How much difference does the guitar make?

[Russ C]

Anyone who has different guitars with identical pickups (ok, not vintage hand wound things but recent, same name, same age I’m willing to call indentical) .. how much difference do you think the acoustic qualities of your guitars make?

[Brent Hutto]

For me different guitars sound different and play different. I don't ever swap parts around, I just play them as they come. So I couldn't possibly say where this or that part of the sound originates within the guitar.

I personally feel that the vast majority of what people attribute to "hog" this or "moon spruce" that in acoustic guitar tone is exaggerated. So on electric guitars I reckon any effect that type of wood is supposed to have is almost certainly greatly exaggerated. But that's just my instinct.

There's a lot of things that probably make a difference All Else Being Equal. Except that "all else" is never "equal" in the real world so nobody actually knows.

[abn556]

The easiest way to test your idea is to play them unplugged and listen to them acoustically. I have 2 similar LPs, both are one piece mahogany backs and 2 piece flamed maple tops. Same neck profiles and same fingerboards, even the same tuners. They sound remarkably different. Once is much louder and more resonant unplugged than the other.

So, IMO the guitar makes a big difference. They are all unique. Even several samples of same year, same model can sound way different.

Also - consider that age might make a difference. LPs primarily have maple caps, which takes longer to mellow and open up than other woods. So two same model LPs that are 10 years different in age sound different.

[Mandobart]

I'm interpreting the question to mean "if you have multiple acoustic guitars with the same pickup, how different do they sound when plugged in?"

This is applicable to me, as I have 7 guitars that all have JJB SBT's in them.

These are all pretty different - a 70's Applause, an 80's Ovation 12 string, an Eastman archtop, an Altamira Sel-Mac copy, a Martin HD-28, Eastman E2OM-CD and a Martin 000-15SM. In my opinion/experience plugging in is something of an equalizer - many of acoustic properties (volume, sustain, bloom, etc.) get altered or lost. And so much depends on the rest of your signal chain.

I typically play unplugged, but if I do plug in I go straight from the instrument to my Carvin AG300 set to HI Z with flat EQ and very little reverb for effects. In this application enough of the original acoustic sound of each guitar still comes through such that they DON'T all sound the same.

EDIT: I read AGF from the "today on the AGF" standard search where it pulls up all the new posts across all the sub-forums and just now noticed this is in the "Electric Guitars" sub-forum....so I did misinterpret the original question.

[rmp]

Originally Posted by Russ C

Anyone who has different guitars with identical pickups (ok, not vintage hand wound things but recent, same name, same age I’m willing to call indentical) .. how much difference do you think the acoustic qualities of your guitars make?

For me, it makes a difference.

I have three with identical pickups, Fisman Infinity Matrix

Gibson J200
Taylor Grand Symphony
'78 Yari Dy74

[Charlie Bernstein]

Quite a bit. Thin nitro or thick poly? Maple or rosewood neck? Alder, ash, or maple body? Solid-body, semi-hollow, or hollow? String-through, whammy, or Tune-o-Matic? Two knobs or four?

Some of the differences are subtle, some are pronounced. But along with pickup type, they all add up to the sound of your guitar. And that's before factoring in the amp and effects.

They don't call it tone-questing for nuthin'!

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by abn556

The easiest way to test your idea is to play them unplugged and listen to them acoustically. . . .

Yep!

Another fun trick: Hold the guitart on the palm of one hand and pluck a string. See how long you can feel it vibrate. Not all chunks of wood are created equal.

[Guitarplayer_PR]

Originally Posted by Russ C

Anyone who has different guitars with identical pickups (ok, not vintage hand wound things but recent, same name, same age I’m willing to call indentical) .. how much difference do you think the acoustic qualities of your guitars make?

Short answer: ZERO.

Long answer: electric guitar pickups work totally different from acoustic guitar pickups (even the magnetic ones). They do not pick up wood vibrations like most acoustic guitar pickups do (even UST's). They're magnets and ONLY work with metal, not wood.

Besides, electric guitars are AWFUL acoustically.

[Guitarplayer_PR]

Originally Posted by Charlie Bernstein

Quite a bit. Thin nitro or thick poly? Maple or rosewood neck? Alder, ash, or maple body? Solid-body, semi-hollow, or hollow? String-through, whammy, or Tune-o-Matic? Two knobs or four?

Some of the differences are subtle, some are pronounced. But along with pickup type, they all add up to the sound of your guitar. And that's before factoring in the amp and effects.

They don't call it tone-questing for nuthin'!

Quite a nothing. Electric guitar pickups are totally different from acoustic guitar pickups. Only that takes the wood way for any consideration.

I thought us acoustic guitar players knew better

[Gordon Currie]

Originally Posted by Guitarplayer_PR

Quite a nothing. Electric guitar pickups are totally different from acoustic guitar pickups. Only that takes the wood way for any consideration.

I thought us acoustic guitar players knew better

Well, close the thread. The authority has spoken.

[Bob Womack]

I've got a Gibson ES-335 and a Gibson SG, both with Gibson's excellent '57 Classic pickups. They sound radically different.

Bob

[Puddleglum]

As far as acoustic qualities of electric guitars, to me none of that stuff matters because that's not the point of an electric guitar. If one wants acoustic qualities, play acoustic guitar. The fact that the great acoustic qualities of well-made acoustic guitars are often (always, really) ruined when the guitar is plugged in further proves the point for me. Any acoustic quality of an electric will be lost also once it's plugged in as well.

For me what makes an electric guitar a great one is how it feels in my hands and how it sounds when I put it on an amp. That's the whole point of an electric guitar.

[imwjl]

I had a window of time with 3 different Telecasters and a set of 3rd party Lawerence Keystone pickups. The '52 AVRI Telecaster had the modern wiring switch so full tone of the neck pickup was there. My '68 Thin Skin FSR has Custom Shop Nocasters, I forgot what the Highway One stock pickups were.

Out came the screwdriver and soldering iron. I did not have good recording gear but my looper channels could store for replay into the same amp and compare.

This was also comparing ash, alder, and ash Thinline.

They all sounded like Telecasters. The Highway One pickups had more output. While I sensed some differences, family members did not hear any difference or only heard flubbing trying to play same thing.

My conclusion was get or keep what brings you joy, and a lot of people are full of nonsense.

I do agree with @Bob where I tried different Gibson types with same pickups. Good semi hollows seem to have their own sort of tone. I tried my Collings semi-hollow with Lollar low wind and same model with different headstock that had Throbak as an upgrade. I mostly heard an output difference and have personal preference for more clean tone.

[Russ C]

When I posted the thread I knew the wooden part of an electric guitar counts for something in that it affects how a string vibrates - which is all the information a pickup gets. Compare an L5 with a Les Paul.
I was remembering a time when I fitted a Gibson humbucker to my Strat and when I fitted a filtertron to my 335 and I did not hear exactly what I expected from either but I also did not have a variable-free A/B comparison - there was too much time lapse for me to be confident.
I guess I was interested in how much others think the subtler acoustic differences between say a Les Paul and a Strat get to the pickups.

[Russ C]

A very relevant thing is distortion of course. Many electric players perceive light overdrive (or allowing an inkling of a guitar’s original sound through as “clean”) - if some of the guys who demo pedals on YouTube are anything to go by.
So if distortion is basic to someone’s sound I understand there’d be much less hope of hearing an guitars’s acoustic qualities from their amp.