00:00.00 archpodnet Hello and welcome back to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 109 and we were talking about tone wood and does it affect your electric guitar and the answer is no so how does this relate to archeology at all now it. It don't it doesn't relate to archeology much at all, but it does relate to pseudo archeology and my meaning here is isn't it. Interesting. How a false belief can become insidious and be can become. Part of the overall narrative right? just by being repeated again and again and again in this play it case in this case ever since the 1950 s and when we look at guitars. You know there, there's something that's slightly magical about playing a guitar. Well you know we we start thinking of our guitar heroes and how great they are and it almost seems beyond human right? It seems mystical. It seems like they have a skill set that we could never attain. It seems like they're just naturals right? They just have it. You don't have it but they have it and when you have something that has that world of kind of hopes and dreams and beliefs. You can see how it can. 01:36.33 archpodnet Fade into pseudoscience so quickly same with archeology right? We deal with places like the pyramids of Giza or the sphinx or the ancient maya pyramids right? All this amazing stuff that. Is so cool and interesting and we all like it just we like electric guitars too and we like the music they produce but it goes into that world of sort of magical thinking that it just has it's something beyond us. It's something that maybe we could never quite know. And we are more open I think to these foolish beliefs because we lose ourselves in it because we want to believe and we got to get back down to the facts and in archeology. It can be hard to get back to the facts. At least for the general public when you have kind of the Graham Hancocks of the world and this kind of stuff where they get big shows and they get blasted to the public all the time it makes saying the facts the scientific facts it makes it very difficult and it puts the general public against you funnily enough. Same in the electric guitar world. You have famous guitar players who swear by the wood that their guitar is made out of you have famous manufacturers who swear by the woods of their guitars you have ah, there's a million examples. But. 03:08.70 archpodnet Somebody like Paul Reid Smith who who makes prs guitars that's his brand he will go to town about how important the tone wood is and it's just not. But so many people have have bought into this belief system and when you have ah big manufacturers. Famous players. You have professional websites all talking about how important what your guitar is made out of is it makes voices like mine sound sort of cruel and. And wrong and how dare you and I'm telling you guys. What's so funny in the electric guitar world people get bent out of shape about the stupid tone what debate I mean good god um, stop worrying about your guitars would and maybe go practice once or twice. Right? same in the archeology world stop worrying about this stupid pseudoscience crap and maybe like get some data you you see how these very different worlds can have similar problems now in both of these worlds. Do want evidence right? and we don't want a cherry pick. We want good solid evidence now in the guitar world. There have been quite a few scientific experiments done on does the wood guitars made out of effect. Its overall sound. 04:44.63 archpodnet Will put one or 2 links at the bottom of this podcast so you guys can check out 1 or 2 of these but 1 of my favorite ones this guy and it's pretty recent too. He um has a guitar a telecaster style guitar and he plays it. Ah, and then he talks and then he plays another telecaster guitar and they sound very different right? and and so at first sight you would think oh my god the tone woods they're so different and he talks about oh this this guitar is ash and this is a basswood or whatever. But then as he goes through it. He starts to change things out right? He'd change out. The pickups and he puts the same pickups in both guitars then he strums them and you're like ooh that sounds a lot closer and then he does things like he makes sure the the pickup heights are the same again the distance between the pickups and the strings and basically what he does is he gets. Strings the bridge the nut and the pickups the same on both guitars now. The woods are different but then he records them you guys it sounds exactly the same and then he does one more which I love he makes what he calls an air guitar. Where he just takes like 2 benches and he stretches some strings across from 1 bench to the other he puts the bridge on one side the nut on the other he sticks the pickups in on one side in the correct spot the correct distance from the bridge the correct distance from the strings. 06:19.12 archpodnet But they're basically just floating there. There's no wood at all. He strums it and it sounds exactly the same I mean you guys have probably heard me talk about an archeology before how I love experimental archeology because it just cuts out the middleman. It just cuts out the Bs magical thinking and I find that that Youtube show really does a great job of it. There are others. There are many others on the. To show the fallacies of the guitar tone would debate but just like in archeology the tone would people never stop. It's just like my experiences in pseudo archeology like on my Youtube channel when people complain and complain and complain and tell me what a. Terrible loser I am for making fun of Graham Hancock they never listen to overwhelming facts. They just don't and hey guitars the same. They never listen and they go back to like maybe I'll have a. Basswood body with a maple cap on top. Ah again, go practice in archeology. It's of course in the data right? And that data we collect through days months. 07:48.72 archpodnet Years of hard work and those of you out there who are archeologists you know what? I mean you been there, you done the hard work and then you make conclusions based on your hard work in the guitar world. It's in your fingers which have been made strong and dexterous. And in tempo through days months and years of practice. It Ai n't the wood in both cases a lack of hard work and discipline makes you a bit of a fraud. But now excuse me while I go listen to the dark tones of my mahogany guitar I'll see you guys next time.