TONE TALK - DOES THE WOOD MATTER?
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THE ELECTRIC GUITA R UNP LUGGED
Isn’t it the strings that make the tone?
People sometimes ask me if the wood materials
used for an electric guitar have an effect to the
sound. The answer is: Yes! There is, however, so
much confusing information (or disinformation)
online about this topic, that I wanted to write
this article to clarify why my answer is ‘yes’.
Feel those vibrations
Let’s observe first the electric guitar unplugged. I
pick it up, place it on my lap and take a chord.
The strings vibrate, and part of that energy
transfers through the contact points (bridge,
THE RESONA NCE FOOT P RI NT OF A N ELECT R I C G U I TA R
How about making a guitar out of wet wood?
A couple of examples. We’re still unplugged
here. If I make a guitar out of a piece of wood
that has just been cut down (and not dried), the
guitar won’t vibrate a whole lot.
The heavy and wet piece of wood will suck all
the energy from the strings, and the guitar will
sound more or less like a wet sock. In other
words, the sound is very weak without much
high frequencies – no striking mids, and the bass
doesn’t sound too healthy either. It’s dead.
Oh my God this is loud!
If I, instead, make a guitar out of dry, light
weight and rigid wood materials, the strings will
stimulate the wood to vibrate. Depending on the
Plugging in – what changed?
When I plug the guitar into an amplifier, the
situation changes significantly. Let’s say I turn
up the volume loud enough so I can’t hear the
acoustic sound of the guitar anymore. So – I take
a chord, and the strings vibrate just like they did
unplugged. The vibration still transfers partly to
the guitar just like it did before. But – what I’m
now hearing is not the guitar itself.
I can feel the tone in my whole body
Let me walk you through what exactly happens.
The vibration of the strings (that is constantly
being shaped by the coupling and canceling
frequencies caused by the “resonance footprint”
of the guitar) moves the magnetic flux of the
pickup, generating a signal that transmits to the
amplifier via the guitar cable.
The amplifier does what it’s supposed to do –
amplifies the signal – and pushes it to the
speaker element and out to the room where I’m
playing. So what I’m now experiencing is a more
complex phenomenon – the sound is shaped by
THE 4 ELEM ENT S T HAT S CULP T T HE A M P LI FI ED T O N E
So we’ve learned that it is possible to observe
separately the acoustic scenario of playing the
electric guitar, and arrive to somewhat
unambiguous conclusions.
It keeps getting more complicated
When observing the amplified tone, the
phenomenon is more complex. In a simplified
form, the amplified sound is sculpted by at least
these four elements: 1) the acoustic properties of
the guitar, 2) the whole electrical signal chain, 3)
the space where the guitar is being played in –
and obviously, last but not least 4) the person
playing the guitar.
This lecture was recorded at Montreal Guitar Show back in 2010, and it touches in some ways the topic of
this 'tone talk' article. It covers a lot of other stuff too, but might be interesting to those interested in guitar
sound. It is a playlist of 7 videos, as in those days one couldn't upload such long videos to YouTube.
Ruokangas Lecture at MGS 2010, Part 1
What is it that makes a good guitar? I suppose I'm still on that road, relentlessly looking for answers.
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nut, tuners) to the neck and body of the guitar.
The instrument vibrates – and so my experience
of the “unplugged tone” of that guitar is a
combination of sound waves coming from the
strings and also from other parts of the guitar.
But that’s not my whole experience – I also feel
the vibration of the instrument against my
hands and my tummy.
Who can tell the differences?
If I put the same set of strings to ten different
guitars, each one of them sounds (and feels)
acoustically different to me. The strings are the
wood species and other mechanical features of
the guitar, I hear a sound that I might describe
with phrases like “strong mid range push”, “oh
my god this is loud”, “too muddy”, “nice and
open lows” or something else.
What I’m hearing depends on how the different
parts of the guitar vibrate – in other words, what
frequencies are more pronounced than others.
So it is the guitar itself (including the strings)
that define the “resonance footprint” of that
particular instrument.
The energy comes from your fingers
When I play, I hear the sound waves and feel the
vibrations that are being transferred from
strings to the instrument. I’m also hearing the
CRANK UP THE V OLUM E
the amplifier, the speaker element, the speaker
cabinet, the room I’m in – and also by the
volume level which I don’t only hear but also feel
in my body.
What’s happening here?
The situation is unarguably a whole lot different
from playing unplugged. And yet – if my guitar
had a “strong mid range push” unplugged, I still
hear that same character singing through! And
when I crank the volume louder, those mids
push through even more! Why? What’s
happening here?
Well, the sound waves firing to the room from
the speaker are making the guitar vibrate more.
And again, the way the guitar starts vibrating is
shaped by the resonance footprint of that
particular guitar.
Let’s change perspective
Let’s look at the amplified situation from the
perspective of the guitar strings. Whereas in an
unplugged situation all the energy came from
The client, a convenient guinea pig?
May sound like off the topic to you, but this
(what I write about in this article) is the reason
why I don’t offer a wide variety exotic wood
combinations for my guitars. There would be so
many variables that I would have no way of
knowing how they would exactly work. I don’t
want my clients to be my guinea pigs. One can
only learn about a certain wood species through
extensive usage of that wood.
A thousand guitars later
Wood is a living material – every piece is a little
different from the rest. When I had built ten
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same, but everything else (materials,
construction, hardware) is different. So, without
a doubt, there are significant tonal differences
between various electric guitars when playing
unplugged. It is essential to understand that it is the
player holding the guitar, who is able to analyse the
sound most clearly. When you’re listening to the
differences between guitars, but you’re not the
player, sure, you can still hear differences, but
the “feel” of the guitar doesn’t come across, cause
you’re not touching the instrument. With me so
far?
sound waves that feed back from the body and
neck to the strings, coupling certain frequencies
and canceling others, depending on the
aforementioned resonance footprint of the
instrument and my touch as a player.
It is essential to notice that when I am playing
without ampli ication, all the energy comes from my
ingers. I pluck the strings that start to vibrate. There
is no energy coming from elsewhere.
my fingers, now the strings are being fed with
energy from three di ferent directions: 1) my
fingers, 2) the speaker element and 3) the
vibrations from the body and neck of the guitar,
generated by the sound waves in the room.
Psychophysicalacoustic… what!?
The guitar is operating now as a sort of “passive
amplifier” for the strings – and again, the
resonance footprint of the guitar shapes which
frequencies are coupled or cancelled. “Acoustic
feedback” would be a suitable term for this
phenomenon.
Again – the differences between individual
electric guitars are way more obvious to observe
when holding the guitar and playing it yourself.
As a bystander, you can hear differences for sure,
but half of the fun comes from the complex
psychophysicalacoustic experience playing the
guitar!
guitars out of spanish cedar I thought I know the
wood inside out – but now, after about a
thousand guitars later, I have in fact learned that
I still don’t know everything about this
magnificent wood species – but I certainly know
the stuff well enough to be sure that every guitar
we make using this material (and my other long
term favourites) will be a superb musical
instrument.
For those who didn’t quite get enough yet – I
continue to analyse the electric guitar tone in
another article – this time from the pickups’
perspective. You’ll find it here.
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