"Tonewood" ~ Luthiery Laboratories

"Tonewood"

This really puts a dent in the whole tonewood argument.

I doubt there is anything very special about those piezos. My experience is that you need the right mounting and electronics to make a piezo sound good, and it has very little to do with the sensor itself, which is just a little bit of semiconductor.

To sound good, a piezo needs to be incorporated directly in the physical support of the strings. And it requires a very high output impedance, otherwise, it turns into a high-pass filter. Both of these are especially true on a bass.

I have to wonder where he got such a great-sounding brick. Home Depot, or Lowes? Or do you have to get your rock-tone from some specialty loothery supplier?

When I run out of plywood and masonite, I'm going down to Loothery Depot and pick up a 50-pound bag of ToneCrete. I will experiment with different mixes, aggregates, and colors, always testing in the most subjective and un-repeatable manner possible, as is luthiery tradition. As always, I will report my results here in Luthier's Corner.

I'll save you some time ... they all sound the same.

I want to see a comparison of different shirt materials, straps, belt buckles, and beer guts.

Either you believe in tonewood, or you don't.

Tonewood is marketing nonsense.

Woods etc

Here at Luthiery Labs, we're only interested in woods that are reasonably priced and locally available.

Wood Notes:

Since the gubment made rosewood illegal, ** despite the fact that there is no real definition of what rosewood is, alternative fretboard woods are going to become more mainstream in loothery. Bubinga is also illegal now, but that's no great loss.

** For a while, no longer

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January 4, 2023

It's All Bullshit

January 4, 2023

Here is a series of videos from a guy who has done the most scientific testing of electric guitars and amplifiers that I have yet to find. His results surprise even me. I have always felt that "tone" is mostly imagination, but these carefully constructed tests show that it is entirely imagination.

More: It's All Bullshit ...

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Neck Binding

I decided that two of my Audiovoxen should have bound necks to go with the bound bodies, because binding is really super classy. So here I'm routing the edges for that. I've taped two strips of scrap binding to the top of the fretboard to act as guides, since it is already radiused and otherwise the router would rock on the curve. The neck is stuck onto a piece of 2x4 for clearance, and the whole arrangement is inside a big box to catch most of the mess. You want to go in one long smooth run rather than nibble at it; you're not taking such a big bite that you can't do it in one pass. Those same pieces of binding are going to get glued on later. Notice that the neck still has a square back. This is actually a pretty easy job and would be even easier if it was done prior to radiusing the fretboard. Set the height of the cut to just remove all the rosewood, so the binding butts against the maple. The depth of the cut is not fussy, as there is still a lot of contouring to do.

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