This is my first post of many, I will post every month or week on matters that deal with guitar design, tonal structure, and various other topics, some of which may be very helpful, some may even be debatable. I do not claim to be some tonal guru, or try to influence your buying decisions, just telling things how I see or know them.

Tone is a subjective theory, over the history of guitar it has been said to be mostly in the fingers. While I agree partially, because of my studies in the guitar making industry, I have some factually based arguments. A great guitar is made up of several key components, and while a cheap guitar can be made to sound good by any good player, there still exists many other details that can and do enhance the tone, sound and playability of a guitar.

Some of the best sounding guitars, are made of woods from around the world, hard exotic woods, and high end components of which the mounting and materials they are made of, give more sustain, and naturally a different tonal landscape.

Density in the wood is a big factor, and high gain pickups give the best performance in this setup, while low gain pickups actually sound better in a less dense wood. The fingers . . . do influence differently for most players, which is much like the difference between talking in a normal voice, or adding sultry feelings, just transfer that to your fretboard, with time and experience you will discover the differences., that make it so that even you could make a yard sale guitar sound like a 2500 dollar axe, but that higher end axe, would be a little easier to make talk or display your emotions.

The search for the Holy Grail of tone, has many facets, and hopefully each player has the opportunity to find it. Peace out, till next time!

If you are interested in guitar manufacturing and custom building, check out this link: http://buildingtheergonomicguitar.com/. It is a great site with tons of interesting information!

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