mass = tone ???

ok i have been hearing this for a long time but now i really have to ask.

so last night i changed the maching heads on my acoustic for the stock one to a set of grovers. the stock one felt light and flimsy when the grovers are heavy and very well made. well my guitar got an instant boost in tone.

i changed the bridge block on a ibanez strat once to a heavier one one and same thing instant boost in tone.

i have a guitar that weighs more than any other ive ever played but it sounds better than just about any othr i have played unplugged (its electric)


so what im wondering for the experts around here is if there is any real fact to this? or am i just hearing things.

Well, a sound engineer I once knew wanted to set his speakers in concrete. He said the increased weight would give the speakers something to push against so bass vibrations had more of a chance.

So it makes sense to me.

I'm no engineer, and make no claims to being an expert, but consider guitars and how and what they're constructed from- the type of wood, how the neck is attached, the type of strings you use- to name a few variables.

Some guitars sound inherently brighter, some not, and guitarists take that into consideration when they're looking for their sound. I have a Strat with a maple neck that sounds far brighter than my Strats with a rosewood neck. The bodies of each are also made from different woods. I believe these variables ultimately have an effect on the overall tone.

So, no, I don't think you're hearing things. The new machine heads, being of better quality may be allowing the strings to resonate better- hence, the "boost" in sound you're hearing. Just like the block you used- possibly the heavier block resonates with the body that much more, therefore the "boost".

But say, you had a guitar made totally of cement; will you get that boost? I really doubt it, as I don't think cement would be a good conductor of of the string vibrations. Maybe for speakers that icicle gave in his example, but I doubt it when it comes to guitars; I think of guitars and all that they're made of working in concert together as opposed to one piece working against something. Only exception I can think of, are semi-hollow, or hollow bodies, where a player might stuff the guitar to reduce feedback. In this case, I think they're trying to reduce resonance.

You could solve this by getting a lightweight guitar, lying flat on the floor to play it, then getting someone to add some weights to it as you play.

Some debatable opinions from Mike Moore of Mooretone Guitars:



"Wood Species and Properties"


This month's question:

Regarding the properties of wood and the construction of electric guitars, are there properties which differentiate sound in the electronic signals from the electric guitar's pickups?


The answer is...yes!


One of the least known or understood aspects of electric guitars and their tonality does have to do with the woods used in their construction. As wood resonates under vibration, these vibrations are transferred through the pickups. As the wood vibrates from the strings being plucked or strummed, it adds to the pickups ability to sustain those signals being sent to the amp. The more a wood vibrates, or "resonates", the more an electric guitar will sustain individual notes or chords. Hidden inside those "shock waves" are "wood tones."

Embedded within your guitar's electronic signal being sent to your amp, wood tones are produced and based on the woods used with string selection being equally important. Your hands and playing style also produce tones that can be manipulated to achieve a desired sound. Yes, two people can play the same guitar and each will create a different sound. Also, taking that same guitar and re-stringing it with heavier gauged strings will produce a completely different sound. However, for the sake of keeping this article short, we will focus primarily on body and neck woods used in electric guitar construction and their tonal properties.

First, as owner of Mooretone Vintage Guitars, I have spent most of our ten years researching the tones produced by various hard and soft wood species with various pickup outputs. We have combined dozens of different neck and body woods with different single coil windings in search of that perfect fat sounding and very resonant electric guitar.

The most argued and most misunderstood wood in our industry that is being used for electric guitars is "Southern/Swamp Ash," also known as "Fraxinus Nigra." This is an absolutely gorgeous wood with a lot of grain and character. It is of the Olive tree family and it is highly sought after for its beautiful grains and light weight properties. Also, it can be found wide enough for a one-piece body. However, this is not the Ash that was once used for Strats primarily from 1954-59. Back then those bodies were actually another species of Ash, White or Northern hard Ash, as found in Louisville Slugger baseball bats. The differences are totally opposite of one another. The Southern or Swamp Ash is extremely light and very open grained whereas the White or Northern Ash has a more closed grain and is much heavier and more dense. The principles of wood tones lies in the wood's ability to dehydrate and to not absorb tones. Any open grained wood will absorb rather than transfer vibrations. Swamp Ash is notoriously soft and open grained which is not a good choice for tonality. Furthermore, it becomes very delicate once " kiln dried," the process of drying wood so that it retains less moisture. Moisture absolutely kills any guitar's tone. Finally, open-grained Ash requires a great deal of grain sealing, sanding, and "wash coating" before you can either use opaque or translucent finish. In other words, you have to use a lot of pre-finishing products to fill up all that grain so that you are left with a level surface for your final finish. Now with all that gunk on the guitar you no longer receive the wood's tones, but rather the tones produced by the gunk. This is the argument many of us make in choosing a nitrocellulose lacquer finish versus polyurethane. Nitro allows the wood tones to express themselves and poly smothers them. If you absolutely have to have Ash as a body wood, seek low output and hot pickups. We wind ours to 5.3K for the neck, 5.5 RWRP for the middle and 5.7K for the bridge. The added trebles produced by less-wound single coil pickups will help an open-Ash body sound crisper instead of muddy with too much bass.

Now, on to Alder and Poplar. Yes, I said Poplar! I can hear many of you saying, "He's nuts. Poplar sucks!" Wrong. This was one of Fender's first woods used in the earliest days of production. They stopped using it because the United States was in a major Baby-Boom building flurry in the early 60s. Poplar was commonly used in new home construction so it became harder to find, thus Fender switched from its Ash bodies for clear coating and its Popular for opaque finishes to Alder for clears and Basswood for opaques. Poplar, also known as Imperial Carolinas or Black Poplar, was forgotten about until now.

At Mooretone, we have rediscovered this wood's tonal and sustaining properties and they are incredible. However, the wood has a tendency to contain greenish streaks, but we have found that recent cross hybrids of Cottonwood and Black Poplar can provide us with clean white stock that is wide enough for a one-piece body construction without any streaks at all! Poplar is one of the straightest grained woods of the hardwood family, making its ability to sustain vibrations endless. The straighter the grained wood, the more balanced and more sustain it promotes. Alder is a close second to Poplar, except for two considerations:

#1 Alder is softer, making it dent easier and Alder does not evaporate or "dehydrate".

#2 Alder has a very low moisture content. We have never had Poplar split while we were kiln-drying. As a luthier, there is nothing more nerve racking as seeing a gorgeous piece of wood split while drying it out. Simply put, Alder and Polar are the best choices for Strats or Strat-like guitars.

Now...Maple and Mahogany. These are, without argument, the best woods for tonal integrity. They have very closed grain like Northern hard Ash, Alder, and Poplar. However, Maple and Mahogany tend to be very weighty and for those of you never having slung on a Gibson LP to play a 2 hour set, a guitar's weight is an important concern. In a perfect world, if Maple or Mahogany were lightweight like Alder and Poplar, then they would be the choicest wood. This is why many companies, like PRS, use Maple veneers over Poplar or Alder. However, we do not ever use glues in out bodies here. We have found that the glues themselves can alter a wood's tone. In fact, we only build our guitars out of one-piece bodies.

Bringing up the rear...Basswood. This wood is just horrible! Why use it? First, it is a small tree which means multiple glued pieces to get it wide enough for a Strat body. Second, it is soft and dents easily and retains water like a sponge. However, it is cheap and plentiful. Tonally, you may as well play a plywood guitar. This wood is totally unsuitable for clear-coating due to its uninteresting grain streaks. This is the ugliest hardwood you will ever find. In my opinion, avoid it.


Neck woods and Fretboard woods.

To begin, I need to mention that this is the epitome of the causes for luthiers to lose sleep and to get into fist-fights with one another! In other words, no one agrees on any combinations of woods here. It is really the essence of all guitar building theory. Some will argue that the neck is responsible for all tones produced by a guitar and, in some cases, this is partially true. Your playing style really will have much to do with the sounds that your guitar produces. Also, larger frets, in our opinion, do add to the sustain and tonal characterizations making each guitar unique. We believe in bass frets to raise the strings up and away from the fretboard. Unfortunately, if you are like me and have small or medium-sized hands, you are in for a workout.

In the Strat or Strat-like world of guitars, the most commonly found wood is Maple, mostly Eastern Hardrock Maple. The best cuts are know as "quarter-sewn," which is a form of splitting the wood in a pie shape so that the grain runs North and South versus "Flat-sewn" where the tree is cut straight across like a piece of bread resulting in flat or horizontal grain. Many luthiers feel quartering any wood makes it stronger and less likely to warp over time under string pressure. We disagree!

We have found that in a two-piece neck (not one piece as in most maple necks) the glued-on fretboard, while quartered as almost all are, is actually more tonal and more adjustable than using quartered Maple as a base for the neck. Yes, at Mooretone, we look for flat-sewn Maple and a softer one than the Eastern Hard Rock.

We have found that the softer Maples not only shape easier and more accurately, but when using an exotic of the Rosewood family for a fretboard, softer flat-sewn Maples are more adjustable at the truss rod. This means that you can really dial-in your relief more specific to your playing style. We also like a Maple that flexes under string pressure versus one that is so rigid that you have to jump up and down on the center of the fretboard to get it to relief. We like headstocks that flex slightly under string pressure because we have found that this gives our guitars an incredible sustaining ability over our competitors. As the headstock flexes, the string is able to vibrate for longer periods since it is the wood and strings vibrating together, rather than just the strings. We have also had customers tell us that they dropped their guitar and the neck didn't break, where as Hardrock Maple tends to be so hard and brittle that it can snap more easily.

As for other neck species, I could go on and on, but for the sake of avoiding an argument, we will say that any closed grained hardwood will work for your fretboard in a two-piece neck whether it is Maple, Mahogany, Bubinga, Zebrawood (which we love), Walnut, Rosewood, Papilionaceae (syn. Fabaceae), etc. By the way, Rosewood is an acronym for Cocobolo, Bogote, Purple Heart, Mahogany, Teak, etc. Most "Rosewoods" are actually derivatives of Cherry, as in Honduras Cherry, Indian Cherry, etc.

The theories that I have shared with you can be argued by anyone. However, in a nut shell, the basics are that closed grained woods produce brighter tones, while open grained woods absorb them. Take your pickups, your musical format, and your playing style and then use those to determine the woods that you need for achieving your personal musical goals. For your information, our rule of thumb is...hot pickups (low output, fewer windings, and fatter sounding) tend to match up well with an Alder or Poplar body and a soft Maple neck with Cocobolo or Pau Ferro fret board. A set of Texas Specials (Fender trademarked) which are wound to put out 6.5K Ohms, tends to need assistance with producing highs/trebles. We recommend the use of Northern Hard Ash or a Maple veneered body and a Hard Rock Maple neck with an Ebony or Purple Heart fretboard. Using closed-grain body woods with closed-grained neck woods will help an over-wound pickup to sound crisper with more trebles.

In conclusion, at Mooretone, we are well aware of the many other ingredients affecting the sound of an electric guitar. What we do not want to do is get into discussing capacitors, pots, and other electronic manipulations like footpedals, amp transformers, speakers, and all the various amp manufacturers, etc. The bottom line is that if you have to manipulate your guitar's sound electronically, then it is not the right guitar for you and your style. It is just that simple.

Good luck in your musical endeavors!

http://www.mooretone.com/

That's a great read from Mooretone guitars. It sounds to me like it's more a function of density than it is of weight. That said, would you get more tone out of denser materials like composites and aluminum? Just curious...

IIRC, Parker uses carbon composite necks for at least some of their models.

There was a guitar maker in the 60s that used aluminum bodies, but I don't recall their name at the moment. Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad used them.

I was curious so I did some searching and saw that Fender has produced aluminum body guitars in the past. I wonder what they sound like?