Fender custom shop rumour—is this true?

stonevibe

Surely, you want the strings to vibrate and not the body and neck?


 As Les Paul (guitar god and all round inventor of everything worth having) was making guitar using rail way track, to eliminate feedback with his original designs and increase sustain.


Ducking for cover now (why must I play Devil's Advocate on guitar forums?)

Caffeine_Vampire

Ah, yet another needless invention to ensure we all sound exactly the bloody same.

Pass.

guitars4you

ICBM said:

LastMantra said:

I guess because people have created great tones with all sorts of guitars.

I'm sure that at some level there is something going on in the wood but there's so many other variables that imo it doesn't matter.
Who plays only hanging the guitar by the headstock? 

Yes, it's true that you can make a great sound with a cheap junk guitar that has no "tone", if you want.

But it's also true that the Peter Green Les Paul has a completely unique sound which is *not* just due to the rewound neck pickup - the tone is in the wood, you can hear it on the original unmodified bridge pickup as well.

So the wood and its resonances do matter at least to some extent.

Ultimately the sum of all the parts have an impact on the final result - It has been said before, that if you can utilise the cheapest parts to build a guitar and accept the results will be mediocre, then surely by hunting down the finest components you can obtain a more preferable tone - Certainly to optimize the tone 

Ref Greeny - I've heard Bernie Marsden talk about this LP and his Beast - He was big friends with G Moore and had played both on many occasions - He said acoustically both guitars sounded different - More open/airy I think he said about Greeny 

LastMantra

I'm going to start making brass neck plates and sell them for £150 a pop 

And a special torque wrench, of course. 

ICBM

stonevibe said:

Surely, you want the strings to vibrate and not the body and neck?

 As Les Paul (guitar god and all round inventor of everything worth having) was making guitar using rail way track, to eliminate feedback with his original designs and increase sustain.

If you do that you get essentially a Steinberger... something which works perfectly well - excellently, in fact - but has no 'character' to the sound, you just hear the strings. That might be what you want for some applications.

Some of the Norlin Les Pauls with maple necks and very heavy bodies can get quite close to it as well - very pure, long sustain but rather lacking 'tone' although they usually have a very powerful, even sound.

WezV

stonevibe said:

Surely, you want the strings to vibrate and not the body and neck?


 As Les Paul (guitar god and all round inventor of everything worth having) was making guitar using rail way track, to eliminate feedback with his original designs and increase sustain.


Ducking for cover now (why must I play Devil's Advocate on guitar forums?)

exactly, that was the aim of solid body guitars, but the materials and designs meant it didn't quite work that way.   your purest design would be a vibrating string with no vibration in the body or neck at all, not possible within the laws of physics

You can get closer with things like steinbergers,   cut off all the wobbly bits to reduce their impact.

Alex2678

Bit of a tangent maybe but I can say for certain I’ve experienced the exact opposite - I had a one of the new (2019) SG standard ‘61s, and returned it because when I hit an E anywhere on the neck the guitar vibrated in a pulsating kind of way, and the note immediately died and left a harmonic ringing. Press the headstock against something hard, problem solved, take it away, problem returned.

guitars4you

stonevibe said:

Surely, you want the strings to vibrate and not the body and neck?

Yes you do - But there are many issues that can dampen the natural time that the string can vibrate - There is a PRS video somewhere about this - Taking the 2 points of anchor, of the string, at the top of the headstock + nut and the bridge/tailpiece, once picked, then you can't really make a string vibrate any longer, but you can make it vibrate for less - So factors come into play to optimize this

WezV

guitars4you said:

stonevibe said:

Surely, you want the strings to vibrate and not the body and neck?

Yes you do - But there are many issues that can dampen the natural time that the string can vibrate - There is a PRS video somewhere about this - Taking the 2 points of anchor, of the string, at the top of the headstock + nut and the bridge/tailpiece, once picked, then you can't really make a string vibrate any longer, but you can make it vibrate for less - So factors come into play to optimize this

yeah, i think its his TED talk where he talks about how you need to think how elements liek nut, body, neck etc subract  from the strings vibration

crunchman

guitars4you said:

ICBM said:

LastMantra said:

I guess because people have created great tones with all sorts of guitars.

I'm sure that at some level there is something going on in the wood but there's so many other variables that imo it doesn't matter.
Who plays only hanging the guitar by the headstock? 

Yes, it's true that you can make a great sound with a cheap junk guitar that has no "tone", if you want.

But it's also true that the Peter Green Les Paul has a completely unique sound which is *not* just due to the rewound neck pickup - the tone is in the wood, you can hear it on the original unmodified bridge pickup as well.

So the wood and its resonances do matter at least to some extent.

Ultimately the sum of all the parts have an impact on the final result - It has been said before, that if you can utilise the cheapest parts to build a guitar and accept the results will be mediocre, then surely by hunting down the finest components you can obtain a more preferable tone - Certainly to optimize the tone 

Ref Greeny - I've heard Bernie Marsden talk about this LP and his Beast - He was big friends with G Moore and had played both on many occasions - He said acoustically both guitars sounded different - More open/airy I think he said about Greeny 

I've owned 3 Custom Shop Les Pauls over the years.  The first one I bought because it was the lightest fully solid Les Paul I'd ever picked up.  Got it home and played it for a while, and I just wasn't happy with the sound.  Lots of top end, and not the usual amount of Les Paul beef to the sound.  Tried swapping pickups but didn't help.

I ended up selling that, and bought an R8 that sounded much fuller.

The thing with both those guitars was that what I heard through the pickups reflected their acoustic sound.  The one that sounded thin plugged in had a lot of top end unplugged.  The one that sounded fuller plugged in was a lot warmer and full sounding unplugged.  I did end up selling that one because the neck was too big.  I now have the one in my avatar.

In addition, I now have two Strats.  One of them is brighter sounding plugged acoustically than the other.  It's also brighter sounding plugged in.  It may or may not be coincidence that the brighter sounding one is the one with maple board.

Whatever the specifics of different species of wood, or different pieces of the same species, the acoustic sound of a guitar wood definitely has an effect on tone.  The wood is a large of part of what makes that acoustic sound,

stonevibe

I have often found a lot of lightweight guitars, just don't sustain very well by themselves. Sure, if an amp is turned up and they feedback they will. Just on their own and clean they lack note definition and don't seem to sustain very well, compared to heavier guitars of a similar build.

LastMantra

funhouse said:

It's an interesting approach, if true. I remember Roger Mayer telling me that Hendrix used to try out lots of different strats and then match the necks and bodies he preferred.

He's also meant to have bought all the best sounding fuzz pedals in the shop only to find they sounded different when he got home. 

Just saying like 

ICBM

LastMantra said:

He's also meant to have bought all the best sounding fuzz pedals in the shop only to find they sounded different when he got home. 

Just saying like 

He was probably unaware that germanium transistors are temperature-sensitive, and the Fuzz Face circuit is so crude that it makes a big difference to the sound.

LastMantra

ICBM said:

LastMantra said:

He's also meant to have bought all the best sounding fuzz pedals in the shop only to find they sounded different when he got home. 

Just saying like 

He was probably unaware that germanium transistors are temperature-sensitive, and the Fuzz Face circuit is so crude that it makes a big difference to the sound.

For sure. 

TINMAN82

Custom Shop getting a lot of love on here these days (and rightly so). Think I’ll avoid wading into this one though!

stonevibe

ICBM said:

LastMantra said:

He's also meant to have bought all the best sounding fuzz pedals in the shop only to find they sounded different when he got home. 

Just saying like 

He was probably unaware that germanium transistors are temperature-sensitive, and the Fuzz Face circuit is so crude that it makes a big difference to the sound.

And he was high as a fucking kite, which probably factored in as well.

WezV

stonevibe said:

I have often found a lot of lightweight guitars, just don't sustain very well by themselves. Sure, if an amp is turned up and they feedback they will. Just on their own and clean they lack note definition and don't seem to sustain very well, compared to heavier guitars of a similar build.

two approaches for me, with a million different results.  



approach one - build things heavy like an 80's yamaha SG1000.    the solidness means you get a pure string sustaining for longer.   also a faster attack up front and a gradual decay with little colouration

Approach two - build it light.   the strings will vibrate the body more at the start giving a different attack.   As the note decays the body vibrations will feed back into the string, it sustains, but the decay is more complex and coloured.



obviously its a hell of a lot more complex than that, i hope the forum pedants (and  actual physics experts) can except that  

skunkwerx

Only counter argument I can think of is Dave Simpson. 

Dude plays cheapo guitars through solid state amps and sounds immense. 

No doubt better quality woods and gear improve tone to an extent.. but is that extent a better improvement than the player themselves?

Personally not so much, for a good player. 

For me a shite player, they would improve things slightly maybe. 

guitars4you

crunchman said:

guitars4you said:

ICBM said:

LastMantra said:

I guess because people have created great tones with all sorts of guitars.

I'm sure that at some level there is something going on in the wood but there's so many other variables that imo it doesn't matter.
Who plays only hanging the guitar by the headstock? 

Yes, it's true that you can make a great sound with a cheap junk guitar that has no "tone", if you want.

But it's also true that the Peter Green Les Paul has a completely unique sound which is *not* just due to the rewound neck pickup - the tone is in the wood, you can hear it on the original unmodified bridge pickup as well.

So the wood and its resonances do matter at least to some extent.

Ultimately the sum of all the parts have an impact on the final result - It has been said before, that if you can utilise the cheapest parts to build a guitar and accept the results will be mediocre, then surely by hunting down the finest components you can obtain a more preferable tone - Certainly to optimize the tone 

Ref Greeny - I've heard Bernie Marsden talk about this LP and his Beast - He was big friends with G Moore and had played both on many occasions - He said acoustically both guitars sounded different - More open/airy I think he said about Greeny 

I've owned 3 Custom Shop Les Pauls over the years.  The first one I bought because it was the lightest fully solid Les Paul I'd ever picked up.  Got it home and played it for a while, and I just wasn't happy with the sound.  Lots of top end, and not the usual amount of Les Paul beef to the sound.  Tried swapping pickups but didn't help.

I ended up selling that, and bought an R8 that sounded much fuller.

The thing with both those guitars was that what I heard through the pickups reflected their acoustic sound.  The one that sounded thin plugged in had a lot of top end unplugged.  The one that sounded fuller plugged in was a lot warmer and full sounding unplugged.  I did end up selling that one because the neck was too big.  I now have the one in my avatar.

In addition, I now have two Strats.  One of them is brighter sounding plugged acoustically than the other.  It's also brighter sounding plugged in.  It may or may not be coincidence that the brighter sounding one is the one with maple board.

Whatever the specifics of different species of wood, or different pieces of the same species, the acoustic sound of a guitar wood definitely has an effect on tone.  The wood is a large of part of what makes that acoustic sound,

a couple of points : -

I know many of us like to go light, so weight is important - But sometimes I've found light guitars can lack body to the plugged in tone - pun intended - I've noticed this on Custom Shop Nocasters on a few occasions 

I heard a story a few months ago - Both FB members - One wanted to buy an R8 or R9 (I forget which) - His mate went along with him for the ride - The LP he went to buy he did not like as it was to bright and almost fierce - His mate decided it was what he'd been looking for, but had given up the search - So the mate ended up buying the guitar - So one guitar can suit one player and not the other - Maybe the epitome of that is the vintage LP that Jimmy Page owns - Joe Walsh sold it as he did not like it 

I think it just shows that the tonal character of wood has an impact on what we buy/like/accept - So even on expensive boutique guitars, we get variables - Not about better/worse (granted there are sometimes the odd dud) but about the finer nuances of the tone 

CountryDave

I recall reading in an interview a while ago where an artist picks a guitar up by the neck, akin to sitting in a hanger, plucks a string (b string comes to mind) and.then puts a finger against the body down by the strap button.
If it vibrates well, that's a good thing according to him.