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There are many elements that make up the sound. The first actually makes me contradict myself in my tone woods discussion where I say 90% of the tone comes from the pickups. The truth is that 90% of the tone comes from the first element making up the sound of the guitar - the player.
Now there are limits to this. If Jeff Beck picks up a Sears Slivertone guitar and plays it through a Pignose portable amp, sorry, it is just not going to sound that good. But I am sure if he picked up a Standard Mexican Strat and plugged it in to any decent amp he could make it scream.
I have found that the next most important thing in a guitar's sound makeup is the resonance of the guitar. Without good resonance the pickups do not have good vibrations to pick up. The resonance consist of a variety of variables.
The first variable in the resonance recipe is the string. The heavier the string the harder it vibrates and therefore the more vibration there is to pass into the wood. Generally, heavier strings sound better... generally. This is not always true as some guitar set ups respond better to lighter strings, but as a general rule it is true.
The next ingrediant in the recipe of resonance is the hardware. The bridge, saddles and nut all have to do with getting that vibration into the wood.
Then there is the wood. It is very important. Not only the body tone wood but also the top wood and the neck wood. Remember the nut is pressed into the neck. That is the major source of tone into the body on a tremolo guitar. But don't discount the tremolo end. It is the combinations of wood that will give the reonance it's tone.
Last but not least is the pickups. You can quickly change the sound of a guitar by replacing the pickups. But you can not make a bad guitar sound good if all the other factors are not properly accounted for. I have read many articles where a professinal, veteran guitar player will tell that when he looks for a guitar he never even plugs it in. He plays it unplugged to feel and hear the resonance. He will say, if the resonance is there thats all that matters, if I feel it needs tweaking later on I can always change the pickups. |
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