My compliments to the chef, for cooking up such a rockin' concoction

[erogenousjones17]

Ridiculous thread title.  :doh:

Anyway, I went to a jam the other day with my yellow W LPS. I've always been partial to that guitar's sound, and I got a lot of compliments on it from the other guys that were there. But not one person commented on the guitar's appearance. The it occured to me -- though it seems so obvious -- that I am far more pleased that the guitar sounds killer than I would be if it only looked good.

So here's my question for you guys: How much tone (assuming "tone" is a quantifiable thing) are you willing to sacrifice for the sake of appearance. Or, conversely, how much aesthetic appeal are you willing to give up for a great sound?

 

[ABH Instruments]

I'm willing to sacrifice a significant amount of looks for better playability, tone and comfort. But, if I was an entertainer playing sold-out concerts, then I'd have to have the best looks and the best tone!

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Why sacrifice when you could have both?  This sound and feel vs. appearance thing always puzzles me.  Daisy Rock, Laguna, and those Hello Kitty Strats, surely one of them sounds awesome, but who's going to play it.  Besides, with beauty being in the eye of the beholder, you think your Yellow L5S looks good.

 

[erogenousjones17]

That's true. I guess this is just a hypothetical thing, i.e., if you had a really ugly guitar that played and sounded great, would you be happy playing it? Im willing to bet some people -- though not anyone here, I suspect -- wouldn't be.

 

[Jusatele]

we had this guy show up at a work shop a few months back that had this no name beat up guitar from the 70s that had so much tone to the bone everybody's head snapped when he cranked it up.
I tried to buy it right on the spot. I think style and appearance we play around with a lot here. But a guitar with tone like that could be a ugly a bed bugs ass and it would be desirable.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Jim, I know where you coming from, but in most cases, it ain't the guitar.  I play others' gear, and have others play mine, and it always sounds like whose playing it.  I've fallen for that, "it's the gear" and "I need to get this to do that" enough times to know better.  Typically, amps make guitars sound better than guitars make amps sound.  Did you play the guitar?  Did he play one of yours?  Some tools make the work easier and prettier, but it in the end it's an extension of the craftsman.  I'd be more interested in what he did to the amp, what knobs he turned.  If he's playing an old beat up no name guitar, he'd probably agree it ain't the guitar, just about finding the sweetspot on the gear.

 

[duosonic]

I've had some guitars where I get compliments on both the guitar and my playing.  Other times just the playing.  If I got a compliment just on the guitar after a show I'd be a little bummed.

I wouldn't be willing to give up tone for appeareance.  Ideally I'd like both all the time.

 

[Jcurl02]

Actually I think this is a very interesting question. 

In my opinion, more people here than will admit are concerned with the looks.  How else would you explain the beautiful guitars we see in the gallary photos.  How about the guitar of the month contest by itself?  We are not judging on tone, we can't hear them  Why are we shelling out (sometimes rather large amounts of ) money for custom built one off botique guitars? 

However, I'm also probably the wrong person to answer this as I never played out, and probably never will.  I'm what you guys would call a basement player.  I only play for myself when no one is around (gets difficult with a full house).  But I'm also an engineer and would love to do a scientific study as to what really influences the tone!

Just the other day I was thinking about trying to make my own pickups.  Read a bit on it, watched some youtube videos and it looks pretty easy.  However, the more I read the more I don't understand.  I read this one article that explained that the TONE is influenced by so much that I don't know how we'd ever get it right.  This article was talking how the resistance of the patch cord affected tone.  Basically saying you would need different windings depending on the patch cord???? ??? ???

Also with so many ways to alter tone, how do you know it's the guitar?  I mean, you have the "tone" or body wood, the pickups and whcih selection you have it set on, the tone adjustments if you will, the electronics within the guitar, the effects between the guitar and amp, the amp, not to mention that ever pesky patch cord resistance........ :dontknow:

So how do you actually quantify tone and or evaluate it?  It would be a neat experiment......

For me it seems to be broken down by the following
1)  Quality (you know it when you pick it up)
2)  Sustain????  Good hardwood body that hold the vibrations long and true
3)  Looks
4)  The ability to get the tones you may want. 

SO I guess I fall into looks more than tone as I expect I'll get a decent and modifiable tone if I pick the right components.  This is why my first Warmoth is a Maple body and the next will be Mahagony.  Korina would be my next choice.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

All great points. 
Let me throw this in.

If the owner of an absolutely gorgeous looking guitar gets inspired by how beautiful it looks each time he pulls it out of the case, one could argue that the beauty inspires creativity, which is expressed in the players own tone and performance?

I think so.  If there is an element that phsycologically contributes to the betterment of your playing and helps you communicate attitude that drops jaws & gets attention, then so be it.

My dad used to keep the tail buttons ("Rattles") of a dead rattlesnake in his old Gibby acoustic.  He said it gave the guitar a better tone.  I thought he was stoned, but hey, if it made him feel like it sounded better and inspired him to play, then who am I to arugue with his chemically induced state of creativity.

So much "Cork Sniffery" is argued about so much these days, ie; "Callaham-this, Nitro-that" all the way down to even the material used on knobs & switch tips.  Who can measure this, on what device, with what degree of variance?  It's all subjective, and I think it comes down to what inspires and individual.

 

[pabloman]

People are always throwing out the tone is in the fingers thing, while this is true you still have to have a decent guitar. Tone and mojo are so subjective. A guitar is a tool and if you find one that speaks to you and has those qualities that are hard to describe but are easy to recognize you definately know it. It's a great thing. Some people may never have this experience and will be just fine not having it. But really with all the stuff that's out there its harder to build a bad guitar than it is to build a great one. People fall in love with old guitars for lots of reasons. Some of the things that I like are the fact that necks are nice and settled, frets are usually super smooth all the way around, necks are really broken in edges everywhere are smooth. Things one really wouldn't think of such as pickgurd bevels. In the end your own opinion is the only one that matters.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Somethings are just a POS.  There's no way around it.  You might have fun and get some fun sounds out of things, but they just don't ooze the juice.  I am of the "it's in the fingers" school just because I've seen it over and over.  Others getting better sounds out of my gear, and going to jams and seeing 10 guys play the same guitar through the same amp.  They all sound different, and it ain't their licks.  That being said, we all have our preferred setups, bridges, woods, and pickups that make up our tone.

 

[Rickgrxbass]

Why sacrifice when you could have both?  This sound and feel vs. appearance thing always puzzles me.  Daisy Rock, Laguna, and those Hello Kitty Strats, surely one of them sounds awesome, but who's going to play it.  Besides, with beauty being in the eye of the beholder, you think your Yellow L5S looks good.

Funny, I was thinking of getting my guitarist a Daisy Rock because he keeps complaining how Fender necks are "too big" (let alone his once-flagship Epi Sheraton) :doh:

Slightly more seriously, those Lagunas have a great tone-to-price ratio, too bad they look like they were made in high school wood shop (if high schools still had wood shop, that is...). That's what happens when all the cost of the guitar goes towards hardware and electronics, though, I guess...

 

[stubhead]

I would never sacrifice for tone or playability. If your guitar sounds and feels good you're going to play more, and get better faster, assuming you have some organization to your practicing. It takes a long time and a lot of guitars to get to the point where your guess about what kinds of electronics will match up to the woods and components best - I tend to stick with maple & pau ferro, swamp ash and alder for that reason. And even then, I'm happy to rewire the thing if it's not doing what I want. I find it odd when people say their Warmoth is the best guitar they've ever played - and they haven't played it yet. And I'm still surprised at how many people who say their "frets were perfect right out of the box" because Warmoth only puts a single bevel on there, and that ain't finished. If you were to hand your "perfect" guitar to a working musician, he could only hand it back and tell you to finish the job.

That said, I also find the ads and testimonies pretty funny. "Vintage tone" was often really awful, and there seem to be definite rules for being "unique." A guitar has to have adequate amounts of treble, adequate amounts of midrange, and adequate amount of bass in order to be useful in a variety of music, and the same is true for amps. So what you're basically looking for is an amp and guitar that sound ordinary and average, because if you have a "totally unique new sound!" it's going to either be awful or extremely limited. Name the top five blues guitarists playing Rickenbackers... ummm. Top two? ummm. OK, name the top three retro-psychedelia merseybeat bangs 'n' skinny tie bands playing Jacksons. With EMG's? What does a "perfect" Strat do? It doesn't sound like something different, it sounds hugely, wonderfully average.

I'm not a big fan of the music of Queen - too much singing - but Brian May is just about the only rock guitarist to reach "God" stature who accomplished it with a weird guitar. You could say the Beatles, except their best guitar solo was played by Clapton....

 

[Ace Flibble]

I can't play a guitar I don't like the look of. It'll just sit there and sit there and never get used. That said, I'm pretty easy to please in terms of guitar tone anyway. You can hand me almost any guitar and I'll find some use for it. It's very, very rare for me to not like a guitar's tone; so the looks become the main selling (or breaking) point for me. I have not and will not ever buy (or make) a guitar I don't like the look of but has a great tone, and I have and will frequently bought guitars that sound crap but look great.

But I also have weird taste in amp too. My main, default, go-to rig right now is a purple HSP hardtail Jazzmaster (because I like JMs and purple) into a talkbox (because it's funny) into a Line 6 HD147 head (because it glows purple). Tone could not be any more average, but it looks chuffin' sharp.