Tonal woods for electrics are only a theory. You could put the same pickups on 2 guitars, one made of "higher quality" woods and one with plywood and there would be no difference. Just do whatever fits you.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

Im an ash man. LOL!!

as soon as someone can show me a wood that has an affect on a magnetic field (so a wood with magnetic or metallic qualities) then i, and everyone else, will finally believe that body and even neck wood actually makes a difference in the sound of an ELECTRIC guitar.

for those of you who are new to the topic, think of what creates the ELECTRONIC signal of an ELECTRIC guitar:
1.) pickups (magnets) measure the amount of vibration the strings make
2.) this measured vibration is turned into an electronic signal by the pickups and sent to the tone pots and capacitor.
3.) the then fine tuned ELECTRONIC signal is then transferred to the output jack of the guitar
4.) the signal is transferred along the cable to the amp
5.) the amp takes the electronic signal and uses this frequency to move the speaker to create a specific tone audible to the listener

ok, that is it. that is all that influences an ELECTRIC guitar, on the most basic level. no where in the chain of events will, or can, a piece of wood influence an ELECTRIC signal created by a magnetic field. sorry to spoil all the voodoo jive mojo theories....just isn't real.

From my experience, body wood has minimal effect on the sound of an electric guitar. Factors of much greater effect are amp/speaker, pickups, hollow body vs. semi-hollow, vs. sold-body, scale length, tuning, pickup location and height, type/construction/gauge of strings, fretboard wood, neck wood, method neck is connected to body of guitar, type of bridge...



So the vibration of a guitar has no effect on the strings? Ever hear Ted Nugent? Stranglehold? The vibrating guitar has noooooooooo effect on the sound? That sure ain't microphonic feedback.

I used to think there was no difference between body woods, and felt the same about fretboard woods. Then one day I decided to test it, and went and played three versions of an American Standard: alder body/RW fretboard, alder body/maple fretboard, and ash body/maple fretboard. I found that everyone sounded different to me, not significantly, but enough. Since the pickups are the same, I figured the woods had more to do with it than I thought.

Try a wood bridge on an electric guitar and you'll hear the difference, only because it touches the strings.

Not true . You have to have an ear for it . I have a squire made of agathis (basswood) & I have an 2010 Am Std w/ Alder . Sound entirely different. The alder sounds brighter and more resonant. The basswood is warm & dull lol

That's a good point. I've been on message boards where people will claim to know all kinds of variables about a musician's gear just from the guitar tone. I always laugh about things like that. For example, they'll say "that's the sound of a Tele with a PAF humbucker installed in the neck position run through a 50 watt Marshall with the bass rolled back to 4" ..or.."that's a 1956 Strat with a wah pedal cocked 1/4th of the way down running through an AC30 and a Leslie"... I mean, come on, I don't think any of us have that good of an ear! But some "experts" on the internet apparently think they do.

I'm not saying that some people can't hear very minor differences in guitar tones, but some people go way overboard in analyzing these things to death.

Lol , true say. But when unplugged, you can hear the differences in wood. Just take acoustics for example . I'm pretty sure that any guitarist can tell that any two acoustic guitars dont sound the same.

There are far too many dynamics in play to be able to attribute tonal differences to wood only.Too many people today have become tone snobs and are afflicted with the Eric Johnson syndrome.I had a guy claim on another forum that in a blindfold test he could tell whether or not a guitar had a rosewood fretboard.Many people make these outrageous claims knowing full well that they'll never be taken to task for them.

Whatever tonal nuances between guitars they can all be very rapidly changed by tweaking a couple of controls.So what's all the fuss about anyway?it's just turned into a gigantic pissing contest from which there will never be any winners or losers because there is no way of any of proving any of the postulations unless someone is prepared to put up the bucks to fund a monsterous triple blind scientific experiment.

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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.

Yes with acoustics. And I'm not saying that the type of wood used on an electric solidbody makes no difference whatsoever in the tone of the guitar. I don't know whether it does or not. But I am saying that with a solid body electric, the difference in tone that wood might or might not make is so minute that the vast majority of people can't hear it. I tend to agree with guitslingers statement that there are far too many variables at play in the makeup of a guitars "tone". The pickups and amplifier have more to do with it than anything.

About a year or so ago somebody posted this YouTube video during a debate about the merits of tone woods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFyQXy74xz4

The person who posted the video (I forget who that was) offered this video as evidence that it does not matter what material the guitar is made from. It could be paper mache or recycled tires and it would make no difference in tone. A lot of people jumped on that band wagon and agreed that if you can make a guitar out of concrete then it's automatically proof that wood selection doesn't matter. In my own opinion I believe this video proves the exact opposite. I think it proves that even with a fabulous pickup you still can't make concrete sound good. That so-called guitar sounds horrible. Make sure you pay attention to the sustain of the guitar and please note the rag stuffed into the strings behind the bridge. The hardness of the concrete is basically absolute and extreme when compared with Alder or Ash. It's no wonder the guitar sounds like it will sustain for minutes and that they had to stuff that rag in there to act as a damper.


The premise of most arguments against tone woods is that solid body guitars use magnetic pickups and since wood is non-magnetic then the wood plays no part in the tone of the guitar. This is a short-sighted viewpoint that stops far too soon to get any understanding of the truth. It's certainly true that the wood will not affect the pickups but it will affect the strings as it is the wood to which the two contact points are mounted, ie: bridge and nut. If those mouting points and the connective material between were made of a high alloy, high tensile steel instead of wood there would be little or no damping affect on the vibration of the strings because of the hardness of the steel and they would ring out loud, bright and long. Listen to the concrete guitar again and see if it doesn't seem like it rings out loud, bright and long. That's only one half of what I'm talking about. The Fender neck is wood so only one anchor point is extremely hard. Imagine both ends. Now think about the early RainSong guitars made entirely of carbon fiber and how they rang out loud, bright and long.

Concrete and carbon fiber are REALLY different materials from wood so they naturally make a REALLY big difference in tone. The difference in hardness and density between Alder and Ash is minute compared to the difference between wood and steel or wood and concrete. The point is, tone differences between Alder and Ash may be small but they do exist.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

I've got guitars made of basswood, alder, ash, mahogany, maple, agathis and who knows what else? I play them all and I don't think there's a nickel's worth of difference in any of them. When you consider all the variations of pickups, amps and effects, who cares?

No one in the world but you.

Of course, a rosewood neck is definitely warmer sounding than maple...

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Dennis in CR
Rockin' since 1963

I think the biggest difference between alder and ash for guitar bodies is the grain pattern. Ash has a much more prominent grain pattern and is used for transparent finishes.

That's why you see Fender use alder for their solid colour finishes and ash for their transparent finishes.

Give it enough years and ash will become a protected or endangered species and we won't see any more new guitars made out of it. Why? Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_ash_borer

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I picked up a Classic 70's Strat quite awhile ago. I could hear that it didn't sound exactly like Alder. There is a difference folks.