All in the wood

[Axl_Rose]

My mate told me that my done up epiphone with seymour dyuncans will never be as good as a gibby cos its all in the wood! Whats the difference between the wood of an epi and a gibson, besides the finish?

[SLY]

Well , the wood depends on a lot of factors like the type of the tree , where it was cut off from , the dryness of the wood , the quality of manufacturing ,etc.

Anyway, wood doesn't realy make a HUGE difference as the pickups , effects & the Amp , beside it's a matter of personal taste .

[canuck7]

it shouldn't really matter man. i bet Gibson has made guitars out of some sh*tty wood as well as every guitar company. but it doesn't make a huge difference, as in making a whole much better than another because of the wood.
it helps, but doesn't better it.

[PonyOne]

That may have been true (what your mate said) back in the 80's, but nowadays, it can be very difficult to tell the difference between a good mass-produced guitar and a Gibson.

I have talked to a number of guys who have owned Gibsons that everyone drools over, only to favor a Samick or Epi or Aria over it. Indeed, if you go through the Samick listings or harmonycentral.com, you'll notice a good number times people who have been playing for 20+ years who saved up for months to buy a custom shop Gibson or Fender, who played the Korean equivelant, and converted to the dark side of "low-end" guitar players.

When you're playing an electric, especially if you use lots of gain, your pickups are going to make up about 75% of the sound you hear. The most noticeable difference between woods is in the neck, and in overall body construction: a solid body will never be as resonant as a semi hollow will never be as resonant as a hollowbody. But, generally speaking, for fast rock, it's better to have a guitar with lower resonance (less feedback, more precise playing), and for jazz or blues, it's better to have a resonant instrument.

The neck is definitely the most important part of a solid body guitar (most LP's are solid body, with a few more expensive ones having chambered bodies under their solid tops for extra resonance). A maple neck tends to let more snap and high-end come through, whereas a mahogany neck lets through more low-end and offers more overall resonance, and Koa tends to offer both pretty well.

Epiphones are made by Samick for the most part. Samick is actually pretty good about woods, even on the bottom-of-the-line models, at least compared to Squiers and low-end Ibanez. My Epi SG Special has a maple plywood body and a solid 1-piece maple neck, so it actually sounds pretty nice. My Samick-made Gretsch Bo DIddley has a solid maple body and neck with some really, really nice US-made Gretsch pickups. Even with its bolt neck, it could kick almost any Gibson's ass this side of the custom shop.

[pstring]

The Epi LP Standards are made out of the same wood as the Gibson LP Standards, they both have set necks and the same style bridge, I bet in a blindfolded sound comparison very few people could pick out the Gibson everytime, the main difference in price between the Gibson and Epi, is not quality, it's the brand name on the headstock. If I had an Epi LP Standard, and a little cash for parts, I could make it not sound as good as the Gibson, but better, Down with Brandname Snobbery! Power to the People! Nixon Eats Lettuce! rant, rant, rave, rave........................BTW, the worst sounding, sorry I ever bought it, excuse for a guitar I ever owned was a Gibson LP, I don't hate them, they just are not worth the money.....................

[Edited by pstring on 01-22-2003 at 10:44 AM]

[SLY]

The only thing I like about Gibson LPs is their look , very elegant ... But they don't worth the money unless you're filthy rich...

You can get 3 realy nice guitars with the same price of a Gibson LP Standard... And each one of them might sound better than the Gibson !

[aiwass]

Originally posted by pstring
The Epi LP Standards are made out of the same wood as the Gibson LP Standards, they both have set necks and the same style bridge, I bet in a blindfolded sound comparison very few people could pick out the Gibson everytime, the main difference in price between the Gibson and Epi, is not quality, it's the brand name on the headstock. If I had an Epi LP Standard, and a little cash for parts, I could make it not sound as good as the Gibson, but better, Down with Brandname Snobbery! Power to the People! Nixon Eats Lettuce! rant, rant, rave, rave........................BTW, the worst sounding, sorry I ever bought it, excuse for a guitar I ever owned was a Gibson LP, I don't hate them, they just are not worth the money.....................

[Edited by pstring on 01-22-2003 at 10:44 AM]

You obviously don't know alot about wood. One piece of mahogany can sound IMMENSELY different from another, and the pieces that sound REALLY good cost ALOT more than the ones that sound like Britney in the shower. Coincidentally, the cheap wood goes in the cheap guitars, namely Epiphones. Now, I'm not saying that Epis suck, but you should knoe that just because an epiphone is VIRTUALLY identical in build to a Gibson, it doesn't mean it sounds the same. Btw, I have no preference to Gibsons, and personally, I think many KOREAN guitars are better built than these so-called AMERICAN LEGENDS we know as Gibsons.

I won't even go into the differences in the so-called "IDENTICAL" hardware, though...

[janir123]

I totally agree with you Aiwass. There's more that makes the price than just the brand. Don't get me wrong, I also think that Gibsons are way overpriced for being mass produced guitars but it still doesn't make them the same as the Epiphones.

[pstring]

Aiwass, you obviously don't know how much I do know about wood, or how much raw mahoghany, curly maple, cherry, poplar, walnut, etc has been in my hands, can one piece of wood sound vastly different from another, slightly is probably a better word, and anybody who believes they are getting the best sounding wood from any mass production manufacturer like Gibson, well, I have some magic guitar wood I'd like to sell you. When any company uses as much wood as Gibson etc, they use what is usable out of the order, they order by grade, dimension and qty, so much of what comes with that order is waste, what can be used, gets used, thats manufacturing, Gibson LP and Epi LP, Standards are mahoghany bodys with a maple top and a mahoghany neck with a rosewood fretboard, you are not going to find much difference in the wood, outside of the Gibson may have a little better figure in the flame tops, Electronically, they are the same, Gibson may use a little more expensive pots, but electricity doesn't really care, the resistance is what affects it, the pick-ups are 99% identical, Hardware the same, the Gibson is cosmetically probably a better guitar, it should be for that price, but cosmetics don't do much for sound, Here's something else that always has to come in to play when we talk about sound, the 3 major factors are Guitar, Amp and Player, Guitar players really like to focus on the guitar and amp, but the magic ingredient is the player. Here's a wood trivia question for all you sonic engineers, you are making one guitar, you have two pieces of wood to use, same size, cosmetically the same, same humidity content, which piece will you use and why?

[Edited by pstring on 01-25-2003 at 01:04 PM]

[aiwass]

Please accept my apology for the rash conclusion regarding your knowledge. However, I still believe your post deserved correction regarding the difference in tonality of woods.

One of the most beautiful sounds I ever heard was the sound I got when I tapped a chunk of old mahogany. It was from a table plate that belonged to my great grandmother (she's 95), and the sound was just so unbelievably vibrant.

Then I made a guitar outta it, and the tremolo routing, electronics and paint completely ruined it. *Sob*.

[pstring]

I never commented on the tonality of wood, wood species do play a part in the overall sound of solidbody guitars, but it takes more than just a good chunk of wood to make a guitar, a guitar is the sum total of design, materials, and construction. What people believe makes a guitar sound great, and what really makes a difference, are sometimes 2 different things, I've been looking into this for over 20 years, and have seen the mojo change from one thing to another, heavy wood, light wood, this species, that species, I think a few people are finally doing some real scientific research, and I hope some of the old myths and legends are put to rest by it, the sad part of that is that the large manufacturers are probably going to keep doing things like they always have, because of the prestige of the brand name, people will keep on paying the money. I think that 2 solidbody electric guitars , made with the same design, same species of wood, similar hardware and electronics, will sound so close to the same, that you can't just boil down the difference to the wood, But, if I'm a manufacturer and I can convince everybody that I use better wood than the other guy, and that's why my product is better than the other guys, I just might outsell the competition, and I think that's kind of what this thread is about, alot of guitarists have suffered from mass hypnosis, they have heard from day one that Gibson is the best, so that what has become the truth, regardless of the facts, is their really $1600 worth of tangible difference between the Gibson and the Epi?..........................

[Lordathestrings]

Originally posted by pstring
...is their really $1600 worth of tangible difference between the Gibson and the Epi?...It's amazing how strongly an opinion can be held in the absence of any factual backing. :)

I remember jonesin' for a Gibson Les Paul Custom because I wanted to sound like Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin's first album... y'know, the one he recorded with a Fender Telecaster? :rolleyes: <blush>

I have an almost identcal pair of black, 1984 Yamaha SBG 1000, double cutaway, two-humbucker, set mahogany neck, mahogany-body-with-carved-maple-top, solid body guitars. They feel the same. They look pretty much the same. They are set up the same. They both have the same string-sets on them (D'Addario EXL-115). They don't sound the same at all.

The one I bought new in 1984 has a DiMarzio SCHB pickup at the neck, and a DiMarzio Super Distortion pickup at the bridge. The controls have been modified significantly. The 'new' one is stock.

The only real difference between the two guitars is electronic. And that's where the difference in sound comes from.

[PonyOne]

...another huge factor of the sound of the guitar is the player.

[Lordathestrings]

Originally posted by PonyOne
...another huge factor of the sound of the guitar is the player. That's probably the biggest factor in making one player sound different from another. We've said before that player 'X' borrowed the gear of player 'Y', he wouldn't sound like player 'Y', he'd sound like player 'X' using a different rig.

My point was that identical guitars sounded different when the electronics of one of them was modified. Both are the same age, the same model, constructed in exactly the same way, from the same materials, but the pickups and controls bring out different characteristics of the intrinsic tone of those materials.

[kingdavid]

It's been argued that two copies of the exact same model from the exact same manufacturing period,say serial numbers 56789 and 56790 wouldn't sound the same,ceterrus paribus(sp?).
Science ought to help(which is why I took up physics in college,but it,or maybe I,absolutely suck(s).Like now I'm just from doing a quantum mechanics test,.God you don't want to know......).I gather John Gilbert(he makes classical guitars in CA.)has a background in engineering and stemming from this background,his processes are generally well controlled and his instruments have a great sound(they a nice,polished look too).But he's expensive.