Paul Reed Smith Ends the Tonewood Debate

Perhaps we should make use of the word "timbre" instead of "tone". Assuming for "tone" the influence of everything from how the player hits the strings to all the electronic components (all the way from the pickups to the speakers), and assuming for "timbre" the harmonic acoustic character or "voice" of an (unplugged) guitar that differentiates it from another guitar, even when both are identical. Some have mojo, while most are so-so, and some are dead.

I am sure that the "air" guitar experiment sounds very different to a woody guitar when unplugged (ignoring the resonance of these two huge tables)

It must also be said that most of the unique characteristics of the timbre are masked as soon as you add high gain or distortion
 
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Andy Eagle said:
All the vibration and every nuance is down to the way the guitar responds as an acoustic . The pickup does just that, but because it doesn't have to produce volume different properties are desirable. Sustain ,balance, evenness ,not the same as an acoustic but equally important. If you want to know how much tone comes from the pickup put an original PAF on a squire strat and obviously it won't sound exactly like a 59 LP standard.
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Ok, but I think you missed my point. I was just saying Paul didn't end the debate about tonewood, in spite of the click bait title. He just kind of wandered aimlessly for a few minutes there, without even trying to be persuasive. I'm surprised he didn't have more interesting things to say on the subject.
 
For me personally, it's completely irrelevant. If you look at the history of music, it's always the work that counts, not the tool. No one today asks what instruments were used in the premiere of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Not even the musicians who performed at that time are known. But Beethoven does.
And so it is with Eddie, David and also Brian May.
Eddie rebuilt an old Fender. The instrument makers would say that he destroyed it. Gilmour's so-called Blackie was a perpetual construction site of various necks, pickups and electronics, and Brian's guitar was built from an old piece of wood from a fireplace, parts from motorcycles and a bread knife.

These instruments are almost sanctuaries for us guitarists. But for the majority of listeners, they are completely irrelevant.

How many PRS, built from woods from his private stock, hang somewhere on walls, lie in showcases or in suitcases and play no role in the history of music.
And that is why it is completely irrelevant whether expensive wood plays a role in guitar making.

A Stradivarius in the hands of a master is great. But he would also play fantastically on a well-tuned China violin. A Stardivarius in my hands would be an instrument of torture.

So are high-quality tonewoods important for an electric guitar?
 
warlockII said:
I want to drink a beer with Paul, he's freakin' hilarious! Off topic, I've always wanted to buy a PRS, but have never found one that spoke to me.
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I’m exactly the same with them !!! I see them and they’re beautiful and the ones I’ve played just seem “off”. Not sure if it’s the weight or what, they just don’t speak to me. I sat and played a dozen of them, some lawyer looking dude bought one of them after I put it back and said I should be a salesman, lol. I’d really really love to find one that I bond with.
 
Everything matters. You don’t taste the flour in a cake, but it matters. These days it seems that our opinions do more damage than good, and condition us to be more worried about the recipe and ingredients than we are about the quality of the result as food. Better to just pick up a guitar we like, for whatever reason or no reason at all, and make some music. Might as well share something that does matter to someone other than ourselves! :)
 
Keybi said:
For me personally, it's completely irrelevant. If you look at the history of music, it's always the work that counts, not the tool. No one today asks what instruments were used in the premiere of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Not even the musicians who performed at that time are known. But Beethoven does.
And so it is with Eddie, David and also Brian May.
Eddie rebuilt an old Fender. The instrument makers would say that he destroyed it. Gilmour's so-called Blackie was a perpetual construction site of various necks, pickups and electronics, and Brian's guitar was built from an old piece of wood from a fireplace, parts from motorcycles and a bread knife.

These instruments are almost sanctuaries for us guitarists. But for the majority of listeners, they are completely irrelevant.

How many PRS, built from woods from his private stock, hang somewhere on walls, lie in showcases or in suitcases and play no role in the history of music.
And that is why it is completely irrelevant whether expensive wood plays a role in guitar making.

A Stradivarius in the hands of a master is great. But he would also play fantastically on a well-tuned China violin. A Stardivarius in my hands would be an instrument of torture.

So are high-quality tonewoods important for an electric guitar?
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It depends on what you call high quality tone wood. I think "tone wood " is a bullshit marketing term but wood matters. Wood that sounds good and is sound in it's application is all that matters . The reason five fence posts glued together sound like ass is the structure not the fact that it is cheap.
 
GlennO said:
Ok, but I think you missed my point. I was just saying Paul didn't end the debate about tonewood, in spite of the click bait title. He just kind of wandered aimlessly for a few minutes there, without even trying to be persuasive. I'm surprised he didn't have more interesting things to say on the subject.
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He said what mattered. His view is if you don't understand this and EVERYTHING maters it's your loss.
 
Other than knowing the weight of a solid slab of mahogany on my 79 LP custom, I don’t think I could tell you what any of my other guitars are made of….

My tele for example, is it swamp ash ? Don’t know…. Guess could tell my the grain of it’s a transparent finish, but having played and owned lots of teles, I can’t hear a difference in ash, basswood et al.

Does that mean there is not a difference ? No, and maybe some can hear it, but I cant

I also can’t hear a difference in a UK vs Chinese greenback….

As such, I’m not paying like a $300 premium for some fancy piece of wood because as “better” as it is, it would be totally wasted on me.

As such, im more concerned about the color of the finish than I am about what it’s made of lol
 
There is so much proof out there that supports that EVERYTHING matters. A guitar is the sum of the parts. Every part of it has an effect on the finished instrument. After reading many threads on this topic, I think some people hear it more than others with the wood. I think folks that play clean to low gain tones hear it more. The more gain and EQ you add to your sound it can cover the differences up and make them negligible to you.
 
hamiltonb6802 said:
I’m exactly the same with them !!! I see them and they’re beautiful and the ones I’ve played just seem “off”. Not sure if it’s the weight or what, they just don’t speak to me. I sat and played a dozen of them, some lawyer looking dude bought one of them after I put it back and said I should be a salesman, lol. I’d really really love to find one that I bond with.
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This is what also does count for me.
I never found or played one that I could bond with. And I played a lot PRS and I had the opportunity to talk with Paul at the Frankfurt Music Fair.

As a luthier I had also many of them on my workbench, great guitars but with every manufacturer, not all of them were flawless.
I would really find one that I would buy.

I had once a mid 60‘s Les Paul Custom in wine red on my desk that I could buy for a margin but it was just a dead piece of wood, no mojo etc. it just didn’t talked to me.
 
Sashman said:
This is what also does count for me.
I never found or played one that I could bond with. And I played a lot PRS and I had the opportunity to talk with Paul at the Frankfurt Music Fair.

As a luthier I had also many of them on my workbench, great guitars but with every manufacturer, not all of them were flawless.
I would really find one that I would buy.

I had once a mid 60‘s Les Paul Custom in wine red on my desk that I could buy for a margin but it was just a dead piece of wood, no mojo etc. it just didn’t talked to me.
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So what do you like?
 
Imagine being a guitar builder that put years into designing and testing a guitar to make it sound and play exactly as envisioned, just to have some braindead keyboard warriors tell you that you might as well have built the thing out of Lego for all the difference the wood choices make. Must be either hilarious to them or demoralizing.
 
Purplestrats said:
Imagine being a guitar builder that put years into designing and testing a guitar to make it sound and play exactly as envisioned, just to have some braindead keyboard warriors tell you that you might as well have built the thing out of Lego for all the difference the wood choices make. Must be either hilarious to them or demoralizing.
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Hilarious would be my position because it shows a level of understanding that underestimates the magnitude of the subject by a huge degree.
 
hamiltonb6802 said:
I’m pretty sure that he built his own guitar because others didn’t “do it” for him as well, therefore I’d bet he understands.

Nobody is attacking him, or the guitars. Hell they’re beautiful!!!

They just don’t click with me. Doesn’t make me think they’re bad in any way.

BTW it always cracks me up when people judge others’ intelligence based on how their opinions align or do not. I haven’t found a PRS yet that I love to play so I’m braindead…… lol.
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You completely missed the point.

The point is you'd have to be braindead to think that you could change all the wood on the guitar and it not making a difference to the sound. It has nothing to do with PRS in particular.
 
hamiltonb6802 said:
I’m pretty sure that he built his own guitar because others didn’t “do it” for him as well, therefore I’d bet he understands.

Nobody is attacking him, or the guitars. Hell they’re beautiful!!!

They just don’t click with me. Doesn’t make me think they’re bad in any way.

BTW it always cracks me up when people judge others’ intelligence based on how their opinions align or do not. I haven’t found a PRS yet that I love to play so I’m braindead…… lol.
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Basing others intelligence on how they interpret information is perfectly reasonable. It's not not about if they agree or disagree it's about how they present the counter claim.
 
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