When it comes to electric guitar materials, choose the wood that looks good.
Nothing raises the hackles of electric-guitar players like the subject of tonewoods. Maybe that’s why I like to talk about the subject. Unlike many, I enjoy being proven wrong, and believe me when I tell you that, despite my decades of experience, it happens on a regular basis. And despite what may appear to be factual science, there’s also something that can change one’s opinion on matters that don’t get discussed: The practical application of the matter at hand.
Of course, we can all agree on the importance of wood selection in the construction of acoustic instruments. Presumably, this is because there are no pickups involved. The difference between a Sitka spruce- and cedar-topped acoustic should be obvious to most ears. After all, there’s no electronic conversion happening there, it’s just the pure interaction of the wood and strings. On the other hand, when it comes to electric guitars, we’ve all witnessed the transformation that a great set of pickups can lend to a solidbody guitar. This allows us to focus on the nature of electric guitar tone, and where it actually comes from.
There have been endless discussions about how a particular pickup brand’s product has rescued someone’s lackluster guitar, turning it into their No. 1. The opposite is true as well. Either way, anecdotal evidence would suggest that tone comes from pickups. Tests have been devised to eliminate the wood of the electric guitar to prove that pickups alone are responsible for the frequency signature of steel strings. The test rig in question is the Dan Armstrong Lucite guitar. Unfortunately, the only pickups found in these guitars are—you guessed it—Dan Armstrong pickups. But I digress.
What I’m really driving at here is that I’ve come to the conclusion that tonewoods don’t matter. Not that they don’t change the sound of your guitar, but that they simply don’t matter, and that’s okay with me. There are so many elements to guitar tone (with no consensus on what is good, bad, better, or best) that wood simply doesn’t factor into it anymore.
“Tests have been devised to eliminate the wood of the electric guitar to prove that pickups alone are responsible for the frequency signature of steel strings.”
The fact is, many guitar makers assume that you are going to switch out the pickups regardless of what handwringing they do to select what goes into your guitar. This frees up builders to choose the least expensive path or lean heavily on name recognition when stocking their inventory. Or they can offer a smorgasbord of choices to their clients, allowing buyers to feel confident in their purchase. I chuckle at the hours of testing I’ve done to determine which recipe works with this or that model guitar, only to have the customer swap out the pickups anyway. This is, as a good friend of mine puts it, the buyer “putting their own stink on it.”
So, I think that we should look at wood selection for an electric guitar exactly like we would when purchasing (or commissioning) fine furniture. A dining room table works just fine regardless of what beautiful wood you select. It’s going to be the meals and the company of friends that you enjoy—the wood just enhances the mood. A handmade recliner will be just as comfy made from bubinga as it would be if fashioned from curly cherry. And so on. It’s the artistic expression of the builder and an aesthetic choice for the owner. It’s the exact same thing with a guitar.
So, it doesn’t matter if I tell you that a lightweight, chambered white limba guitar will have more air, or that a genuine mahogany will sound fatter. You are going to choose with the greatest, most important sensibility you have—your eyes. Then, after the honeymoon period is over, you can start swapping out pickups and finetuning the tone capacitors and bridge alloys.
You’d think that this might bother or disappoint builders, but I suggest that more of them just get over it and give the customer what they want, regardless of the why. In the end, this benefits everyone. Builders are relieved of the need to ear-test a zillion permutations of Strat, Jazzmaster, P-90, or PAF-style pickups and can focus on delivering a beautiful, well-crafted instrument that looks and plays great. So, there is my new take on the tonewoods and pickup debate. I was wrong, and still am. But at least I understand the new normal. And for those who still think wood makes tone, I’ll be here for you.
- Acoustic Soundboard: Why Guitar Builders Blend Tonewoods ›
- What Will Replace Classic Tonewoods? ›
- Paul Reed Smith Ends the Tonewood Debate ›
- In Defense of Maple, the Tonewood You Already Know - Premier Guitar ›
- Acoustic Guitar Tonewoods — Do They Matter? ›
- Acoustic Guitar Tonewoods — Do They Matter? - Premier Guitar ›
- A Fresh Look at Alternative-Material Electric Guitars - Premier Guitar ›
The final day is here! Enter Stompboxtober Day 31 for your last chance to win today’s pedal from Keeley and finish the month strong!
Keeley Octa Psi Transfigurating Fuzz Pedal with Polyphonic Pitch Shifting
Meet the OCTA PSI Transfigurating Fuzz – The Ultimate Combination of Pitch-Shifter, Octave Generator, and Tri-Voiced Analog Fuzz! Key features include: Instant Effect Order Switching, Flexible Output Configuration, Momentary or Latching Octave/Pitch, and more! Each pitch shift mode includes an up, down, and dual setting, resulting in 24 different modes.
Does the guitar’s design encourage sonic exploration more than sight reading?
A popular song between 1910 and 1920 would usually sell millions of copies of sheet music annually. The world population was roughly 25 percent of what it is today, so imagine those sales would be four or five times larger in an alternate-reality 2024. My father is 88, but even with his generation, friends and family would routinely gather around a piano and play and sing their way through a stack of songbooks. (This still happens at my dad’s house every time I’m there.)
Back in their day, recordings of music were a way to promote sheet music. Labels released recordings only after sheet-music sales slowed down on a particular song. That means that until recently, a large section of society not only knew how to read music well, but they did it often—not as often as we stare at our phones, but it was a primary part of home entertainment. By today’s standards, written music feels like a dead language. Music is probably the most common language on Earth, yet I bet it has the highest illiteracy rate.
Developed specifically for Tyler Bryant, the Black Magick Reverb TB is the high-power version of Supro's flagship 1x12 combo amplifier.
At the heart of this all-tube amp is a matched pair of military-grade Sovtek 5881 power tubes configured to deliver 35-Watts of pure Class A power. In addition to the upgraded power section, the Black Magick Reverb TB also features a “bright cap” modification on Channel 1, providing extra sparkle and added versatility when blended with the original Black Magick preamp on Channel 2.
The two complementary channels are summed in parallel and fed into a 2-band EQ followed by tube-driven spring reverb and tremolo effects plus a master volume to tame the output as needed. This unique, signature variant of the Black Magick Reverb is dressed in elegant Black Scandia tolex and comes loaded with a custom-built Supro BD12 speaker made by Celestion.
Price: $1,699.
Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is one of the loudest guitarists around. And he puts his volume to work creating mythical tones that have captured so many of our imaginations, including our special shoegaze correspondent, guitarist and pedal-maestro Andy Pitcher, who is our guest today.
My Bloody Valentine has a short discography made up of just a few albums and EPs that span decades. Meticulous as he seems to be, Shields creates texture out of his layers of tracks and loops and fuzz throughout, creating a music that needs to be felt as much as it needs to be heard.
We go to the ultimate source as Billy Corgan leaves us a message about how it felt to hear those sounds in the pre-internet days, when rather than pull up a YouTube clip, your imagination would have to guide you toward a tone.
But not everyone is an MBV fan, so this conversation is part superfan hype and part debate. We can all agree Kevin Shields is a guitarists you should know, but we can’t all agree what to do with that information.