Wow, that’s bitchin. Pencil wood is Pine isn’t it?
Cedar, traditionally.
Umm, I would say you don’t really know if that guitar sounds terrific. For starters, you only hear it through a heavily processed signal, and no other way. It’s a good sounding chorus pedal, though. Any guitar could get you that tone, really. It could be made out of paper and sound nearly the same. It is a nice looking guitar, but so are clear Dan Armstrongs. They can both get that sound out of a chorus, so can a Steinberger or a Teisco Del Rey.
I didn’t believe in tone woods, either until I watched the videos I linked to before. That test is pretty conclusive, to me. In contrast to the pencil guitar demo, there’s not even an amp coloring the tone. The wood (even non-structural wood) affects the tone of the guitar. It’s less of a factor than the actual suspension method of the strings and the pickups, or the effect of the pickup design and wiring, and most of those are totally tiny compared to your amp selection and EQ settings when dealing with a solid body - but it’s there.
Can you link to it again, I’d love to see it. Unless it’s one of those tests where some dude plays a Strat with a maple neck/ash body and then a Strat with a rosewood neck/some other “tone wood”, and then draws conclusions. :smack: 
Because I’ve seen tests online where someone makes the mistake you are alluding to, about not really knowing what the guitars in the test sound like. You have their setup, their mic, their amp, etc, and then you only hear it from your speakers at home. Now, as for my comment about how the pencil guitar sounded, I did not mean to draw any conclusions from just that, it was merely a throw-away line. I would not even consider giving an actual conclusion until it was involved in a double or even triple blind test.
Sure thing, here’s both of them. The second has an amp in the mix, but the first is straight into the D.I.
Interesting test, but it has the same problem that others have had. And that is, you have one guy doing the test. Who knows how his attack might have changed when playing each guitar? It’s not scientific. It convinced me of nothing. And even though this is not relevant to a scientific test, I just don’t see how the wood of an electric guitar, which typically has strings that are attached to the body using some metal bridge or the like, can affect how the strings vibrate over the pickups. Now, just because I can’t understand how that could happen doesn’t invalidate the proposition. But I’d love some try to explain that to me. And especially, how on earth a maple neck vs a rosewood neck can change the sound, given that you press the strings down on a metal fret, so what difference does it make what kind of wood is used?
I’m pretty sure you affect the perceived tone of an electric guitar much more by practicing than by changing the wood in the body.
Noy only that but the ear adjusts to the baseline sounds coming out of a source, and bakes it into the psychological cake after seconds or so. After that you are listening for the song, and the playing.
I’m not sure how this objection amounts to anything. There’s nothing ergonomic that changed with the bodies making him strum differently, and he went into the test assuming they would sound the same. He also said they sounded the same to him when he was playing them, and only noticed the difference on editing/playback.
I think the only way to satisfy your objection would be to have a machine playing the guitar. I don’t see that happening soon, but hey, Tim Sway might be the man to do it. But at this point I doubt it would make a difference, even if it would be interesting.
Well, my theory would be that the sound reflects throughout the rest of the body, and those vibrations change the sound that’s transmitted into the strings themselves in ways we can perceive. Even though this sounds reasonable to me (and did before, I just discounted it), I’m not sure how you’d “prove” this theory other than an experiement like the one in the video with a piezo inserted between the slug and the body, and another (or several) mounted on the slug. Then you could compare the frequencies at each, and have some idea after playing it without the body. Even then, it would take some thought to cancel out the noise in that measurement.
But as I said before, the difference is small.
Umm, I have never made such a claim about fret board wood, and the video above has the same fret board for all bodies. I’m still in the camp that thinks the fret board material may make you feel differently about the guitar, but unless there’s an actual defect in it, it’s going to change the timbre less than the body does.
The body doesn’t affect much (it’s certainly less than pickups or bridge style), but it’s there. It’ll take an enterprising experimenter like the above to convince me that board wood matters.
What exercise shall I practice to change the timbre of my instrument, pray tell? After playing stringed instruments for 40 years, I can already fret properly even on instruments without frets, and am well familiar with picking in different intensities and areas of the string to get different timbres. How shall I practice to change the sound of the guitar body from mahogany to reclaimed solid core door without touching the knobs? Please be specific.
Yeah, I’d like a cite for that. I’ve played my Jazz at the last two practices, and nothing besides changing the EQ liberally* at the end of the last practice would make it sound close to my Precision. If the sound was going to be baked into the psychological cake in seconds, it should have happened over nearly six hours of two practices.
*Rolling off the bridge pickup completely, boosting the bass frequencies, and moving the mid peak down. I knew it sounded weak, but didn’t fix it until the singer complained that my bass had recently disappeared. It still didn’t sound exactly the same, but it was a lot closer to the same point in the mix of everyone else.
Well, after a few weeks of weather getting in the way, my 2017 Epi Les Paul Special I finally arrived this week. I’ve had a few days with it now, and I’m pretty impressed with my $89 guitar. The finish is semi-transparent, and the body seems to be a single solid block of wood (probably nato). The pickups are alnico V P-90s, and it sounded pretty good upon arrival. Bright, throaty, and a little aggressive.
But, it’s not without issues. I’m not crazy about the worn black finish. I’m not sure what Gibson/Epiphone is thinking, there. It looks fine, and doesn’t show prints, but it rubs off on stuff. Even though this is a used guitar that was played a bit, with some fret wear below the 5th fret, the neck still leaves a blue/black spot on my thumb when I play it. My 2012 SGJ has a similar finish, but it’s been played enough that my thumb doesn’t turn red. It’s not the end of the world, but the Gibson/Epi worn finishes are the only guitars I’ve ever played that do this. I know that they use this finish because shooting clear on top would cost a bit more, but guys, please try to find a similar finish that isn’t so easy to rub off.
The wraparound bridge is a little chewed up, but that’s pretty common with that style, and it doesn’t adversely affect the sound. I’ll probably put a badass-style bridge on it or a Wilkinson bridge shortly, since the intonation on the fixed Gibson-style one is always a little wonky. This one is fine on the low E and A, a little sharp on the D and G, B is fine, E is low. My guitarist thinks the fixed compensation on the original is part of the style’s charm, but I’m not sure I agree. I can always put the old one back on if I find that I’m wrong.
The tuning gears are a little loose, so tuning it is more work than on a more expensive guitar, but they do operate properly and hold tune. I probably won’t replace them until I break one though.
Also, the second fret was high on the treble side and causing a buzz, so I originally just pulled out the screwdriver and moved the action a bit higher on the first day. Today I pulled out the files and filed it down and polished it. The action wasn’t unreasonably high before - but it was an easy fix, and no reason to not do it. It plays/sounds equal to most of my other P-90 and P-90-ish equipped guitars, now - even the cheapest of them was several times the price of this guitar. There’s no reason someone couldn’t gig with this $89 guitar after a little love. Ok, the first few shows will get you a blue thumb, cry me a river.
As I started reading your response, I thought, a good way to do this type of test would be a machine of some kind.
The objection is again, that it is not scientific. The person judging the sound of the guitars should not be setting up the test. For all I know, Tim played exactly the same on each guitar, but I don’t know this to absolutely be the case.
Right, my apologies on that. I didn’t mean you, I was thinking of others I have discussed this with, and tests in general, not Tim’s.
My Snark snapped, then snuck off.
I glued it back together, then I lost it in a move. I thought it was great- cheap, worked great and never gave me cause to even think about it. It seems that my experience with it breaking is not unusual, though. They have a design flaw that makes them prone to breaking at the ball joint where it connects to the clamp.
So I need a cheap Snark replacement to help with tuning an electric guitar, one that won’t break easily. Suggestions?
Guess I’ll go with the Korg Sledgehammer Pro. Overall good reviews, and I like the big display. My vision isn’t so good these days.
Personally, I like the Snarks and it’s not like they are super pricy. Why not just buy a few of them or take it off the neck when you aren’t using it?
Yeah, I loved my Snark. I treated it gently, but still managed to break it. I think I’d just buy another, but I’m tempted by the Korg because of the bigger display. My vision’s pretty poor. Guess I’ll think it over.
Hmm, for an electric, I’d normally suggest just about any pedal tuner over a Snark. It doubles as a mute switch, too. I personally prefer the Boss, because they pretty much don’t break.
Speaking of pedals, I got two rare/odd ones in the last month from Idiotbox effects. Mystery Effect #7, and Mystery Effect of the Month Club effect #3 (the Space Mod-Delay-Tor :D). They’re both delays. I thought ME #7 was a weird delay (and it is) until I got the Space Mod-Delay-Tor. Both are made using the PT2399 chip that lots of delays use. ME #7 has two of them, the Space Mod-Delay-Tor has one. The first is just a really pretty space-y sounding delay that sounds really nice, lets you have some control of the pitch of the modulation, is easy to drive into self-oscillation once you kind of figure out what the knobs to, and has no labels on the knobs. The second is a modulating delay, with emphasis on modulation. It allows you to control the rate of the modulation, and there’s a knob labeled modulation that changes the modulation, but you’re not getting rid of it. It almost sounds like it’s arpeggiating the repeats, even on the mildest setting.
Here’s a track at bandcamp that I made to demonstrate to one of my friends how the Mod-Delay-Tor sounds. It’s crazy. They’re both rare enough (only about 20 were slated to be made of each) and neat enough that I actually plan to make demo video of the two of them soon.
That’s just cool. I expect you to post back when you make the videos.
On a whim, as I was killing time before an appointment in Guitar Center, I bought a little mixer. A Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (2 in 2 out) that comes bundled with a bunch of software.
I have no idea how to use any of it. So far I have registered my product and downloaded the requisite drivers as well as the majority of the bundled stuff, but I haven’t installed any of it. The bundle comes with Pro Tools First, another production suite called Ableton Live Lite, bass samples, drum samples, a production program for creating loops, a suite of compressors, reverb and EQs, as well as a mastering app and a Addictive Keys product. I didn’t snag the last two because I didn’t feel like setting up two more accounts tonight.
So basically, I’m wondering if anyone has any experience with either the unit I bought or any of the software that came bundled with it. Any tips, advice, reviews would be appreciated. I’m not looking to make Sgt. Pepper but I’d like to put down demos and use it to get song ideas down to work on and that sort of thing.
My shortcomings right now, beyond ignorance, is that I only have electric guitars here right now. I can plug right in and record that but if I want to use my amps or record my acoustic or vocals, I’ll need to borrow a mic - which I suppose should be easy enough. I also have a Casio keyboard that I suppose I could make work some how. What I don’t have that I desperately need is speakers. Studio monitors with 1/4 inputs to go with the mixer. My only option right now is ear-buds in the headphone jack and that won’t do.
Well, I ended up with a third Idiotbox effect that’s unusual, as well. It’s a Holy Trooper Fuzz. It’s got three germanium transistors, no knobs, and is out of production. Since I was fooling around with all three, I decided to make a single video for all of them. So, you asked for it, you got it, Toyota: Three Unusual IdiotBoxes.
I enjoyed the process so much, I plan to make another vid for Mystery Effect of the Month Club pedal #4 (just got it today!). If you have any suggestions, let me know.
I don’t have any extensive experience with that interface or the software you got with it, Jack Batty, but recording on a computer is pretty simple. A SM57 and a stand and cable for it will run you about $130 on sale. However, for convenience and so I can work while others are asleep, I usually record electric instruments direct through a cab simulator these days (I used an ancient delay pedal with retty op amps when I went direct before that). I usually just use a tube preamp or distortion into the CabDryVR pedal in the video. In my opinion, it sounds pretty convincing. It’s almost as good as a decent engineer with a couple of mics, when you work it right. But for acoustic instruments, it’s no help
I want one of these, but don’t have the funding yet. I’ll be interested to hear how it goes.
I saw a series of videos on youtube, the guy used a focusrite and built a song, piece by piece with the included software (amps, drums, FX). It was amazing. Very little tweaking.
Goodluck.