Re: Do you expect a guitar or bass to have a certain sound based on looks?
I think the SD Facebook page asked some variety of this based upon finish and color, but I thought I'd ask it based on shape.
For me, it's very true. I associate 24 fret shred sticks like Dinkys and RGs and pointy brands like ESPs and BC Richs with a bright, articulate, cutting sound.
Whenever I see an LP copy, meanwhile, I think of a meatier, throatier, warmer tone.
Strats seem to have the most tonal variation in my mind. Looks need not describe sound, but I often associate warmer colors and natural finishes with vintage tone, while black sounds, well, metal.
It's not just your imagination or your preconceptions, the body shape makes a subtle difference that, like a lot of other subtle difference, is hard to hear just by strumming a few chords, even in a direct A/B setting, but becomes evident after spending a lot of time playing the guitar, up and down the neck, with various pick attacks. I've heard a lot of people who don't know any better say that the wood doesn't matter, or that the body shape doesn't matter, that you can stick a couple humbuckers in any piece of wood and have a Les Paul tone, and that leads people to believe that the difference between a Tele and a shred stick is just a matter of looks, but in fact the shape of the body does make a big difference, here's proof
http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/guitars/coronet.html , you can see that the body flexes along different axis at different frequencies, so for example, you could play an "E", then cut off a chuck of your guitar, and the "E" might not sound any different, but then maybe the "A" will sound totally different because the piece you cut off doesn't matter so much when playing an "E", but was important to the vibration of the guitar when playing an "A". So all things being equal, playing two different electric guitar shapes will be similar in some ways and different in others, and it's almost impossible to predict what the differences will be until you've spent time with them.
I can think of a few reasons why shred sticks might associate more positively with high gain and not so much for clean tones. The most obvious reason is shred sticks usually have hotter pickups, but IMO, even a pickup swap doesn't greatly improve things. Other reasons; shredders usually like low action, when the action is low, the tone seems to suffer, presumably because the string is subtly crashing into the frets, not enough to sound like a sitar, but enough to dampen harmonics and overall amplitude. Shred sticks often have a Floyd Rose, which is never going to sound as natural as a hard tail. Finally, shred stick bodies are often smaller, lighter, thinner, etc. and IME the more you take away from the body, the more "dead spots" there are tone-wise, the more notes along the neck you fret and find don't quite produce the richness you expect from a whole Tele or a Les Paul. Those differences tend to be lessened under high gain, so the light weight, or radical looking guitar shape is then seen as a worthwhile trade off, where as it's seen as too great of a sacrifice if you intend to play clean or low gain.
