Forum Coordinators: RedPhantom
Poser - OFFICIAL F.A.Q (Last Updated: 2024 Dec 26 8:04 pm)
"Although the weight of the wood isn't telling, the density is." If you have two identically milled guitar bodies, and one weighs more than the other, isn't the heavier one also the denser one? "A friend of mine once owned a pair of 1962 Fender Stratocasters. One had an alder body, the other had ash. In all other respects, such as hardware, neck and even strings, they were the same. They certainly sounded different and the tighter alder-bodied guitar sustained longer than the heavier ash guitar." Well, that's one guy's anecdote, but I'm not sure he knows what he's talking about. How does he know the necks were identical? Did he take them off and weigh them? Did both Strats have tremolos? A hard-tail setup sustains way better then those old Fender trems. If they did both have trems, did he weigh them? Fender outsourced all their metal casting and switched suppliers a lot. Were both nuts the same material and mass, filed the same way? Proper nut and saddle setup is one of the most crucial elements in getting the maximum sustain out of your guitar. And what about the pickups--in the early 60's, if I'm not mistaken, Fender still cranked them one at a time; there was a lot of variation one to the next--even in the manufacture and weight of the magnets. This seems like a more likely explanation than the mysterious properties of ash grown in a wet place vs. alder grown in a dry place.
Look, I'm not going on about this anymore. It is information gathered from other guitarists, luthiers, books, magazines, personal experience, and a knowledge of materials, physics, and acoustics. If it were only a myth that density adds sustain and different woods apply different tonal qualities to electric guitars, why do all of the manufacturers and all of the luthiers and many guitarists all go on about it? Are we all delusional? Nope. As for the weight. Obviously not. As was discussed in the one set of paragraphs, some wood is denser than others but lighter. I'll admit that most dense woods are heavier woods, but this is obviously not the case for all woods. The "guy" you are dissing is Melvyn Hiscock, author of "Making Your Own Electric Guitar" and guitar maker for over 25 years. Please read this from Amazon: Link to book and note the lousy rating (5 stars of 5) for his lack of knowledge. Let's agree to disagree and get back to modelling and oogling over synergyauto's beauty guitar model.
"Are we all delusional?" A little. That's my point. And I never said that greater body density doesn't enhance sustain--what I said initially was: "Body density does influence sustain, a little, but overall rigidity has a lot more effect in that department." Just so we both know what we're talking about, here's a definition of the word "density" from Yahoo's online Concise Britannica: "Mass of a unit volume of a material substance. It is calculated by dividing an object's mass by its volume. In the International System of Units, and depending on the units of measurement used, density can be expressed in grams per cubic centimeter (g/cm3) or kilograms per cubic meter (kg/m3)." By definition, the heavier of two objects of identical volume (two strat bodies, say) is the denser. I knew I'd heard that bogus anecdote before. I read the Hiscock book back in the mid '80s (used to sell it). It first came out at a time when there wasn't much published on the subject, and it's useful, especially in its discussion of woodworking and wiring. But it's not the be-all and end-all. Believe what you want to believe, by all means. And synergy--great work!
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Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar tech told me once that Stevie could hear the difference between Ever-ready and Duracell batteries in his stomp-boxes. Who am I to say it ain't so?