It does not take much to get guitar players arguing with each other. But there are few topics that get people going like tonewoods.
Some players will die on the hill of mahogany bodies making for warmer, fuller-sounding electric or acoustic guitars while others say it is a total myth. Generously, the latter will tell the former that it’s all psychosomatic, that the brain is leading the ear. Less generously, they’ll tell you that you’re full of crap. And so it goes.
It doesn’t matter that Paul Reed Smith, who knows quite a bit about making a guitar, chooses tonewoods with the same care as a Michelin-starred chef sources their game and seafood. Some players remain unconvinced, and one in particular even has his own guitar brand, Zakk Wylde.
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In a recent interview with Guitar World, Wylde was discussing how he chose tonewoods for Wylde Audio’s new lineup of acoustic guitars. Its grand auditorium range is its first acoustic instruments in what has been exclusively an electric brand specializing in some of the most aggressive shapes you will see on the market. Wylde says his opinion on tonewood has changed over the years.
“There are tried-and-true woods for guitars, even more so with acoustics than electrics,” says Wylde. “When I was younger, I remember reading a thing with Yngwie Malmsteen where he was talking about the different tones that come out of Strats made out of different woods. He also spoke about how he’d change from a maple neck to a rosewood neck and notice how the sound changed.”
Malmsteen: there’s one we can count on backing up Mr Smith from Maryland’s stance. Wylde says all this doesn’t matter on the electric guitar.
“On electrics, your pickups work as a microphone,” he says. “I saw this one guy who did a test where he took the pickups out of his guitar, put them on a cinder block attached to a neck – and it sounded identical.”
These videos do exist. There are more dramatic examples yet, some truly weird experiments to disprove the tonal merits of having a nice thick cap of AAA figured maple on top of some well-cured mahogany – to prove how the pickup is doing all of the heavy lifting.
“That’s where a lot of the tone is coming from,” says Wylde. “Just to disprove all the people who spend their lives arguing about which sounds better out of ash, maple, alder, mahogany or rosewood. One guy even recorded a microwave with some pickups on it and a guitar neck. And when he A/B’d that against his actual electric, it sounded the same.”
But Wylde is a salesman, too. What about those grand auditoriums, with their Norse snake and bullseye graphics?
“If you listen real hard, you’ll be able to hear the difference in tone,” jokes Wylde. “My friends come round and say they can’t tell the difference. But they’re not listening hard enough. [Laughs] It just might depend on how many adult beverages you’d had that evening – because I heard that can affect how you hear things!”
You can read Guitar World’s interview with Zakk Wylde in the latest issue, available from Magazines Direct.
