Alder, Ash, or Basswood?

[Angry Tele]

yeah its a stretch to say wood doesn't affect tone,resonance,sustain etc; Its one thing to not be able to quantify something and another to say it doesn't exist. I think broad generalizations can be made about different wood species...But then of course my Twin Reverb on 8 levels the playing field a bit.

[fabstrat]

theres no way wood doesn't make a difference, now wether your ears can delineate it or care is another story.

[Davo17]

All of the common strat tonewoods sound pretty close. There is enough variability in the types that its diffucult to make generalizations. Im a fan of ash myself. Its a bit brighter-but I think this is more a function of its density. Its also easier for me to cut a bit of treble response then to boost it.

 

I think the neck has a much bigger impact on tone. Picture a bow (as in bow and arrow, not violin bow). The bow string represents the guitar string. Now picture 3/4's of the bow as the "neck" and 1/4 as the body. Both effect the interaction with the string-but the necks flexibility has a greater impact-assuming of course you dont throw in an extreme wood, like balsa. Remember the pups on most strats are floating on a plastic plate, so direct intereaction between pups and body are much less then other solid bodies.

[Mel Cooley]

I like alder.

[hecticone]

Every guitar that I have bought, the first thing I do is hold it by the head stock,pluck the b string and see if I can feel any type of resonance down at the input jack.

If not its just not a lively guitar.

[Davo17]

 

I have found that the swimming pool route that Fender used during the 90s is the largest factor in tone suckage for those guitars.

 

 

The route has so little affect in the way of tone that I doubt it was the "largest factor".

[PlectrumPete]

I think the wood does make a very small difference. Like really small. However, there is more difference between 2 (or is it 3 or more) pieces of Ash than there is between some generalised Ash or Alder or whatever it says on the label.

 

It's the generalisations developed over weeks of playground debate that I disagree with, not the fact that 2 guitars can sound slightly different from each other. Although my theory is that most of the differences are down to differences coming from the wide manufacturing tolerance of the electronics, especially the tone cap and pots.

[Frets99]

Don't worry so much about the type of wood. Just remember to only sand down to where the tone is. Too much sanding and you bypass it completely. Too little and you only get a whiff of it.