Faith pickguards

[firstrebel]

Faith guitars have produced polished ebony pickguards for some of their acoustic range.



Bob

[fazool]

THose are nice - I don't care too much for the Taylor wooden ones.

But it makes me wonder:


If the top is wood and the wood is prone to scratching so they use a plastic pickguard. When you put a wooden pickguard isn't that kind of defeating the purpose? I mean can't the wooden pickguard get scratched just like the wooden top?

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by fazool

THose are nice - I don't care too much for the Taylor wooden ones.

But it makes me wonder:


If the top is wood and the wood is prone to scratching so they use a plastic pickguard. When you put a wooden pickguard isn't that kind of defeating the purpose? I mean can't the wooden pickguard get scratched just like the wooden top?

Sure it can, but wooden pickguards are typically made of hardwoods, which are considerably more scratch-resistant than the conifer woods used for guitar tops.

Now, a spruce pickguard would be pretty ridiculous.


whm

[Beakybird]

Would a layer of ebony affect vibration of the spruce and the sound of the instrument?

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by Beakybird

Would a layer of ebony affect vibration of the spruce and the sound of the instrument?

It can, but only if it’s thick enough to add a discernible amount of mass to the top. Both wooden and plastic pickguards that are thick enough to be inlaid (such as what you’ll see on Martin’s fanciest high end guitars) can and do add enough mass to stifle some of the tone by inhibiting a bit of the top’s vibration.

I don’t want to suggest that this automatically makes guitars with inlaid pickguards sound bad - at its worst, this would be the merest fraction of the tone-stifling inflicted by the player laying his forearm on top as he plays the instrument. But it is a minor tone dampener.

Those inlaid pickguards have to be thick enough so that the inflexible pearl and abalone inlay pieces can’t pop loose.

These wooden pickguards used by Taylor and now Faith guitars are considerably thinner than the inlaid pickguards have to be, though, so any impact that they have on the top’s vibrations is going to be insignificant, and thus inaudible.

It’s a perfectly valid question, and five or ten years ago what they’re doing now with wooden pickguards probably wouldn’t have been possible. Because if it HAD been possible, somebody would have been doing it. So there’s probably been a production advance that allows paper-thin wooden pickguards to get sliced thinner than deli ham....

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[v32 finish]

I want one! Although I don't think that shape would fit on my Washburn. (it is peeling up and scratched and needs replacing). And I still want a wooden one for my Taylor, and for the life of me, I can't get one from anyone, anywhere. I was hoping Taylor would sell me one, but they won't do it unless I can prove ownership of a 6 or 8 series guitar that came stock with one.

Definitely a market for nice aftermarket wooden pickguards, as I would like to buy 1 or 2 myself, and have spoken with several others who like them and can't find them anywhere.

I think the effect on tone is negligible, unless they are super thick, as Wade stated.

SC

[SpruceTop]

Originally Posted by fazool

THose are nice - I don't care too much for the Taylor wooden ones.

But it makes me wonder:


If the top is wood and the wood is prone to scratching so they use a plastic pickguard. When you put a wooden pickguard isn't that kind of defeating the purpose? I mean can't the wooden pickguard get scratched just like the wooden top?

I find the Taylor wooden pickguards are very resistant to scratching and a player would have to want to kill their guitar with a steel flatpick to scratch these pickguards.