mahogany good for a bolt on?

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the alumnus

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i've been thinking about making a project guitar, from various guitar parts. i was wondering what people think about maple bolt on necks to mahogany bodies? the classic mahogany body is the gibson, but that has a through neck, so the tone of the maple neck has alot of influence on tone (or so i was told). anyone know particular bands with good tone that go mahogany? i am quite familiar with the tone of bolt on alder and basswood...
 
in my opinion (as i have built a guitar from scratch materials) the order of tone affecting parts goes:

1. pickups/electronics
2. neck joint (where through is better than set, which is better than bolt)
3. construction quality
4. body/neck material
5. cosmetics such as finish, hardware, and other non-key parts.
 
mahogony is great. I thought gibsons were set necks, not neck thrus.

I've heard mahogony with koa overtop and a koa neck is a sweet combo. I think I'd be too scared to build one like that. mahogony and maple sound sweet, but I'm quite partial to that Les Paul sound.

I think the wood has a huge influence on tone. I think I'd rate electronics as #3 with body/neck material as #1.
 
Silent Song is right. You won't hear any difference using mahogany produced by anything other than your mind. The difference in WEIGHT will affect the amount of sustain (heavier=more sustain), but other than that you'll be fooling yourself. Solid-body, bolt-on electric guitars aren't affected by wood type, except via the psychology of the player.

For some reason, this comment always ends up being controversial. I refer all future disagreements to the laws of physics.
 
agreed with Aviso.

not that woods are unimportant, but more that pickups are the critical devices that convert your guitar's vibrations into magnetic and then electrical signals. this conversion point is crucial to tone because all pickups do it differently, and their effects are amplified a great number of times.

i said joint second because the joint is the ultimate factor in sustain. notes will ring longer and clearer with a better joint, because both ends of the strings will be attached to material that vibrates in phase with itself. if the bolts or glue or even a badly done thru-neck dampens the vibrations, the guitar and thus the strings will vibrate out of phase and kill the sustain and ring "dead". we call it bad tone.

3rd i put construction quality because as in the above paragraph, even a good choice in the above categories can be ruined by bad construction. precision and an uncompromising eye for detail are essential to make a quality instrument. given the same set of parts, a guitar built with care and attention will sound a lot better than one built with less thought. construction affects all aspects including tone, sustain, durability, appearance, etc. so i think it is important.

materials are 4th because with an electric guitar quite frankly the pickups do so much more than the materials do. however, it is important to note that a denser wood will have a deeper sound and more sustain as there's more material for the sound waves to compress and rarify and thus they propogate easier. on the extreme end though, an extremely dense material will dampen the sound just as badly as one that is too light because it will be so thickly packed that sound waves can't compress and distort it to transmit vibrations. too light a material won't have enough material for waves to hit and thus will fade out fast. alder, ash, basswood are lighter but acceptable woods. maple is a middle density, and mahogany is on the heavier end. i tend to prefer mahogany for its deep resonance. however, remember that you have to wear this thing so weight can be an issue.

i put everything else last because they really have very minor affects. obviously quality parts will perform better than crap ones, but the tone will be the same regardless. staying in tune is more an issue associated in this area. appearance is last in my opinion, because anyone can make a pretty guitar, but if it doesn't sound good, its not worth playing. my guitar has quite a few scars on it, and so does Steve Vai's, as well as many other players. what counts is that both Vai and I still play these beat up guitars because the tone is so golden.


note: if we were talking about acoustic guitars, i'd have put construction at #1 and wood choice at #2.
 
Any luthiers out there who are quick enough to make quality guitars, one out of mahogany/maple as suggested and then perhaps one out of pine/maple so we can see exactly what effects the body wood has on overall tone? I surmise Aviso and SilentSong will be proven quite wrong that wood has no effect on tone of the instrument. If it did not, why would we pay such high dollars for rare, dense, expensive woods and not just build guitars out of pine (or any type of wood, for that matter)?

And, yes Gibson Les Pauls are set-necks not through-bodies.

I will further expand on the issues by saying wood type has high contributions to a guitar's tone. Take your current pickups in whatever guitar you are playing now, buy a new guitar with different wood types, insert the pickups, and play. You will hear a difference with the same electronics through different woods. Each wood type has its own resonance characteristics that will translate through how the strings vibrate, affecting the tone quality (timbre, if you will) the pickups produce.
 
ABQShredHead said:
I will further expand on the issues by saying wood type has high contributions to a guitar's tone. Take your current pickups in whatever guitar you are playing now, buy a new guitar with different wood types, insert the pickups, and play. You will hear a difference with the same electronics through different woods. Each wood type has its own resonance characteristics that will translate through how the strings vibrate, affecting the tone quality (timbre, if you will) the pickups produce.
Click to expand...

maybe you skimmed what i wrote in my second post, but i never said it has "no effect". using your analogy, think of it this way: same guitar with different pickups vs same pickups in identical guitar with different wood. both will change the tone, but, given that your pickup choices are diverse enough, that change is a lot more drastic. this is why there are so many options in wood choice. in fact you don't even have to use wood. i said above "materials" because guitars can be built out of just about any flexible solid material. BC Rich successfully sells guitars made of hard clear plastic, and i've seen them made out of metal and other mediums. Fixing the range to just wood, the range of change caused by choosing different woods is far less compared with the range of change you can get with choosing different pickups.

most rare woods are for detail and cosmetics. "AAAAA Flame Maple" tops and "Quilt" tops are not chosen for tone nearly so much as they are chosen for appearance. they cost a lot of money because this kind of grain configuration is rare.

keep in mind that all of this applies only to electric guitars. in an acoustic, clearly wood choice is extremely important. I was merely advising the original poster that whatever wood he wants to use will likely produce satisfactory results and cited how density affects tone.

if there was indeed one wood that somehow drastically improved tone and sustain, i'm sure every self-respecting guitar company would use that in their models. however, even among Fender, Gibson, and Jackson, the range varies greatly. i agree with everything you said, but i think that it is secondary to the effect of electronics and pickups as well as construction. good wood or not, if a 4 year old made it, it won't sound good.
 
Different types of wood do indeed have different resonance characteristics. Unfortunately, the magnetic field generated by the guitar's pickups have no way of picking up the resonance of the wood. The field is "disrupted" by the steel strings as they wiggle in the field, but it's a purely electronic process. The wood definitely resonates, but the pickups have no way of capturing that resonance. The function of the pickups is to capture vibrations in the air and transmit that information into an electrical impulse.

You might argue that since the body of the guitar is connected to the strings, the wood resonates in harmony and therefore the pickups oscillate at the same time the strings do... The wood would definitely affect that.

However, such vibrations are so small that they are virtually imperceptible by the human ear. I just don't see how wood can affect tone, if we're talking about solidbody electric guitars. If you hear a difference, it's likely because you WANT to hear a difference.

As for the pickup experiment... I've never actually seen anyone prepared to conduct that experiment, but in order to isolate the effects of the wood in that experiment, you'd have to make sure that the pickup placement was EXACTLY the same on each guitar, that the pickup height was EXACTLY the same, that the pickstroke of the player was EXACTLY the same... In other words, there are so many variables to control that such an experiment would be difficult, though not impossible, which explains why no one has ever conducted this experiment before.

So I go back to my original point: the difference occurs in the psychology of the player. Let's face it, if you're playing a Squire Strat, even if you're a great player, you'll never FEEL AS GOOD as if you're playing a 1953 Fender Stratocaster. Because people LIKE to play more luxurious instruments, they probably play the luxurious instruments better. But this is a psychological difference and it has very little to do with the superiority of one wood versus another.

I'd certainly rather have a vintage 70s strat than the new reissues, but there probably isn't a huge difference in the construction of the instruments inasmuch as our ears could tell... unless of course my feelings about each instrument translated into my performance. Know what I mean?
 
again i agree. though i think those resonant vibrations matter a bit more than you said. they are a major factor in sustain. tone is predominately pickups though.
 
!Aviso! said:
Different types of wood do indeed have different resonance characteristics. Unfortunately, the magnetic field generated by the guitar's pickups have no way of picking up the resonance of the wood. The field is "disrupted" by the steel strings as they wiggle in the field, but it's a purely electronic process. The wood definitely resonates, but the pickups have no way of capturing that resonance. The function of the pickups is to capture vibrations in the air and transmit that information into an electrical impulse.

You might argue that since the body of the guitar is connected to the strings, the wood resonates in harmony and therefore the pickups oscillate at the same time the strings do... The wood would definitely affect that.

However, such vibrations are so small that they are virtually imperceptible by the human ear. I just don't see how wood can affect tone, if we're talking about solidbody electric guitars. If you hear a difference, it's likely because you WANT to hear a difference.?
Click to expand...

(No need for an impromptu look into Faraday's Law. I'm well versed in Maxwell's Wonderful Equations.)

Resonance is a very interesting thing. Resonance of the wood will definitly affect the string vibrations, which will in turn affect the timbre of the instrument, regardless of pickups, gain settings, eq, etc. I will argue this point, but it is indeed minimal to the overall sound pumping through the amplifier, as Silent Song pointed out and as I mistook his comments (as he again points out). What will wood resonance do for the tone of the guitar? Resonance will affect the harmonic content of the pitch produced by the vibrating string (as will bridge type, spring type in tremolo bridges, nut material, etc.).

!Aviso! said:
So I go back to my original point: the difference occurs in the psychology of the player. Let's face it, if you're playing a Squire Strat, even if you're a great player, you'll never FEEL AS GOOD as if you're playing a 1953 Fender Stratocaster. Because people LIKE to play more luxurious instruments, they probably play the luxurious instruments better. But this is a psychological difference and it has very little to do with the superiority of one wood versus another.
Click to expand...

Now you're entering into a new argument - feel. How an instrument feels will be totally different from guitar to guitar. Squire's are far less quality than $1500 signature-model Fenders - I would hope that quality is "feelable" to the player and the higher-priced instrument would be much more playable for anybody. But, back to the argument of sound quality, does an alder Fender strat sound different from an alder Squire strat? Definitely, but most notably because of construction quality (and probably wood type as well - how many pieces of alder are used in each body, blah blah blah), again as noted by Silent Song, whom I am mostly in agreement with. My disagreement, though, is with the original statement that "solid-body, bolt-on electric guitars aren't affected by wood type, except via the psychology of the player".

So, back to the original question: "i was wondering what people think about maple bolt on necks to mahogany bodies?" I love the combination. Mahogany is a good, solid wood with warm tonal qualities. (http://www.warmoth.com/guitar/options/options_bodywoods.cfm) I'm sure you'll find it a great combination as well. Now, if you're into the aesthetics of the guitar, you'll probably want to glue on that AAAAA flamed maple top, which will tighten up the tone a wee bit and add some snap.
 
ABQShredHead said:
(lots of stuff i agree with)- SS

So, back to the original question: "i was wondering what people think about maple bolt on necks to mahogany bodies?" I love the combination. Mahogany is a good, solid wood with warm tonal qualities. (http://www.warmoth.com/guitar/options/options_bodywoods.cfm) I'm sure you'll find it a great combination as well. Now, if you're into the aesthetics of the guitar, you'll probably want to glue on that AAAAA flamed maple top, which will tighten up the tone a wee bit and add some snap.
Click to expand...
my original intent was to give a longer response and background and i think we've done that. i didn't want to just tell the guy "sure thats great" without giving him other options and the reasons why he should think about them.

that said, i love the mahogany axe i built.
 
Resonance is a very interesting thing. Resonance of the wood will definitly affect the string vibrations, which will in turn affect the timbre of the instrument, regardless of pickups, gain settings, eq, etc. I will argue this point, but it is indeed minimal to the overall sound pumping through the amplifier, as Silent Song pointed out and as I mistook his comments (as he again points out). What will wood resonance do for the tone of the guitar? Resonance will affect the harmonic content of the pitch produced by the vibrating string (as will bridge type, spring type in tremolo bridges, nut material, etc.).
Click to expand...



That's interesting. If you can give me any good reason why the resonance of the wood would affect the harmonic content of the oscillating magnetic field, I'll believe you. It sounds awfully fishy to me, though.
 
Wouldn't wood resonance color the string vibration, either by dampening or enhancing certain frequencies? I know this becomes somewhat of a moot point when you consider that most modern guitars have floating bridges... Well, there's another couple of things that can color tone; bridges and nuts.

I too, misunderstood Silent Song. I won't deny that pickups make a difference in coloring the tone, but if you don't have a good piece of wood and good construction, the best pickups in the world won't make a difference. That's how I was ordering, in terms of importance to overall tone.
 
Yes, just as weenur pointed out. The resonant quality of the wood will affect the harmonic quantities of the string (not the oscillating magnetic field - the string's movement creates the oscillation affecting the static magnetic field of the magnets in the pickup, through which an induced voltage is created in the coils of wire wrapped around the magnet), but the extent of the effect will be limited by isolation from all things between the string and body; for instance, a direct-mount bridge will see plenty of tonal qualities from the wood, but a floating tremolo is isolated from the body and the tonal qualities of the wood begin to degrade. The resonance qualities of the wood will act to enhance or degrade frequencies produced by the string (string vibration is what produces the sound that comes from your amplifier, not pickup magnetic field). The vibrating string will produce a certain pitch based on the length of the string, but this pitch is made up of many - myriad, perhaps - harmonics. The harmonics closer to the resonant characteristics of the wood will be enhanced, while the harmonics farther from the resonant characteristics of the wood will be reduced - in effect changing the timbre (the tonal characteristics) of the instrument.
 
But the string stops vibrating at the point of the bridge and the nut. In order for what you're saying to be true, not only must the vibration of the string extend to the wood, but it must also bounce BACK AGAIN from the wood to the string and into the magnetic field.

So what we've got here is this:

1 - String is plucked, immediately oscillating the pickup's magnetic field.
2 - Vibration travels from the string to the bridge
3 - Vibration travels from the bridge into the wood of the guitar's body.
4 - All the frequencies not already killed by the bridge resonate throughout the body of the guitar, some of which are filtered out if not consonant to the wood's body.
5 - The remaining frequencies again travel through the bridge and back into the string.
6 - Minute harmonic nuances flavor the harmonic content of the string's vibration.
7 - All this information is translated into electronic information, processed through the amplifier and converted into sound.
8 - Now they travel through the AIR into the human ear and vibrate in our eardrums.
9 - Our brains finally hear the sound.

I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but there's no possible way human ears could pick up that minor of a vibration. It would have to be too small to even be measurable. Considering the fact that some people can't even tell which fret a guitarist is playing when they hear a certain note in real-time, can you honestly say in good faith that the human ear could pick up the tonal nuances of the vibrating system described above?

I mean, if that were the case, the WEATHER would affect the guitar's tone... Again, it's conceiveable if we're talking about acoustic guitars subjected to varied amounts of humidity, but all other things being equal, do you really think you can hear the difference between a mahogany guitar body and an alder?

I'm still very skeptical.
 
the affect body materials and joints have on tone is through the pickups. they determine how long note sustains and which of those frequencies as you said, will get killed by the materials. different frequencies make different notes, so different harmonics will be heard with different materials.

basically speaking, denser wood (as long as its not too dense) will have a deeper, duller sound.
this is partially why fenders sound twangy and gibson/jackson sound thicker. of course a lot of that is also due to construction and pickup choice.

what a lot of people overlook is that a similar experiment to changing the wood type in the same guitar would be to just turn your TONE knob. they do the same thing in different ways.
 
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