First off: I know I come off as a snob. I really struggle with that. I don’t really try to be a snob but I think that there is a difference between good and the marketed impression of good. And it’s not based on bias but on what is actually going on. For instance the combination of what naturally comes from the wood of a guitar and what your ear naturally hears is the measure of quality that I use for a good guitar sound.
But for each person a lot of that is based on what you like. So if you like the high-endie bright guitar sounds of like a Warrant type band or the muddy thickness of Nickleback I’m not saying you are wrong or that that’s a bad tone. I’m just into a different tone that’s all. I like really balanced tones that are expressive even when loaded with distortion. I think a guitar should be clear and precise across all 6 (or 7) strings. And each tonality from the highest note to the lowest note should be equal and just as clear as the last. And these qualities should be the same from no effects to when you have a metric tone of effects layered on like ice cream on pie.
There you go. Not trying to be a snob or elitist just looking for the best a guitar can give.
So some definitions:
Super Strat. Kind of a fuzzy term. Some people call them evolved strats. Basically the term just means that style of guitar that started happening in the 80’s when people wanted a strat because it’s the gold standard but they wanted something that would annoy their parents. We also wanted something that looked tough because we were beginning to realize that big hair and spandex was NOT masculine after all ;) . So it’s a guitar that has the general look of a strat but is elongated and “Rock-n-Rolled” out.
Floyd Rose. A Floyd Rose is the floating bridge system that Floyd Rose designed and built for a long time and Eddie Van Halen made famous. It was designed to overcome a lot of issues with the stock Fender floating bridge. In the 80’s and early 90’s it was considered standard. Basically you take a bar attached to the bridge and push down on it and it creates slack on the strings which effectively makes them longer which in turn makes the note of that string lower. On a standard floating bridge that would throw the guitar out of tune unless you were really really careful. Eddie (and the rest of the world of guitar) wanted to be able to get nuts with the bridge and make it dive bomb all the way until the strings were slack and then back up again and not have the tuning go out. So Floyd saved the day. There are a lot of other types of floating bridges out there but one thing that Floyd did that others didn’t was that he made his bridge really sensitive. So it’s very very expressive. You can use it to make the guitar more like the human voice instead of just yanking it around like a crazy person. I’ve used it on jazz gigs before even.
Tone woods. Hmm. This is tough. Basically, in my opinion there is no pickup in the world that can give you a sound that is not already in the wood of the guitar. Well, let’s change that. A pickup can either enhance the natural tone of the wood of your guitar or it can totally ignore it and make it sound like hell. There have been many popular guitarists who go the route of not paying attention to tone wood. Basically their sound comes from the pickup. I’m not into that. I want a good tone wood because, again, balance is the goal. And it isn’t even a factor of the type of music you play. There are a lot of examples of pickup oriented tone in the same genre as tone wood balanced with pickup oriented tones.
So basically what I’m saying is that pickups should be matched with the tone of the wood they are going into no matter the style of music you are playing.
So there you go. Some definitions for you. Next time I hope to talk about my pickup selection since it goes with these definitions so well. Might be interesting to talk a little about different sounds that come from different tone woods too.
No comments:
Post a Comment