Impact of Electric Guitar Body Material and Shape on Guitar Tone
Any person who plays an electric guitar considers whether the material, the shape, and the body of the guitar impact the sound quality. Our goal is to look at research on impacts of different material and shape to determine if there are impacts to sound quality. This board will not go into string materials which is a separate question. This board will also only focus on electric guitars and not acoustic guitars.
The conclusions from this paper were generally inconclusive.
In general, measurement results did not show any relevant difference between examined guitars, although they greatly differ for price tag and musical characteristics. It is expected that new measurement sessions, Finite Element Modeling, and Sound Quality evaluation software will possibly lead to the definition of new measurable parameters that will allow sorting guitars in a realistic way. Moreover, other studies will deal with guitar single components, to investigate their relationships when assembled in a single unit.
https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/4827/1/Axe-work-II--vibro-acoustical-study-of-solid-body/10.1117/12.468185.full
Three electric guitars of different body geometries are investigated in an attempt to characterize their tonal differences. One guitar has a solid body, one is fully hollow, and one is semi-hollow which represents a midway point between the first two. The transfer functions of the electromagnetic pickups are determined by inducing a known signal through the pickup and measuring the output. Input admittance measurements are taken at the bridge and nut of each guitar to show the vibrational modes of the bodies. Wire break measurements are taken for different notes on each guitar, which are analyzed in conjunction with the admittance measurements. The results demonstrate significant admittance peaks in the hollow and semi-hollow guitars that are not present in solid body electric guitars. As well, “dead” notes with shorter decay times are found to be correlated with these admittance peaks, thus indicating that the bodies of hollow and semi-hollow electric guitars play a role in their tonal characteristics.
https://asa.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1121/1.4950571
Through the course of this research it seems that there is proof to the statement made by
Halliday in that the body of an electric guitar does not have resonance. Of course this is both
correct and incorrect. From the stand point of the electric guitar’s purpose of being amplified the statement is correct. However, the guitar body does in fact resonate and when it is not plugged in, the body is noticed to color the sound. This observation explains why some would say they can hear a difference in the wood. When playing an electric guitar unplugged the tonal qualities of the wood are apparent as the ears perceive what the microphone “hears”. These perceptible variations however, appear to get lost when the volume of the amplified signal takes over.
Musical instrument (electric solid body guitar) operates on the principle of
mechanical vibration, which is transferred to the pick up that sends the signal to the
amplifier that produces sound through the speakers (free space). For a good electric
guitar sound, a good choice of pick-up and strings is not enough, but also the correct
choice of materials for making the body and the neck, and of course the shape of both
parts. The problem is in the acoustics of materials that have a decisive influence on the
final sound image of a musical instrument. For the purpose of electric guitars
production we researched the acoustic properties of the test subjects from Walnut wood
(Juglans regia L.) and Ash wood (Fraxinus excelsior L.). At impulse transverse
mechanical excitation we also determined the flexural rigidity and damping
characteristics of the elements, and we set acoustic quality indicators.
Conclusion:
To sum up, the authors can despite great variability of wood statistically prove
differences in acoustic and mechanical properties of tested two hardwood species, i.e.
walnut and ash wood, for use in making of electric solid body guitars. The research
confirmed the better mechanical properties of ash wood, that is, the larger modulus of
elasticity and shear modules in all anatomical directions and planes. At the same time,
some indicators of acoustic quality were better in ash wood, but only in the basic
vibration mode.
It has also proved to be less homogeneous and, consequently, poses great
differences between vibrating modes. The results will further be used in the study of
laboratory and numerical model of electric solid body guitar. The impact of the model
geometry and used material will be tested to check the string/structure mechanical
coupling and possible effect on vibration characteristics of the electric solid body
guitar.
Full PDF:
https://www.daaam.info/Downloads/Pdfs/science_books_pdfs/2018/Sc_Book_2018-018.pdf
Electric guitar wood can be separated into three distinctive classes based on how the wood is commonly used in the instrument, although the three classes were not body, neck, and fretboard wood, unlike expected. The low-density body-only wood and the high-density fretboard-only wood classes are most unlike the average commercial hardwood in anatomy and elastomechanical properties. The medium-density class wood is used for the electric guitar body and neck and has a high damping coefficient.
The anatomy and mechanical properties of these guitar wood classes are distinctive although with some overlap. Differences between the classes were seen in the dimensions and distribution of vessels, fibres, rays and axial parenchyma. Commercial tonewood options exist for the threatened wood species commonly used in electric guitars. Density and elastic modulus are good parameters to consider when assessing how a prospective wood species could be used in an electric guitar.
A blog post on Guitar Wood effects on tone. Author Matt Dunn puts in his two cents on the topic.
"While there are a couple of things that could create the tonal variance (are they using the same pick, hitting strings at the same spot on guitar, same pickup, etc..) they do a great job trying to account for all those things with a true side by side tone comparison. Ultimately, I do hear a difference with the Swamp Ash guitar sounding louder and warmer, while the Mahogany model is brighter and quieter. While I always believed that wood had an impact on tone, I was really curious to hear some type of scientific explanation for this difference."
Two experimental methods are used: a free sorting task with recorded stimuli from the guitars (listening test) and a free verbalisation task where the guitarists play the guitars. In the listening test, the guitarists perceive differences between guitars, but the resulting clusters do not show an ebony/rosewood dichotomy. A linguistic analysis of the verbalisations exhibits psychological descriptors that are relevant for the discrimination of the wood of the fingerboard: PRECISION (referring to how each note stands out from others), and to a lesser extent ATTACK (referring to the guitar's response to musician's gesture) and BALANCE (referring to the frequency content). This study is part of a broader project aiming at establishing an explicite relation between mechanics, perception, and lutherie. A physical interpretation of the psychologically-relevant descriptors is eventually proposed in order to use them as hypotheses in a further hypothetico-deductive approach starting from physics and using psychophysical methods.
This study examined 2 wood materials for the fingerboard as well as potentially manufacturing differences. For the fingerboard analysis, the two woods used were Type-2 RN (rosewood) and Type-2 MN (maple).
The Type-2 RN and Type-2 MN sets are expected to differ only in one lutherie parameter: the wood of the fingerboard. The modal frequency and damping ratio differences between these two sets are then expected to be mainly due to this lutherie change. None of these guitar sets stands out from the other, and no higher variability is noticed between intentionally different guitars (RN and MN guitars) than between two nominally identical guitars (guitars from the same set).
Conclusions from this paper. Sound quality measured used roughness, sharpness, and specific loudness.
Based on the results, it can be concluded that:
1. Wood species has an ambiguous effect on sound timbre of recorded signals and it depends on the recording method (microphone, pickup).
2. Statistical analysis of roughness and sharpness results showed a non-significant, ambiguous effect of wood species on these parameters.
3. Wood species affects specific loudness for signal recorded using a microphone. In that case, correlations between wood density (also MOE) and specific loudness are linear (r = 0.7 to 0.95). Pickup signals give no correlations.
http://psjd.icm.edu.pl/psjd/element/bwmeta1.element.bwnjournal-article-appv127n131kz
http://przyrbwn.icm.edu.pl/APP/PDF/127/a127z1p31.pdf
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