I’m not a geek, so I don’t have a lot of tech type stuff to back this up, but I’ve noticed that a lot of talk about guitars/tone/wood is at least a little bit biased towards lead guitar and the goal is to have crying sustaining notes with a certain bluesy tone.
However, there are other factors to consider if you’re not doing that sort of thing. I’m not really sure what they are, because all I ever see when looking up this sort of thing is the whole Jimi/Stevie Ray/Eddie thing or jazz or something. Some of us want a guitar with nice tone and maybe the ability to be dropped/stomped/set afire/vomited upon and have the pickup selector in a convenient location.
Oh, yeah a month-long test drive is really the only way to know what all the kinks are.
You guys think all the big boys get along like this? Fussing and fighting over the “big” issues? Makes you wonder what it would be like if they all got together in one room and just shot the breeze. That’s a whole other thread.
First of all, An Arky, of course I agree - these conversations do typically revolve around single-note lead work. But they don’t have to. EVH has a great rhythm tone; Tom Scholz of Boston was known for bottling up the classic Les Paul and Marshall sound using tech innovation (remember the Rockman mini-amp that some folks used as a pre-amp boost in their rigs because they loved the sound?). Or even the guitar shopping thread, where I cite Aerosmith’s Mama Kin as the tone my rig sounds like.
With rhythm guitar work, I suspect some of things you are looking for might include:
**Sitting in the mix well while cutting through ** - a good rhythm tone, clean or crunchy, needs to complement the other instruments, not blanket them in a fog of nasty distortion, or clash tonally with them - but at the same time you want to be able to isolate it and hear it clearly. As you know, that’s a tough balance.
**Great string separation ** - when you hit a rhythm chord, or arpeggiate it, you want to hear the individual strings/notes, AND you want to hear them integrate; i.e., their harmonic overtones to blend and integrate in a musically-pleasing way. The more articulate the string separation, the more likely you will get the nice sounding harmonic overtones (I think the good ones are “even ordered harmonics”) that “beat” or throb as the overtones wash into each other, with wave troughs and peaks reinforcing each other. Nuthin’ better that having a great rig, getting a little hair in your tone and doing a sharp “Jimmy Page upstroke” on a standard open D chord - ah, those beaty harmonics…
**IMHO, a big midrange punch ** - this is where I will diverge from a lot of metal shredders. I love big, rich, woody mids - they are central to a classic rock tone, for instance ZZ Top/Billy Gibbons I’m Bad I’m Nationwide or Tush kinda tone. Metal tone typically focuses on scooped mids - the exact opposite. IMHO - absolutely unburdened by the facts - I think the scooped mids tone profile was borne of necessity: metal-heads wanted SO MUCH distortion (“I can out-gain you!!”) that it drove their amps to feedback way too much - and the only way to tame that was to cut the mids - a major driver of feedback. So they were willing to sacrifice a rich tone for a gain-loaded tone. It has clearly worked for much metal, but when I go back and listen to **Rust in Peace ** by Megadeth I am reminded that even thrash metal can have good, mid-rangey tone and still bring the rock. (fwiw, I think metal drumming is the same way - metal drummers put higher priority on machine-gun-fast double bass over the tonality of the kick drum - if you have a big kick, like say John Bonham’s tone, you can’t do rapid-fire combinations because each strike needs a bit of time to decay. But if you tighten up and limit the tone, the drum head recovers much faster and you can do flurries to your heart’s content. Again, it clearly has worked for metal over the years, but I think a trade-off choice has been made and the drums themselves, while super-fast, don’t sound as good…
Disclaimer: I’m more of a Pete Townshend fan, even tho’ I worship the frets Clapton walks on, so my interest in tone is more in line with Arky’s–I want a guitar I can use to win a knife fight in the middle of a gig, that I can continue to play on after I’ve clonked the guy on the head*. Pete would never play a special guitar, at least not live, because at the end of a set the one he’s playing is worth $0.00 anyway–the necks give out even before he smashes them.
All that said, there have been quite a few experiments in non-wood electric guitars over the years. The aforementioned Steinberger Bass is probably the best known (I saw one being played last night, in fact). The stone guitars (Who ever thought that could be a good idea? How the heck do you hold it up???). The Dan Armstrong Plexi Guitar back in the 70’s–Hey! They’re making them again!!!–that had a swap-out pickup: you just turned a screw and slipped that puppy out and put in a different one whenever you wanted. Ovation made an electric that had a composite body as well.
I’ve played both the Armstrong and the Ovation. Armstrong had fret dressing that made me crazy so I didn’t listen to it much. It was heavy as sin as well. I played the Ovation longer, but it was a badly made instrument and died a well-deserved death IMHO.
Has anyone here played any of the unusual-materials guitars such that they could comment on their tone/balance vs. natural-wood instruments?
Yes, it is intended to be humor. But I really did have a guy pull a knife on me in a club in Alaska. His friends held him back and I didn’t have to test my guitar’s stability at that point, but as my bass player said: “Remember, guitars are cheap!”
I’ve jammed on a plexiglass Armstrong - heavy sumbitch! Sounded good, though.
Any material that is rigid enough to have a “tone profile” can be used, clearly. And since most of a player’s tone is in his/her HANDS, then they are going to sound like themselves regardless of what they play. There is a legendary story of a great guitar maker dropping off guitar to Eddie Van Halen and walking in hearing him playing great, classic EVH-toned guitar. When the guy walked in, Eddie was playing a Steinberger with ancient, rusty strings - but damned if he didn’t still sound just like Eddie!
Remember: there is a big difference between having a decent, gig-worthy tone vs. an inspiring tone. When I am playing in a band, I want the qualities I describe above - but a bunch of guitars of varying qualities can deliver that. When I am playing by myself and trying to learn and grow, though, the subtleties of good tone really matter. The better the guitar sounds, the more likely I am going to play LESS - to let the guitar just do its thing and sound good. Playing less is at the heart, IMHO of truly great playing - it’s the spots you pick that define your sound and the less you play, the better you’ll mix with the other players. A good tone tends to require that I tighten up my technique - a great sounding guitar rewards a more accurate bend - the difference between a sloppy bend and a good one is more obvious vs. a not-good guitar, so you play better to get the payoff. But that is not a gig situation - that is you playing alone and really listening to yourself…
Oh, and btw, Townshend played then-cheap-ass Gibson SG Specials at the height of most of his guitar bashing - and yeah, you could buy 'em used for $100 bucks or so at the time - but let’s be very clear about this: those suckers sound AMAZING - old-style P-90 soapbar pickups, a thin hunk of resonating mahogany and Hiwatt amps that could stomp out London are a recipe for a dominating tone…
I’m still looking for a good link to whoever made the stone guitar that I saw back in the mid-'70s. I suspect I’ve mislead you all with that earlier link - I think that’s just a marble finish, not an axe made of marble. Still googling… Found this, though (in German)
The one I saw was played with a reinforced Gracie stand, cause it looked about as heavy as a marble countertop. Supposedly, the density gave it a sustain beyond belief…
Does anyone else remember the bronzed Strat that Robbie Robertson played for the first half of ‘The Last Waltz’? He’d had it bronzed at one of those ‘baby shoes’ kinda places, but he never thought about how much it was going to weigh. Traded it off for someone else’s halfway through the concert, and finished up giving it to Martin Scorsese cause it was unplayable.
Re: Knife fight with guitar (sounds like a painting!) Pat Metheny used to say that El Kabong was his first influence on the guitar. I can think of worse things to have between my chest and a knife than a solid body. That’s a good argument against wearing your strap too long…
Sorry I was doing Mother’s day stuff, AKA keeping the kids out of her hair.
Yeah, definitely I agree with all three. Doesn’t seem to be so much a function of the wood, to me. Of course you want a good wood and for it to be crafted to maximize the natural tone and have good sustain, but the things you mention are a combo of good guitar, good pickups AND a good amp…kind of a tonal package. In fact I seem to have improved those three things when I bought my new…Vox amp, haha!
Then again, the guitars that lead guitarists drool over are likely to be really good for rhythm, as well. Or they might be $$$$$ doorstops.
I have a vague memory of reading about an instrument like this, but my recollection was that it was a composite (think Corian) that looked like stone, but wasn’t.
Here’s a patent, filed in 1973, for a stone guitar. The name on it, “Cawthorn J.” doesn’t ring a bell for me.
OTOH, here’s a guy on YouTube playing what he claims is a actual stone guitar, but it’s an 8-string (I think) and doesn’t fit my recollection of the instrument I read about.
Interesting - I didn’t know he actually had it bronzed; I had thought it was merely painted. What I noticed about that guitar is that the middle pickup had been moved - Robertson feels the middle pickup gets in the way of his picking style, so he had it repositioned down at the bridge. It almost looks like a humbucker down there…
As for other materials - again, I am sure other materials can be found that can do a great job, but of course then you run into the problem of mass-produce-ability, which is at the heart of sticking with wood all these years. I am sure various plastics can be used - again look at Armstrongs and Steinbergers - but I will always be biased towards the organic variability (and look) of wood…
An Arky - oh yeah; the amp is 50% of the tone (with of course your hands being 90%, the guitar being 50% and any effects you have a big chunk as well… :dubious: ) But as Terry the Guitar guy discusses in that linked thread, the guitar is the thing that shapes the potential for sound at the front of the chain. So if you have a great amp and feed a dog guitar through it - well, you get the idea. Clearly, your Ricky matches well with your Vox AC30 - but both are top notch pieces of gear…
I’m making my way through the gear page thread. Maybe WordMan or some other fast reader can tell me if my basic question is addressed in there. A magnetic pickup reacts to the movement of ferrous strings over the magnetic poles, translating the changes in the position of the strings relative to the poles into an electrical signal which is then amplified. Do I have that right? If so, what exactly do good wood aficionados think that the pickup is reacting to that makes a good-sounding unplugged guitar sound good when plugged in? The pickup can’t “hear” the vibration of the body, can it?
Crotalus, I can take a shot, but trust me, I’m no expert; when the materials-engineer guitarists start to geek out about the testing they do on this stuff, my eyes glaze over - just like yours do when I go off the geek end…
Anyway, what you describe is correct, I believe. The question is: what influences how the strings vibrate and how the pickups “pick up” the vibrations? I believe that the body material interacts with the strings such that some frequencies are dampened on the string’s vibration; those that remain are the “tone” of that particular guitar.
One interesting data point to consider: Some guitars are legendary for their more raw, direct tone - and a key ingredient used to explain why is that the pickups are not mounted with springs to enable height adjustment, but instead the pickups are bolted directly into the body. The guitars I am thinking of are the old 1-pickup Les Paul Juniors (think Mountain’s Mississippi Queen or Green Day’s American Idiot) and Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein parts-guitar. This suggests that the pickup’s direct mounting influences the “guitar system” in some way to change string vibrations (fwiw, with the LP Jrs., please note that there is a sister guitar, the Les Paul Special, which is very similar in most ways, except the bridge pickup is mounted with an adjustable screw set, not bolted straight into the body, and does sound different, smoother vs. the LPjr.)…
Missed the edit window, but wanted to add: So good wood is particularly good, apparently, at dampening the worst-sounding harmonic overtones in the string. That would make sense and explain (to me, a believer in the role of wood) why an unplugged solidbody’s tone is the starting place for the amp’d tone and therefore why playing a solidbody and gauging the unplugged tone would matter…
Ah - but it also explains the situation: a person really has to train their ear to hear what amp’d tone they like and what unplugged tone is central to delivering that amp’d tone. Kinda like training your palate to taste just-pressed grape juice or an early ferment and know how the wine will end up. There’s a whole lot of room for…exaggerated claims, puffy egos and Emperors with no clothes, if you will…
OK, I think I get that. Everything that makes up the system across which the strings are strung has some part to play in the characteristics of the vibrations. This includes everything from the tuners to the tail piece, as well as the neck and body on which everything is mounted. That makes sense to me.
Absolutely - remember the mid 70’s when all the rage was “sustain blocks”? It was all about burying a big-assed chunk of brass into the body and mounting the bridge onto it so you could isolate the string vibrations - and end up with a boat anchor of a heavy guitar!
Then, when folks started looking back at the vintage stuff and wondering why it seemed to sound better, they realized that Les Pauls, for instance, had (can’t remember exactly) zinc or aluminum tailpieces - ultra light, NOT heavy. So the thinking swung back - "oh, if you have a light-but-rigid stop point for the string, it will enable the wood to play a bigger role in shaping the harmonic overtones of the string. The brass sustain block limited how much influence the wood can have…
I understand that anything that enhances the vibrations of the strings can make it to the signal chain. Where the good wood guys lose me is when they even hint that the wood of a solid body electric is imparting some tone into the unplugged sound that makes it to the signal chain. When we play acoustic guitars, the body wood is part of the “signal chain”. Much of what we hear is added by the body to the sound made by the strings. If a solid body electric adds anything to the unplugged sound in this way, I doubt that that addition gets to the amp. I know that what the body does on an acoustic is fed back to the strings and all that, but I hope you get what I’m struggling to say here.
I think so - I think it gets back to what I am saying - I think it comes down to this: The wood dampens certain frequencies in the strings, so the strings vibrate differently depending on the guitar’s body material. Bad-sounding guitar body materials either:
allow too many frequencies to vibrate through the string so the string is going nuts, sending a broad spectrum of overtones - both good and bad, but either way, too much - to the amp and not sounding good.
or they dampen too much of the preferred, good overtones, leaving the bad overtones in the strings’ vibrations, which in turn get amplified and again, bad tone.
So the key is the body material’s ability to dampen strings vibrations, so the worst overtones are reduced/eliminated.
Again, I am not a materials engineer, but have a read quite a few of them on message boards…not a big claim.
One last thought: A big deal concept in all of this is that “tone is shaped by what is taken out.” You know how objects appear to be a certain color because the object is absorbing all the light frequencies except for the ones that are reflected back and our eyes pickup - so those reflected frequencies determine the object’s color? The same principal applies here - with acoustic instruments, they dampen (i.e., absorb) most harmonic overtones - it’s the ones left over that define the sound.
A key point that may stir the point and take a while to wrap your head around is that solidbody electric guitars operate on the same principle. The “guitar system” dampens most string vibrations except for the tonic note and some of the overtones - THAT is what the pickups pick up. So if you have a guitar system that dampens the worst frequencies the string will vibrate differently - in a more pleasing way to our ears.
So you need to start at the very point of sound creation. By the time the pickups pick up the string vibrations, the tone’s potential is shaped. Sure you can mess with it using effects and amps in HUGE ways - but its boundaries are set.
Oh - and looking back at **Euthanasiast’s ** post, you could see how a thick finish will alter what frequencies a guitar body will absorb and which will make it to the string to get picked up by the pickups…
“I ain’t no luthier; no luthier’s son
I can grind your fret til the luthier man come,
'Cause I’m an all round man” to paraphrase Bo Carter.
Crotalus -you’re on exactly the right track - the wood can’t effect the pickup directly because the pickup is working off the electro-magnetic resonance of the strings. The microphonic aspect of the pickup is all but negligible. That’s why nylon strings don’t work with electric guitar pickups - they need either a piezoelectric pickup or a contact microphone. Also, you can yell directly into single-coil or humbucker and you won’t hear it at all - unless you hit the resonating frequency of one of the strings.
And there we have it - the woods affect the strings, which are then picked up by the electromagnetic pickups. Anything that affects the strings resonance will be directed down the chain. The extent of this effect is controversial, but not many people would deny that an archtop sounds different from a solid body, and that solid bodies sound different from each other.
Easy example - finger the ‘e’ on the third string at the 9th fret. When you play it, does the 1st string resonate? It ought to. Does the 6th string resonate? It ought to. Does the 5th string resonate? It ought to because that ‘e’ is the second harmonic on that string (the one at the 7th fret). Does the open second string resonate? It ought to because it’s the second harmonic of the sixth string, which ought to be resonating as mentioned above. On an steel string acoustic or a classical, the box is picking up all of those resonating strings and acoustically amplifying their signal. On a solid body, some interesting things come into play - how much does the bridge transfer string energy to the body of the guitar, how much does the wood resonate with that energy, and all important for our discussion, how much of that energy gets transferred back to the other strings, how much gets transferred back to the string which was plucked, and is it enough that the pickups can sense it? These are huge variables from one guitar design to another, and there is no one universal ‘best’ design. There was the gitless that was around sometime in the late 70s/early 80s that was a metal frame with frets attached. Looked kind of like a fish skeleton. No significant resonance to the axe whatsoever. Gave a really cool ‘tikka tikka’ sound, even more than that characteristic Strat quack. Contrast that with the really thick bodied Les Pauls that are made to encourage sustain. I’m late for work - more later if anyone’s still awake after that.
