Where does tone come from in a guitar?

[pompeiisneaks]

BTW he did a follow up on where tone comes from in a guitar amp this month:


He's done a few others I just haven't seen them all. Interesting, but I'm not 100% sure his tests are perfect, the recordings themselves may not be 'perfect' but I dont' sense a huge difference in tones either.

~Phil

[romberg]

His one on amps was kinda sketchy (at best). But the one he does on speaker cabinets is better. I've always found speakers make a huge contribution. But I've never experimented with the actual cabinet to this extent.

[xtian]

Awesome video! Love his styrofoam cabinet at the end. SO MANY VARIABLES!!!

[Guy77]

Fantastic video. The biggest 4 x 12 sounded best!
Its always the thing that breaks my back that sounds best lol.

Guy

[Reeltarded]

Umm.. cabinets aren't an artform.

They are a SCIENCE. There is even a name for it. You can get a degree! A government loan! Student debt!!! A job at Starbucks!

This guy makes 'fun to watch' videos based on... doing silly things and micing it up.

[xtian]

... doing silly things and micing it up.

Yep, and making records, and comparing...and that's SCIENCE!

[Reeltarded]

So you are telling me you feel comfortable with a guy who claims things you know to be false?



There are degrees and debts about this science. I can accept his notions to his point, because he is a musical monkey, but I am not going to argue with Martin (even about old crap being electrically identical but somehow way better) because Martin is a scientist in practice. He doesn't have to crap nine times to find that formula I was looking for! He bought that and it paid for his house.

Now, you might want to come up with an Igloo Formula or maybe a philosophy of cardboard to act all toidy about whatshisname's youtube videos, but I am saying there is already a generalized method and a specialty dealing with only the material end of acoustic engineering, and it says he is a musical monkey! (not an automagical monkey, stop acting like a special interest group!)

You know how in-your-face recordings are exciting but like Radiohead uses as mich compression but the sound has dimension. Just like a PAF in a thinline vs one lashed to a plank.

Electrically identical. Somehow different. Also, quantifiable! Student debts have been paid about this. Surrender! Forget!

Ook! Musical monkey pays for his house by "just asking questions" then taking you where you knew he was going. Is it evil? mmm it's questionable!

Granted, it feels more like knowledge than a girl licking a wind sock and whispering the contents of her purse.

[stephenl]

Granted, it feels more like knowledge than a girl licking a wind sock and whispering the contents of her purse.

That created a slightly disturbing visual that I can't un-see

[martin manning]

The amp episode is epic. There's a lot of oversimplification going on, as in: "this amp has a switch that changes x while everything else stays the same." Strictly speaking this is not likely to be true, but the effort to focus on those differences was good. If the changes in the voltage level and bias are normalized in a comparison of a solid state vs. vacuum rectifier for example, most people will hear little difference. A point that is not to be missed is that noticeable differences can often be dialed out with volume and EQ adjustments. The effect of a change with everything else fixed is good to know, but the practical difference a component or circuit change produces is not necessarily revealed by keeping all the knobs at the same positions.

Amps are mostly electrical in nature, and that includes things beyond the simplified view shown in the schematic, like the stray capacitances and the magnetic and electrical fields around the components. An electric guitar, or a speaker and its enclosure, have much more going on in other areas of physics that interact with the electrical part of the system. And of course, in the case of an electric guitar the guitar and the speaker interact with each other. Different acoustic guitars sound different, don't they? If the system that produces the string movement detected by the pickup changes character, why wouldn't some version of that appear in the electrical signal?

The tackle box amp is great. In the end, it's three solid state preamps and a clean solid state power amp (and the lead dress is just atrocious!). I'd like to see a block diagram (maybe it's more or less like the graphic shown earlier in the video?), and understand how the selection of the tone stacks and the order of clean vs. distorted gain is accomplished with one switch. In any case, the idea of building a preamp by connecting some pedals together is interesting, The EQ curve doesn't tell you anything about the distortion, and different frequencies are clipped and distorted by different amounts depending on the gain structure. That could be tweaked by adjusting the controls on the boost/distortion pedals, and it did seem to capture the character of the three amps. Maybe there was a lot of fiddling to get each one dialed in for the clips shown?

[Reeltarded]

Granted, it feels more like knowledge than a girl licking a wind sock and whispering the contents of her purse.

That created a slightly disturbing visual that I can't un-see

Do not search yourube or go on Twitch then, Ick.

[Reeltarded]

SEE!!! I TOLD YOU SO!!

'oversimplification'
'not likely'
'effort to focus'
'dialed out'

Martin is saying the guy is maybe a little slow, probably going to stay that way, ADD, and maybe on drugs of some sort.

Probably.

I trust Martin's professional opinion if I can spin it to support mine.

The amp episode is epic. There's a lot of oversimplification going on, as in: "this amp has a switch that changes x while everything else stays the same." Strictly speaking this is not likely to be true, but the effort to focus on those differences was good. If the changes in the voltage level and bias are normalized in a comparison of a solid state vs. vacuum rectifier for example, most people will hear little difference. A point that is not to be missed is that noticeable differences can often be dialed out with volume and EQ adjustments. The effect of a change with everything else fixed is good to know, but the practical difference a component or circuit change produces is not necessarily revealed by keeping all the knobs at the same positions.

Amps are mostly electrical in nature, and that includes things beyond the simplified view shown in the schematic, like the stray capacitances and the magnetic and electrical fields around the components. An electric guitar, or a speaker and its enclosure, have much more going on in other areas of physics that interact with the electrical part of the system. And of course, in the case of an electric guitar the guitar and the speaker interact with each other. Different acoustic guitars sound different, don't they? If the system that produces the string movement detected by the pickup changes character, why wouldn't some version of that appear in the electrical signal?

The tackle box amp is great. In the end, it's three solid state preamps and a clean solid state power amp (and the lead dress is just atrocious!). I'd like to see a block diagram (maybe it's more or less like the graphic shown earlier in the video?), and understand how the selection of the tone stacks and the order of clean vs. distorted gain is accomplished with one switch. In any case, the idea of building a preamp by connecting some pedals together is interesting, The EQ curve doesn't tell you anything about the distortion, and different frequencies are clipped and distorted by different amounts depending on the gain structure. That could be tweaked by adjusting the controls on the boost/distortion pedals, and it did seem to capture the character of the three amps. Maybe there was a lot of fiddling to get each one dialed in for the clips shown?

[romberg]

A point that is not to be missed is that noticeable differences can often be dialed out with volume and EQ adjustments.

Dave Friedman brings this up often during his Tone Talk podcasts.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9f8xg ... KV_DR4rUjQ

He has frequently swapped components in two otherwise identical amps and has then been able to adjust the controls so that a guitar player can not tell the difference. In such cases the change in components may have an effect. But one can argue that it may not be all that significant.

Mike

[TUBEDUDE]

Reel, still bringing the joy!
These are one of the funniest, and one of the most honest statements ever made on the web.

"Granted, it feels more like knowledge than a girl licking a wind sock and whispering the contents of her purse."

"I trust Martin's professional opinion if I can spin it to support mine."

Thanks for that.

[Reeltarded]

Join my Patreon and listen to me whisper similar crap while I scratch my microphone like an idiot!

(absolutely authentically like an idiot)

[Reeltarded]

Come on someone say something so I can ad hoc brutalize this some more.

I came for an argument.

These are not the droids I'm looking for, but they will do!