Okay... so if wood doesn't matter.... and scale length doesn't matter....

[ManWithGas]

Wood? Who needs damn wood!!

I've been told on good authority that Mozart & Beethoven recorded their best works on this abomination.

 

[Justincase]

Wood? Who needs damn wood!!

I've been told on good authority that Mozart & Beethoven recorded their best works on this abomination.

The 50lb monstrosity....hard pass.

 

[Desertdweller]

That epoxy/computer parts Fender is pretty rad looking, NGL. It definitely looks heavy though!

I'm going to absolutely add nothing to this conversation with my following points:

1. The densest, best sound guitars I own are mahogany guitars with passive pickups
2. Specifically, there's something about the Ibanez S series shape and the 2 piece mahogany body they use in these guitars that just sounds amazing.
3, Every time I've put a mahogany guitar with a Dimarzio Evo or Seymour Duncan JB pickup in it, it smokes the other guitars in the room for tone (in a metal context), and it hasn't just been my opinion, but the opinions of the recording engineer, other guitarist in the band, and bandmates. It was unanimous opinion, both times this happened.

Having said that, I love mahogany, basswood, and all types of interesting woods in guitars.

 

[andergtr]

pickups matter way more than body wood and neck or fingerboard wood.

i can take a cheap squier and a $3000 strat and put the same pickups in, and sonically they won't sound that different.

 

[Fireproof]

Any wood and scale length is fine as long as it’s mahogany with a maple top and 24.75 length. Lmao.

 

[Bruce]

“That was a great take and this song is definitely a hit, but lets take another pass with that alder body nitro finish guitar. Im not really hearing the guitar breathe…….” Said no producer ever. Vai could have played P&W on a kazoo and it would have still went platinum.


But ultimately of course tonewoods dont matter. All that matters is tonehands. A few of y’all claim superhuman extraphysical ability to alter tone to great degrees via your meat mittens, so why pay an up charge or even care? Just play guitars made out of plastic or plywood and keep makin that magic!

 

[Eagle]

One thing people are not talking about here it how the body interacts with the string vibration. Harmoniously or detrimentally? This is more important than the actual material. This is why thick plastic paint with added plasticisers is seriously detrimental to way the wood interacts. A thin brittle finish enhances the resonance, even better that no finish. Some hardware is detrimental too. Now take in to account the design and a lot is happening even before you get to wood.
Everything matters but yes some things way more than others. A world class guitar must get it ALL right though.

 

[Bruce]

There’s only one answer to this- buy more guitars. Just keep buying them until you have so many, you have one guitar perfect for each thing you want to do.

I know for myself (and I suspect the overwhelming majority of others) is that there is a huge amount of crossover between what we’re hearing and what we’re feeling, physically, as we play. Separating these things doesn’t seem to be an easy task and more often than not, confirm our biases. There are so many variables involved in this stuff that we have zero control over that while I have certain wood/spec preferences, they’re more about ensuring a guitar feels the way I want; I love ebony fingerboards and stainless steel frets. There’s not much out there that feels as smooth as that to me and I really enjoy it, but I always go back to “what difference is this going to make in a mix, live or recorded?” and 9x out of 10 it just doesn’t matter because that extra bit of “top end” you’re hearing and believing is the result of the stainless steel frets can be completely wiped away by adjusting the treble of the amp, slightly adjustment of a mic or EQ. Or you swear you can hear the difference all day long when playing in the room you always play in, then you move the same rig with the same settings to another room and all of a sudden it’s gone and you’re adjusting your amp to bring it back again so you can say “Ah yeah, there it is! I knew it!”

So I’m not really being sarcastic with my opening line, I started buying guitars for the tones they’re known for, which often confirm my biases over how nothing sounds as big as a Strat on the neck pickup with a clean tone than a Strat on the neck pickup, or that my Solar is the ultimate metal guitar because it’s a 10lb Explorer with pickups designed by a guy known for chugging, or my JEM is the ultimate guitar for lead playing because of how effortless it is to pull of technical sh*t on it and because the way the pickups are wound the leads just jump out of a mix with little effort, so on and so forth. All this sh*t can be done with other guitars, but they all confirm my little biases and idiosyncrasies that make me want to pick them up for specific purposes.

How’s that for nihilistic consumerism? Nothing f*cking matters, buy it all.

Im kinda with ya 100% on this one. If I feel like taking the semi hollow body out the the hairband gig, why not? What’s the difference in the end? No one is going to say my band sucks because I’m not playing a pointy headstock Floyd rose guitar. Buy all the guitars. Enjoy your money and spend it on the things you like. So long as your bills are paid and you’re not one of those 430 credit score people, knock yourself out! I have more guitars than I can play and I’ll probably buy the next one that comes my way just the same. As a matter of fact that new Jackson Soloist isnt going back, so I guess I just did !

 

[Bruce]

One thing people are not talking about here it how the body interacts with the string vibration. Harmoniously or detrimentally? This is more important than the actual material. This is why thick plastic paint with added plasticisers is seriously detrimental to way the wood interacts. A thin brittle finish enhances the resonance, even better that no finish. Some hardware is detrimental too. Now take in to account the design and a lot is happening even before you get to wood.
Everything matters but yes some things way more than others. A world class guitar must get it ALL right though.

Yes I suppose all things do matter. In the order of things going thru my head 5 minutes before the first note of the night:

1. Fuck, I should probably cut back on the beer these pants gettin a lil tight
2. Fuck, I hope that patch cable holds out for the night, Amazon was late.
3. Shit, I need another beer
4……..
5……..
11,365 You know, if this guitar had a little less plasticiser in the finish, I just may get .00237 seconds more sustain out of my high E and an immeasurable amount of harmonic content more.

11,366 damnit, I missed the downbeat.

 

[Fireproof]

Im kinda with ya 100% on this one. If I feel like taking the semi hollow body out the the hairband gig, why not? What’s the difference in the end? No one is going to say my band sucks because I’m not playing a pointy headstock Floyd rose guitar. Buy all the guitars. Enjoy your money and spend it on the things you like. So long as your bills are paid and you’re not one of those 430 credit score people, knock yourself out! I have more guitars than I can play and I’ll probably buy the next one that comes my way just the same. As a matter of fact that new Jackson Soloist isnt going back, so I guess I just did !

Nope. Don’t you know if you pull out your semi hollow body you’ll automatically start playing jazz-like licks!?

 

[Bruce]

Nope. Don’t you know if you pull out your semi hollow body you’ll automatically start playing jazz-like licks!?

Got a D’Angelico EX SS that kicks ass better than it should on rock stuff.

 

[Eagle]

Yes I suppose all things do matter. In the order of things going thru my head 5 minutes before the first note of the night:

1. f**k, I should probably cut back on the beer these pants gettin a lil tight
2. f**k, I hope that patch cable holds out for the night, Amazon was late.
3. s**t, I need another beer
4……..
5……..
11,365 You know, if this guitar had a little less plasticiser in the finish, I just may get .00237 seconds more sustain out of my high E and an immeasurable amount of harmonic content more.

11,366 damnit, I missed the downbeat.

I get it but this has way more of an effect than your thinking here. It’s actually one of the biggest differences between a custom shop relic and a Mexican player strat. The MIM is dead on arrival.

 

[EOengineer]

While I’m less confident of the tonal impacts of different body woods, finishes, etc…I do sometimes feel (anecdotally) that scale length makes significant contributions both to how the guitar feels to play as well as how it sounds. Maybe there is something to the string tension argument though, not sure.

I play pretty much exclusively Teles and Les Pauls. My teles are set up with 9s, Les Pauls use 10s or even 11s in some cases. Not sure why I do this, but it is probably to try to normalize string tension when moving between guitars. In either event, i don’t get the sense that the strings are making one guitar SOUND more like the other. Of course, there are other variables there too though.

Others who are suggesting that everything matters might be more my speed. That’s not to say that every part of a guitar makes a noticeable tonal contribution, but that things add up ACROSS each instrument to make them unique, and it’s really hard to point to individual elements of a guitars construction and say “this is where that unobtanium sonic element is coming from” or whatever it is.

 

[Eagle]

While I’m less confident of the tonal impacts of different body woods, finishes, etc…I do sometimes feel (anecdotally) that scale length makes significant contributions both to how the guitar feels to play as well as how it sounds. Maybe there is something to the string tension argument though, not sure.

I play pretty much exclusively Teles and Les Pauls. My teles are set up with 9s, Les Pauls use 10s or even 11s in some cases. Not sure why I do this, but it is probably to try to normalize string tension when moving between guitars. In either event, i don’t get the sense that the strings are making one guitar SOUND more like the other. Of course, there are other variables there too though.

Others who are suggesting that everything matters might be more my speed. That’s not to say that every part of a guitar makes a noticeable tonal contribution, but that things add up ACROSS each instrument to make them unique, and it’s really hard to point to individual elements of a guitars construction and say “this is where that unobtanium sonic element is coming from” or whatever it is.

Everything matters. Paint and wood matter hugely but paint for how thin and hard it is and wood for is it up to the mechanical job and does it resonate in a productive manner.
I have never found an awesome electric guitar that didn’t have a awesome tone unplugged acoustically.

 

[GuitarBilly]

OF COURSE tonewood matters . I sent a message to George Lynch about tonewood and he responded right back, I was shocked ., He went into depth about what his guitars are made of and what sound the different body and neck woods would produce . Great guy

Ask John Suhr or Tom Anderson if tonewood matters .


https://acoustics.ippt.pan.pl/index.php/aa/article/view/2949/pdf_582

Yeah exactly. Ask people that actually make great instruments and they will say it matters.
It's only internet know-it-alls that say it doesn't.

 

[la szum]

Tonal Nihilism: Nothing matters.

 

[JT]

It All Matters

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I would look at the location of the bridge PU, compared to other guitars as one possible reason.

this genuinely matters so much more than it ever gets mentioned.

measure where a bridge pickup is on an explorer. Compare that to a Les Paul, and an SG. Compare that to PRS, Ibanez etc.

Pretty obvious that the tone will be different based on where the pickup is positioned relative to the bridge. Definitely worth choosing your pickup with this distance in mind - brighter/thinner pickups if it’s far from the bridge, softer/darker pickups if it’s close.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Yeah, bridge PU placement is something incredibly important. In that position, just half a centimeter makes a whole lot of a difference. Which is why I abused an old pickguard for experimentation decades ago, extended the pickup screw holes in a way they rather became slots, allowing me to move the pickup back and forth at least a little bit. Once I'm about to finalize my Anderson (which is like a never finished construction site), I will do the same (the old pickguard is completely messed up anyway) and fool around a lot with moving pickups (well, nothing too critical for the neck, I'm fine with that one since years already) before cutting the final pickguard.

 

[TSJMajesty]

brighter/thinner pickups if it’s far from the bridge, softer/darker pickups if it’s close.

I think you got that backwards- the closer it is to the bridge, the thinner/brighter it will be.