We Made An Acoustic Guitar With No Tonebars.. Can You Hear The Difference?!

"We wondered about the effect tone-bars have on the guitar...so we built one of our guitars without tone-bars..." Wow. Thanks for the time and commitment required to respond to the question. I don't have the best ears on the planet, but even I can clearly hear the sonic difference.

Thanks to YOU both and Alvarez for building a special guitar to answer a question we all have asked!

Before Martin went to a preponderantly forwarded-shifted X-Brace in their newest acoustic lineup, the D-41 had a rear-shifted X-Brace. The soundboard (top) vibrated less, but the guitar had a "punchy" sound (you could feel the punch from the bass strings). This experiment showed off these general principles, only with the tone bars instead of the X-Brace. Thank you for doing this. Quite the demonstration.

One of the best Alvarez vids yet, great experiment!

Another excellent and informative video. Makes me want my next Alvarez guitar even more (already selected one). By the way, great and speedy response by the Alvarez helpdesk. Thanks!

Wow I wasn't expecting the difference to be that extreme 😮 super interesting!

These are the things I love about your channel. All the crazy questions and ideas we have and the ability to make them a reality.

Thank you for the effort and the education. You’re contributing to this community’s understanding and appreciation for wood, craftsmanship and music.

That's a great video and experiment, thank you gentlemen. No other manufacturer makes such interesting acoustic blogs, and now that you're done with basic topics, new videos are getting more and more interesting. Please keep up the great work, also looking forward to Masterworks jumbo! :)

I am a 40 year Alvarez fan. I bought my first 5051 in 1983 (1982 60th Anniversary edition. I also own a 1983 5051). I have a 1973 5046 w/original pickup and pots. One of these days I will have a Yairi but I have always loved the Artist Series going way back becasue Alvarez delivered a high quality affordable product that competes well against much more expensive guitars. I would put my 5051s against just about any vintage flatpicking guitar. They just push air with a creamy fat and lush mellow tone. My favorite guitar company buck for buck.

Always a treat to have new videos from you. Very informative as usual. Thanks so much for your commitment to making wonderful sounding guitars and educating us along the way!

the intro is dreamy sounds beautiful

This is great stuff. This has become my favorite guitar channel. What an amazing difference in sound/resonance with and without tone bars. For me, the one without tone bars doesn't sound very good at all. It's like a sailboat without a rudder (or maybe without a centerboard). Of course, the other one sounds great.

Wow. I had no idea that the bracing modifies the speed of sound across the top to prevent (or cause) out of phase responses from different sections. Thanks, you guys are great!

Great discussion! Thank you.

Awesome! Thanks dudes

To be able to say if it sounds better or worse, you need to put it into context. If you use a guitar by itself, just guitar & vocals, then yes, you want a good balance between high and low end. However, if you use it in a mix with other guitars and a bass and drums, most of the time, you will cut some of the low end (called "doing a high-pass") so that you hear the strumming of the strings and you let the other instruments handle the actual notes and let the bass guitar handle the low end. In this case, having a guitar like this saves you some EQ work.

Friggin’ brilliant video

The one with the tone bars has what I would call a rounder or a fuller sound. The one without tone bars has a thinner sound. I would think without the tone bars the guitar top would be more susceptible to cracking.

I thought you were talking about the little metal bars that they sell on Ebay for 10 bucks- glad you clarified what you were talking about- so now go get one of those 10 bars and compare what it does to the low end of your guitar.. no comparison whatsoever tonebar wins hands down. And throw your bridge pins away forever.