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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on August 11, 2018 at 6:59pm

I also meant to point out that the cement block guitar had a wooden neck on it.

There's a guy over on the TDPRI forum(may have already said this) that's making a plywood guitar like yours, but the neck is also made of plywood. He glued a few strips one on top of another, turned them over so that the seams opposed to the fretboard for better strength.

Something else to consider about your plywood guitar CTBR, plywood is made of - well it's made out of wood. ;) Maybe even tonewood Hahahahahaha

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Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on August 12, 2018 at 12:48pm

Hi Paul, not knowing what a concrete guitar sounded like I searched for it and found a comparo between a concrete Tele style concrete guitar with a single coil pickup, and a proper guitar. It was a blind test. At first I just listened thinking that what I was hearing was the one concrete guitar. The whole presentation sounded the same.

Then I realised that there were two guitars being played, one after the other. I A/B'ed my listening by switching between the two segments and getting the middle of the same tune from the different guitars. I could defiantly here a better quality of sound from one of the guitars. The one I chose was the real guitar. But I only noticed it by focused listening, not over and over again but just twice.

Martin have used laminated necks on some model guitars for a number of years.

There are many different grades of plywood so that may confuse some listener also.

For me I would sooner tell my customer that their treasured guitar is made from solid timber of some kind, than playwood, oops plywood. [genuine typo] Mind you I have laminated bodies, but that sounds better than plywood bodies. Ha Ha.

Here's a what I mean.

and necks

Taff

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on August 12, 2018 at 6:19pm

The real difference to me between multiple piece laminate guitars and plywood is the filler between the layers of the plywood. It's basically sawdust, small bits of wood and lots of glue. 

For the multi-piece guitars, if the neck pocket area to the bridge area are one continuous piece with the other pieces layered out to the side, then they will sound better in my opinion. Plywood with it's stacked layers and glue can tame things in my experiences. That can be a good thing or a bad thing though.

A/B-ing a sound test is better done with headphones because some differences can be very slight. When listening to recordings on youtube for an A/B test between 2 recordings, your missing what the room dynamics are in each video, recording equipment, settings and mic placements, amp and amp settings and the like. Which is why those types of tests are better done at your home on one amp with the same settings and recording equipment/settings.

When it comes to saying this one is better than that one, that's usually based on individual likes/dislikes and how many others agree with you.

CTBR's new guitar build has plywood laminate top and bottom pieces with some solid Maple in the center, which will be a difference than what he is used to. So it will be interesting to find out if he likes this one over the full plywood bodies of his past guitars and what he has now. That will be a test that will matter most for him. My first guitars were plywood bodies and I just wasn't real impressed with them unless cranked with all the add ons, but didn't take notice til something else grabbed my ears.  

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on August 11, 2018 at 6:44pm

Anybody remember those giant 3 foot long wooden fork and spoon people would hang on their walls back in the early 70's?

My Mother In Law had a set and I rescued them from the trash.

I'm thinking fretless Bass or Slide guitar. Maybe I could join them for a double neck Bass and Guitar combo.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on August 12, 2018 at 1:13pm

Did you end up with the plain ones or the ones with fruit and veggies on them? Saw them both ways. Should be an awesome build!

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on August 11, 2018 at 8:26pm

A quote from Guitar Wold Magazine,

"This Fender made cardboard Stratocaster sounds like the real thing."

There are others I could quote. But places like Popular Mechanics and the like are not souly dedicated to music.

they cheated with that cement guitar. That bandana behind the bridge wasn't there for show. Cement, because it's denser than wood, would have a louder resonant frequency. That same law of physics that effect electric guitars. That's why folks started putting foam rubber between their pickups and the body wood. Just like filling the cavity of a semi hollowbody. Helps fight feedback. In the 60's and 70's bass players used to use hair scrunchies either on their headstocks or behind the bridge to fight the unwanted resonant frequencies. They had to find a way to dampen this resonant vibration. Wala bandana. In the end you really can't fault them for the bandana. They did prove their bridge would sound good. And it would have been a sales pitch nightmare to explain. 

I can post a few vids on people putting necks made of different woods and different fretboards into the same body. Not getting any difference in sound.  But I'm going to stop my end of this debate here. Folks can go find these for themselves. See for themselves that every tone wood preacher uses the same trick. Slap microphonic pickups on. Wile those who prove them wrong are using the pickups everyone actually uses. 

I've seen others using ply for necks. The end result is usually the same. The neck eventually gives. Because ply doesn't have the same tinsel strength of solid wood. Wish the guy all the best for his effort. I'll check out that forum. Sounds like a great place to get some cool ideas from. 

And yes, all wood has tone. And so does hardened glue. : ) 

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on August 12, 2018 at 7:10pm

What is cardboard made out of? ;) The video on that one ran a good bit of effects in the recording, would've been better to do a clean sound version.

The plywood guitars of my past all had double coil humbucking pickups on them. That will add more dark tone to the guitar. Single coil pickups will have more treble like the one your building.

Foam under the pickups works great to kill feedback. I've seen those scrunchies too. Ole Ted Nugent milked those microphonics for all they were worth. ;)

It's always good to try all products/materials to build with because you don't want every guitar you have to sound the same, what would be the point in that?

Remember how the sound of George Harrison's Walnut Telecaster was so different from what everyone else was playing back in the day? Jimmy Page used a Fender Telecaster to record the first 3 Led Zeppelin albums and part of the 4th one, but most people think of him playing the Gibson Les Paul. People saw him playing the LP on the 2nd thru 4th US tour and assumed that's what he played on the recorded albums. The tone on those albums were fat sounding, like humbuckers. There was a reason for that. He had wired the neck and bridge pickups to play in series on that Tele, used a lot of recording and mic placement tricks he learned as a session guitarist and from Les Paul himself, used a modified Supro amp and many new then effects to get a fat tone that the stock Tele couldn't do. He stuck with the 59 LP later because he didn't have to work as hard to get the tone he wanted. But then you have to think about a lot of fat toned songs he did on the Danelectro with lipstick tube singles like Kashmir. More tricks I suppose. 

I didn't much care for single coil pickups in my youth, but I also didn't have a Tube Amp. With that amp, I'm discovering the awesome tone of single coil pickups through a tube. Yumyumyum

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on August 12, 2018 at 2:06pm

I have two sets of single coil pickups on my bench. One from a 1980's Series 10 bought  at a yard sale for $15. The other set is from a Fender Squire. Both have really cheap magnets. The Squire has two magnets with the pole pieces sandwiched between them. The old 10 has one at the bottom, I'll use wood spacers to make up for the dual Squire mags. Just ordered 3 Alnico 2's and three Alnico 3 bar magnets. Both magnet sets are unmagnetized. Once these come in I'll rework the pickups. Then gauss the pickups, pole pieces and all, to the proper north south orientation. Then it's off to get a good soaking in hot wax. Because neither set looks to have a spot of wax anywhere.

Ordered the mags from Tone-Kraft.com. They had the size I needed. Needed 2.18 ( 2 3/16) by 1/2 inch.

The Squire pickup bobbins are plastic so I could have replaces the pole pieces. The 10 has fiber bobbins. No way to replace the poles without possibly damaging the windings. Decided to just replace the bar mages on both. Cuz I'm lazy.. : ) 

this is the best vid I've found to date that shows the difference between alnico and cheap magnets. Even the slight difference between alnico 2s and 5,s.

Fabian's tiny workshop

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on August 12, 2018 at 7:25pm

Those dual mag Squier pickups are supposed to be made by Tonerider and most people love them as is. You might want to try them first before any mods, especially for the neck position. I usually like Alnico over ceramic, but I got a set of Squier Affinity pickups and put them in my plywood body/red oak neck baritone dulcitar. They sound very good.

Also, did you happen to notice how different the sound was between the ceramic magnets - Alnico 2/5 magnets - and Neodymium magnets on the same pickups in the same guitar? That was a good A/B test and you could clearly hear a difference between the magnets. 

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on August 13, 2018 at 6:39am

The guy did a great job showing the difference in mags in the same pickups. And was honest about what makes a good pickup. Changing the mags will only go so far. But the difference in clarity and sound is worth it.

I had to to replace a neck fast so I never even plugged that Squire in. It was leave work. Find a guitar. Get home. Take the neck off. Replace. Do a complete setup. Go to bed. Get up early the next morning and go. Very last minute fix. 

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on August 13, 2018 at 8:36am

My car. Rolled my driver side window down. And that's where it stayed. Motor makes noise. And theres some clanking. (you can tell I'm not a mechanic) So I got some clear vinyl and taped it on. This will do till this Friday when I can get the car into the shop. The fastest I have to travel is 30MPH and the farthest is about 2 miles so this should hold up till then. Today is the only day this week it's not supposed to rain. Have more tape. Will travel. : ) 

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Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on August 13, 2018 at 11:06am

Hi cause, a little while ago you mentioned your dilemma regarding printing inks, well the same happened to me recently.

I needed inks in a hurry for my Epson printer, the nearest shop that has them is 130km away, and the printer take 5 different inks at around $140.00a pop. So as my wife was out shopping I asked her to pick up a new printer, an HP, cost $70.00 with ink. Its much easier 5to use, better quality prints and much , much cheaper on inks that I can get locally.

Taff

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