Dear Chris, instead of using just one capacitor in series with a tonepot one can use a bunch of capacitors ranging from a few hundreds of picofarads to a few tens of nanofarads. (may be you can even omit the tone-pot). Furthermore instead of using the standard 5-way pickup switch, use a 3-way 2-pole toggle switches on-off-on. So it's possible to make any combination of single coil pickups in phase or anti-phase. That's what Brian May does, albeit with slider switches. By doing these two things You get the most versatile way in changing the sound of your guitar.

@whyis45stillalive

Күн бұрын

I don’t mean to sound condescending. You could buy/make a Varitone switch. It’s usually a 5, or 6 position rotary switch that you can use a variety of different capacitors. You can even add resistors for treble bleed. It can take the place of one of your tone pots, (if you have two 😉). As for pickup switching; you could use push/pull, or push/push pots to add the extra circuitry for series/parallel, and phase shifting, and coil tapping, (single coil pickup), or coil splitting, (humbuckers). A very nice solution for pickup switching are Seymour Duncan ‘Triple Shot’ pickup mounting rings, for humbucker pickups. This uses two small slide switches at the top of each pickup ring. These four switches will allow you to do; series/parallel, and coil splitting both pickups. With no permanent modifications. You could then use push/pull, or push/push pots for phase shifting. Edit: if you incorporated all these options, from the last paragraph, (with a Varitone) you would have dozens of tonal options, *before* you touched your tone knob.

Hey, Chris! This is super helpful. I’m adding it to my Guitar Building playlist for future reference. Thanks!

Interesting question Chris.

Great video! I've been building from kits since 2019 and have abt 11 guitars to my credit. When I started, I was watching a bunch of your videos and they were very helpful. As to today's video, I fully agree on electronic parts. As to wood, I agree, but give wood choice a little more credit. You did offer some good points on capacitors and pickup ingredients. When it comes to switches and plugs, I think it's more a question of quality. For example, a cheap Chinese made switch vs a well made Switchcraft, which I would say can last the life of the guitar vs a few months or years. Thanks for a good heads up!

I build my guitars out of plywood and JB Weld with the best $3 pickups from Ali Express. I keep hearing over and over that tone comes from the fingers. So I figure tone is all on the player’s skill level. (Funny enough, I haven’t actually sold any guitars.?.)

I know this doesn’t relate to this video particularly, but would you mind possibly doing a video on how you use and maintain your hvlp paint gun? I know there are other videos out there but I love the way you explain things and it’d be geared more towards guitars rather than cars. No problem if not, just throwing it out there in case you’ve ever considered it!

Good stuff

cool vid👌, 5:25 the "board dependant" statement is about as succinct a way to describe what most folks are struggling to understand/or the main semantic hurdle that most will just use as a debate like pivot point. Also the thoughts on sustain you briefly made at the end is certainly something I hope enters more into the discourse.

great video. I like what you said about the tome of the wood. I'll add that for solid body guitars, I think that we notice the "tone" of the wood mostly when playing the guitar unplugged. Once the guitar or bass is plugged in and cranked, then the pickup and electronics far outweigh the woods. I select woods for weight, stiffness, and looks. As for nuts, I prefer a zero fret and the nut only serves as a guide for the strings. Great video.

@vw9659

16 күн бұрын

There is no good evidence that what you hear acoustically from a solid-body guitar has anything really to do with the "sound" of the body wood; that is, the vibration of the body wood. What you are mostly hearing is the acoustic sound waves direct from the strings. Which is why it sounds so anaemic compared to a real acoustic guitar. There is just not enough body vibration to do that. All measurements of real guitars show that (bridge admittance, string vibration measurements, direct sustain measurement, etc). It's just that some players have absorbed the nonsense physics notion of "transfer of vibrations to the body" as both a significant and an intrinsically "good" thing. Neither are true. If they were, sustain would be very poor (Conservation of Energy Law). The acoustic sound does still have some relevance though. Because it reflects the vibrations in the strings, it's telling you what the pickups "see".

@sunn_bass

16 күн бұрын

@@vw9659 exactly. Like i said, those differences we hear acoustically mainly disappear once plugged in and that's where the pickups take over. All I want are woods that look good, have the right weight and for the neck I want a hight modulus of elasticity (stiff). Any subtle difference in tone that the wood imparts is minimal if even audible to the human ear. As primarily a bass player, I also don't buy into the high mass bridge hoopla that mass equals better sound than a bend metal fender bridge. Maybe better adjustability in some cases, but not sound.

I would like to think so, but having bought a through neck Ibanez that was PERFECT on paper, but basically A-resonant in real life, I am a lot more hesitant to just take the plunge now. If anything I'd love to see e.g. maple body with ash or mahogany neck, or other silliness like that just to "experiment". But then someone is still going to have to pay for them! 😂

That shirt is from an old run? Great one man

I build mostly set-neck, double humbucker guitars with a tunomatic style bridge and stop tailpiece. I’ve found that with that simple recipe that nothing will affect the tone quality of the finished guitar as the distance between the bridge and the tailpiece. I normally put the stop tailpiece twice as far from the bridge as it is on a Gibson Les Paul. This does two things that I consider very important. First, it fattens the tone a lot. Second, it softens the action, enough that a set of 10-46 strings will fret and bend almost as easily as a set of nines. I’ve found that if a guitar sounds thin there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. A lot of people think well I’ll just boost the bass and cut the treble on the amp, but all that’s going to do is muddy the sound. If that fat but hard sound isn’t there in the first place then playing around with the EQ probably isn’t going to help very much.

@HighlineGuitars

15 күн бұрын

Not all amps have the same EQ circuit. Some are much better than others, especially the most recent designs.

@victormarinelli5660

2 күн бұрын

I would think the longer string length would increase the tension needed to bring the string to pitch.

@lumberlikwidator8863

Күн бұрын

@@victormarinelli5660 Thanks for your reply. I’ve heard that the actual string tension doesn’t change, that’s strictly based on the scale length. I’m not sure, but I think what’s going on behind the bridge affects the feel of the action. Jimmy D’Aquisto said that putting a shorter tailpiece on one of his archtops would soften a tight action. I’m pretty sure he knew what he was talking about, because he used to be able to alter the action and tone of his guitars even after they were finished, to suit the buyer’s expectations by changing the length and height of the tailpiece. And I know for a fact that the action feels tightest with a Fender-style bridge where the strings run through the body and cross the saddles at nearly a right angle. I’ve built several guitars with the Fender 25.5 inch scale that have a bridge and stop tailpiece instead of thru-body stringing, and they all play easier and sound fatter than guitars with the Fender-style setup, even with the same pickups. I’ve seen and heard enough to be convinced that increasing the distance between the tailpiece and bridge is going to get me closer to the sound I like to hear.

@lumberlikwidator8863

Күн бұрын

@@HighlineGuitars Thanks for your reply. That’s not my experience. I think boosting the bass and cutting the treble on the amp or pedal to add depth to a thin-sounding guitar is definitely not the same as building a ballsy-sounding guitar in the first place. Tweaking the EQ may help, but it throws the frequencies out of balance, so that the bass is going to overpower the treble. When chording there will be a significant treble masking effect. This doesn’t bother some people, but I want my high notes to be louder than the lows.

Thanks for your continuing rational contributions to these discussions. Some players want to believe that major guitar manufacturers do things like TEST wood for bodies and necks to determine what will produce the best sonic "marriage". There is no evidence that they do that. And there is no scientific basis on which they could. Although certain manufacturers like to use smoke and mirrors to create such a mystique (PRS and FCS). I know you don't believe in body "tonewood". That's consistent with thirty years of complex measurements of real guitars by independent guitar scientists (eg Fleischer, Zollner, Pate). Guitar manufacturers don't make any of those measurements. So take anything they say about the supposed characteristic "sound" of solid body wood species with a grain of salt. But I noticed you did say that there is a small effect of the "piece" of wood. That's a common belief among some body tonewood proponents (although they often attribute more sonic significance to said piece of body wood). But what they're really saying is that they found by experience for example that alder doesn't always "sound" like Fender's marketing dept says it should, and likewise for ash. So someone dreamed up the "piece of wood" theory. Not that there was any direct evidence for that. It was just that guitars sounded different in ways that didn't track with species. But it doesn't follow from that common experience that it must be due to the "piece" of body wood. There are many, many things that have been measured to influence the sonic profile of real guitars. Many not well known to players. So when you say regarding the "minimal" effect of solid body wood on tone that "the tone of the wood isn't species-dependent .. it's board-dependent", I think you should really be saying, when your 5 slabs of mahogany produce slightly different sounding guitars, that you don't really know why those guitars sound different. It does not follow that the heard sonic differences are due to the particular "piece" of body mahogany (there is however evidence of wood-related variation in a neck's sonic properties). Unless you did the complex measurements of literally every other part of the guitar known to be sonically influential. You also talked about how pickup specs like pickup wire, magnet type, wind count, etc. determine the pickup's tone. But the thing you really want to know is the resonant frequency and Q factor. But pickup makers don't tell you that. So we're left grasping at straws, trying to figure out how the component parts affect the tone - that should really only be relevant to a pickup designer. It's indicative of the dismal state of the pickup industry that they don't provide proper specs, leaving their customers to buy largely blindly. If speaker or microphone manufacturers didn't publish full frequency response plots, they'd be out of business. All pickup makers should publish bode plots (many measure them internally). Regarding capacitors in tone controls, the first half of a tone circuit's response (from 10 down to around 5) is all due to the pot's resistance not the capacitor. The capacitor effect only kicks in for the second half. So if you never dial your tone control down that far, messing with the capacitor value is pointless. Your separation of sustain from "tone" is not really correct. Anything that affects the relative decay of different frequencies in the signal is going to affect the overall tone. Sustain is just the "last man (frequency) standing". Note that it has been shown that sustain can be accurately predicted from the string properties and the neck's resonant modal frequencies (Pate et al, 2014). Not really a practical approach for luthiers, but an important indication of the relevant physics. Zollner has additionally shown that individual bridges for example can reduce sustain at particular frequencies (and therefore the overall relative tone produced by the different frequency decay rates), by absorbing those string frequencies.

@tawraste

16 күн бұрын

Hi, I found your reply very interesting. Where can I read those studies? Or do you have more details to help me look for them please? Thanks 👍

@HighlineGuitars

15 күн бұрын

You went into way more detail than I wanted to in this video. You mention my definition of "board-dependent" as being inaccurate and that I should be saying the differences in tone can't really be determined. That's exactly my point. Worrying about the influence of the wood is a waste of time because once the guitar is finished, you can't change the wood to dial in the tone. But you can change the other components. You also mentioned resonant frequency and Q-factor. Those two factors cannot exist without the specs I mentioned. For this video, it wasn't necessary to drill down into that level of detail. If I had, viewers would have bailed. Finally, you claim I separated sustain from tone. I never said tone isn't affected by sustain. I merely said that bridge selection has a greater impact on sustain than it does on tone. Yes, tone is affected by sustain, but the affect is secondary and therefore not worth discussing in this video. Everything you mention, I have covered in previous videos and will probably discuss separately in future videos. However, for this video, such detail wasn't necessary.

@vw9659

15 күн бұрын

@@tawraste I would give direct URLs to the work of the three most prolific guitar scientists I mentioned, but youtube doesn't seem to allow URLS. Manfred Zollner's 1200 page book "Physics of the Electric Guitar" is the seminal work on the subject, and free to download from GITEC. It can be heavy going for those without a scientific background, but Ch 7 is a good place to start. Google "GITEC guitar forum", go to the English page, then click on the "THE BOOK" at the top of the page. Most of Helmut Fleischer's and Arthur Paté's work is also free to download, from Researchgate. Search for their names there and you should get to their published collections. Specifically regarding pickups, Zoller's work has material on pickup resonant frequency and Q factor, but Helmuth Lemme's work is easier to read. Google his "The Secrets of Electric Guitar Pickups" (web page). Those parameters can be quite easily measured by a keen amateur with equipment costing about the same as a boutique set of pickups (see pickup testing forum at guitarnutz).

Hellow can you tell as more about audio rezistor on preamp ?Worh? Sorry for my Engliash!

@Harrison-kt5xr

17 күн бұрын

The value of the input resistor on the preamp is not that relevant. What matters is the entire impedence of the whole input network and that can be complex to analyze. FWIW, lots of tube amps yse 68k input resistors, but the actual input impedance is much higher because of the tube. you would ideally like to not need any resistor there because the higher the resistance, the noisier the iinput.

I have a question that I have not heard asked in relation to tone of a solid body electric guitar. If wood selection makes a difference; has anyone considered the body shape effect on tone given the same wood selection??? 💜💜💜💜 Sarah xx

All very relevant for acoustic guitars, but solidbody electrics? I have played many different electric guitars and whilst feel and response differ greatly, they all sound like guitars and the difference in "tone" is next to nothing, or nothing that can't be eq'ed easily.....i'll just shut up now and play my guitar🎸🤘🏼🎸

You miss one thing when talking about tone. Paint and coating. Certain company says certain type paint makes better tone. Personally, I believe paint may impact tone in small amount, but I won't buy a guitar based on paint alone.

To me, frequency-wise tone doesn't matter much because it can be adjusted simply with an eq. But attack and sustain does, the bridge selection is essential to determine the sound of the electric guitar and this element of the sound (transients and harmonic content) can't be easily adjusted (only to a certain degree with a compressor maybe, but still not enough).

Don't forget the glue. Huge impact on sustain and tone.

What's a tone pot? You guys dont just wire your pickups straight to volume then output jack??? 😂

@HighlineGuitars

14 күн бұрын

A tone pot is a variable resistor used with a capacitor to bleed off some of the treble frequencies and send them to ground so the tone will sound warmer as you turn the knob.

@Mossy5150

14 күн бұрын

@@HighlineGuitars hey Chris, sorry for the sarcasm on my part, was just making an allusion to the Van Halen style of eliminating the tone pot and relying on volume rollback for adjusting "tone"

@HighlineGuitars

14 күн бұрын

@@Mossy5150 No need to appologize. Often times, my responses are intended for those viewers who read comments and genuinely don't know the answers. Sarcasm is a beautiful thing!