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What are your guitars made of?
The failure of non-wood materials used in guitar building can be put down to traditionalists hearing with their eyes instead of their ears. A good example of this is the old received wisdom of "a rosewood fretboard will give a darker sound than a maple fretboard". Why? Because it looks darker?
Yes you can make something sound like an electric guitar by strapping a pickup to it, but to say it doesn't have an effect is just plain wrong.
I had one of those plastic moulded Trev Wilkonson guitars (forget what they were called) some years ago, with a beefy bridge humbucker and gobs of gain it was pretty convincing, even had its own thing going on which was likeable, but it didn't sound like a chunk of mahogany, and clean it sounded like a bag of spanners.
Anyway, I'm out, I don't mind debating something that's worth debating, but this......
Some very clean jazzy bits at around 21:00
BTW, the wood in your guitar is also dead, so let's give up the arguments of something sounding lifeless.
Yeah I use an Axe FX 2 as well. What tuning? I'm in drop B or C# standard, so fairly low. I only ask because you mentioned tightness and there's pretty much nothing tighter than an EMG 81. Most actives have less deep low end in them than passives though (the frequencies below the note when you palm mute).
I hate too much high end fizz in my own guitar tones, some guitars are worse for it than others. I personally found certain actives to work for me if the guitar is too fizzy and bright with gain.
This is possibly an extreme example, because the Nazgul is supposed to pretty bright (I think it's generally ballpark of the Distortion but a bit less mid spike though I've not tried one), but listen to the difference between the EMG 81 and the Nazgul here.
The only snag for some people is that the feel is different. Not everyone likes it. I've found the Duncan Blackouts have a subjectively better feel than EMGs but they're also less tight (though I've not tried the EMTYs). The high end is preferable though to a comparable passive IMO. Just listen to the difference between the distortion and the blackout in the isolated guitars here. Time codes for all pickups are in the description, but distortion starts at 14:34 and blackout starts at 16:23
YMMV but that's my experience
So a pickguard will have a minor effect on the guitars resonance pattern, but its effect may be much smaller than other factors.
I swapped the cheap pot metal block on my Jap strat for a cold rolled steel one and the changes were remarkable for that guitar...moreso than later experimenting with the saddle material (which made a tiny change but negligible compared to the sustain block)
How we perceive a guitars sound is down to the timbers subtracting from the overall frequency spectrum, frequencies lost to resonating the wood.
It was found that a carbon fibre guitar like the old Steinbergers etc didn't sound the same, and it had it resonant frequency higher than the frequencies that make up what we perceive as the main core tone of an electric guitar.
Also, we perceive how an instrument reacts to quick transients before settling down to the main waveform and some pieces of wood are quicker than others in how they handle those, and I mean on an individual piece by piece.
Wood is far from uniform, so one piece of alder will be a bit different from another, so whilst reacting in a certain way in broad terms won't be the whole story.
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
Stockist of: Earvana & Graphtech nuts, Faber Tonepros & Gotoh hardware, Fatcat bridges. Highwood Saddles.
Pickups from BKP, Oil City & Monty's pickups.
Expert guitar repairs and upgrades - fretwork our speciality! www.felineguitars.com. Facebook too!
A few years ago, I had two almost identical 2005 Les Paul Standards at my house, at the same time. One was mine - the other belonged to a friend of a friend - I was setting it up for him.
I set them both up pretty much indentically - relief, action, pick-up height, etc. Both had the same brand and gauge of (new) strings).
The unavoidable fact, was that they sounded significantly different from each other, when played through my (clean) amp. One was significantly more 'open' and bright. This chacteristic was evident regardless of which pick-up was used - including the middle position.
The more open sounding one was a fair bit lighter than the other - if I'm honest, there seemed LESS difference acoustically, than when played through the amp.
The only variable was different pieces of wood - the pick-ups and electronics were indentical in each. Had I owned both guitars, I would have swapped the pick-ups and electronics between them, to see if the brightness stayed with the same guitar.
So not a completely 'scientific' experiment - but sufficient to convince me that wood does affect the amplified tone of a solid guitar.
Back to the OP's question - I've not had issues with Alder bodied guitars before, personally. However, if its the top end that's an issue (and you use a fair amount of gain) it may be worth considering a chat with Ash or Marc at Mojo to see what they suggest - it could just be as simple as a particular type of magnet or a wind that's needed to get you to the sound you are searching for.
I play in a classic rock band doing mainly 80's rock and metal (Maiden, Dio, Y&T, etc.) and also use an Axe FX. I'm really happy with this guitar.
If you like I can take a photo of my control cavity later