For that reason they’re not really suited to accompany you when out on the road and not ideal for live performances. An acoustic guitar is hollow bodied and, played in it’s natural form, doesn’t rely on pickups to produce sound. 1. It’s not as bright as Spruce, producing a much more mellow tone. Bolt-on necks are usually the cheapest option and produce a twangier tone. Okay, so now you know more about body, neck and fret board wood and how it affects the tone of your guitar. It’s a general rule of thumb that the more dense the wood, the brighter the tone. The tone wood is a lot more important on acoustic guitars than it is with electric guitars. The additional weight of the unit will not tip the neck up. These offer a happy medium between a warm tone and resonant sound. That’s reasonable as the top is the first thing to receive the sound when you strum the guitar. Rosewood also brings out something that’s difficult to label. There are three main types of body type: solid, hollow and semi-hollow. And when it moves back the other way, it moves into an area of low pressure, where there is less air. It’s not quite as dense as maple so allows the sound to be absorbed more readily giving a deeper tone. Softer woods will have a darker tone with less bite. Fender used poplar in the 90’s but now favors Alder in many of their guitars. There are also three main types of neck construction: bolt-on, set neck and through-neck. Head over to our post on the 4 ways your strings impact your tone for more information. The most obvious thing that affects tone in an electric guitar is the pickups. Tonewoods is crucial for acoustic instruments. The wood the guitar is made from affects the way the sound resonates that is detected by your pickups. Dense, strong, and beautiful it's used as a top, sides, back, neck, and for headstocks. Due to the density of the wood if you play hard it might sound like it’s distorting due to the lack of brightness. The color of the mahogany depends on the variety. It’s these vibrations that are then detected by the guitar pickups. Wood is not completely uniform, it has grains and gaps which affects the vibrations produced by the strings. A Laminate Koa guitar will set you back around $350 with a solid top creeping up beyond $800 and solid wood comfortably into the thousands of dollars. I am bringing this one back by popular demand. It’s harder to work than basswood or poplar, which inevitably adds to the manufacturing cost. Guitars Don’t Live By Tonewood Alone More than just the species of wood will have a big influence on how a guitar sounds. Hollow guitars have a more acoustic-sounding tone. Instead it produces warm bass with a rich tone. Hence, with acoustic guitars, the wood is a lot more important as it is what actually amplifies the sound and picks it up. On top of that we have to consider the bridge, the nut, whether the neck is bolted on or glued in and the selected pickup configuration. Poplar is another relatively inexpensive tonewood. Generally, heavier woods like mahogany resonate differently than a medium-bodied wood like alder and a lighter wood like basswood. There are a ton of pickups on the market all of which have a distinct tone. It’s grain can look pretty good, so it can sometimes be found on guitars with a more natural finish. This is because the wood itself is mimicking the string’s vibration at two separate points: Mechanical energy transferred from direct contact with the string (at the bridge and nut). Head over to my Acoustic Guitar Page to take a look at some of the guitars on the market right now. That’s because it grows below the water level in the swamps of the southern US. Clear sound with a balanced tone without excessive bass resonance. The brightness of Maple allows the listener to pick out individual notes more easily giving it dynamism. Arguably it doesn’t in solid bodied electric guitars. It’s quite dense so provides decent resonance. It is usually the choice of body wood for guitarists looking or a lot of sustain, and a warm tone that has a lot of low-end frequency giving a thick sound. It’s strong and dense so has great durability. Most archtop guitars have spruce tops, so let’s consider what a spruce-topped archtop can sound like when combined with maple or mahogany. Laminate guitars are not as vibrant as solid wood or solid top guitars. Like I mentioned before, there are three main areas where wood will affect guitar tone, let’s start with the body wood. Maple is also used on fret boards quite commonly, even more so than it is used as a body wood. It’s very dense which contributes to better resonance and natural sustain. The way it’s cut, for instance, will affect both its workability for a guitar maker and its sonic performance. This leads to a sharp sound. Solid wood guitars tend to have a richer tone, which improves with age. You can find a solid top maple guitar from around $350 upwards, so you tend to find them in the mid-price range. Whereas, if the wood is less dense, the vibrations will be soaked in more and you’ll get a darker tone with more sustain. If we’re talking about acoustic guitars then the answer is that it definitely matters. Generally, soft ash works better for blues, jazz and light rock, and hard ash is the better option for hard rock and metal. The right choice of guitar wood will effect the tonal qualities, amplitude, weight, stability, playability and appearance of your next guitar. But what else can affect tone? This is what allows it to highlight notes so they are more pronounced than with less dense body woods. Electric guitars tend to have less variety of woods than acoustic guitars. For acoustic guitars, the materials and how they are used in the guitar are critical to the guitars tonality; the “voice” it will have. The question is simple, does wood make a difference in the tone of an electric guitar? On the other hand, humbuckers produce a thicker and fuller sounding tone that’s generally deeper and smoother. The guitar body wood and the guitar neck wood, also known as tonewood, can range in look, feel, and more importantly, sound. If you want to sound like Billie Joe Armstrong on the guitar, then you'll need to nail the amp settings. Rosewood guitars are very beautiful to look at too. It’s another matter entirely when considering acoustic guitars. We’ll then move on to talk about tonewoods in acoustic guitars. Neck pickup: used for rhythm guitar because it’s fuller and smoother. Fender American Ultra Stratocaster Review. It’s safe to say that this isn’t one for beginners! This is a pretty lightweight and soft kind of tonewood. The first, and most significant question is whether tonewood actually matters? The first is that it depends on whether or not you’re looking at an acoustic or an electric guitar. Hard ash is a lot denser which gives it more sustain. You should be changing your strings after every 100 hours of playing in most instances. Early electric guitars of the 1950s and 1960s used very microphonic pickups. Bear in mind that woods of the same species cut from different … Solid electric guitars are very versatile and suit a wide range of genres. So there is little (or none) influence from the wood. There are a ton of videos where people have experimented with different tonewoods in electric guitars and the conclusion is always that there doesn’t seem to be an objective difference between each wood used. But how exactly does this happen? Mahogany is heavier than other woods. Thanks for reading, I hope you found this post helpful. 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