Walnut body, what is the tone?

[rowz]

I have to disagree with Crash here...
and also agree with tfarny.. I think wood (both neck and body) affect the tone a lot (based on experience)  but the actual effect is very unpredictable.
I still don't think it is a good idea to pair a "bright" neck wood with a "bright" body wood with "bright" pickups...  a little bit of a balance is good.

I agree with you and personally i really like fat tones not too bright but i think the Gibson P-100 pickups for what i know they are dark

 

[rowz]

Poplar is ugly, that's why you don't see it on expensive guitars with pretty paint jobs. It's cheap because it's common easy to find wood, unlike mahogany which won't exist in 20 years. Nothing to do with the tone.

For what i know its not ugly, is hard to get a good finish with poplar.
Maple is easy to find there but is not cheap.

 

[line6man]

For what i know poplar is the worst wood for everything that is why is so cheap.

Hogwash. Regardless of the tonality, that's not why Poplar is inexpensive. Poplar is inexpensive because it is a common domestic wood that is in abundant supply. Go to Home Depot and you should see it everywhere.

Alder, Ash and Maple are commonplace on guitars for the very same reason. They are inexpensive woods in abundant supply.

 

[crash]

Well, if you make a list of the items that influence the tone in order from greatest to least (rough estimate for order, anyway):

Pickups
Neck scale
Electronics
Neck wood
Guitar cable
Bridge/nut type & material
Strings
Body wood
Frets

When playing acoustically, the body wood will make a huge difference because you are also hearing the resonance in the wood.  Plug it into an amp and the pickups only pickup the vibrating string.  The wood has a slight affect in that the vibrating wood will have a feedback effect on the vibrating string.  This is why the neck wood has a greater affect than the body wood.  The neck can vibrate more freely than the body.

The guitar cable in conjunction with the pots and amp input creates a low pass filter which has a much greater affect than the body wood.

Changing from a 250k pot to a 500k pot can increase the resonance peak of a pickup by about 3dB.

Yes, the wood does influence the tone.  I never said it didn't.  Just compared to the other items listed above, it's small potatoes.

Now if you are putting some Bill Lawerence XL500XL pickups in a maple body with a maple neck, 1M pot, brass nut, tele bridge with a low capacitance guitar cable, then you might as well have a dog whistle.  Then the only change you did was make the body mahogany, you probably wouldn't notice a difference. 

 

[timuwmun]

Body wood on a solid body really has no effect on "brights"/"mids"/"treblys" or whatever else you think y'all are hearing the. The axe below sound IDENTICAL to another I have with an alder body/maple neck/same pickup configuration...

Then "y'all" dont have a very fine ear at all to differentiate on what "y'all" think you're not hearing in difference. Wood type matters most of all, over pickups, etc. It's the first and main source. If the wood you have has a certain harmonic signature to it, it will always be there no matter what pickups, amp, you use. Will you notice? Do you care? Depends on how particular and perceptive you are and/or want to be with this. Wood always influences the character the most. Notice I said character. This is more complex than just treble or bass or the generic term "mids" which is too wide of a range its very deceptive. High mids? Low mids? Middle mids? What freq? I'm talking more about the complex resonances of all freqs in the mids too, which are hard to talk about and compare. Also woods affect dynamics and resonance greatly, which makes the FEEL of the strings and pick attack change. This is why wood is most important in the chain, as no pickup or amp can change those more complex factors that come from the WOOD. They are stuck there and will always be there. Pickups and amps can try to hide, mask or accentuate some of these factors, but can never eliminate them as main source of character, again not only of "tone" but "feel" and beyond, as deep as your mind and ear and fingers can process the more complex variances that are harder to define and talk about.

 

[Prometheus]

Interesting, and strongly-stated opinion. Would you care to offer your impressions of the 3 "tonewoods" below?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFyQXy74xz4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYLSzKlisx8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hip2YiQCGs

 

[stubhead]

Referencing a 30-month-old post in order to proselytize about wood is a rather oblique method of "Howdy." I think he already finished his guitar.... I used to buy Warmoth bodies out of ads in Guitar Player before they even got "exotic." Maple, ash, walnut, alder. Cackle, creak, MS-DOS, Intel 386, spark plugs, 12 miles to school barefoot through the north woods blizzards uphill both ways etc.

But "Howdy!" :hello2:

 

[Stonker]

Lots of videos on youtube about tonewoods and whether they affect tone or not

 

[fdesalvo]

I had a heavy once piece walnut body with a tru-oil finish.  Felt cold and dead to me.  No life to it.  I'm sure someone out there has a positive experience to share, but I'm not taking another chance on one.  To be fair, I've also had mahogany guitars that felt the same and my current #1 has a light and very resonant hog body. 

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

All walnut body + walnut shaft/ebony fingerboard acoustically (unplugged) sounds reasonably flat with a bit of an upper mid notch.  Pickups will take it from there, but gives you plenty of range to increase/decrease the amp's tone settings.

 

[Rick]

Scale length then pups then electronics then hardware then neck wood then body wood ... All things being equal