The reason for tone quality………
A few of you will have read my last couple of topics about my first build. I had one where I was concerned I had made the right choice about the body I bought and another topic where I discussed whether people had had to sand or shim their Warmoth neck and bodies.
Anyway, my body arrived on Thursday and I absolutely love it. It matches my neck so well and having tried the combo with a tortoise and a black pickguard I have found the tortoise sets it of fantastically. On another point, however, the neck and body will just not fit together. The neck pocket on the body is so tight that not one section of the neck heel would go in (a mild irritation) so I have had to take it to my luthier to sand and refinish (yep, it is going to have to have that much taken off) the neck pocket to get a good fit. He is also going to run his eyes over the fretboard and see if it needs any attention. I intend to do the build myself, but I won’t try anything that I am out of my depth with on my first build…………….. fret dressing (especially ss frets) and sanding for a perfect neck fit might not be the most technically demanding processes, but I don’t have experience to know when to stop sanding or filing and so the stuff where I can cause damage I cant reverse should be left alone.
Which brings me onto the point of this post; I went round to my luthier’s house on Friday night. He is a local luthier called Les Tones (I wonder if that is his real name……hmm) who works out of a shed in his back garden at his house. It’s a pretty humble setup, but he has a big rep in the area in that he is Chris Rea’s current tech, and has been for years, and has also done work for Mark Knopfler. He is more than a tech though, he is a player and teacher of 25 years and makes instruments from scratch. He even showed me a pretty impressive neck through Strat he made, which I mention because I read someone on here asking if it had been done before. He does the works. You get the picture. Anyway, I am trying to convey that I think he is pretty well qualified to past judgment and offer opinion on all things guitar.
I have seen him a few times but he is always busy with loads of people there at the same time and I have never really had the chance to chat with him for more than 5mins before. When I turned up on Friday night I was the only one there and he was just about to pack up for the day, but the guy could talk underwater and I am not adverse to a little talking either. Anyway, 2hrs passed and we spoke nothing but guitars, when he offered me a little theory he has on how to get the best tone out of a guitar and why some guitars sound better than others. It seemed like such a sound theory to me that I though I would offer it up here. I have never heard this before.
So I ask him the question about my build, what can I do to make it as good as possible?
He replies in one word ‘hardware’. Les goes on to tell me story about how when he was young he served his time as a sheet metal welder. He told me his first job out of school was to go up to Scotland and work on the construction of the Firth of Forth suspension bridge. He said that the thick cables used for the bridge were made up of lots of smaller cables which were each made of a different alloy. He says that the different alloys each brought a different density to the overall cable and that when the vehicles crossed the bridge and caused vibrations the individual strands in the cables would vibrate at a different frequency due to the varying densities and so would counteract other strand’s vibrations and act as a shock absorber through the cable. INTERESTING.
He says, that was his theory on why certain guitars sound better than others. He said wood and pickups were important for character (wood less so, not in terms of species, but in terms quality being less important) and that you couldn’t have a good guitar without them. They must be well made and stable, but quality of tone comes down to having hardware made of the same alloys from the same manufacturer and of the same age. He said that if you make sure all the hardware in the guitar; bridge, tuners, screws and string trees is made of the same raw materials and shares the same density then the hardware will resonate at the same frequency and allow the character of the wood and pickups to achieve its best possible tonal quality without the hardware frequencies fighting each other. He thinks this is the secret of the major manufacturers. He says that he has seen a number of top of the line guitars ruined by customers that want him to install new tuners or a new bridge from a different manufacturer. For this reason he thinks that the best guitars you can get are the lucky factory made Fender, Gibson and PRS guitars which make it out with the best build quality (hit and miss) and have the matching standard hardware or custom shop master builds with matching hardware. If you get a very well made guitar from a major manufacturer you may not like the character of the instrument because of the pickups and wood combo and you may what to change the pickups, but you will be getting high tonal quality according to Les. Character and tone quality are two very different things according to Mr. Tones. :guitaristgif:
Think of it, if you had a tuning fork and one side was denser than the other would it ring true?
This makes sense to me being a scientist. It is a physical explanation that goes beyond the usual theories of perfect 10 wood etc. or ‘one off’ hand wound pickups (although hand wound or well made pickups are important for the character) and based on this conversation with Les I am going to get all the hardware completely matched in this build. It actually works out cheaper in my case to do this as the tuners I was going to buy are $130 and now they will just be $40. Everything must come in a Fender bag or box and where possible avoid parts Fender subcontracted to be made.
Comments? Just thought you might find this one interesting. I am sure not all will agree.
A few of you will have read my last couple of topics about my first build. I had one where I was concerned I had made the right choice about the body I bought and another topic where I discussed whether people had had to sand or shim their Warmoth neck and bodies.
Anyway, my body arrived on Thursday and I absolutely love it. It matches my neck so well and having tried the combo with a tortoise and a black pickguard I have found the tortoise sets it of fantastically. On another point, however, the neck and body will just not fit together. The neck pocket on the body is so tight that not one section of the neck heel would go in (a mild irritation) so I have had to take it to my luthier to sand and refinish (yep, it is going to have to have that much taken off) the neck pocket to get a good fit. He is also going to run his eyes over the fretboard and see if it needs any attention. I intend to do the build myself, but I won’t try anything that I am out of my depth with on my first build…………….. fret dressing (especially ss frets) and sanding for a perfect neck fit might not be the most technically demanding processes, but I don’t have experience to know when to stop sanding or filing and so the stuff where I can cause damage I cant reverse should be left alone.
Which brings me onto the point of this post; I went round to my luthier’s house on Friday night. He is a local luthier called Les Tones (I wonder if that is his real name……hmm) who works out of a shed in his back garden at his house. It’s a pretty humble setup, but he has a big rep in the area in that he is Chris Rea’s current tech, and has been for years, and has also done work for Mark Knopfler. He is more than a tech though, he is a player and teacher of 25 years and makes instruments from scratch. He even showed me a pretty impressive neck through Strat he made, which I mention because I read someone on here asking if it had been done before. He does the works. You get the picture. Anyway, I am trying to convey that I think he is pretty well qualified to past judgment and offer opinion on all things guitar.
I have seen him a few times but he is always busy with loads of people there at the same time and I have never really had the chance to chat with him for more than 5mins before. When I turned up on Friday night I was the only one there and he was just about to pack up for the day, but the guy could talk underwater and I am not adverse to a little talking either. Anyway, 2hrs passed and we spoke nothing but guitars, when he offered me a little theory he has on how to get the best tone out of a guitar and why some guitars sound better than others. It seemed like such a sound theory to me that I though I would offer it up here. I have never heard this before.
So I ask him the question about my build, what can I do to make it as good as possible?
He replies in one word ‘hardware’. Les goes on to tell me story about how when he was young he served his time as a sheet metal welder. He told me his first job out of school was to go up to Scotland and work on the construction of the Firth of Forth suspension bridge. He said that the thick cables used for the bridge were made up of lots of smaller cables which were each made of a different alloy. He says that the different alloys each brought a different density to the overall cable and that when the vehicles crossed the bridge and caused vibrations the individual strands in the cables would vibrate at a different frequency due to the varying densities and so would counteract other strand’s vibrations and act as a shock absorber through the cable. INTERESTING.
He says, that was his theory on why certain guitars sound better than others. He said wood and pickups were important for character (wood less so, not in terms of species, but in terms quality being less important) and that you couldn’t have a good guitar without them. They must be well made and stable, but quality of tone comes down to having hardware made of the same alloys from the same manufacturer and of the same age. He said that if you make sure all the hardware in the guitar; bridge, tuners, screws and string trees is made of the same raw materials and shares the same density then the hardware will resonate at the same frequency and allow the character of the wood and pickups to achieve its best possible tonal quality without the hardware frequencies fighting each other. He thinks this is the secret of the major manufacturers. He says that he has seen a number of top of the line guitars ruined by customers that want him to install new tuners or a new bridge from a different manufacturer. For this reason he thinks that the best guitars you can get are the lucky factory made Fender, Gibson and PRS guitars which make it out with the best build quality (hit and miss) and have the matching standard hardware or custom shop master builds with matching hardware. If you get a very well made guitar from a major manufacturer you may not like the character of the instrument because of the pickups and wood combo and you may what to change the pickups, but you will be getting high tonal quality according to Les. Character and tone quality are two very different things according to Mr. Tones. :guitaristgif:
Think of it, if you had a tuning fork and one side was denser than the other would it ring true?
This makes sense to me being a scientist. It is a physical explanation that goes beyond the usual theories of perfect 10 wood etc. or ‘one off’ hand wound pickups (although hand wound or well made pickups are important for the character) and based on this conversation with Les I am going to get all the hardware completely matched in this build. It actually works out cheaper in my case to do this as the tuners I was going to buy are $130 and now they will just be $40. Everything must come in a Fender bag or box and where possible avoid parts Fender subcontracted to be made.
Comments? Just thought you might find this one interesting. I am sure not all will agree.
