Does bling affect tone?

[kwakatak]

Yes and no. If you're on a budget and want a guitar that looks good then you're gonna make a sacrifice in what could potentially make a guitar sound good. OTOH if you're not on a budget and want a guitar that looks good and sounds good then prepare to spend a pretty penny.

 

In a nutshell, you get what you pay for.

[DeepEnd]

 

. . . Aesthetically speaking, I think if the bling makes a git truly beautiful, one would want to do justice to a lovely instrument, and in playing their best would bring out the best in the git.

 

It used to say on the official Art & Lutherie site that while a cutaway wasn't necessary, if your guitar had one and you thought it made the guitar "cooler," you would be more likely to play and in turn you would get better. I was in a Guitar Center in Illinois the other day and played a Martin D16RGTE. Beyond the fact that it needed a setup bad, I couldn't help thinking that it was a very ordinary, distressingly plain guitar with fancy electronics and that I could do better buying a Seagull, Breedlove, or Parkwood for 2/3 the price. So yeah, it does make a difference but only psychological.

[Etienne Rambert]

A lot of other factors affect it more.

[AndrewGG]

Simple answer; if you like the way your blingy guitar sounds then the decoration doesn't affect the tone. You wouldn't have bought it otherwise, right?

[boxorox]

Well, as some point out, bling is expensive. If you were a luthier and constructing such a guitar as a flagship model, limited edition or custom order, you might, consciously or not, select better woods, take more care in construction, detail in/re fit and finish, and wind up building a guitar that was just a scoche better than your usual effort. If you were a factory like Martin, Gibson, Taylor or Guild you would have your best and most experienced workers on it from start to finish. But this may not be necessarily true. As for most traditional bling, it is applied in places that would have less effect than bridge pins or nut material. A popcorn fart in a hurricane.

[sixgunner455]

I've seen some pretty guitars that sounded dead, as I'm sure most people have.

 

Nobody has addressed finishes -- I don't know, but I think that they might affect tone, especially if you are comparing ostensibly identical guitars with different finishes. Especially if one of the finishes was a thin, hand-painted nitro, and the other several coats of bullet-proof plastic.

 

I could be wrong. *shrug* What do I know? I just play 'em.