Re: Woodgrain patterns... better tone?
I found this on an SD blog. It's a comment on an article about tone woods. Very eye opening. The link to the article is
this but read this comment first:
"Wood
is the majority of tone on a electric guitar or any guitar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
It's a bias or a placebo. A non subjective test must be made to make sure.
Try to make a blind test and I am not certain, but pretty sure you will screw up badly.
I am really waiting till someone makes a real lab test, comparing tones blindly with sound software or something... I really want this myth to be confirmed or denied, because I really want to know for sure.
Logic goes:
Acoustically - Yes, everything on the guitar affects the tone, because the tone comes from strings resonating the wood, and the vibrating wood (The whole guitar actually) is causing the amplified sound.
But when it comes to the Electric guitar signal to the amp, the wood is bypased. The sound comes from the direct vibration of the strings, picked up by magnetic pickups. They do not pick up wood vibration, the vibration of the wood is not amplified. It may or may not be that the wood colors the vibration of the strings, but the effect is so small it's insignificant.
If the body material did a difference, the tone of the guitar would significantly change if you pressed the guitar against a wall, or put the guitar on the floor, because that's like an extention of the body. But it doesn't. Acoustically - Yes, out of pickups - not at all.
Not sure about sustain, but it's said that it's dependant on the materials of bridge and nut, and the magnetic field strength of the pickups.
Electric guitars have been made out of plastics, stone, plywood etc and that didn't stop them from sounding great. Try that on an acoustic and you'll have some weird sounding stuff.
Basically, the tone of the electric guitar is dependant on the pickups, pickup position, the bridge and the nut, the material that strums, strumming technique, The wiring, the main output wire, and the amp, the cabinet, and the room.
