Technical discussion: "The guitar's natural tone"

[Newc]

I've always heard this phrase applied to electric guitars regarding pickups, and I have to ask: What is this based on? What's the foundation for this statement?

If you compare an acoustic guitar to an electric, one need only stick a mic in front of an acoustic to amplify its natural tone. Whether the tone is thin or full is based on the woods and bracing, but a solid-body electric doesn't have internal sound chambers or bracing, and therefore the "natural tone" - interpreted as acoustic tone - is much lower in volume and thinner.

Is this what pickups and amplifiers are supposed to amplify?

Or did someone somewhere say "I have an acoustic made entirely out of mahogany and it has a given tone, so if I make a solidbody guitar out of mahogany, I will have the same tone as the acoustic with x pickup design"?


What about semi-hollow and chambered electrics: which tone is the pickup targeted for, amplifying the acoustic tone or capturing the solid core tone?

[jdr94]

i wondered the same thing. i was thinking of gettin a piezo element and try mounting it under my floyd right between the posts to see what kind of sound i got, but i didnt think it would be loud enough so i never did it. maybe its time i give a shot.

[Cuthbert]

I've always heard this phrase applied to electric guitars regarding pickups, and I have to ask: What is this based on? What's the foundation for this statement?

If you compare an acoustic guitar to an electric, one need only stick a mic in front of an acoustic to amplify its natural tone. Whether the tone is thin or full is based on the woods and bracing, but a solid-body electric doesn't have internal sound chambers or bracing, and therefore the "natural tone" - interpreted as acoustic tone - is much lower in volume and thinner.

Is this what pickups and amplifiers are supposed to amplify?

Or did someone somewhere say "I have an acoustic made entirely out of mahogany and it has a given tone, so if I make a solidbody guitar out of mahogany, I will have the same tone as the acoustic with x pickup design"?


What about semi-hollow and chambered electrics: which tone is the pickup targeted for, amplifying the acoustic tone or capturing the solid core tone?

Solid body guitars do have a acoustic sound, although it has a lower volume than a acoustic guitar the sound is different, mainly because the strings are reflected by the top and the fingerboard, how the wood reflects the vibrations is the key of the "natural tone"...since these reflected waves re-put the strings in vibration and they are the reasons why the electric guitar has sustain, while acoustic has not.

A acoustic guitar is based on the principle of resonance of the structure and the contained into the chamber.

[zeegler]

This is a subject I've always been curious about. Electric guitar pickups are not like a microphone, in that instead of amplifying an existing sound, they work by creating a magnetic field, and the vibration of the strings disrupts the magnetic field causing a signal which goes to your amplifier. Let's say you build a guitar using the most acoustically dead materials you can find. It's still going to sound like an electric guitar. What if you attach a guitar string between two fixed points, and simply hold a pickup next to it. When it vibrates, will it still transmit a signal throught the pickup to the amp? The answer is yes, it will. Again, this leads me to wonder how much does effect the construction of a guitar actually have on the sound. Do we percieve a greater effect than there actually is, because we expect to hear a difference?

It would be easy enough to answer the question once and for all, with a simple experiment. Take all the other variables out of the equation. Take a board of mahogany, and a board of maple of identical size. Attach an anchor point at one end, and a tuning key at the other end. These must be identical for both boards, and in the exacet same location. String them up with strings of the same gauge and brand. Tune them to the same pitch. Given that there are no other variables, you should be able to hold a pickup in front of the stings on each of the boards, and if there IS a tonal difference, you should be able to hear it.

[dg]

My understanding of how it works is that different woods, different types of construction (like bolt-on vs. set neck), different bridges or bridge metals, even different nut materials will all have a tendency to accentuate or cancel out certain frequencies or harmonic overtones when a string vibrates. The natural tone of the guitar actually feeds back to the strings and causes them to vibrate differently, and it is transmitted that way through the pickups without them having to act as microphones.

For example, I have Duncan Customs in the bridge of 4 different guitars and they all sound completely different: swamp ash strathead with 1-piece maple neck, alder pointy with maple/maple neck and floyd, alder pointy with maple/maple neck & Kahler, and Model 6. The most surprising to me is how different the two alder pointies sound. The bridge makes a huge difference.

[Guitardude86]

well.. Not sure if this fits into this subject but it's kind of interesting.. I actually didn't notice the guitar had no guts until he said it..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiV56mn7OMo

[Aaronharmon]

Ovation has a new(er) solid body electric that has a piezo pup as well as a humbucker iirc. Anyway, I believe it has a sliding mixer that lets you dial in all of one or the other or a mixture of both. I've heard guys say they were cool, but I have never tried one.

[Dreamland_Rebel]

when i met Chris Poland he was telling me about his Yamaha guitar. he said they went to a room that was pilled with mohagany body and neck blanks. they srtung up almost every one in the room and held a pickup in front of it plugged into an amp untill they found the one that resonated the most. he coudln't beleive how much wood they wasted in the process but that became the guitar he plays now.

[zeegler]

when i met Chris Poland he was telling me about his Yamaha guitar. he said they went to a room that was pilled with mohagany body and neck blanks. they srtung up almost every one in the room and held a pickup in front of it plugged into an amp untill they found the one that resonated the most. he coudln't beleive how much wood they wasted in the process but that became the guitar he plays now.

That sounds a bit far fetched. The wood would have no effect whatsoever on the pickup without strings. Wood is pretty much magnetically invisible.

EDIT: LOL, obviously I can't read too well. I missed the part where you said they strung them up.

[dg]

I believe they could definitely resonate differently. I've had guitars with exactly the same woods & specs where some are ho-hum and others are way more alive & resonant.

[zeegler]

I believe they could definitely resonate differently. I've had guitars with exactly the same woods & specs where some are ho-hum and others are way more alive & resonant.

Absolutely they could, but the way Chris Poland said he tested them would not work.

[Joelski]

In my experience, with all construction methods being equal, I believe that dense wood gives a truer representation of the strings themselves (Bright; think of an all metal guitar with no "give"). A soft, porous wood such as mahogany will tend to "damp" the strings natural resonance across it's supports (the wood), thus giving a darker, mellower tone, and therefore a best representation of the wood's influence given the same pickup. Middle of the road types of wood such as Alder achieve a balance between too bright and too mellow using the control pickup, allowing a player to tweak his sound with outboard methods such as amp, EQ, etc...

Using this logic, a Les Paul made of Alder would sound very similar to a traditional LP made of Mahogany with a Maple top (the two tone wood's properties cancelling each other), however, variables such as the mahogany neck come into play here. Thus, the art of guitar building remains just that; a practice born of educated trial rather than scientific foundation which is good; otherwise there would be no anticipation or joy in crafting the instrument. Besides, a Maple top LP will always be preferable to a plain-looking one no matter how similar the sound.

[Aaronharmon]

The new moog solidbody has a piezo too, come to think of it.

[El Chiguete]

they srtung up almost every one in the room and held a pickup in front of it plugged into an amp untill they found the one that resonated the most.

To ¨srtung¨ (and I used what I guess was an error) a guitar, don't you need string? so the did have strings in them.

[zeegler]

To ¨srtung¨ (and I used what I guess was an error) a guitar, don't you need string? so the did have strings in them.

Yeah, I just noticed that.



As someone mentioned above, the wood probably does affect the way the strings vibrate. That's really the only way the wood could have an effect on a magnetic pickup. So, we're not really "hearing" the wood, but rather we're hearing the affect the wood has on the way the strings vibrate.