So I'm trading an iPod that I never use for a Harmony (est 1982) - it's not the America made in Chicago Harmony, a Yamaha amp, and gig bag. I think you can get the guitar for $99 new.
Now I really can't find anything on these things, except that they are made of plywood. How does wood come into play in an electric guitar? Since there are electronics, do they play less a factor?
Here's a demo of it, I'll be getting a Black one:
In Space, no one can hear me sing!
In an acoustic guitar, wood - and more specifically, the wood used for the top - plays the biggest role in tone. In a solid body electric, the major factor is the electronics, so yeah - it's less of a factor.
Electric guitars generate sound through the electricity fed into your amp. A pickup converts the string vibration into an electric analog - in a perfect world, every nuance of the string vibration is duplicated in the voltage leaving the pickup. Since we don't live in a perfect world, how well the pickups do their job of converting vibration into voltage is the single biggest factor of tone.
Wood in an electric guitar still plays a part, though. What gives a sound its "tone" is the distribution of overtones in the string vibration, and since the wood serves as the anchor for the ends of the string, it can dampen specific frequencies, and might enhance others. It'll do this in any guitar. solid body or not.
From a design standpoint, most luthiers look for stiffness in the wood. The less the wood moves in response to a vibrating string, the longer the energy stays in the string, and the longer the sustain will be. And the less the wood moves, the less the wood will affect the overtone distribution, and the string vibration will be closer to what an "ideal string" would do. ("Ideal string" is a theoretical idea - what would a string do if it was made of perfect material, and vibrating all by itself with no outside factors at all?)
But IMO, pure sounds and ideal strings may be a design goal, but pure sine waves aren't particularly musical. And although our understanding of how wood affects tone in solid bodies is improving, it's still pretty fuzzy. What makes a guitar sound good is a mix of so many factors, building a good guitar is still a bit of a black art. When people say one material is "better" than another, they're actually just describing what they've experienced as good tone (which might be very different from your idea of good tone) and attributing that tone to one factor among hundreds. Generalities like "mahogany gives better sustain" are just that - generalities... true most of the time, with most pieces of mahogany, and assuming all other factors are the same (thickness, electronics, strings, etc). Since wood is a natural material, no two pieces will behave exactly the same way, and two guitars made from the same wood will still have different tone.
My advice would be to try to play it before you make the deal. I've heard some pretty decent guitars made from cheap stuff, and some pretty bad ones with top-of-the-line materials.
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
thanks for the explanation that helped a lot after closer inspection after I made the deal the guitar is junk and will be used for parts or firewood unless I can get about 20 bucks out of it.
In Space, no one can hear me sing!
thanks for the explanation that helped a lot after closer inspection after I made the deal the guitar is junk and will be used for parts or firewood unless I can get about 20 bucks out of it.
What's junky about it? Neck? Frets? tuners? pickups? bridge?
Or all of the above :lol:
I wrapped a newspaper ’round my head
So I looked like I was deep
thanks for the explanation that helped a lot after closer inspection after I made the deal the guitar is junk and will be used for parts or firewood unless I can get about 20 bucks out of it.
What's junky about it? Neck? Frets? tuners? pickups? bridge?
Or all of the above :lol:
YES LOL.
In Space, no one can hear me sing!
