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Similarly to how I think about pickups - the output level of a pickup itself is, IMO, irrelevant because we have master volume amps and pedals to choose how much gain and how loud our end signals are. It's just that the pickups that happen to be lower output generally have a different tone to those that have higher output (at least in my experience).
I actually do think these is something to this. It also explains why direct mount pickups can be noticeably different too
Every change in the sound of an electric guitar has to be understood in terms of the strings vibration, the magnetic field it is moving in, and the electrical components that follow on from that.
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My own view is that resonance makes a guitar feel nicer but that’s about it.
The nearest I’ve got in a modern Fender is my CS ‘56 Relic (from 2006). It has an Ash body and a one-piece maple neck - both of which are supposed to sound ‘bright’ - yet it doesn’t. It’s much warmer/fatter than the rosewood board/alder bodied ‘59 reissue that it replaced. Through an amp, these characteristics are preserved.
I don't have enough experience with different guitars to really say, but my gut feeling, and logic, says that the pickup, pedals, amp and speaker will have far more impact on a guitar's sound than the wood it's made of, when talking about solid body electrics.
The only way to really test it is to have the same pickup, and wiring loom, in multiple guitars of differing woods, construction methods etc and do double blind testing with random control groups.
If you do tests with guitarists where they know what they're listening to, confirmation bias will occur. If you did a test with non musicians, they would likely not be able to tell the difference - as far as my mum is concerned, all three of my guitars sound much the same.
As far resonance specifically is concerned, I would say that it has an impact - if energy in the string is being transferred elsewhere, you're losing that energy, but as all of the strings are connected, energy from one string will effect the other strings (if you don't mute the other strings while tuning, you'll hear other strings ring out) - but again, if you start putting the signal from the guitar through lots of additional circuitry, the natural resonance will be "hidden" to some extent.
I thought the ol' tonewood debate was "it makes a subtle difference" vs. "it makes zero difference" but maybe some people take it further than that.
I'd be impressed if someone could tell from a recorded clip of a standard humbucker whether the guitar it was in was even a Fender or a Gibson, never mind anything more specific than that. So that's basically everything except the pickup being different.
Maybe we could even do it as a thread and choose as popular a pickup as possible, something from Seymour Duncan maybe, and everyone who has one in a guitar uploads a clip and see if anyone has a clue what guitar it's in.
Yeah, back when the debate was at its peak there were people at each others' throats on various forums and in YouTube and social media comments threatening to find out where other people lived and do them in for daring to agree or disagree with whichever way somebody had chosen to present their case. It was really over the top at times, with YouTubers slagging off other YouTubers' "scientific" comparisons. I guess Covid came along and gave people something more important to consider.