How Much Does Wood Efect Tone On A Solid Body

[mikhailgtrski]

+2

90% of your sound is in your hat fingers.

That being said, if the wood doesn't make any difference, why aren't we all playing plexiglas or metallic guitars?

Of course, too much gain on your amp will make pretty much anything you plug into it sound the same.

[Mickguard]

I agree with drak. Doesn't anyone else think that trying to quantify something subjective, like "good tone," just sucks all of the fun out of guitar building?

The fun of building guitars, for me at least, comes from trying out things you'd never be able to buy off a rack in the store.

And that includes funky wood choices, etc.

The whole idea that I can make an entire guitar from start to finish --and I know I can now, even if I still have a lot of mistakes to make along the way -- has me planning three, four guitars in advance already.

Of course, I love to cook (referring to the 'design' thread), and I'm also interested in new ingredients.

[Guitarfrenzy]

^^^^ fantastic start. Now add about $10,000, a couple mad scientists, and a class room full of sound engineers, a couple hundred pieces of wood, various glues, and a bunch of different blocks of metal...

Exactly. It would be a major undertaking, and very expensive, plus it probably wouldn't help you build any better guitars after you knew an answer... lol

Stevie Ray didn't need no steenkin' room full 'o space scientists to tell him what sounded good.

...All he needed was the right hat.

.. and a tube screamer!!!

....

That being said, if the wood doesn't make any difference, why aren't we all playing plexiglas or metallic guitars?

Of course, too much gain on your amp will make pretty much anything you plug into it sound the same.

There are pefectly good guitars made out of alternative materials. How good they sound is up to each individual though. One thing to know is that a guitar string can be tuned so that the fundamental pitch is the same, regardless of what material is used to build the guitar. In other words, no matter what material the guitar is made up of, it can still be tuned up and played like any other guitar made of wood. The thing that it will change is the timbre of the guitar tone. Basically, the harmonic content of the pitch will change in relation to what the guitar is made of. Also, timbre is determined by the attack and decay of the pitch, which is also related to the neck and guitar body material. What makes a piano playing an A(440Hz) note compared to the guitar playing the same exact pitch? Timbre. That's also what makes each guitar have slightly different sounds. Now, the wood does help determine the sound by some degree, but after the signal is transferred from the pickups, the electronics can change the sound also. Then, when you plug the guitar into effect pedals, amps, etc... That changes the sound even again. So really there is a lot of varibles, way more than you probably would think about, and they all determine the tone of your guitar. Maybe you should have been more specific with the question, like: "How Much Does Wood Effect Tone On A Solid Bodies Pickups?"

The fun of building guitars, for me at least, comes from trying out things you'd never be able to buy off a rack in the store.

And that includes funky wood choices, etc.

The whole idea that I can make an entire guitar from start to finish --and I know I can now, even if I still have a lot of mistakes to make along the way -- has me planning three, four guitars in advance already.

Of course, I love to cook (referring to the 'design' thread), and I'm also interested in new ingredients.

I agree... That's how things got where it is nowdays, from years and years of guitar builders experimenting with different things, until you have pretty much standard tonewoods. That's not to say that everything has been done before, because it hasn't, there is plenty of room for new ideas in the guitar building world.. You can't limit yourself to that way of thinking anyway.