Finding a guitar with the right construction - questions

[AwakenTheSkies]

So now that I've removed all the playability issues that my guitars used to have and set them up equally, I can appreciate the sound differences better without being biased towards one guitar or the other because of how they play or how they are set up.

I listen to them unplugged and they all sound different, it's this acoustic sound that shapes like 70% of the amplified signal and gives the guitar it's character, the other 30% is the pickups IMO. I don't know exactly what it is, probably a combination of the wood and hardware.

So now I'd like to see how does one do it to find the "really great" guitars for recording. So these are questions for the really experienced people who have tried lots of guitars I guess.

Do you look for a lot of resonance? A little? Just enough?

Do you look for any particular construction type because it sounds better? Multiple piece necks and bodies, set neck, neck though, bolt on... Or specific hardware, for sound reasons, tremolo, hardtail, tune o matic, sustain blocks, brass tremolo block, etc?

Have you found more success getting guitars that sound better acoustically the more money you spend? Or is it still a lottery?

Considering two guitars of the same model can sound different, if this is what you want then you can't order online because then it really is a lottery. So I guess I just have to walk in a store and start trying as many guitars as I can and hope they won't get annoyed with me

 

[Gator]

I personally tend to buy mostly bolt on guitars. Why? I can’t really say other than I never had owned a neck through or set neck that I liked. Except for a Parker fly. For me it’s all neck profile. I like thin, like as thin as you get. So 90% of set necks are out.

I only owned one neck through which was an agile 727 and that neck was way too thick for me.

Plus I had a one piece neck twist on me before so I only go multi lam necks.

Mahogany bodies sound too low mid heavy, and I can’t seem to get along with any I’ve tried.

I can say I got into most of what I find to be the best instruments from friends suggestions and then started there. Then buying and selling a bunch until I found out what I personally like. I wish there was an easier way. I can say once you find something you like or don’t like it makes it easier to narrow in on specs you want to go for, or what sounds good.

As far as the resonance thing, I find it’s a goose chase. I mean even spinal tap made fun of it. Most guitars are going to sound good if played well. It’s really just personal taste.

 

[tedtan]

Do you look for a lot of resonance? A little? Just enough?

I’ve played a lot of very resonant guitars as well as a lot of “dead” guitars and haven’t really found that it translates to the amplified sound. Go with whichever feels better to you.

Do you look for any particular construction type because it sounds better? Multiple piece necks and bodies, set neck, neck though, bolt on... Or specific hardware, for sound reasons, tremolo, hardtail, tune o matic, sustain blocks, brass tremolo block, etc?

No, but I do find that I can hear a difference between bridges (TOM, Strat trem, Floyd Rose, etc., heavy brass sustain blocks), so it’s best to have a collection of guitars that offer different tones.

Have you found more success getting guitars that sound better acoustically the more money you spend? Or is it still a lottery?

No. More expensive guitars usually have better attention to detail, but wood is still wood, so it will vary from piece to piece.

Considering two guitars of the same model can sound different, if this is what you want then you can't order online because then it really is a lottery. So I guess I just have to walk in a store and start trying as many guitars as I can and hope they won't get annoyed with me

Play as many as possible. Play your friends’ guitars, your band mates’ guitars, go to shops when you travel for work, vacation, etc.

And when you find one that really “speaks” to you, buy it then or it will be gone when you go back for it.

 

[ArtDecade]

None of the things you are thinking about matter in a recording studio. Find the instrument that you play your best work on... and use it. That's it. The performance matters more than 3.5 percent more resonance on a black guitar facing southwest.

 

[SalsaWood]

Do you look for a lot of resonance? A little? Just enough?

Do you look for any particular construction type because it sounds better? Multiple piece necks and bodies, set neck, neck though, bolt on... Or specific hardware, for sound reasons, tremolo, hardtail, tune o matic, sustain blocks, brass tremolo block, etc?

Have you found more success getting guitars that sound better acoustically the more money you spend? Or is it still a lottery?

Considering two guitars of the same model can sound different, if this is what you want then you can't order online because then it really is a lottery. So I guess I just have to walk in a store and start trying as many guitars as I can and hope they won't get annoyed with me

I look for fullness of the spectrum and a little bit of character up top. Basically how musical does it sound and is it interesting or mundane to me. Too much resonance in electric guitars can be exceptionally fucking annoying to me, it makes the entire guitar sound thin and sloppy. With a more full spectrum baseline I can dial things out instead of dialing them in, which gives me shit tons more options.

Neck through tends to invite better sustain but the character of the neck woods matters more. Bolt ons are where the body wood character will matter more in comparison. Multi piece necks tend to be more stable, otherwise it largely doesn't matter in regard to any practical factor.

Better sounding guitars are often completely subjective. You can spend over 1k$ on a basswood and maple RG off the rack and find a unicorn, and you can spend 4k$ on a mahogany and rosewood LP and find a turd in your eyes. Mojo doesn't by default listen to the sticker price, and frankly I'm not sure anyone knows what it is exactly, but more expensive guitars tend to have a better chance of being made to their full potential. At the end of the day there are some guitars that just sing their fuckin heart out and play like a dream, but nobody can explain exactly why. You just gotta play the lottery a little bit. I would say odds are about one in fifty on the low end and one in 35 on the high end, but I am completely guessing based on my personal experience.

 

[nightsprinter]

The really great guitar for recording is gonna be whichever guitar I play the most/play the best on. There are 80000001394 VST's out there that can EQ, sustain, pitch drop, turn your notes into fart sounds, whatever a person could want.

take dry signals from both a guitar made from indonesian nyatoh with a black winter bridge humbucker in it and a guitar made from wood of the true cross of Christ with a black winter bridge humbucker in it and they're both gonna sound like a DI signal'd black winter bridge humbucker.

 

[gh0styboi]

For me, it's a short list of

1. Does it feel good to play, cause if I hate holding it, the rest doesn't really matter.
2. Is it resonant or not? Sure, I can push the gain and some OD to force more sustain out of a recorded signal and doctor it up a bit, but better source = better everything else.
3. Are there any mechanical issues preventing the guitar from being it's best? If so, is it worth fixing, or would it be a waste of resources? I'm pretty handy and can do most things at this point (having no local shops for the last handful of years has forced me to learn pretty much everything that doesn't require builder-level luthiery ), but if I'm gonna sink more time or money into it than the guitar is worth, it's a pass.

Outside of that, it's all open to interpretation for me personally. I've got vastly different guitars that play drastically different, and I love them equally. Sounds dumb, but beyond the mundane mechanical shit, the right guitars just feel right, and it's not related to price - the two guitars I play the most right now are my Axion Label 7 string and a Squier Carbonita Baritone Tele I picked up for about $300 used.

 

[Alberto7]

Idk, I see a pretty guitar and I want to buy it. I go based off of looks and playability/ergonomics first. If it plays well and is well suited to my body and playing form, then I'll feel super comfy with it.

Lately I care a lot about rigidity and stability. Having a guitar that won't move around too much and that I can pick up and be confident it will still be the same as it was yesterday. I can set up playability myself for the most part. And I can change pickups and/or use different amps/modellers/sims to get the sound I want. The character of a guitar's sound can be drastically changed with signal processing.

Too difficult to make predictions on what the sound will be like unless it's a guitar built with a specific sound in mind. Guitars like that that come to mind are Parker Flys (probably more so the pre-refined ones, maybe?) and my Oni Essi 8. They're really purpose built and go through a gazillion iterations of the same design by the same guy before arriving at a realized vision.

In other words, I will literally never understand how exactly all the different parts of a guitar of a given design/shape interact with one another to make them sound the way they do. Unless I decide to become a luthier and design my own instruments.

 

[Dayn]

I suppose the answer is "I don't look". Every instrument I currently have were all bought online without playing them first. I know what I like for playability, and it had nothing to do with sound. They all sound slightly different but I run them through the same rig. All have good results. Even my tele-style guitar which I like the least still gets the job done, and does it well.

The counter-question is, what is it that you think is missing from your recordings? I think that, until you can clearly articulate what it is, then you probably don't have a problem at this stage (or at least one that you're aware even exists).

 

[l1ll1]

I try not to go into to much detail (says he who is on a dedicated guitar forum)... because for me it always comes down to playing the guitar. For example I tried out so many Strats and Les Pauls and among themselves they are all soooo different, even if their specs don't differ that much.

Apart from that feel / resonance / handling, I always prefer satin necks (if not nitro, which will wear in fast and feel better quicker) and the big thing I just found out for good: I like hard tail bridges much better than anything else.

 

[budda]

None of the things you are thinking about matter in a recording studio. Find the instrument that you play your best work on... and use it. That's it. The performance matters more than 3.5 percent more resonance on a black guitar facing southwest.

This is the post.

Bring your A game and whatever guitar gets you to that point.

Nothing matters if you bend notes out of tune, mute like shit, cant keep time and generally didnt prepare for tracking.

Everyone hears with their eyes: if you see x band live and they play Y guitar, but Z guitar tracked 90% of their albums, you’re more familiar with the Z guitar tone even though you associate it with Y live guitar.

I found out like 7 albums in that one of the guitarists in comeback kid writes and tracks with a les paul. Hes toured an SG pretty much (?) the whole time so I mistakenly assumed that was recorded too. Nope…

There’s no silver bullet for recording, full stop. But im taking the R9 to the session.

 

[Asdrael]

Does it feel good when you play it and does it sound good to you? If yes, then you'll do your best work/have the most fun on it. The rest is just fluff.

I personnaly prefer low profile fixed bridges and bolt-ons and light guitars. They are the most comfortable to me, I can set them up more easily and thus I play my best on them. That's how far it goes for me. Some people will debate how the headstock angle on a LP change the tone of the entire instrument so much that it makes a particular angle worthless to them... Don't go that route.

 

[MaxOfMetal]

This sort of minutiea doesn't matter if you're shopping mass produced factory guitars.

Just have fun with it.

 

[jaxadam]

I have never had a problem with an Ibanez RG570 loaded with 18 v mod EMGs.

 

[odibrom]

If there's no tone specific conditions, play the guitar that makes you smile...

 

[budda]

If there's no tone specific conditions, play the guitar that makes you smile...

Even if there are, play the one you play best. Then play the “tone” one. In my experience the “tone specific” parts are the “one more for atmosphere” not the album.

 

[AwakenTheSkies]

The counter-question is, what is it that you think is missing from your recordings? I think that, until you can clearly articulate what it is, then you probably don't have a problem at this stage (or at least one that you're aware even exists)

Nothing, I don't have any problems. But I can tell which guitar I've recorded a part with even if they are using the same preset and are built with the same type of wood. Because IMO they do sound different enough where it's worth looking into. And it's not the pickups, because the difference between the two is the same that you can hear if you can play them unplugged.
I'm not really looking to fix a problem, I'm looking to make it optimal. If it was good, I want to make it awesome.
I look at it almost like a wavetable synth, you start with a raw sound and you build upon it. Same with guitar sound, built upon the sound of the DI to bring the best out of the guitar, instead of building around the "amp", "cab" or even your vision of what is supposed to be your dream tone. It's a bit of a personal experiment or goal of mine.

This sort of minutiea doesn't matter if you're shopping mass produced factory guitars.

Just have fun with it.

Aha! But I want to be able to pick the best of them for myself

 

[Rubbishplayer]

I smiled when I read your post, as it reminded me of the lost knowledge of the ancients (ancient being the 70s).

I remember my surprise when I first tried an Ibanez Blazer bass back in 1981, having played other basses up until then, and wondering "why does this bass sound like the bass of god?" This led me to study solid body luthiery.

What was conventional wisdom then seems to have been forgotten in the rush to produce guitars that sell well and have high margin potential. That wisdom used to be:

1. Through necks are better than set necks, which are better than bolt-ons. The top of every range of guitars was almost exclusively through neck guitars, followed by set necks (witness the catalogues of Ibanez, Aria and even the original Roland synth guitars). Bolt necks were always considered inferior for tone and sustain. All of that went out of the window with the advent of the superstrat and through necks are rare now.
2. Mass is good. Thick bodies, thicker necks, heavy brass bridges were the order of the day to get great tone and sustain. However, with superstrats becoming popular, this turned attention away from heavily-anchored bridges to locking trems. This also was accompanied by a move to slimmer bodies and necks, ironically in the latter case leading to ultra-thin Wizard necks which, to my mind, has coincided with an increase in tendonitis and complaints of pain from guitarists.
3. Wood matters. Necks have remained predominantly made of maple, but bodies that were once exclusively made of ash or mahogany on the then-premium guitars have increasingly been made of cheaper woods, such as basswood.
4. Star-alignment. Yep, you can get two identical guitars, same make and model off the same line, and one will be dull and the other will come alive. This is down to the variability if tonewoods and other accidents. Acoustic luthiers understand this very well and will "tap test" candidate top wood to check for tonal neutrality and even response. I don't even know how you would do that for 50mm thick body wood, though I'm sure it's feasible with the right equipment. But who would do it? This is why trying guitars in the shop is critical. But of course, manufacturers and even shops don't like this, preferring that you buy online or accept a boxed guitar from their store room. Yet my experience has always been that my best sounding guitars have been selected firsthand, in person.

Even more interestingly, we've begun to see these wisdoms being reintroduced: mahogany bodies, brass sustain blocks, "Gibraltar" bridges, (slightly) thicker necks, etc. Were I to commission a no-limits custom build, I'd almost certainly be ordering a through-neck design with an ash or mahogany body and a "heavy" trem (quite probably a Kahler).

Now that's not to say superstrats are pants. Indeed, I agree with many of the responses to this thread that advocate simply choosing a guitar that makes you smile and focusing on your performance. And Carlos Santana put it best when asked what proportion of his tone comes from his fingers versus his gear. His response: 10% from his fingers and 90% from his thighs.

And let's not forget that superstrats more easily allowed a more advanced school of playing, even if there were technical compromises to tone and sustain. After all, playing guitar is less physics and far more physicality. Plus, of course, you might just prefer the sound.

Rather, it is a matter of trade-offs: between playability and tone, and even affordability. After all, through-neck, premium wood guitars are more expensive to make than basswood bolt-ons.

But FWIW, I think your goal to understand why one guitar sounds better than another is a worthy one and will help inform your choices if you commission a new custom build. And while I'm sure you already know that it won't make you sound like anything other than you, at least you'll be that little bit more happy doing so.