Do types of wood really affect an ELECTRIC guitar's tone?

i just don't see how an electric guitar would be affected that much by the wood.

Hi,

Fascinating subject and some great answers so far. :)

My own feeling is that one of the most important elements in the whole sound chain is the ear of the listener. To most casual listeners a piece of distortion rich rock-n-roll is unlikely to sound any different no matter what the woods and other components are.

When I started out I couldn't tell the difference between trying out a cheap electric guitar in a shop and a good one. I could pick the difference between dirty and clean amp sounds, but not much else. All that slowly changed as I became a better player. But I'm still probably well short of having the experience or "ear" to be able to pick the differences that Gnease and CitizenNoir can.

Lots of things have an effect on tone and sound. I believe that the amount of skill and experience in the player's fingers are the most important. The way the amp is set up probably comes next. Then the style and quality of the pickup and the general construction of the guitar. And I'd definitely include the fine detail such as the difference between woods as part of the mix. But as most makers favour woods with somewhat similar properties I think that you do need a reasonably good ear to pick the differences made by wood alone if all other things on the instrument were equal. Others would disgree about the order of importance of course. :twisted:

And just out of interest, people do experiment with using all sorts of materials for solid bodied guitars, including one guy who custom makes them from solid aluminium. :)

Cheers,

Chris

You can throw me in the camp of... "Electric guitars have so much OTHER stuff that affects the tone of a guitar that the type of wood is largely irrelevant."

I'll agree that unplugged there is probably an influence, but are you suggesting that the type of wood REALLY affects the sound of an electric guitar when you factor in all the following:

- string type and gauge
- pickup type, quality, and wiring
- wiring of the control pots
- type of cable running from the guitar to the amp
- affects in between the guitar and amp
- the amp itself
- the types of speakers in the amp
- the elctronics in the amp
- the electrical outlet the amp is plugged into (interference, etc)
- the bridge type used on the guitar
- the specific setup of the guitar(s) in question

Give me three or four of the above as a greater influence on the sound of an electric guitar over the specific type of wood used in the construction of the guitar.

As an example... I plugged in an Epiphone SG and a Gibson SG at at music store about 4 years ago. THe two guitars were pretty similar. Same scale, same wood (both were supposed to be mahogany)... they sounded WORLDS APART on the same amp with the same settings. WORLDS APART. The Gibson SG sustained for probably a good 10 - 12 seconds. The Epiphone for about 5 - 6 seconds. The actual sound produced by each was not even close either... the Epiphone was muddy and thick. The Gibson was bright and attacking. Not that the Epi sounded bad - just VERY VERY different.

Anyway... this is just a small sample from my life, but I think you can make any electric guitar sound like any other electric guitar. Its all electronics, the wood and finish are really just footnotes.

Well,
I guess what I'm seeing in regard to 'TONE' is something akin to the thread discussion on -
Do players 'hear' songs differently????

And most players (me included) usually hear the guitar part in a given song.
Although, I also hear production techniques and other things.
Basically, we hear the individual parts of a song, while non-players hear the whole song.

Translate that macro version into a micro version -
What do you hear with JUST the guitar????

Some people only hear the electronic sounds (PUPS and Amp/effects etc....)
While still yet, there are people who CAN hear even more than that. (The WOOD)

I happen to be one of those people.

And so agreed that a great deal of the 'sound' that is found pleasing is from the 'way' a player plays.
To say that his equipment doesn't matter much in the scheme of things .....

Would David Pearson (The Greatest NASCAR driver ever :D ) have been able to beat Richard Petty with old tires????
Or a slack crew????

No - and this is why professional guitarists (Or even stars :P ) use top of the line equipment.

This is also why top of the line guitars have GOOD SOLID WOOD for bodys.

Don't get me wrong... If you can't hear the difference in woods, that's okay with me.
If getting a good 'electronic' tone does it for you - great.

It's well know that I'm a Fender guy. More than that... a Strat guy.
I have said in other posts that an overdriven Strat STILL has another woody, dry 'version' of what you play underneath it.
I CAN HEAR that.
That's one of the reasons that I like Strats so much - their complexity; their character.

It took me A LOT of getting used to the ash body on my Strat.
It IS the ash that makes it sound so broken up. Like the amp speaker is slightly blown.
That's NOT my imagination. I've heard it on recordings with other KNOWN ash bodied Strats.
Now - I can't live without that sound.

The rosewood/ash combo IS what makes the notes 'lag' on my Strat.
It's not some wonderful way that I play - no magic in my fingers.
It happens on any amp I plug it into.
And it's not the PUPS.
The notes Bloom and decay SOOOO SWEETLY because of the WOOD.
And there is NO electronic way to simulate that.

I've been turned on to these woody sounds.
So now there is NO going back for me.
It's sorta like those visual effects where what you see at first is a bunch of blocks printed on a piece of paper....
When all the time it was the 'space' that said something....
And once you see it - you'll always see it.
That's how it is with me and wood tone on solid body electrics.

To me... the wood is the most important part of the sound.
The electronics are important as well.
I love well made pups and high end tube amps and all that.... my snobbery isn't limited to just guitar wood :D
It's all just gingerbread to me though.

So - don't hate me because I can hear all that when it comes to the wood :wink:
It is there - you just have to listen to the 'spaces' to find out. :D

Ken

You can throw me in the camp of... "Electric guitars have so much OTHER stuff that affects the tone of a guitar that the type of wood is largely irrelevant."

I'll agree that unplugged there is probably an influence, but are you suggesting that the type of wood REALLY affects the sound of an electric guitar when you factor in all the following:

- string type and gauge
- pickup type, quality, and wiring
- wiring of the control pots
- type of cable running from the guitar to the amp
- affects in between the guitar and amp
- the amp itself
- the types of speakers in the amp
- the elctronics in the amp
- the electrical outlet the amp is plugged into (interference, etc)
- the bridge type used on the guitar
- the specific setup of the guitar(s) in question

Give me three or four of the above as a greater influence on the sound of an electric guitar over the specific type of wood used in the construction of the guitar.

As an example... I plugged in an Epiphone SG and a Gibson SG at at music store about 4 years ago. THe two guitars were pretty similar. Same scale, same wood (both were supposed to be mahogany)... they sounded WORLDS APART on the same amp with the same settings. WORLDS APART. The Gibson SG sustained for probably a good 10 - 12 seconds. The Epiphone for about 5 - 6 seconds. The actual sound produced by each was not even close either... the Epiphone was muddy and thick. The Gibson was bright and attacking. Not that the Epi sounded bad - just VERY VERY different.

Anyway... this is just a small sample from my life, but I think you can make any electric guitar sound like any other electric guitar. Its all electronics, the wood and finish are really just footnotes.

Are you familiar with the concept of GIGO = garbage in, garbage out? It applies here. Unless one starts with a reasonably good signal (vibration sustained by the body components and strings) one isn't going to have much to work with down stream in a non-feedback system (99.9% of electric guitars, no Fernandes Sustainers and the like). Both the type of material and its configuration (that's wood type -- even specific piece -- and the shape and construction -- hollow, semi, sold, flat, arch, bolt-on-, thru body-, set-neck ..., plus hardware and its assembly) contribute significantly to the initial (acoustic) signal's ADSR and harmonic balance. One can argue that electronic EQ and gain and other processing can make up for a lot of garbage in, but that's when one begins to run into noise and hum and other issues with our beloved, but rather crude magnetic pup technology and a rapidly decaying signal level (poor acoustic sustain). It's a basic premise of communications theory that the signal-to-noise going into a processing system (pups, pots, cables, FX, amp ...) cannot get better without some bandwidth limiting or non-linear signal processing or knowing the exact time/freq characteristics of the noise and cancelling. Moreover, the last is not something that is possible for thermal noise (hiss), which is why we resort to lowpass filtering and/or gating, compression and expanding, of which the last three drastically alter the signal in non-linear fashions. For the better? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Better to start with a good signal and have to process lightly to get the desired result, because every processing step degrades the signal in some dimension.

Let's bound the discussion in reasonable terms: fairly clean playing. Many of us play fairly clean to only moderately distorted. In this case, the original timbre of the body (all of it!) and strings is certainly noticeable. Sure the pups color this -- especially intrinsically lower bandwidth 'buckers as Ken noted. But many of us are SC lovers for the very reason that they have a wider bandwidth that allows the acoustic nature of the instrument, as well as our personal playing nuances to be better heard. Those of us who do this are definitely choosing our electrics for their acoustic qualities as well as electric. You think wood is a minor factor? Why do you think the same woods keep appearing in the best sounding LPs, Teles, Strats, SGs ... e.g., mahoganies, maples, ash, alder, basswood. Modern manufacturers can work almost any wood. So then why are the best never oak (lots of that; some is pretty), poplar (only cheaper models), seldom walnut (hint -- tap on a chuck of it). There really aren't that many 'tonewoods' that get used in the better solid bodies, because despite there being many, many woods, only a few within a reasonable price range (forget $$$$ exotics), actually sound good in the end product.

What do you think is determining the difference in sustain between the Epi and Gibby SGs you compared? Some of it could be the pups, but listen acoustically, and I bet you still hear a difference in sustain and clarity. And most of that is probably not magnetic due to field loading, which will be there acoustically as well. It is probably the woods and the assembly of those woods and hardware. You might argue the hardware quality and density is key as well. Why would that be any more key than the density and acoustic properties of the wood? It all works as one system. Build a guitar of concrete and another of mahogany -- same dimensions and hardware. Think they will sound the same acoustically or electrically? I don't -- and I'm sure of it.

I've owned a lot of guitars of a lot of different designs from solid to semi to hollow, and of various woods and non-woods. One thing they have in common. Those that sound bad acoustically, never sound good amplified -- distorted or not. They don't get kept in my collection. Those that sound really good electrically, also happen to have a very good acoustic nature.

Gnease, looks like a struck a chord there (no pun intended).

Yes, you are making my point. It is the sum of the parts that makes a guitar. In my opinion people focus too much on the woods used in the construction and not enough about the rest of the guitar. I truly believe that once it is a ll said and done, the electric signal can be distorted and compressed and miss-matched enough to make the "tonewood" irrelevent.

Perhaps to people who are extremely "tuned in" to the sound of a guitar there may be some truth the tonewood argument, but for the majority of people it just doesn't make ENOUGH of a difference.

A similar example from my past (yes, I'm a story teller)... A friend of mine was a total audiophile - he had MacIntosh dual-block pre-amps and Parasound this and Adcom that and $500 1-meter cable. His overall investment was well above $20,000 for a normal stereo system. While it sounded AMAZING, I easily could have put together a similar sounding setup for a quarter the price. He argued that there would be subtle sonic differences. I agreed - but for $15,000 more? Who cares?

I think the same is true of this argument. Yes, if you placed pickups and wire in a block of concrete it would sound different that if there were in the body of a PRS hollow-body. But, so what? Does the PRS hollow-body sound BETTER? I don't know, isn't that a meaure of individual taste?

My point is I've heard plywood guitars with upgraded electronics and a proper setup sound amazing and I've heard solid mahogany Les Pauls sound boring and muddy.

I mean think about it... the Foo Fighter's used those acyrlic guitars on their latest album, did anyone notice?

Nothing compares to the classic Telecaster twang and spank on ... Led Zep's first album.

And just think how much better John Petrucci would sound if he didn't use those el-cheapo basswood guitars. Painted and coated in poly, even! The fool!

The Foo Fighters....
You're absolutly right - I didn't notice that they made another album. LOL J/K

Well, to some extent... yes you are correct.
You can have a fine piece of equipment and destroy the tonal characteristics of it by overproccessing the signal.

I have made it pretty well known that I use no pedals.
I take my wonderfully acoustically brilliant Strat and (using a quality cord) plug it into an all tube amp. That's it.

Other guitarists are always quipping (enviously) about my fantastic tone.

Well - lets take a look shall we....?

I have a middle of the road 88 MIA STANDARD Strat plugged into a small point to point handwired all tube amp (a $100
early 60's Harmony H303a 5 watt w/original 6 " Jensen loudspeaker) and an orange cloth covered cord connecting them.

They have a MIM Strat plugged into a TON of pedals going into some pretty pricey tube amps.

They have ALL of these options.... knobs to turn up the giggy on their pedals and their amps.

I have a volume/on-off switch on my amp.

Still, I have better tone.

I don't know anyone that has a MIA Fender.
Seems everyone has a MIM.

They all seem KINDA happy about 'em.
They still whine about not being able to get the tone they want though.

Then I show up - and man you should see the look on their faces when we play.
Full of disdain.

I don't know ANY of them that don't have a HUGE smile on their face when I offer them to play one of my Strats.
They JUMP at it.
They play much better with MY guitars than with their own.
They cream about the great tone they are now getting from 'Their' equipment.

Do they realize that it is the Guitar that is getting this great tone....?
Are they willing to abandon their $500 MIMs to go get a $1000 MIA (or even a $750 used one)????
NO WAY!!!!

They aren't going to spend that much on a single guitar.
Instead - they'd rather buy a cheap guitar and spend $1000 on pedals and $2500 on an amp and WHINE like little girls
that they can't get good tone.
And then POUT when I play with them because I can.

What's the moral here????

A good guitar thru a well built inexpensive amp sounds better than a cheap guitar thru top quality electronic equipment.
And also that there is NO electronic substitute for the TONE that the wood gets.

Now - I'm not saying that you need to buy the most expensive guitar in the world.
I am totally against that.
I don't care for cheap guitars, nor do I care for DELUXE guitars that have way too many tone sucking wastes of time
built into them.

Yes, all of us TONE FREAKS agree that electronics and such are important.
We are certainly not going to go thru all the trouble of getting a good sounding body/neck combo just to run it through
a bunch of junk.

I think it is you that don't believe that the wood makes a HUGE difference that need to listen more intently.

Now when I was starting out at 18, I just wanted gobs of distortion and feedback.
The better I got at playing, the cleaner my sound got.
Why - because when you start out, you don't quite have the ear for tone yet.
Also, the better you play, the less you can do with loud heavy distortion.

Maybe the genre of music counts - if it's the Foo Fighters.... who cares about tone.
I LOVE the Sex Pistols. (an anomoly for me) They are loud and toneless.
I still love 'em.
Do I play that way????
NO WAY.
If I did, would I need my 71 Strat with all it's beautiful nuances????
Wouldn't matter.

The fact is that tonewood does count for something.
If you play the kind of music that you can actually hear it in - you WILL search out the better sounding guitars.
If you don't -
Hey, Hot Humbuckers in a stringed slab of concrete don't sound too bad.... Does it????

Ken

Wow, this is a great discussion, don't know that I can add much.

I do have two very similar guitars, a Squier Standard Telecaster and Fender American Telecaster. There is surprisingly little difference in construction. The Fender's tuners, bridge/saddles, and electronics are of a little higher quality, or at least more durable feeling to the touch. But they are not that much better.

The biggest difference is the woods, the Squier is Agathis, the Fender is Alder, the Squier has a Rosewood fretboard, the Fender maple.

There is a big difference in tone between the two. Although the Squier does have some Tele like tones, it has a far darker tone than the Fender. The Fender is bright and twangy.

That said, the Squier is actually a great sounding guitar. In fact when it comes to a dirty Blues like tone, the Squier is superior. It is Bad to the Bone. :twisted:

The Fender is more Country, or Jazz. It is very clean sounding.

I am sure the pickups are part of the difference, but I really think the body wood is the biggest factor in the different tones.

So I agree with Ken on these points. However I disagree about amps. I think there are bad sounding amps, good sounding amps, and great sounding amps.

But I think the biggest factor with amp tone is THE SPEAKER. Take a good amp and put a lousy speaker in it and it will sound horrible. Put a good speaker like a Vintage 30 in it and it will sound great. One of the best ways to get great tone out of your amp is invest in a good speaker. Makes a world of difference in tone.

And I can't help it, but I just prefer the tone of tube amps over solid state. I have heard some great solid states (owned a few too), but tube amps just sound more full and warm to me. I am not into hyper distortion, if I were I would probably be a fan of solid state. I like an amp with a warm full tone that sends tingles down your spine. 8)

What a great discussion. :)

I started out (in my first post above) thinking that wood type and quality does make a difference, but that I'd probably still not have a good enough ear to pick much of it up. I'm a big fan of wood in general, having built my own house largely from wood, and also many pieces of furniture etc over the years. You only have to knock two pairs of chunks of difference woods together to be able to hear how very different they can be acoustically. But I thought that the hardwoods used in electric guitars were probably all in a pretty similar property range, and never really took it any further. After all, I couldn't make any of them sound good when I started playing, so it was a somewhat moot point anyway. :wink:

But, after realising fairly quickly that my amp did not make me sound any better - just bad at a greater volume - I took to practising on my electrics mostly unplugged. It also made it easier to sit wherever I wanted, without having to lug gear around and plug it in. I've only recently got back to plugging them in.

So this morning I thought I'd better test out what I could hear now. And guess what. I had no difficulty at all telling the unplugged sound difference between the Yamaha Strat copy (agatis body), the Epi SG (one of the mahogany family of woods) and the Yamaha AES620 (a slab of maple on top of a very solid mahogany base). Now, they are different shapes and weights and the ironmongery on top is not identical, but when I play them unplugged I swear that I can hear the weight difference, and the woody difference in the sound. Good to realise - maybe my ear is coming along more than I thought! :D 8)

Cheers,

Chris

Gnease, looks like a struck a chord there (no pun intended).

Yes, you are making my point. It is the sum of the parts that makes a guitar. In my opinion people focus too much on the woods used in the construction and not enough about the rest of the guitar. I truly believe that once it is a ll said and done, the electric signal can be distorted and compressed and miss-matched enough to make the "tonewood" irrelevent.

Perhaps to people who are extremely "tuned in" to the sound of a guitar there may be some truth the tonewood argument, but for the majority of people it just doesn't make ENOUGH of a difference.

A similar example from my past (yes, I'm a story teller)... A friend of mine was a total audiophile - he had MacIntosh dual-block pre-amps and Parasound this and Adcom that and $500 1-meter cable. His overall investment was well above $20,000 for a normal stereo system. While it sounded AMAZING, I easily could have put together a similar sounding setup for a quarter the price. He argued that there would be subtle sonic differences. I agreed - but for $15,000 more? Who cares?

I think the same is true of this argument. Yes, if you placed pickups and wire in a block of concrete it would sound different that if there were in the body of a PRS hollow-body. But, so what? Does the PRS hollow-body sound BETTER? I don't know, isn't that a meaure of individual taste?

My point is I've heard plywood guitars with upgraded electronics and a proper setup sound amazing and I've heard solid mahogany Les Pauls sound boring and muddy.

I mean think about it... the Foo Fighter's used those acyrlic guitars on their latest album, did anyone notice?

Then we will only partially agree -- no problem here.

We agree: The guitar is a system, and there are some components plus design and assembly characteristics that will affect timbre more than others. Electronics and processing can hide or cover a lot of the guitar's acoustic nature (Dave Grohl processing, guitar synth are pathological examples.)

We disagree: Wood is an important element (me). In clean playing, it's not really that difficult to hear the difference in woods, all other things being roughly the same (me).

I don't know for sure: Beer labels under heavy lacquer affect the tone? Acoustically, I suspect the answer is 'yes' (Ken would say 'YES!' :wink: ). Clean electric: I say 'yes' ... you say ...? (Ken is still at 'YES!'). Distorto electric: I say 'Unlikely.' You say 'Nope.' (Ken ... well, there is a pattern here.)

Since we keep getting heavily distorted guitar back into the argument, let me break it down by style.

Possible for a player with some experience to hear the difference in woods and other acoustic characteristics: Unplugged (not a biggie), if electrified much of country, folk, surf, ska, reggae, rockabilly, jazz, '50s and early '60 R&R, cleaner electric blues, sickly-pop

In the gray area: 'classic' rock, dirty blues, mildy-to-moderately saturated or distorted anything

Unlikely to hear the acoustic characteristics (aside from sustain => tail-end noise in high gain systems): metal, nu-metal, lot-o-grunge, industrial, heavy fusion, hard rock, Foo Fighters ...

But here's what matters the most: player

Sorry, one more thing: $20k on an audiophile audio system? Amateur! I worked in a high-end audio (no AV then) shop while at university -- the weird-@ss expensive things I saw and heard ...

Well, I guess everyone has convinced me that I'm wrong. I think a good thing that we all have to remember is that if you listen hard enough, pretty much anything will affect tone: I've never payed attention to what kind of wood a guitar is made of before so i'm a complete beginner in terms of what kind of matierals make good tone.

This discussion also helped me understand why Gibson Les Paul's are much more expensive than Epiphone Les Pauls, and there is little difference except the location of where they are built, the type of finish and the quality of wood used to build the guitar (there might be more things, like Gibson Les Paul's probably have better pickups, i'm just trying to make a point).

I've been playing for seven years through a cheap Yamaha practice amp with two no-name cheap guitars with a few pedals: so I don't know much about tone and am completely willing to admit it :lol:

But once I get my Epiphone Valve Junior Combo I'll probably be picking up a better guitar (which will be my 6th guitar :lol: )

I mean think about it... the Foo Fighter's used those acyrlic guitars on their latest album, did anyone notice?
Do the Foo Fighters play clean or with heavy distortion? By definition, you are distorting the incoming signal - and, by doing so, taking away some, if not all, of the differences between body materials and guitar hardware.

Foos Fighters play with heavy distortion. Perhaps a bad example, I just remember them playing on Saturday Night Live with those lucite guitars.

Gnease, I think you are right. We can agree and disagree at the same time. It is a system, and the base for the system (wood) has an important role in the system.

Beer labels on a guitar? How dare you bring that up and throw it in my face!! That is my art you are commenting on, sir. I shall have you drawn and quartered for such utterances. :lol: Obviously placing beer labels on a guitar body and covering in 20 coats of lacquer improves the sound of a guitar. I mean, sheesh. That's guitar 101 there.

Steve-o - I think there is much more to the Gibson/Epiphone price difference than wood quality. All the components are different and the labor cost is MUCH lower for the Epiphone. Plus, the Gibson name also hikes up the price.

I knew the guy with the $20,000 audio system before I made much money, and it seemed like a freakin' bundle of cash for stereo sound. I think I had a 15 year old Harmon Kardon stereo tuner/amp at the time that my parents had given me and I thought THAT was nice. I remember that I was looking to buy a home theater system at the time and this guy was telling me that I should spend roughly 25% of the total cost on cables. You know, the RCA and S-video hookups? I remember asking him... why would I do that? They come in the box with the DVD player and the CD player.... good times...

A guitar doesn't have to be constructed of expensive woods to have good tone. I have a cheap Danelectro guitar, it is constructed of a plywood frame covered with masonite. :shock:

But it has really great tone and more than a few pros like Jimmy Page and Stevie Ray Vaughan have played Danelectro's for their unique, but great tone.

And speaking of Dave Grohl, he uses many different guitars including this acrylic: