Full transcript of “Acoustic Tone Woods: Why it matters!”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 i just can't believe i captured this miracle on camera i grabbed my pick it fell on the ground and it was right there i just picked it up okay so now on topic so what you're about to hear is the same chord on the same guitar fitted with the same top the only difference the tone woods for the back and sides yeah baby [Music] welcome to part two of the ultimate acoustic guitar comparison video and in part one we looked at all the body shapes i'm sure you've seen it and now we're looking at the most controversial topic for guitars the tone wounds we start out with comparing the different woods used for the back and sides of the guitars and the differences are huge then we take a look at the top
0:46 woods and again i did not know this had such an impact on the sound let's go so first we're gonna listen to the differences between rosewood and mahogany and i'd love to hear your first reaction leave them in the comment section because i'm in for a hot debate [Music] the most commonly used you've got mahogany and rosewood indian rosewood mahogany has that very very specific characteristic where it has a lot of grey mitts so you can always hear it very well in a mix a vox ac30 with el84
1:34 tubes is very much what a mahogany does it's it cuts right in the middle but if you switch to the rosewood it's like a rosewood is like like a very good red wine it's got more lows it's got more highs less mitts a more delicate sound and i always compare it to a fender twin reaver there's a lot of sound [Music] if you if you have to describe mahogany it cuts right through it has that specific projection it's got a lot of mid doesn't have that much lows
2:19 so it really is always audible in any kind of circumstance that's funny easily recordable and that's really what what mahogany does when you go to to rosewood there's much more low to start with yeah it's got less mids and it's got more highs so the range the dynamic range of a rosewood guitar is always going to be bigger than a mahogany [Music] we all love the d18 as a strummer it's like a strummer's favorite the mahogany
3:06 sort of serves the chords so beautifully just works so beautiful with that mid-range for the rosewood it's [Music] [Applause] you hear the top end just that crisp on top if that's something you're after i think that crisp is something to look for and you will find that crisp more in the rosewood than in the yeah and then the lows of course the loans are just but that's sometimes and i always say you have like rosewood people and mahogany people where i all my life i've always even blindfolded i always went for the mahogany guitars
3:51 that is it because it's so personal yeah i think it depends on what kind of player you are yeah if you play in a band you might favor a different kind of guitar i play a lot of solo guitar because you know i'm all the time alone in my studio so then i feel like the rosewood accommodates just the whole spectrum a little bit better than just the mahogany but in a band setting when there's a singer going on or there's a piano player or there's a lot of people the magni probably will sit in the mix a little bit better right absolutely and the the frequency range that you get on rosewood is just much bigger [Music]
4:46 [Laughter] [Music] there's others that like for instance sapele sepeli that is very very close to mahogany and sepali has the same characteristics it's a little cheaper to to to find and to use so often it's on a little bit more low-end guitars not it's not anything worse than mahogany but it grows faster so it's easier to to get then there's a couple of other more tropical woods like for instance maple although maple is perhaps not a tropical wood but maple is something that is often used on the jumbo size the maple is much lighter in tone and and and gives a nice counterbalance
5:32 to that so you got the 17 inch big body and at the same time the maple evens that up so this is the maple bag and i'm sure we can all see the differences now because maple just looks so different than the rest of course maple usually it's white so this this one is stained yes yeah it's stained but it's got the flame yeah that's one of the things where here you see on the mahogany it's got the uh the vertical grain where uh maple if you have a nice flame maple it's always going to be horizontal yeah it's beautiful so we heard the differences between mahogany and rosehood all the time but now we also have maple in the mix
6:19 [Music] do [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay so maple yeah well the good thing with maple is that it's it's got a very light tone there's less bass there's more highs so that means for instance on the on the ac guitars so that like what i always say like the stage guitars yeah it's very good because there's a there's a pickup in this guitar so if you were on stage you can be assured that with a maple back inside you have way less problems with with feedback stuff like
7:05 that so it's also very practical to use it on a guitar like that the sound is very different from mahogany and rosewood yeah and and it because these guitars are all exactly the same with exactly the same specs apart from the bags that's it so the maple in an acoustic situation would deliver a little bit more highs a little less low end yeah more projection probably i think on this guitar [Music] so there's a lot of lot of projection and every note is very very well audible and it's it's also i i always think a
7:52 little sophisticated yeah it's a very clear sound in the because the low end doesn't fight for the attention there is there's almost no difference they've got a european spruce top which we will talk about later but the maple mahogany and rosewood those timbers they are giving the difference in sound [Music]
8:38 back and sides are super important i know that but there's also the top and we didn't talk about it yet no no no we haven't touched on that topic and uh topic that's a topic tops yeah oh yeah topic a little the most commonly used uh top wood is sitka spruce sitka spruce uh well you can find it uh on i perhaps 80 of all guitars acoustic guitars being made a very versatile wood that is capable of almost anything and uh it has a very beautiful grain so there's not a lot of notches and and brown streaks so it it speaks to a big
9:24 audience and it does its job perfectly imagine like like a martin d28 that has a sitka spruce top everybody knows that guitar so that that will be a good comparison [Music] if you go from that sitka spruce and you look at what else there is for a top wood then the most commonly known is the adirondack spruce the red spruce the red spruce adirondack is a spruce that is stiffer and has a lot more volume and is also not as attractive looking as sitka it's more expensive the adirondack always has like wider grains so so when you really want to
10:12 have that really beautiful spruce without many many streaks or brown strikes or knots or dots it probably is not adirondack but in bluegrass adirondack is the go-to top [Music] do [Music] i've never hold them this close together and you can actually tell the difference quite easily if you zoom in on the instruments a little bit
10:58 one is very straight grained and very narrow and the adirondack is a little bit more wobbly usually and wider grain right yeah adirondack is a much stiffer top wood when they start using it suddenly they realize that this was the perfect topwood for these these acoustic guitars especially for those dreadnoughts because it was so loud adirondack has much more sound much more volume than sitka sitka is more subdued more beautiful more even but the adirondack is really loud and makes you be heard so for bluegrass for instance i mean i don't think there is a blueprint player out there who doesn't prefer the the adirondack sitcom let me
11:43 give an instant reaction oh wow wow that's even bigger than i thought the difference so much more volume but also a little less rounded off a little bit more screaming is a bad word it's but it's it's it's a it's a loud it screams for your attention exactly yeah and then especially with the big dreadnought it's just like it's all there yeah if adirondack or if a dreadnought is the the piano under the acoustic guitars then eddie rondack even adds to that i think people have the tendency to prefer loud sounds when they just have to compare an a b but louder isn't always better so that's maybe important
12:30 to notice as well adirondack is a more expensive mood so that's why you most of the time will find that on the higher priced instruments yeah that doesn't mean it's better a matter of taste exactly then you have european spruce mostly coming from like like italy bosnia swiss switzerland swiss alpine spruce which is often lighter in color and even more beautiful than the sitka the european spruce is probably the best looking top wood there is it's very very light in color and there's almost no grain [Music] so those are the three most important
13:16 top woods next to that very distinctively different looking you have the cedar wood most of the time used on classical guitars because we're talking about steel string guitars but on the classical guitar nylon string guitar cedar is used but also cedar you can find cedar for instance the loudoun guitars also on eastman guitars and it has a very very dark woody tone and from dark woody tone it's an easy step to mahogany which is sometimes also used for the top you can get more woody than a mahogany top guitar so that is about the the most commonly used and there's many many others but that's 80 90 of guitars perhaps even 95
14:02 are fitted with a top like that something that that that has been happening in the last few years a lot uh dana bourgeois being one of the first doing it it is actually baking the tops so here you have an adirondack top that has been baked which allows the wood become like 60 year old wood and it has that that tone and that sound so [Music]
14:53 do [Music] so one thing that immediately stood out for me is that it feels a little bit more like a vintage guitar right it sounds warmer a little bit uh rounded off not as bright but super rich when you torify the wood and we call it thermocure we do it in our own kilns it extracts the moisture out of it and it makes suddenly makes you jump like 60 years so this guitar that's why it also looks that way and it's obviously looks just as important as a as a sound it's not for everybody because some might really like the more highs on the uh non-torrified adirondack where others really prefer the warning
15:38 warmth [Applause] [Music] like it's not only taking heights off but it feels like it's adding actually something in the in the middle absolutely it it adds something all right so um let's sum it up back in size rosehood mahogany belzy versus earthy yeah like scoop mitts versus very present mids maple back and sides a little bit less low end yeah more more more uh open more more open sparkly more high-end a little bit belsy on top yeah cool now to the tops we've got the basic or should i say the brilliant sitka
16:23 spruce yeah the standard the industry standard every guitar manufacturer uses eighty percent of their you just can't go wrong with citrus foods absolutely it is what you expect from a guitar then there's adirondack which takes that sitka spurs and elevates it into a little bit louder sounding guitar a little bit more screaming maybe not as balanced but definitely packing a punch yeah and more focus more and more more smack to the face yeah and then we can even set the thing on fire figuratively yeah yeah and turn it into a terrified top and then it becomes a little bit more rounded off again mellower sounding more like a vintage guitar yeah going back a little step to sitka but with more volume cocobolo obviously is a is a i once spoke to bill collings
17:10 and he told me that he hated working with cocobolo because obviously it's one of the the worst woods to work with it's very oily but it's beautiful there's very coaty there's black walnut and all these woods have a an identity of their own like black walnut sits right in the middle between mahogany and rosewood but i don't want to bring too many different woods we're talking about the majority we're talking about 80 percent of the guitars i mean koas also i forgot koa growth in hawaii incredibly good looking uh wood so there's there's so many choices but lucky enough also so many tastes breadboards the fretboards are these important to the tone they are important to the tone because uh
17:55 practically all the fretboards that we use are ebony yeah also for the uh for the bridge and ebony is just a very very dense thick wood that also contributes to the highs on the guitar so it's very good where rosewood if used as a fingerboard and bridge it's more earthy more more a little uh more woody sounding but obviously these sounds don't have as much influence as for instance having a mahogany or a rosewood back inside or an adirondack and a sitka it's more subtle but the differences are also there yeah yeah yeah it's all the ingredients together i can make very good decisions from now on like when i go into a guitar store i can just say hey i would like to try a mahogany back
18:42 inside with a top and if if i don't like the sound i can just change certain elements till i find exactly what i'm looking for absolutely absolutely absolutely and that's all what we want to do is just give you give you more choices and and and to find the guitar that that is your guitar that speaks to you yeah exactly brilliant thank you paul and uh thank you for watching and thank you for having us yeah it's been my pleasure thank you eastman the its heart of course also watch video one where we talk about body shapes extensively it's a two part video so you can make the best decision into buying guitars have a lovely day and see you next time see you bye-bye cheers
