I have a little time these days, therefore I want to talk about tone woods today guys, to those who want to buy a guitar and/or those, who want to build a guitar etc. so lets call this Tone Woods part 1 Tone Woods, the quality, the type of wood and in the end the finish as well as the processing will have major impact on the sound of the guitar, not to forget the model to decide on and the bracing of course. But one after the other... we go step by step and will not hurry through this lecturer... If you are going to buy a guitar in the music store calls for a mandatory check and play of the instrument. Assumed you are entering the guitar shop having in mind to play Fingerstyle guitar or Bluegrass guitar or electric Jazz guitar, you will be guided inside the shop to the right place to find what you are looking for. We buy a an acoustic guitar now and and most of us will get attention of something when it is beautiful in form and finish, the same here with the guitars. You will get quickly a few eye-catcher and want to play those, please always check on the woods, the finish used and the bracing inside the guitar. Nowadays you will find many guitars with integrated pick-up systems, which I personally dont like, as I want to find out my own pick-up system matching best for the guitar I have bought. When I was traveling 3 m month in Brazil this year, I went to several music shops and found that more than 90% of their acoustic guitars have a pre-installed pick-up system, hey come on, who is buying this? I want to have an individual sound... However, you will get information about the woods used for this guitar, you will find out playability and sound while getting familiar with each instrument and playing for a while. There are many fancy guitars around these days, but often a simple and humble looking guitar sounds much better than the fancy one you just grabbed, dont get confused by these sometimes overloaded guitars, follow your ear and the sound you can pick out of it... Knock on the wood without touching it too much, just with 2 fingers, with the other hand, e.g the top, hold the guitar at the neck and knock slightly on the top wood, the top wood is mainly different from the woods used for the back and sides, if you play 2 similar guitars with different woods, you should be able to hear the difference between the two, check the neck for how fast you can run up and down with your fingers etc. When you build a guitar and you select your tone woods, it is a similar procedure, you take the wood in one corner and knock with your other hand on the wood to hear the sound, dont grab with the full hand to hold the wood, this will kill every sound! see how to do it in the picture below. You can run through several guitars or respective tone woods until you have found what you are looking for. Mahogany has a different tone than Rosewood or Maple and Cherry, the tone will be influenced mainly by these factors : 1. tone woods for back and sides and top 2. the finishing 3. the body shape 4. the bracing 5. pick guard yes/no 6. the quality of work 7. miscellaneous In part 2 I will talk more about the builder and how the wood will be selected for the guitars/instruments... cheers guys, keep on picking... JD
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 05:02:14 +0000
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