Yes you are right bluesky636, it will sound like crap with all of the amps. I take it that you didn't get that I was being facetious, referring to the fact that some people feel that the pickups and strings are the only things that will affect the sound that a guitar produces.

Your experiment might prove my point if you did the comparisons with the Wing Ding vs a Custom Shop Strat, each having the exact same pickups and all pickups set up identically. I'll bet that the Wing Ding sound would pale in comparison to the CS Strat. If not, I could save a lot of money in the future by buying the cheap plastic guitars.

Don't get me wrong, the Wing Ding and others like it may sound great, but I submit that they will sound nothing like a good Strat, even if they have the same pickups.

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---> "The amp should be SWITCHED OFF AND UNPLUGGED before you do this!" <---

Por favor, disculpe mi español, no se llega a la práctica con mucha frecuencia.

Has anyone thought to ACTUALLY test this with proper equipment/measurements/graph s*** that I forget the name(s) of, as opposed to "f*** it, I HERD WUT EYE HURD!!!!11!!1!ONE!"??? It would completely rule out the confirmation bias both sides have rather badly.

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Favorite bands:

Melvins
The Jesus Lizard
Cows
Big Business
R***man
Minutemen
Flight
Minor Threat
Big Black
Shellac
Karp
Scratch Acid
Wipers
Pixies

Ya'll have missed my point. Yes, different guitars sound different. However it is my contention that there is no way that you can determine the true "sound of the guitar" because of all of the external influences on that "sound". Now, maybe if you could figure out a way to plug directly into your brain, you might be able to do it.

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Bill

Thank you for suggesting the Scientific Method.

There's very little science involved when there's a lot of snake oil to sell ...

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

Audio/video equipment manufacturers have been designing/building/testing their equipment since around the turn of the century to demonstrate that their equipment is better then the other guy's. So far, no one has come up with a truly objective test for something that is strictly subjective. Even double-blind tests are not without controversy.

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Bill

Yeah, we are all human beings in the end. Our ears and the thing in between is not the best equipment regarding sound.
Sometimes my guitars sound like s*** just because I didn´t had breakfast.

Cheers,
Robin

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http://www.youtube.com/robinstrower
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Brings up the old question:

"If a tree in the forest falls on a band that sucks, would anyone care?" - B&B

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---> "The amp should be SWITCHED OFF AND UNPLUGGED before you do this!" <---

Por favor, disculpe mi español, no se llega a la práctica con mucha frecuencia.

Makes me wonder if any of those digital modeling amps have switches for "poly vs nitro" or "alder vs ash vs mahogany" ...

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Member #26797
My other guitar is a Strat.

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You dig?

I haven't read all the postings, but something that I don't think that most people think about is capacitors. These too can change the sound of a guitar, but in the end everything changes the sound, amps do make a difference and yes we're all crazy because it's all in our minds.

By the way when I buy a guitar I play an amp like mine. If I buy an amp or effects pedal I bring my guitar into the store.
Sometimes a salesman can fool young guys by having a crap guitar hooked up to a great amp.

I still say that the Tone knobs on my guitar,and the knobs on the amp and speakers will make a more dramatic change in the sound than any wood or finish can ever make.
Yeah,you can strum it unplugged and let it vibrate until you have an orgasm..but plug that baby in and she really comes alive!...she will teach you things that your mama warned you against.

Ain't that the truth. I had a Strat recently that sounded great, other than the high E, it was just dead sounding, almost as if it was slightly muted. I first suspected the nut, then the saddle, then scratched my head for awhile before discovering that it had a .1 uF cap for the tone control. Installing a .022 uF cleared the problem right up. And, there's the rub, someone may have preferred the darker sound and put in the larger value cap.

Rebelsoul,

The "tone control" is an urban legend, and has no affect on the actual tone that the guitar produces. The fact that the knob says tone on it produces a placebo effect in the person turning the knob, and they only believe that the tone is changing. This myth of guitar tone control has been perpetuated by those who sell "tone" knobs, and repeated by those who don't know any better. Some even believe that the so-called "aged" knobs give the guitar a more vintage tone. The knobs were just there originally for novelty, and the word "Tone" was just the manufacturer's label proudly displayed on top, made by the "Taste Of New England" company based in China.

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---> "The amp should be SWITCHED OFF AND UNPLUGGED before you do this!" <---

Por favor, disculpe mi español, no se llega a la práctica con mucha frecuencia.

Indeed......



THREE KNOBS AND THE TRUTH!



Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

I think it goes without saying that with no pickups you would have no sound at all. It's the pickups and tone controls, combined with a good amplifier, that produces most of the sound and tone. The wood does add a resonance which can color the overall tone to a lesser or greater extent, but those pickups are the most important factor in the sound. Lousy pickups tend to produce lousy sound and vice-versa.

Given that the stock pickups in a guitar are of good quality, replacing them with aftermarket pickups, of equal or better quality, and with slightly different characteristics, will change the overall sound of the guitar in a clearly noticeable way, whereas the use of a different wood might have an effect on the coloration of the sound, but the difference would be very subtle.

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"It's about sound and sound alone. Looks are irrelevant. You can have the best-looking guitar on earth, but if the sound isn't there it is nothing more than a beautiful piece of trash. The sound it makes is the soul of any guitar."

The are so many dynamics brought into play that contribute to the overall sound of a guitar that 2 apparently identical guitars can sound different from each other.Minute fluctuations in the windings of the pickups,the makeup of the caps and resistors,the weight and densities of the woods used etc. can all play a part in the overall tone so that you can have 2 guitars tha are unmistakeably Strats but still each will have its own unique tone.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.