playing a 2x4 through a tacklebox head into a foamcore cabinet

February 23, 2023 9:07 AM

About a year ago, Nashville musician Jim Lill asked: where does an electric guitar's tone come from? Lill has since asked a few more questions and done his best to document some answers in additional short entertaining videos:
- where does sustain come from?
- where does guitar string tone come from?
- does scale length affect the tone?
- where does speaker cabinet tone come from?
- where does amplifier head tone come from?
posted by cortex (31 comments total)

A cellist friend, who also taught cello, had an adult student who couldn’t afford a cello. He scrounged up a cello finger board, a tail piece, and a bridge, attached them at all the right distances to a 2 x 4, put a contact mic on the bridge, got a small amp, and came to his lessons. And yes, it sounded just like a cello. My friend tried it, and she said it was really playable. My guess is, it’s the strings….
posted by njohnson23 at 9:24 AM on February 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

Really want a photo of the 2x4 cello.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:57 AM on February 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

OK I found a guy who's made four electric cellos (sidebar has links to other 3) which are pretty much as described. Really cool idea.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:04 AM on February 23, 2023 [5 favorites]

when i was a kid i got an electric guitar for christmas and i played it endlessly for about a year until i became curious how it worked. turns out it’s very easy to take a guitar apart and get it into a state where it’s very hard for an 11 year old to put it back together. this put a several year gap in my musical development. but i did have fun trying to use the pickups to amplify other things, like the strings on my grandma’s baby grand or the sound a saw makes when you run a wire against it. right then my parents should have realized the analog modular synth was the real instrument for me
posted by dis_integration at 10:16 AM on February 23, 2023 [11 favorites]

Are we going to have the tone wood argument, then? I love the tone wood argument that every guitar forum has by law to have every month or so, I love it so, he said in a flat tone of voice that suggested he didn't love the tone wood argument at all.
posted by Grangousier at 11:01 AM on February 23, 2023 [11 favorites]

he said in a flat tone of voice

A shellac finish on your throat might brighten up your voice a bit.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:03 AM on February 23, 2023 [15 favorites]

Are we going to have the tone wood argument, then?

Between the first and second links, Lill makes a pretty good case for either literally no wood whatsoever or a stock strat clone with some pieces cut off and a bunch of holes drilled through it, subsequently smothered in titebond in a kiddie pool, which hopefully forestalls some of the more well-worn opinions.
posted by cortex at 11:07 AM on February 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Sustain anecdata: I got a noticeable difference in sustain (and tone) from a (new, intermediate level) unamplified upright bass by putting on a better set of strings.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:10 AM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Greg_Ace: Anecdata for electric bass: I have a semi-hollow body Beatle bass copy, and the type of strings absolutely makes a huge difference in tone, playability, and sustain. I've had flatwounds, black nylon tapewounds, and steel round-wounds on it at various points, and it's almost like I'm playing a different instrument with each.
posted by indexy at 11:20 AM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

"...so I did that"

Love this guy. He's the Project Farm of guitars.
posted by gwint at 11:24 AM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

The key thing to understand here is that, unlike an acoustic guitar, the body of an electric guitar IS NOT A RESONATOR. In fact, its job is exactly the opposite: to vibrate / resonate as little as possible so as not to bleed energy out of the vibrating strings. Aside from truly ridiculous extremes (like the body is a 5 ounce piece of balsa wood, or super-soft woods that cannot take screws well), the body material has NO impact on the sound.
posted by tom_r at 11:26 AM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Nigel Tufnel: The sustain, listen to it.

Marty DiBergi: I don't hear anything.

Nigel Tufnel: Well, you would though, if it wasn't smothered in titebond in a kiddie pool.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:31 AM on February 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

the type of strings absolutely makes a huge difference in tone, playability, and sustain. I've had flatwounds, black nylon tapewounds, and steel round-wounds on it at various points, and it's almost like I'm playing a different instrument with each.

For electric guitar or bass, the things that have the most effect on what you hear in the room are the things that move or the things that translate movement to/from electricity.

Big huge differences when you change speakers (including the geometry of the cabinet, but generally not the material of the cabinet), amplifiers (not necessarily the component type but the recipe of tone stack/gain staging and order of those things), pickups/electronics (including pickup placement along and distance from strings), and the strings themselves.

For electric guitar and bass, if you're worried about anything other than that list, you're certainly well beyond diminishing returns on the quality of your sound, and many things people argue about (poly vs nitro finish -- not just tone wood but tone PAINT) aren't even detectable on null testing.
posted by tclark at 12:06 PM on February 23, 2023 [6 favorites]

The guitar string link just leads to the sustain video again, this is the right one.
posted by egypturnash at 12:09 PM on February 23, 2023

Oops! Thanks, fixed.
posted by cortex at 12:11 PM on February 23, 2023

The cabinet one was very interesting to me, because although there were variations in sound, they all sounded pretty OK to me, like basically just down to a matter of preference in what kind of sound you wanted.
posted by RustyBrooks at 12:29 PM on February 23, 2023

I am forced to link to the opening of It Might Get Loud, wherein Jack White builds a guitar out of scraps in 2 minutes

And in regards to pickups, there's a scene midway through the movie where Jimmy Page toggles between neck and bridge pickups (and where he plays on the neck) and it's whisper to a roar and then back again. As far as I can figure out, the one pickup has the tone set up high with a low volume and the bridge pickup has a low tone and the volume CRANKED. Watch him hit that toggle switch.
posted by Ber at 12:48 PM on February 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Greg_Ace: Anecdata for electric bass: I have a semi-hollow body Beatle bass copy
Indexy, I have a semi hollow Beatle bass copy too! I have never ever, in the entire time I've owned it (20 years or so) ever changed the round wound strings on it, and it has never changed tone. I wonder why that is? I have been asked to stop playing it, frequently, but, you know, everyone's a critic.
posted by evilDoug at 1:51 PM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

the type of strings absolutely makes a huge difference in tone, playability, and sustain

Is this bit controversial?

I have never ever, in the entire time I've owned it (20 years or so) ever changed the round wound strings on it, and it has never changed tone. I wonder why that is?

In my experience brand new strings sound different than broken-in strings, but that doesn’t mean the sound keeps changing forever as you keep playing them. I’d expect it reaches steady state pretty quickly (relative to a time scale of 20 years, anyway).
posted by atoxyl at 2:00 PM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I didn’t take up guitar until well after the advent of amp sim, and what that has taught me is that the importance of the cabinet (inclusive of speakers) or impulse response thereof is curiously underrated? Not that guitarists don’t readily acknowledge it as a factor but it matters so much more to tone than literally anything on the actual instrument, for example.
posted by atoxyl at 2:07 PM on February 23, 2023

evilDoug, atoxyl, I play both guitar and bass and I agree that bass strings essentially never need to be changed, and changing them doesn't affect the sound much. In my experience, guitar strings do need to be changed periodically (where the period is much much less than 20 years). I could be wrong, but I don't think either of these things is particularly controversial.

With the disclaimer that I have NOT tested this, I believe it's because bass strings are enormous and guitar strings are tiny. I've never broken a bass string. I break guitar strings all the time. I could absolutely believe that small imperfections (little kinks / dents, small amounts of oxidation) affect guitar strings a lot more than they affect bass strings.
posted by tom_r at 2:17 PM on February 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

If you keep your guitar strings very clean they might be OK for very long periods. For me the problem is the unwound strings eventually corrode and then playing on them *feels* bad. Also in general I like how new strings sound but I could probably get used to the sound of old strings.
posted by RustyBrooks at 2:24 PM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have never ever, in the entire time I've owned it (20 years or so) ever changed the round wound strings on it, and it has never changed tone.

In general big ol' electric bass strings last way longer than guitar strings (assuming similar treatment, e.g. not slapped/popped/twanged to death). Plus, a Beatles-type bass is going to favor a tubby/dark sound no matter what strings are on it or how new/old they are.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:42 PM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ber! I did that with one of my first electric guitars (I still have it and it needs work... )an Ibanez PF100 with a tone and volume for each humbucker. Set the neck volume to 0 and the bridge to 11 and toggle the pickup selector like a madman for a tremolo-flavored effect. I was extra proud to get that one because Page was my big hero back then (probably saw him do that in a concert movie & picked it up there) and this black with white binding LP look-alike was a little bit like one I saw him playing.

Nowadays in the evenings I often enjoy the hell out of a made-in-china Squire Strat that I picked up on a whim, with plans to turn it into a frankencaster, but it's grown on me so much now I kind of hesitate to mess it up and screw up the action. I've got a Godin XTSA (that's very playable & feels great) and a couple of synths for it to drive, but I've more often got the strat (maybe going through an ancient POD-XT for effects) and a 9v Honeytone amp out on the couch just jamming around.

I agree with tclark by-and-large - body woods and shapes don't make any difference to tone, but hot dang, I love a purty guitar!
posted by The Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas at 3:20 PM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

And yes, it sounded just like a cello. My friend tried it, and she said it was really playable. My guess is, it’s the strings….
posted by njohnson23

In acoustic guitars at least, the basic palette of tonal possibilities is determined by the strings and the soundboard.

There is an important experiment in guitar making by Torres in the 19th century (i.e. pre-electronics and amplifiers), where the sides and back of the guitar body were made from paper mache, with the fingerboard, neck, and soundboard (front of the guitar) being made from the usual woods. Apparently it sounded fine. It was the experiment that proved the importance of the soundboard material in tonal quality (or disproved the relevance of the sides and back).

There is a question of what is meant by paper mache, and how closely it resembles what we mean by that term today. Sometimes the material he used is described as cardboard. But still an interesting experiment, that others have played with over the years.

Some discussion of it here, and here. Also search YouTube for paper mache or cardboard guitar.
posted by Pouteria at 3:22 PM on February 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

guitar strings do need to be changed periodically

Oh my yes. On a steel-string acoustic, putting on a new set of strings is like getting a whole new guitar. For like a day or two the sounds is dramatically bigger and brighter. Then it settles down to very good for a few days or weeks depending on how much you play, the kind of strings, etc. After that they sound okay for months but kind of slowly get duller in sound.

If I had way too much money, I'd have somebody put new strings on my guitar every day.
posted by straight at 9:41 PM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

You know I was thinking about this again last night. I mostly don't play on big cabinets, because I don't *really* have space for it plus they're expensive plus I don't really know what I want.

But this has got me thinking I can just slap together some chipboard cabinets and kind of do what he did until I get something I like and then make a better version of it out of plywood. I've been struck by paralysis before because I always get stopped at the design stage, i.e. what do I want?

I was really surprised to hear the difference between micing an enclosure with 1 speaker vs 2 even though you're only micing one speaker. I could probably fit a 1x2 in my space no problem, maybe even a compact 4x4 if it doubled as some other useful thing like idk I could put some other stuff on top.
posted by RustyBrooks at 9:22 AM on February 24, 2023

Today I thought "Oh, you know who I know that would eat this stuff up? My guitar-obssessed friend John!!" before remembering he died 4 years ago, and suddenly I miss him a lot.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:54 PM on February 24, 2023 [2 favorites]

guitar strings do need to be changed periodically


I made a record many years ago and the producer brought in his 1930s Gibson L-00 (a small bodied acoustic guitar), which had very old and dead strings on it. The engineer suggested that we get some new strings before tracking, to which the producer replied, "Don't you dare, it sounds perfect.", which it it absolutely did.

I love Jim Lill, and I think it is super interesting to dive into why things sound the way that they do. That said, I think that folks generally fixate way to hard on what is the "right" or "best" way to set up their guitar rig. It all boils down to this:

Can you make the sounds that you want to hear with this setup, and does it make you feel good when you play it? Then it is perfect. For you. Everybody else's opinion is irrelevant.

(And I think that this is largely Lill's point.)
posted by TheCoug at 7:58 AM on February 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, that's part of what I like so much about Lill's video series here: it's so focused on "what, actually, affects the sound/tone" instead of "how do you get the obviously *correct* tone". It's pure experimental demystification without any particular agenda beyond isolating what has an impact and what doesn't.

And that's valuable because it gives folks potentially wading through swamps of gearhead arguments a clear dry alternate path to take: figure out what sort of sound you want to make, and rest assured that you can get there with like two or three basic, fairly flexible decisions, and let everything else fall by the wayside.

I took a friend shopping for their first electric guitar recently which is part of what put this series back on my mind and led to this post. Because I was trying to figure out how to simplify their whole path to making a decision, and it came down ultimately to: pick a guitar that feels good in your hands, give yourself some pickup configuration flexibility, and buy a distortion pedal. And don't worry about anything else. And they got a nice Guild with a couple single coils at neck and middle and a humbucker at the bridge, and the action is good and the neck is straight and the tuners are fine, and plugging that fucker into a DS-1 makes it sound like a rock guitar, and good lord that's plenty.

I wish I could go back and walk high-school me through that same line of reasoning when I was buying my first electric, not because my decision-making would have ultimately been a lot different but so I would have felt less awash as a result.
posted by cortex at 8:37 AM on February 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

These are just fantastic, I hadn't realized he continued the series, thanks for the wealth of good humored guitar nerdery, cortex.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:16 AM on March 5, 2023