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Who is this guy?

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some guy
7K views 77 replies 12 participants last post by  Meechy 
#1 ·
Ok so I was looking up the trans- Jem pickups used on the 20th anniversary because I was very curious to what was different about them and I came across this guy

Go to 2:30.

What's this guys qualification? Is he like the athiest of woods? 90% of people think wood makes a difference, but 10% don't?

Wood makes a difference in a way that's not always blatantly audible. It can be evident in passages of playing, overtones, etc. I've never met another musician who doesn't know wood makes a difference. It's also a feel thing, sustain etc.

Is he just blatantly saying this to piss people off? I mean, who would he if he doesn't actually believe it?

You'd think that if he had an acrylic guitar, and another guitar with Trans Jem pickups, he would notice a tonal difference? I think it would be kind of hard not to. (I know you can't buy the teans Jem pups but you know what I mean)
 
#6 ·
I've read this argument over and over on this, and other, sites.
No one has ever claimed they could tell you what wood has been used in a guitar they are listening too.
Pick up two guitars that are supposed to be identical and play them unplugged.
Often they will sound subtly different, sometimes very different.
This sound has to be translated through the amp. Unless you're playing through a ton of distortion and effects, there will be a difference, albeit subtle, in the final sound that comes through your amp.
Different types of wood 'lean' towards certain properties, but that being said; even two pieces of wood from the same tree can sound different.
So, in my humble opinion; wood matters. :)
It may be subtle, but a harmonic there, or not there, is a difference and to say it's not is like saying all Pecorino Romano cheeses are the same.
And if you don't know what that is, your opinion means nothing to me. LOL
J/K
 
#8 ·
Thats a great way to look at it... in the simplest terms.

Scott Grove is a knowledgeable guy... and is entitled to his own opinion. He just talks way too much and takes too long to get to the point! My favorite video of his is the amp comparison - A classic Fender tube amp vs the cheap Walmart bass amp.

 
#9 ·
This was the first I've ever seen/heard of him

Saying that Ibanez & Vai are retarded for thinking the dense acrylic body would effect time shows me he spends a lot of time judging and thinking he's a master analyst of tone, and that his word is final.
 
#10 ·
It's actually far simpler than that. He's intentionally offensive, because he knows every time he gets under someone's skin, they'll post a link to his video saying, "Can you BELIEVE this a-hole?!?!" and he'll get another couple hundred youtube views.

It's pure click-bait. I'd just ignore him.
 
#16 ·
Nobody said theyre not going to buy a guitar because of the wood.

I'm saying, now, that this guy is an idiot/jerk who said it makes NO DIFFERENCE. Even though to some degree it does

People can tell. Especially fretboard wood. It dosent matter if you can't identify the kind by listening to somebody else play, it's what you hear when YOU play it. If it dosent matter to you, that's quite alright, no big deal. It does matter to some people. And this guy on YouTube is calling people retarded because of it.
 
#24 ·
By the way, did anybody watch the video he mentioned about comparing an acrylic guitar with a wooden one, both having the same pickups? If not, I can completely understand as he's certainly long winded. At any rate, if interested you can cut out all his babbling by going right to 10:55. Hear any difference? You make the call.

 
#27 ·
Dear Lord, so that's what this site is really about. Just a bunch of blathering on about sound, with no audio examples posted to support anybody's contention. When an audio example is provided, it is summarily dismissed for some goofy reason.

Who cares about youtube views? Is there some approaching final moment in time where everyone's youtube views will be tallied, and the person with the most will be declared the winner? Or are we not clicking on his video in an attempt to not feed this guy's perceived narcissism?

And you're asking me if I can tell something from a video? My answer is that I'm in a much better position to tell than you. You know why? Because I actually watched the video. Forgive me if I believe that trumps your supposition.
 
#28 ·
He gets paid per view.

I wouldn't be using his video and camera mic as a tool for judging the difference. I'm pretty sure a difference (how big or how small doesn't matter) could be heard in the room.

A guitar's sound is due to all of it's parts. Wood included, IMO.

I posted an earlier TEDx talk from Paul Reed Smith that makes more sense and isn't biased strongly by personal opinion.
 
#29 ·
So what if he gets paid? Does the person clicking on the link cut the check?

To your second sentence, have you listened yet? Do they sound the same to you? That said, I'm not buying that his camera will make two different sounds sound the same.

To your third sentence, of course. But to use what PRS said in the video you provided, I'm not sure it's impossible to build an acrylic guitar that you can put 6 in and get 5.9 out.
 
#33 ·
I was told time and time again to record what I play, even just practicing, and I can tell you, two guitars that sound totally different in the room can sound very similar when using a small microphone. A lot of the harmonics get lost due to the smaller frequency range, especially on microphones used on smaller cameras.
I don't have any clips where I'm sure what guitar I'm playing, so I won't post anything (well, I will, I'm bored and love to get your opinions on my playing). I just record the audio, no video, so I can't even look at that, as it doesn't exist. :)
When I get this cast off I'll record both guitars through the same amp, same microphone... the only difference between my guitars is the pickups. Same woods. RG1550 and an RG550.
The argument I hear most is that it's the pickups that decide the final sound.
But that's not where I'm going with this. I have a PAF Pro and a Super Distortion in my RG550, and a set of Evolutions in my RG1550. These guitars sound VERY different in the room due to the pickups, but when I listen back to what I've recorded, even thought it's JUST GUITAR, nothing else, I can't tell what one I was playing. For all I can tell; every recording could be the same guitar, but I know they are not since I like to give both my boys a lot of love. :)
It's simply because of the compression of the microphone, and then the compression of the file itself. Unless you want to upload a raw waveform file, you're going to lose a lot of the original sound. Lossy compression kind of sucks that way. :)
 
#35 ·
After some reflection, I'm out of this one.
I'll lurk, just to see what's said, but there's no point. This argument has been ongoing here, and on many other sites, and blah blah blah.
If you can hear it, great, if you can't, great.
As long as what you're hearing sounds good to you, trying to convince me that 'it all doesn't make a difference' isn't going sway what I hear, or think I hear, and it's not going to make your guitar sound better or worse to my, your, or anyone else's ears trying to convince anyone of anything.
It sounds good, great! Doesn't matter what it's made of.
You could make a guitar out of papier mâché, reinforced with re-bar and duct tape, if it sounds good, who cares? ;) Is anyone going to argue that you should have used the New York Post instead of The Wall Street Journal to make the slurry? LOL
"New York Post would have sounded 'warmer', you get too much high end out of the Journal....":rolleyes:
 
#43 · (Edited)
Excellent points.

I wish a really good player like Scott Grove would simply stay out of the controversial issue of tone woods and the role of pickups in solidbodies. To me he sounds just as good with "bad" woods or "undesirable year" models of certain guitars. I think the controversy he seems to like to create just ups his hits.

Other than him, most players I have seen who are all in on one side of the tone argument or the other are usually not good players. The good players I know take whatever gear is there at the moment and create ... music. Wow, what an amazing concept (player, guitar, amp ... music!).

That's why I like getting together with musicians and go play out, rehearse, and record. The issues of tonewood and GAS never enter the equation. We are all good players simply trying to get better as the poor players don't have the patience to take it this far. Where I find wanna-bes who can't play are on forums about people being more into tonewoods and not music, and about acquiring gear but never going out and playing it. Yes, there are those who only record by themselves and don't play with others, and still write and execute amazingly beautiful music but they are very rare, even in this boosted up digital age. Most of the time the lone wolf artists who are good have paid their dues in bands, gigs, and studios and all the headaches they can come with. All those things of playing with others, good and bad, make just about any mediocre musician a good musician.

I can always tell if a person is a competent musician, not by touting the latest tone wood or pickup of the month, but by sharing how they resolved certain issues with recording and gigging and making different personalities work to the best of the advantage of the band. One will never get better if they approach a band as an individual ego with their favorite gear pounding the other musicians in a band into submission. Even the weakest musician (technically) can offer something the most seasoned musician can't see or do and those dynamics of a band of brothers/sisters is half of what makes a musician.

All that being said, I don't blame the guitarist/musician who never wants to go through the personal trials and tribulations that it takes to work with others and in the process make themselves a good musician or the best musician that they can be. Sometimes just being good enough or so-so but having fun is the better option than reaching one's potential but also getting scarred up in the process of dealing with others. Drugs, cops/arrest, jail, rehab, and death are common threads in many long term bands (all the way to the top like Aerosmith, Nirvana, Rolling Stones, etc) and it's a good enough reason for many guitarists to never want to do more than scratch the surface of this whole soap opera. I often admire the restraint of these dilettantes who get into it for the fun but also find that things like tone wood conversations and GAS dominate their conversations. It's much more productive to worry about moving a chorus with flattening a third or adding a seventh and how that affects a song or changing up the tempo and trying to break rules. Any person can get more out of being a musician analyzing (and applying) a great album/song than becoming an expert in tone wood or pickups. To get to the next level and out of the tonewood/pickup/gear merry go round, a mentor blew me away with this:

 
#37 ·
So I'm not accused of not practicing what I preach, here's video evidence that every pertinent guitar frequency passes through these much maligned hand-held camera mics. This is Andy Timmons playing through a MESA at NAMM. Sounds great to me. So was the supposition that these cameras reduce MESA tone down to Crate level, or vise versa? I just want to be clear.

 
#39 ·
The point is, give him a crappy amp and it'll sound just as good.

You have provided nothing that proves your point, so why should anyone else. I personally don't care if you don't agree with my opinion, but you seem to really care that people don't agree with yours. Yet you provide no scientific proof about what you seem to want everyone else to believe.

So you have your beliefs I have mine. Prove me wrong because I don't mind either way what you believe.
 
#42 ·
HAHA

It's not our job to convince you. Or look at your videos. You're not changing any bodies views about what they hear or feel. Know why? Because we hear and feel it.

We hear it. You don't. So therefore we must convince YOU. Niope, already tried that. That's not a good enough answer because you seem to have something against this, in which case you have to be right. I don't need your evidence to begin with- I have my own. My ear. Unfortunately for you, that's all I need. No videos to prove it.
 
#52 ·
HAHA

It's not our job to convince you. Or look at your videos. You're not changing any bodies views about what they hear or feel. Know why? Because we hear and feel it.

We hear it. You don't. So therefore we must convince YOU. Niope, already tried that. That's not a good enough answer because you seem to have something against this, in which case you have to be right. I don't need your evidence to begin with- I have my own. My ear. Unfortunately for you, that's all I need. No videos to prove it.
It's not your job to convince me, yet to feel compelled to do so. For those capable of keeping score, I posted an opinion of which Meechy then clumsily rebutted, in an attempt to convince me, I'd guess. She could of left my first post in this thread alone. She, along with others including you, didn't and I responded in kind. And you people don't hear crap. Meechy proclaims this great wood tone hearing ability, then posts audio of her playing, saying, I don't know what guitars I used. She can't hear them? I'm shocked.
 
#47 ·
I'm kind of agnostic on the woods thing rather than atheist. However I definitely notice a difference on fretboards. I have switched pickups between my guitars because my favourite guitar doesn't have my favourite pickups and noticed one sounding more like the other. However, on my maple board I honestly think it sounds a little more glassy and springy. My old LP custom definitely had a richer deeper sound than any guitar I've ever played.

I am still agnostic though, I have no evidence and a feeling does not constitute evidence. I would be more in agreement with those that state that the wood makes a small contribution and that pickups play a much greater part in the sound.

Regarding Scott Grove, I watch his lessons. I still think the man is an opinionated tosser, he's right on some things, wrong on others. I get the impression he's a total ****e stirrer, he seems the type of character to make the balls for others to throw and I think if I spent a day in his company it would turn into a "how many of your fantastic collection of guitars do you think I can fit in your rectum..sideways" challenge. I still watch his lessons though, he has something to teach and I am willing to learn from anyone (I generally skip to the parts where his jaws stop and his fingers start).

Just for the record, I watched the Jem video, he doesn't refer to Steve Vai as an idiot, it has become more or less an urban legend here and elsewhere. He states that he doesn't know SV personally, he has friends who do, some think he's very smart others think the opposite. He doesn't deny that SV is a master at what he does, he instead points out he couldn't do what SV does and SV couldn't play what he plays.

I sometimes wonder why I watch the videos, I intensly dislike political/social opinion being segwayed into music. I find the man arrogant, rude, disrespectful in his rebuttal and not the type of person I would like to go for a beer with. However, he can teach and even though I hate most country, I like and respect some of the greats and feel their technique would be a nice addition to any player's armoury.

Then again in the words of Lyndon B Johnson "If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking."
 
#53 ·
When it's gone on too long, it's just time to end. Now would be a good one.

Personally, I can absolutely hear the difference in a maple board 777 and a 777VBK, same guitars but the rosewood, and maple always has snap and attack rosewood never does. I can definitely tell the difference in a JS10th luthite and a JS2 basswood [otherwise the same exact guitars], and the difference between a mahogany body JC and basswood 3000 series [same guitars but wood] is just night and day. I'm not sure why anybody couldn't tell the difference between them. I cannot tell the difference between batteries though so I know my senses aren't that well developed!
 
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