What wood/pickup combinations would you say define your sound?

Karl Hungus · 19-04-2006 01:01AM #1

I've definetly been thinking about this lately. Pickups and wood are really what adds the most to your guitar's sound in my opinion. That is, aside from yourself, because as we all know, the tone is in the fingers. But what lets your fingers shine their best?

I'd say for me, it would be a mahogany bodied guitar, with a DiMarzio Evolution in bridge position, and Air Norton in neck position. Always with the Air Norton really, I've got 4 guitars with that particular neck pickup, so it had better be good.

Anyway, mahogany is definetly the body wood for me, very rich sounding altogether. A 2 humbucker guitar is perfection for me, as that's all I ever really use. The neck pickup I use for cleans, and some lead sounds, so the Air Norton sounds great for nice warm cleans, and really singing leads. The bridge pickup, well that's good old distorted tone, rythm playing, and sometimes leads aswell, so the Evolution has more than enough bite, it sounds extremely articulate, it's not scooped, and it just sounds great.

So, what is everyone else's thoughts? Is there some combination that is just 'You' or do you use a variety of different pickups, and couldn't nail one down?

david · 19-04-2006 01:03AM

At the moment, im very happy with a seymour duncan custom custom and jazz in a mahogany SG. I'd love to try a JB/'59 combo in the same guitar though.

jcoote · 19-04-2006 01:15AM

i like hsh setups gives the player much more options...i like the single coil for rhythm and some subtle leads...but if u wanna truely rock u need the buckers...ihave always liked alder body guitars cos they seem to give a bit more life and brightness to the tone...in saying that i loved the mahogany in my SG...the ash strat has a bit more bite than alder so i'd say ash is my fabvourite at the moment...so hsh and ash for me

Karl Hungus · 19-04-2006 01:23AM

jcoote wrote:

i like hsh setups gives the player much more options...i like the single coil for rhythm and some subtle leads...but if u wanna truely rock u need the buckers...ihave always liked alder body guitars cos they seem to give a bit more life and brightness to the tone...in saying that i loved the mahogany in my SG...the ash strat has a bit more bite than alder so i'd say ash is my fabvourite at the moment...so hsh and ash for me

Yeah, HSH can be great if you like both singles and humbuckers, or even if you don't use singles that often, it can be great for the odd time you might like to.

jcoote · 19-04-2006 01:32AM

thats it it just gives a little bit more of an option..im considering hsh'in the lite ash with some dimarzios or maybe an sd jb or something

Karl Hungus · 19-04-2006 01:34AM

jcoote wrote:

thats it it just gives a little bit more of an option..im considering hsh'in the lite ash with some dimarzios or maybe an sd jb or something

If you think so. But if I got a strat, I'd want it for the single coils. That's where the whole Strat sound lies, you dig?

jcoote · 19-04-2006 01:37AM

i hear ya kh yeah but i would like some extra bite from the lite ash...i suppose just getting another guitar for that sound would be better than changing a strat into somethin it might not wanna be

Karl Hungus · 19-04-2006 01:39AM

jcoote wrote:

i hear ya kh yeah but i would like some extra bite from the lite ash...i suppose just getting another guitar for that sound would be better than changing a strat into somethin it might not wanna be

That's the spirit! Build a might collection of guitars.

Giblet · 19-04-2006 02:18AM

A nice strat. Single coils have so much character

RustinPeace · 19-04-2006 08:43AM

For me it's EMG's in mahogany.
It gives me a raw agressive tone that I love.

Doctor J · 19-04-2006 08:44AM

The Eggle is the one that sounds the nicest, so Brazilian mahogany body (sorry Sting) and neck, ebony fretboard and a JB and 59. I have a JB in the S2120 also with a mahogany body, maple neck and rosewood fretboard and it sounds nothing like the Eggle.

Basswise, my Hotwire will have an Ash body, birdseye maple neck and ebony fretboard with a pair of q-tuners. The q-tuners are supposed to be the most transparent magnetic pickup out there so my logic is to team them with some hand-selected wood and it should all be hunky dory.

Giblet · 19-04-2006 05:17PM

You have four guitars with Air Nortons? Would ya not look for a bit of variety?

Paladin · 19-04-2006 05:18PM

Alder Body.
Extra hot Tex-Mex single coil “Hot Bridge". Seymore Duncan Hotrail Neck.
Hot strat single coil sound, with deep rock growl available at the flick of a switch.

Mmmmm

feylya · 19-04-2006 06:36PM

Plywood strat through a Marshall Mg15.
PRS Private Stock through a Diezel VH-4 full stack.

The second one is gonna be nicer but you'll get my sound through both of them. Wanna know why?

david · 19-04-2006 07:49PM

feylya wrote:

Plywood strat through a Marshall Mg15.
PRS Private Stock through a Diezel VH-4 full stack.

The second one is gonna be nicer but you'll get my sound through both of them. Wanna know why?

Because you have no ears?

68 lost souls · 19-04-2006 07:53PM

This better be no joke Fey cause Im playing a plywood JEM through a marshall G215 and I love the sound, even with the no name pickups. Then again I do break out the mahogany SG every now and then.

fish-head · 19-04-2006 08:21PM

Filtertron and Dynasonic pickups make my day, anyday. Sadly I havent got any. Yet! Basically, one of these..
http://www.gretschguitars.com/gear/index.php?product=G6120-1960&cat1=&cat2=&q=&st=1

feylya · 19-04-2006 08:23PM

No, it's because people are too ****ing wound up in "oh, this wood is fantastic but it absolutely has to have this pickup or else it just won't sound like me" or else "well [insert random guitar player's name here] plays with this wood and these pickups so if I have the same, I'll sound just like him". It's ****ing ridiculous and it's about time that people ****ing copped onto that fact and learnt to open their ears and not worry about stupid things.

deaddonkey · 19-04-2006 08:33PM

word.

anyone who says wood is the primary factor in how a guitar sounds is full of it, basically.

A guitar works by the vibration of the strings being transferred to the body and in turn back to the strings in a never ending but diminishing cycle.

So the most important part of that is how the vibration is passed to the body, and the answer to that is the nut and the bridge.

And the second factor is how the sound is picked up - hence the pickup design and their impedance.

Everything else is secondary.

an unplugged tele doesn't sound the same as an unplugged strat even though they have the same scale length. Why? The bridge design is completely different.

I guarantee that if you put a strat bridge and electronics into another guitar with a set neck and mahogany body (say a les paul) it would sound like a strat and 99% of us would never know the difference.

I know there's tone snobs that dispute this...but try it... the bridge is the main factor in a guitar's sound - it's why a les paul and a strat and a tele don't sound anything like each other.

Some people will say it's bull, but some people say they can hear the difference between a rosewood and maple fingerboard....

Unless you're friggin' eric johnson I'm willing to bet you wouldn't notice the difference in a blind sound test.

I'm sure there is an impact...but it's so small it's negligible and you'll never know.

seriously, if you're obssesing about woods either you have more money than sense or your time would be better spent recording yourself playing and listening for mistake and practicing until you can play it perfectly. I'm not a good player by any means... but I don't give 2 turds about tonewoods and pickup combinations. I play what gives the sound I like and if it sounds like crap then i blame myself and not my guitar.

feylya · 19-04-2006 08:38PM

deaddonkey wrote:

anyone who says wood is the primary factor in how a guitar sounds is full of it, basically.

Ah, you kinda shot yourself in the foot there. Wood does play quite a large factor in how a guitar sounds. The density of the wood will change the sound fairly dramatically. My point was that people are too obsessed with certains names and types. If it sounds good, play on!

Voodu Child · 19-04-2006 10:17PM

In relation to pickup configs, its HSH all the way for me. Ive identical (more or less, same woods, pickups etc) J-customs with HH and HSH configurations, and i definitely prefer the HSH. Y'know, it doesnt have any more choices, as they both have 5 way switches, so neither one is better, but i definitely prefer the 'in between' sounds that come from a singlecoil in the middle, rather than the coil splitting, or parallel wiring or whatever, that various HH guitars use to create 5 sounds.

deaddonkey · 20-04-2006 12:13AM

feylya wrote:

Ah, you kinda shot yourself in the foot there. Wood does play quite a large factor in how a guitar sounds. The density of the wood will change the sound fairly dramatically. My point was that people are too obsessed with certains names and types. If it sounds good, play on!

Did you even read that sentence before you quoted it? I wasn't even challenging your opinion. I said "primary factor". Of course it's a factor, but it's a very small one.

Does an unplugged alder tele sound like an unplugged alder strat?

nope.

what's the difference between them?

bridge design.

Guitar companies like gibson and fender and warmoth and USACG want you to think there's a difference so you'll go out and buy a real expensive guitar and swear you hear a difference between that better quality wood, and you sure aren't gonna say it doesn't sound better after you've spent 2 grand on it.

Of course a denser wood will tend to sound brighter, but it really, really isn't the most important factor. New strings make a guitar sound brighter, so does a heavier picking hand. Can you pick up an alder tele and say it sounds different to an ash one? if you're seriously telling me that you can hear the difference between the 2 without being told then I really wish I had your ears. I have a guitar that's made of plywood. If I didn't know it was made of ply the sound of it wouldn't alert me.

To all intents and purposes, as you're playing your guitar, a piece of wood resonates like a piece of wood and a piece of beech resonates like a piece of maple and so on. Drop a piece of maple and then a piece of beech on the ground and see how different they sound. Notice that there isn't a huge difference - one may have a higher pitch than the other because of it's size. Now think about how that wood vibrates when you play it, and how little the tonal difference of what you heard when you dropped them will affect the vibration of the strings... you'll still hear the wood resonate when you play, but you won't hear a huge difference.... to say that the type of wood affecting the resonance of your strings is having a major impact on what comes out of the speakers, is bull****, and instead of someone telling me that they should be trying to achieve the technical ability of say stevie ray vaughan.

It's 70s guitar magazine myth that should be posted to them jerks on the FDP - if you think about it in terms of technology and physics, the bridge is a lot more important. It's against the accepted wisdom, but it's the truth.

there are so many more important variables... the age of the strings, their gauge and tension, what they're made of, the player's fretting and picking style... that the type of wood is almost irrelevant in day to day situations. Do you listen to a guitar in a radio song and say "oh, that must be mahogany with a bubinga fretboard?" I doubt it, and that's because the tonal signature is pretty small. The quality of the wood is far more important than the type - it's why we guitarist prefer better quality and more resonant guitars - it feels a lot better. It doesn't sound better.

I'l repeat what I said earlier:

when a string resonates, it transfers vibrations to the body and neck via the nut and the bridge (right?), and as the body and neck resonate themselves they affect how the strings resonate and onwards in a constant cycle until the kinetic energy of the strings has been transformed entirely into sound energy (when the string stops vibrating)

As the vibration of the neck and body affect how the strings keep resonating, this then affects the sound that the pickups are receiving and converting to current and sending to the amp.

why does a jaguar or jazzmaster sound so thin and plinky? because the bridge is very ineffciently transferring energy to the body - it just sits on top of the body in a little metal cup with very little downward pressure.

If wood has such a huge effect on how a guitar sounds, why does a jazzmaster made of the same wood of the same density with the same neck and body joint as a strat, not sound at all like a strat? I'd like the tone purists to answer that for me. I'm referring to the guitars being compared acoustically btw...

though they're both single coil guitars, I refuse to believe that the width of the jazzy pickups make them so much warmer than a strat pickup. (yeah right they do. I hate fender marketing. people tell you that jaguar and strat pickups sound different, but underneath the cover they're identical. )

I'm perfectly honest with myself - I know that I'm not going to sound any different or better to myself or to someone watching me play with a tele made of choice warmoth tonewoods or with my modded to hell affinity tele made of 11 piece MDF or whatever.

sorry to be obssesive about this, but people who tell me their guitar sounds best because it has a 2 piece fine ash body piss me right off when all the evidence pisses all over them.

pickups, however, are another story, because they really are the voice of your guitar and really are directly affecting what goes to the speakers.

rant over.

j.

david · 20-04-2006 12:22AM

deaddonkey wrote:

Did you even read that sentence before you quoted it? I wasn't even challenging your opinion. I said "primary factor". Of course it's a factor, but it's a very small one.

Does an unplugged alder tele sound like an unplugged alder strat?

nope.

what's the difference between them?

bridge design.

Guitar companies like gibson and fender and warmoth and USACG want you to think there's a difference so you'll go out and buy a real expensive guitar and swear you hear a difference between that better quality wood, and you sure aren't gonna say it doesn't sound better after you've spent 2 grand on it.

Of course a denser wood will tend to sound brighter, but it really, really isn't the most important factor. New strings make a guitar sound brighter, so does a heavier picking hand. Can you pick up an alder tele and say it sounds different to an ash one? if you're seriously telling me that you can hear the difference between the 2 without being told then I really wish I had your ears. I have a guitar that's made of plywood. If I didn't know it was made of ply the sound of it wouldn't alert me.

To all intents and purposes, as you're playing your guitar, a piece of wood resonates like a piece of wood and a piece of beech resonates like a piece of maple and so on. Drop a piece of maple and then a piece of beech on the ground and see how different they sound. Notice that there isn't a huge difference - one may have a higher pitch than the other because of it's size. Now think about how that wood vibrates when you play it, and how little the tonal difference of what you heard when you dropped them will affect the vibration of the strings... you'll still hear the wood resonate when you play, but you won't hear a huge difference.... to say that the type of wood affecting the resonance of your strings is having a major impact on what comes out of the speakers, is bull****, and instead of someone telling me that they should be trying to achieve the technical ability of say stevie ray vaughan.

It's 70s guitar magazine myth that should be posted to them jerks on the FDP - if you think about it in terms of technology and physics, the bridge is a lot more important. It's against the accepted wisdom, but it's the truth.

there are so many more important variables... the age of the strings, their gauge and tension, what they're made of, the player's fretting and picking style... that the type of wood is almost irrelevant in day to day situations. Do you listen to a guitar in a radio song and say "oh, that must be mahogany with a bubinga fretboard?" I doubt it, and that's because the tonal signature is pretty small. The quality of the wood is far more important than the type - it's why we guitarist prefer better quality and more resonant guitars - it feels a lot better. It doesn't sound better.

I'l repeat what I said earlier:

when a string resonates, it transfers vibrations to the body and neck via the nut and the bridge (right?), and as the body and neck resonate themselves they affect how the strings resonate and onwards in a constant cycle until the kinetic energy of the strings has been transformed entirely into sound energy (when the string stops vibrating)

As the vibration of the neck and body affect how the strings keep resonating, this then affects the sound that the pickups are receiving and converting to current and sending to the amp.

why does a jaguar or jazzmaster sound so thin and plinky? because the bridge is very ineffciently transferring energy to the body - it just sits on top of the body in a little metal cup with very little downward pressure.

If wood has such a huge effect on how a guitar sounds, why does a jazzmaster made of the same wood of the same density with the same neck and body joint as a strat, not sound at all like a strat? I'd like the tone purists to answer that for me. I'm referring to the guitars being compared acoustically btw...

though they're both single coil guitars, I refuse to believe that the width of the jazzy pickups make them so much warmer than a strat pickup. (yeah right they do. I hate fender marketing. people tell you that jaguar and strat pickups sound different, but underneath the cover they're identical. )

I'm perfectly honest with myself - I know that I'm not going to sound any different or better to myself or to someone watching me play with a tele made of choice warmoth tonewoods or with my modded to hell affinity tele made of 11 piece MDF or whatever.

sorry to be obssesive about this, but people who tell me their guitar sounds best because it has a 2 piece fine ash body piss me right off when all the evidence pisses all over them.

pickups, however, are another story, because they really are the voice of your guitar and really are directly affecting what goes to the speakers.

rant over.

j.

Amen

Patricide · 20-04-2006 02:03AM

I like it, but for some reason i only half buy it.You could play two warwicks next to each other one burbinga one and one ash one and they do sound a hell of a lot different. They both have the exact same pickups bridge scale length nut strings but the burbinga one would have more "growl" . This is just an observation i made, but try it yourself go into some music shop one day.

Also wouldnt the type of wood have a greater role in the sound of hollowbodys and acousitcs? Thats just guesswork right there but its always intregued me.

deaddonkey · 20-04-2006 02:27AM

Patricide wrote:

Also wouldnt the type of wood have a greater role in the sound of hollowbodys and acousitcs? Thats just guesswork right there but its always intregued me.

absolutely. They have a lot more impact in the sound in acoustics because they're vibrating much more and pushing out vast amounts of air, and hence you hear them a lot more.

a maple acoustic does sound noticeably brighter than a spruce one...

my maple archtop sounds a lot brighter than my plywood archtop.

did you get my pm btw?

Karl Hungus · 20-04-2006 02:35AM

feylya wrote:

Plywood strat through a Marshall Mg15.
PRS Private Stock through a Diezel VH-4 full stack.

The second one is gonna be nicer but you'll get my sound through both of them. Wanna know why?

Oh, because of that thing I said in my original post about the tone being in the fingers?

Karl Hungus wrote:

That is, aside from yourself, because as we all know, the tone is in the fingers. But what lets your fingers shine their best?

In fairness Fey, I'd agree with you, and I think my choice of wording in the title was poor. I shouldn't have said "define your sound" but rather, "What works best for you?" That would have been a much better choice of words for what I'm asking here.

Giblet wrote:

You have four guitars with Air Nortons? Would ya not look for a bit of variety?

Naw, not really. I've used EMGs before, didn't like them at all, have one guitar with a Seymour Duncan JB/59 set, and those are nice, but I find the Air Norton works best for me. I don't want variety just for the sake of variety, you dig?

deaddonkey wrote:

I said "primary factor". Of course it's a factor, but it's a very small one.

Eh, I won't quote your whole rant there deaddonkey.

Now, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you though. Why? Well, I can tell the difference.

Lets take for example, two guitars that I own. Both have DiMarzio Tone Zone and Air Norton pickups, both have floating trems, and both have 24 fret maple necks. The main difference is that one has a basswood body, and the other has a mahogany body. To my ears, using the bridge pickup, the mahogany bodied guitar sounds muddier. Hell, it's that very comparison that inspired me to start this thread.

It's a fairly subtle difference, but I can hear it, I notice it, and it bugs me enough that I want to replace the bridge pickup of the mahogany bodied guitar for something brighter.

Would I be able to tell what wood a guitar is by listening to a song? Hell no! But that kind of brings us to an observation someone else made on this board before. I think it was something to do with using modelling gear live, and one person basically said that 99% of the audience isn't going to tell the difference, but someone else said that they would tell the difference, and at the end of the day, it's his gear and he should be the ones happy with it, not the audience.

Maybe I am a tone snob though?

deaddonkey · 20-04-2006 02:38AM

firstly:

could you tell the difference between the 2 of you didn't know they had different body woods?

and secondly, we'd all be a lot happier the less we knew. I try hard to not think about my gear when I'm playing... I like to enclose myself in a room with a cheap guitar and see what comes out... if i'm that concerned about my tone, i come to the conclusion that my playing is crap.

Karl Hungus · 20-04-2006 02:45AM

deaddonkey wrote:

firstly:

could you tell the difference between the 2 of you didn't know they had different body woods?

and secondly, we'd all be a lot happier the less we knew. I try hard to not think about my gear when I'm playing... I like to enclose myself in a room with a cheap guitar and see what comes out... if i'm that concerned about my tone, i come to the conclusion that my playing is crap.

1. Definetly. The body wood wasn't something I even thought about untill after I noticed one guitar sounded a bit muddier.

2. Ignorance is bliss eh? I dunno, maybe I'm happy obsessing about gear?

Seriously though, I'm really putting in a lot of hard word playing and practicing, and there are some things I'm not happy about my playing, which I've been working to correct. I don't think it's a case of the bad workman blaming his tools.

Doctor J · 20-04-2006 10:05AM

There's a very simple way to gauge the influence of woods, just go to any Fender dealer, try your instrument of choice with rosewood and maple fretboards, alder and ash bodies. Can you hear a difference? I think so. Can you hear a difference between the sound of a Les Paul and an SG? I think so. Can you hear a difference when the band are blasting through the PA and the punters are trying to order a pint over your racket? I think not

Overall does the wood make a difference? Yes. Most bassists who play Fender style basses will notice a dead spot between the 4th and 7th frets usually on the G string. Would a better quality of wood make a difference there? Yes, the wood is directly affecting the vibration of the string. If you took an Indonesian Squier and added Fender USA electronics would it sound the same as a USA Fender? No. No it doesn't and I've tried. Would you hear a difference in an ash bodied tele vs a mahogany bodied tele? Yes. Would you hear it when the band are blasting through the PA and the punters are trying to order a pint over your racket?

There was a debate on talkbass recently about whether removing the pickguard makes a difference to tone. I'm sure it does, but would it be anything anyone normal would notice? There's another debate about whether a virtuoso could pick up a piece of **** beginner instrument and make it sound like a boutique custom instrument. Again, you can't deny that a lot of your tone comes from how you play, but then again, a great player cannot overcome the laws of physics.

The simple rule of thumb is that everything makes a difference. Different brands of strings make a big difference. Body mass makes a difference. Electronics makes a difference. Woods makes a difference, definitely. Pickups translate the vibration of the string, the wood effect how the string vibrates, wood absorbs sound so the vibrations that the pickup is transducing is influenced by the wood. Hardware makes a difference. It all makes a difference and it's what pleases the ear of the player that counts.

Doc_Savage · 20-04-2006 09:09PM

Doctor J wrote:

It all makes a difference and it's what pleases the ear of the player that counts.

spoken like a true doc!

i think that the matching of different materials and approaches in design make the biggest dirrerence.

That is: where the strings transfer energy to the hardware and hardware to the body. this could go on all day.. and i hope it does! it's bloody intriguing!

look at the difference between neck constructions?

Karl Hungus · 21-04-2006 10:02AM

Doctor J wrote:

It all makes a difference and it's what pleases the ear of the player that counts.

You make a powerfull and concise arguement, Doc.

What wood/pickup combinations would you say define your sound?

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