What's the current consensus on body wood's effect on electric guitar tone?

guitarnerdswe said:
Or vintage "magic" is a myth and there are plenty of crap vintage guitars from both Fender and Gibson? Building guitars was much more of a crap shot in the vintage era due to several factors. Inconsistency has never been a bigger issue than during the "golden years".
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Yup. And all the crap ones went to the trash. So what's left is the exemplary stuff.
 
iaresee said:
Yup. And all the crap ones went to the trash. So what's left is the exemplary stuff.
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No, they're still around. It's not like they threw guitars in the trash. Of all the vintage guitars I've played, there have been good and bad ones, just like today. Except the ratio for how many bad to good ones was much higher among the vintage ones, and none were magic.

The best vintage guitars I've played have been modern ones with vintage specs.
 
I'm with M@. Two pieces of the same species of wood (even if they're from the same tree) will have different tonal characteristics. Like others, I believe the wood plays a part in the overall sound of an electric guitar, but it's just one piece of the puzzle.
 
I know where not talking Stradivarius here, but old growth wood I think would make a difference ,quarter sawn necks .I don’t think any 2 guitars would sound the same , look at old tele’s body’s , made of pine . Every effects the tone on an electric guitar , but I think what effects it most is who’s playing it 😀
 
I've been building my own guitars for some time. Perhaps assembling is a better word. Warmoth stuff...strats and teles mostly and my take is basically....pickups make the biggest difference, then wood...neck wood especially. Then body wood. Pots and strings are pretty far down the list, although some types of strings can ruin a good overall setup.

I've discovered by a lot of trial and error is my favorite treble pickup is a powerful humbucker in parallel instead of series. I have switches on all my guitars where I can go back and forth but I have found the series, in a powerful pickup is too compressed and you lose dynamics. That coupled with the fact that I hate single coil bridge pickups led me to this stage. The kicker on the parallel humbucker is you have to turn the tone knob way down... like to 7k to 10k or its too shrill.

But yeah...wood can certainly make or break a guitar, and you have no idea whether two pieces of wood can resonate well together. Sometimes they seem to cancel each other out.
 
scorch said:
I've been building my own guitars for some time. Perhaps assembling is a better word. Warmoth stuff...strats and teles mostly and my take is basically....pickups make the biggest difference, then wood...neck wood especially. Then body wood. Pots and strings are pretty far down the list, although some types of strings can ruin a good overall setup.

I've discovered by a lot of trial and error is my favorite treble pickup is a powerful humbucker in parallel instead of series. I have switches on all my guitars where I can go back and forth but I have found the series, in a powerful pickup is too compressed and you lose dynamics. That coupled with the fact that I hate single coil bridge pickups led me to this stage. The kicker on the parallel humbucker is you have to turn the tone knob way down... like to 7k to 10k or its too shrill.

But yeah...wood can certainly make or break a guitar, and you have no idea whether two pieces of wood can resonate well together. Sometimes they seem to cancel each other out.
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I find that low output bridge pickups don't work to well in parallel. Just too much high end information, too hifi. Hotter and darker bridge pickups work much better in parallel IMHO.
 
Admin M@ said:
I believe that the SPECIES of wood is less important than the special qualities of one particular specimen. Great is great.
You can't tell by looking at it either. Beautiful guitars can be some of the worst sounding ones.
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Exactly! It is the resonant mojo of a particular timber slice. My old RG550LTD (basswood) has a lucky piece of wood. Some idiot associated basswood with budget guitars, and that seems to be the popular internet belief. But I've owned and played very expensive guitars with the most diverse and exotic woods, and I always come back to this RG. The superiority starts when playing unplugged.
 
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mr_fender said:
Wood does matter in electric guitars, but not as much as many people think it does. It's one of many factors in a fairly complex system and it's impact will vary from guitar to guitar.
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This^^^

Play and listen closely to different electric guitars unplugged. Do you hear a difference? Is it a big difference or not so much and what role does the hardware play in that difference. Say between a Strat and a LP. Also the mass of the wood. As Mr Fender said, it's complex and more a sum of it's parts
 
I am lucky, I have an axe fx, so It really does not matter much what the wood is, if the axe fx is sent enough signal it will produce great sound.
 
Admin M@ said:
I believe that the SPECIES of wood is less important than the special qualities of one particular specimen. Great is great.
You can't tell by looking at it either. Beautiful guitars can be some of the worst sounding ones.
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This, 100%. I have two USA Made Jackson KE-2s. Only difference is the year they were made, and color (one's black, the other Eerie Dess). Same wood (Alder). Same hardware. Same materials used in construction (poly finish, binding, MOP inlays, etc). Almost the same pickups (JB/Jazz in one, Sentient/Nazgul in the other).

The difference in sound is huge. Much more than just the differences between the JB and the Nazgul, one of them is an insanely boosted low end, right around 120-150hz. It's so bad I have to drastically low-shelve the input or else everything is flubby and muddy.

On paper, these guitars should sound damn near identical, but they don't sound anything alike.
 
My personal opinion - I’ve had the best response from Alder Body’s+maple neck+ebony fretboard - for my personal tastes ,:the alder seems to resonate brightest; maple seems to have the snappy response, and ebony is a favorite for most shredders because it’s also complement to the maple neck and sturdy

How important is it versus pickups - if passive , then very important,slightly less with active

And lighter gauges are preferable unless your really only doing rhythm work
 
Never noticed it too much until recently. I got 2 new guitars one made of basswood and the other sassafras. Night and day difference between the 2. The basswood is very dark and the sassafras extremely bright.
 
Kamil Kisiel said:
This video is a good comparison of mahogany, swamp ash, and alder:

Same weight of bodies, no finish, same components moved from body to body.
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Something that may or may not be as "fair" is the same body weight part.

The same guitar body made of different woods will have different weights and that will contribute to more differences (in my opinion).

I mean it's an interesting comparison in any case
 
The same guitar made of the same woods will have different weights too. I've seen variations of 2lbs or more in alder bodied strats for example. That's going to affect tone in its own way. The point of matching up the weights in the video is to eliminate that variable for this comparison.
 
TBH, given the usual Wood choices (ie not something extreme like balsa wood for example), the wood doesn’t matter a whole lot. One of my best sounding guitars is a cheap ass Steinberger Spirit and there’s not much wood in this guitar. Pickups, on the other hand, matter a ton. Maybe woods matter more for low gain tones which I don’t use a whole lot. In an acoustic, woods can make a dramatic difference for obvious reasons.
 
plexi59 said:
TBH, given the usual Wood choices (ie not something extreme like balsa wood for example), the wood doesn’t matter a whole lot. One of my best sounding guitars is a cheap ass Steinberger Spirit and there’s not much wood in this guitar. Pickups, on the other hand, matter a ton. Maybe woods matter more for low gain tones which I don’t use a whole lot. In an acoustic, woods can make a dramatic difference for obvious reasons.
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Likely right on the gain bit. By the time you get to GR-RRR! tone, the amp's preamp and the pickups are likely the dominant elements of the sound. In the Warmoth video, even on my smart-phone, the differences between the wood types was apparent....
 
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