. Electric guitar tones are mostly dictated by the strings, pickups, amps, and speakers. The material is of much less importance compared to these things.

Wow, what a guy! I admire all the work you've done. Subscribed.

This method might be a great idea for a Travel Guitar. Easy assembly and disassembly.

The attention to detail is fantastic! the interchangeable neck - BRILLIANT

now I'm having the time of my life pressing my guitar's neck to random objects to amp the sound.

Cool! Great test. Any subtle differences (if any) could be from not strumming at the same exact location on the neck. I'm sure you tried to, but like you said, we're human and can't be perfectly precise. The only thing I could think of would be to add a mechanical strummer that is attached so it doesn't move. Oh, and perhaps just tune to an open chord so that you take the fingers on the neck variable out too.

Awesome to keep your son in bud. New sub here. Love your process as well. Sounds like your son wasn't just parroting your words either. He clearly had his own opinion based on more than a few minutes of experience and research. He may have learned most of it from you but he still made his own connections. Good for him and good for you too. Your a good Dad.

Dude.......your a great dad! thanks for going to all the time and trouble for us.

Scientific tip: Plot a fourier transform of the recorded waveforms so that you can see if the spectral response is any different for each kind of wood.

The door and MDF were out of tune. My doors are always going out of tune.

When you play them all together you get an out of phase chorus’y effect, which goes to show that YOU are probably a greater variable, than the wood is.

i'm glad you plugged it straight into the interface instead of an amp first gives us a chance to hear more of the raw tone from the pickups

Congratulations you've proved that a slight different pick variation can make you believe the solid body wood was a major factor in subjective perception of tone.

Loved the comparison. Really genuine unbiased. Kills all the myths. Your Son was right too. He's smart. Like father like son. 😉

Cool guy... Cool kid. Bad assed concept. I'd be awake for days trying these out!.

3 years late, but shout out to Gemini pickups, I'm not sure what's nicer, him or the pickups

But the pickups don’t work acoustically. They are magnetic. That’s why the wood does not matter in electric guitars. Those pickups does not pickup the vibration of air and the body because they are non magnetic. The pickup can only hear a vibrating magnetic metal nearby. Piezo pikcups are acoustic though.

Excelent test. Frequency = sqrt(stiffness/mass) This means more mass, more bass if the stiffness is the same. For me it's clear when you hear the decay of which wood.

Bright kid you have

This video came back to my recommendations again, I appreciate the time and effort you put on the experiment, it was very fun to watch again! Cheers!

your son knows more about the physics of solid body guitar tone than at LEAST 80% of the guitar players I know. Cheers!

Really great comparison video and interesting results. My only concern is the lack of control from human error. The "strum" would need to also be controlled so the amount of pressure, speed, and placement was also identical. The differences I was hearing can be attributed to the placement, speed, and force of the strum. Really...fantastic job!

This father and son interaction just made my day lol really sweet

I almost never like or subscribe to any channels, but I did to yours because what you did for your son, and the content was pretty valuable as well.

Every test I've seen that even attempts to achieve controlled conditions seems to return the same results. The affect of the wood seems to be pretty much negligible. The question people always ask is: "Does the wood an electric guitar is made of affect the sound?". I am fairly certain that it does to a small degree, but I also believe that tiny changes in ambient conditions have as big if not a greater impact on the sound. I think if you recorded the exact same guitar hours or a day apart you'd probably see some variation between recordings. I suspect that if you took the neck you made out of a body and then reinserted it in the same body you might get variation in the recording. This could be due to the act of handling, having to retune strings if they've become detuned in the process and because time has elapsed and you've been performing another task, so it gives you time to forget exactly how you strummed the strings (and if we're going into minute differences, your body will be in a physiologically altered state to when you performed the initial strum). I think the question people should be asking is: "Does the wood an electric guitar is made of have a perceivable or significant affect on the sound?". I don't believe it does.

Nice experiment. So just basically make one out of plywood, which is also strong and durable. Put a nice veneer on top for the looks and you can build a guitar body for a couple of bucks.

Tone woods do exist but only manifest an affect in the acoustic realm, listen to the difference between a mahogany vs spruce soundboard, very noticeable. I think a lot of ppl wanted to believe the 'tone wood' thing with electrics because it allowed a certain amount of snobbery. They could wax lyrical about how expensive and rare the wood in their particular guitar was, all the while the reality was they payed thousands for what amounted to a few hundred quid worth of pickups and hardware with a name slapped on the headstock. You could make the bodies out of different materials (plastics,stone etc..) and legitimately produce noticeable tonal differences, or probably more importantly do that with the necks but the range amongst woods is too narrow to discern, at least with electrics. Look at Brian May's guitar, body made out of oak and blockboard, not exactly traditional tone woods and one of the greatest sounding guitars ever heard. Pickups - amps - effects (and the player of course) are the only real inputs when it comes to electric guitars.

Tight neck module insertion is the first variable. You worked it out. Good going. Forgot this was the original video which received my comments.

Well that just about proves it for me. Basically, if you're a cool dad, you're gonna make cool kids. Science!

there was this guy on a guitar forum that asked the tonewood experts to guess what body the guitar was and posted a soundclip, so they argue ash alder pine, and it turns out its 2 hunks of MDF screwed together lol

I really like that solid core door. It has a warmth and shabbiness that I really need from a guitar

No noticeable difference here. The strumming was as consistent as humanly possible! Seams to apply for neck thru constructions. The main sound comes from the neck and minimal influence of the wings. I love how your son explains the choose for mor density. He‘s smart (has it from his dad)👏🏼👏🏼🤗

08:28 Baseline 08:53 Mahogany 09:16 Poplar 09:37 Swamp Ash 10:04 Canarywood 10:24 Reclaimed Doug Fir 10:48 Solid Core Door 12:27 3/4" MDF 1 - Little man should wear a hat, leather jacket and beard -> Mini Adam Savage 2 - The strum is not controlled 3 - The gap / contact surface is another confounding variable However, I think it's safe to say that body material does make a difference in tone - yeah, I DO hear differences.

For me...and I dear say for me. Truly the instrument that matters when it comes to tone wood is an acoustic instrument.

Wow! Respect the effort and dedication to take us on this discovery. Thanks for your hard work and passion for the guitar! 👊

Wish I could like this one more than once. Kudos for stepping up and doing some real experimentation. As others have suggested, you should push further with this, do 50 strums each like you said, maybe rig a mechanical strummer for it to get the same input exactly, then compare the overtones. My theory is that the body can only affect tone by selective dampening. The poplar sounds brighter so I suspect it's absorbing some of the amplitude from the base note and some of the lower overtones while letting the high end ring fully, but you should be able to confirm or deny that with empirical evidence. Oh, as to other materials to try, I think you should go crazy. Got a 3d printer? What would a plastic body sound like? Any different from nylon? Do any metal casting? A bronze semi-hollow might work very well. A *lead* semi-hollow would be even easier to make, and possibly more useful in a test. Might be a bit heavy but this is for science not gigging, right? Do any pottery? There's as far as I know one ceramic guitar in existence and it sounds just fine, might make a great data point if you have the equipment and skill. And we know you work well with wood, so try any crazy wood you have. I always wanted to hear a maple body, if it's so good for necks why not the body too? Cherry? Ironwood? The lumber store has quite a selection and there seems to always be a deal on something.