Tonewoods absolutely matter when it comes to acoustic guitars, right? But how much difference does the wood actually make? If you’ve tried out different guitars made from different woods by different vendors, then are you only hearing the woods? Or are you hearing the shape? The body size? The bracing? Or maybe other differences in the design and construction?
Could you ever tell the difference between guitars from the sound of their tonewoods alone? That question has puzzled us, too — for years. Sweetwater reached out to Breedlove Guitars to try and answer these questions by doing something that’s never been done before.
“What if we made the same guitar out of different woods? How much difference would we hear?”
The premise seemed simple enough: same guitar, same dimensions, same maker, same everything. The difference? Only the wood in the backs and sides would change from guitar to guitar. Simple — but no one has ever committed the time, expertise, and resources required to do this. Until now.
Can You Hear the Difference? Acoustic Guitar Tonewood Showcase
Let's Listen
Your initial reaction to these guitars may be like ours when we first flipped the latches and opened the cases — lots of “ooh-ing” and “ah-ing” over how beautiful the instruments are. They are truly works of art. We’ll start with a gallery of photos while treating you to sound samples for each of these exquisite guitars, played by Don Carr.
Note: We used premium microphones and preamps to record these and reveal all the nuances between them. Using high-quality speakers or headphones is the best way to listen to these.
Rosewood
A perennial favorite, offering power and definition like no other. Listen on Sweetwater.com.
Myrtlewood
A Breedlove favorite, Pacific Northwest native, and new to many players -- it may surprise you. Listen on Sweetwater.com.
How This Project Began
Thom Grant, Sweetwater’s acoustic guitar category manager, reached out to Angela Christensen at Breedlove Guitars and brought up the intriguing idea of a Tonewood Showcase series. In this project, we would build identical guitars from different tonewoods to compare the sounds of each. From the start, Angela was all in. As head wood buyer for Breedlove, she was intrigued by the properties and characters of different woods. As a company, Breedlove adores coloring outside the lines, and this group of Tonewood Showcase guitars certainly fits that model. One word that kept coming up was “unprecedented.” Nobody has ever done anything like this before. With buy-in from a premium builder like Breedlove and a dedicated luthier like Angela heading up this unique project, we began with a completely blank slate. Imagine having every option available to you: Where would you begin?
Where Do We Start?
This amazing opportunity presented us with a number of questions:
What guitar model should we use?
We decided to use the Breedlove Concert body style, the company’s most popular model.
What wood will we use for the top?
We decided that the tops would be spruce, and Angela agreed to personally select the highly figured Bearclaw Sitka spruce tops that would be used on all the guitars. And the tops are stunning! Each is hand-tuned with Breedlove’s proprietary Sound Optimization method. In this hand-voicing process, the company’s luthiers meticulously tap, listen, and shave away wood while targeting specific frequencies to make each instrument sound its best. Each instrument comes with a certificate that documents the optimization process for that specific guitar.
What tonewoods should we use for the backs and sides?
Sweetwater and Breedlove decided that these five woods — chosen for their unique looks and sounds — would be utilized for the backs and sides:
- Cocobolo
- Koa
- Rosewood
- Walnut
- Myrtlewood
If all the guitars are identical except for their backs and sides, then how will you tell them apart just by looking?
Each guitar has neck inlays, an inlaid rosette around the soundhole, and a veneer on the headstock that matches the back and side wood. The original Breedlove “B” logo appears on the headstock to visually differentiate these guitars. Note the beautiful wood binding around the body as well.
What about the necks?
All the necks are made from mahogany and have ebony fingerboards. The guitars’ neck inlays are quintessential Breedlove and match the body wood — koa inlays on the koa guitar, for example. The one exception is the neck on the myrtlewood guitar, which is maple — a pairing prized by Breedlove.
What bracing and hardware do we use?
All the guitars are identical in terms of bracing. The tuners and bridges conform to Breedlove’s high standards.
These look like limited-edition guitars. Are they?
These are NOT strictly limited-edition guitars because we can make more. We have ordered five of each with the option for building more. They are Sweetwater-exclusive instruments, however, and with the look and panache of an instrument valued at more than $10,000, each will surely be rare and highly prized but at a more reasonable cost. Sonically and visually, they compare well to guitars that cost twice as much.
Player's Perspective: Do Tonewoods Matter?
Don Carr had the unique privilege of playing these five guitars on multiple occasions. Here are his thoughts after spending time with all of them:
"Normally, when playing various guitars in a head-to-head comparison, there’s a long checklist to consider for each instrument: visual appeal, body size and shape, design and construction, action and setup, wood choices, quality vs. price, and ultimately, of course, how it sounds. This experience was not a normal comparison. In this one-of-a-kind context, the only difference I had to consider was how the guitars sounded, and as a player, how that sound felt to me and how I responded to each one.
I’ll start with the fact that all of the guitars sound incredible. This is a testament to Breedlove and Angela’s expertise and resources. Breedlove’s Concert guitar is a perfect platform because the feel is balanced, and the sonic spectrum is evenly represented. Plus, it’s just a joy to play. Breedlove has an amazing wood library, but beyond having the right woods, knowing how to choose the right pieces and pair them properly is an art. All that considered, with every other aspect of the construction of these guitars being as close to identical as possible, there are subtle differences.
As the person lucky enough to play and record all five guitars, I got a chance to spend a decent amount of time with each one. From the player’s side, the most noticeable differences are in the low end, largely because you feel the way it resonates against you. When picking a favorite, this is a factor depending on whether you like to feel the body resonate and be enveloped by the low end of the instrument. Spoiler alert: I found that the more I played them, the more difficult it was to pick a favorite. Sorry, not sorry! I honestly enjoyed every one of them, and they each have their own unique and useful sonic signature."
Conclusion
These extraordinary instruments are some of the finest, most unique acoustic guitars you may ever see, and they are only available at Sweetwater. Pick the one with the sound you like most and reach out to your Sweetwater Sales Engineer at (800) 222-4700. While we hope to make enough for everyone who wants one, there are no guarantees. We’re not sure how long they’ll be around, so don’t wait — order your favorite today!
Credits
Don Carr’s original compositions and performances are featured in this article, and Jason Peets engineered the sessions at Sweetwater Studios. We used a pair of Telefunken C12 large-diaphragm tube condenser microphones through a DW Fearn VT-2 Dual-Channel Microphone Preamp recorded directly recorded into Avid Pro Tools through Avid MTRX converters. Photography was done by Sweetwater’s own Matt Owens, and the tube lights utilized in the shoots were Chauvet Pro WELL STX 180 LED tube lights.
- Hot Take: Tonewoods Are Just for Style ›
- Maple, the Unsung Tonewood ›
- Paul Reed Smith Ends the Tonewood Debate ›
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But it can also be fuzzier than you expect. And calling it a distortion sells short its fine overdrive and boost qualities, as well as its responsiveness to guitar volume and tone variations, and picking dynamics. It interacts with amps spanning the Fender- and English-sound templates as though it has a very individual relationship with each. It rarely sounds generic. And its tone range makes it a potential problem-solver in backline situations or studio sessions where you’re looking for something predictable or altogether weird—which is reassuring if, like me, looking at 10 different gain devices gives you a nervous sense of decision fatigue. The Nichols 1966 may not always be precisely the gain unit you’re looking for, but can also produce scads of tones you may not have known you needed.
Exponential Possibilities, Many Personalities
When the knob count on a pedal goes up, that doesn’t always make the device more effective or complex-sounding. But when controls work as interactively as they do on the Nichols 1966, four knobs and a mid-cut switch can make for a very broad palette, indeed. You don’t often see fuzz and drive controls together on a pedal. Usually, the two terms are interchangeable. Here though, the fuzz and drive knobs have a very different effect on the Nichols 1966 output. They also react very differently to single-coils, humbuckers, and American- and British-style amps.
At its maximum, the drive control’s distortion can sound and feel comparatively midrange-y, not too saturated, and sometimes brittle—requiring careful attention from the tone control. In general, advanced drive settings (with low fuzz) favor slightly attenuated and bassier tone-control positions and the stock EQ toggle setting. At their best, these combinations evoke small vintage amps cranked to their nastiest or larger amps with more sag. Advanced drive control settings with toppier tone settings and/or a mid-cut EQ setting are much less flattering, particularly with single-coils and/or high-mid-focused, British-voiced amps. Introduce humbuckers though—especially neck PAFs with less aggressive tone profiles—and you can coax muscular, hazy gain with tough tenor-saxophone tonalities, which are fatty and delectable. The drive control can also help shape great clean-boost sounds and treble booster-stye distortion. There are discoveries aplenty you can make with the right guitar-and-amp recipe.
The fuzz control is the hotter of the two, in terms of gain. At maximum levels, it’s scorching and buzzy, and, if you like really burning fuzz, it’s actually quite forgiving of trebly settings and mid-gain scoops, even with single-coils. A great technique for creating nasty, mid-’60s fuzz colors is to set the fuzz tone to maximum, scoop the mids, add a fair bit of treble, and add drive to taste.
“It’s plenty loud, and with the volume, fuzz, and drive all the way up, it’s positively brutish.”
Danelectro may allude to the Nichols 1966 being something less than a full-on fuzz, but I just spent the weekend listening to Davie Allan and the Arrows Cycle-Delic Sounds, and if this isn’t fuzz—as in getting-jumped-by-a-gang-of-leather-clad-mace-wielding-wasps kind of fuzz—then I’m Tony Bennett. There may be fuzzes that are silkier, smoother, or sound more like classic fuzz X or guitar-hero Z. But if you regard fuzz as an attitude more than a sonic commandment etched in granite, you’ll be tickled by how unique the Nichols 1966 sounds in that capacity. It’s plenty loud, and with the volume fuzz and drive all the way up, it’s positively brutish.
But it’s the playful use of the interrelationship between fuzz, drive, and tone together that showcase the Nichols 1966’s real strengths. Used actively, intentionally, and with an attentive ear, you can fashion high-gain distortion and fuzz sounds as well as varied, unique overdrive colors that you can fit to single-coils or humbuckers and that summon unique textures from each. The pedal responds effectively to guitar tone and volume attenuation without sacrificing much in the way of dynamic sensitivity. And, at less trebly and cutting settings, it still works as a vehicle for funky David Hidalgo/Tchad Blake Latin Playboys fuzz or Stacy Sutherland’s 13th Floor Elevators drive sounds that are distinctive in a mix in spite of their low-midrange emphasis.
Fuzzy Finish
Though generally sturdy, the Nichols 1966 isn’t a flawlessly executed pedal. The three circuit boards—one for the I/O jacks and DC 9-volt jack, another for the footswitch and LED, and a third for the drive and tone circuitry—are affixed to the enclosure independently of each other, which conceivably makes the pedal less susceptible to cataclysmic failure and more conducive to repair. On the other hand, some of the finishing work around some solders looks less than pretty and irregular. I’m not sure this affects pedal longevity. I’ve seen decades-old fuzzes with solders light-years uglier than these that work perfectly. At $199, you do like to see slightly tidier finishing work. Then again, I suspect most of what looks sloppy here is only superficial. The pots and switches all feel sturdy and smooth.
The Verdict
If you’re non-dogmatic about how much your fuzz, overdrive, or distortion sound like a certain template—and if you have the time and presence of mind to tinker with the Nichols 1966’s interactive controls to learn how they work with each other and different guitar and amp pairings—you’ll find the Nichols 1966 a pedal of power, great utility, copious surprises, nuance, and happy weirdness.
