Maple Body Guitars

how do you guys feel about a full maple body guitar for modern hi gain music?

Get a Wide Strap

Ditto that. It's gonna weigh a bunch. Supposedly, maple will give you a bright tone. Jury is still out on use of woods & the impact on tone. The debate will rage on forever! Big debate on the accoustic forum concerning tone woods too.

Seriously this is the argument from hell. You will get a ton of responses from folks with "magic ears" and they will argue that you can tell the difference between mahogany, maple and . For the rest of the 99.999% of people the pickups will make all the difference. In my experience, they make up at least 98% of the tone along with your playing style. The rest of it comes from materials, whether the neck is set, bolted or through and what amp/speaker you are using and the biggest effect there is the sustain moreso than the sound per se. I don't care what your guitar is made of. I could take a plywood guitar and make it sound just like yours with the right pickups.

All that is assuming your technique is down and we are talking about electric instruments. In the end, that is really what dictates your sound. My whole argument is based on a skilled player playing all these virtual instruments. If you gave a plywood or pressure-board guitar to Jimmy Page, it will sound like Led Zeppelin even if it isn't a Les Paul, if you understand what I'm getting at. If you put me on the spot I would say the type of wood contributes *way* more to how a given instrument looks and has a very minimal effect on how it sounds.

As a caveat, I'd say this doesn't necessarily apply to acoustic instruments where the sound comes mostly from the instrument itself as opposed to an amplifier amplifying pickups.

You'll definitely want to pay attention to the weight. Maple is rarely light.

I have one maple body electric guitar built from an old butcher block. I went with a small body vs a standard size so the weight is minimal. The combination of a maple body and Maple Strat neck gave it amazing sustain and very good tone once I matched some pups for it. I used a HB Tele bridge and have a Humbucker/Mini Humbucker combo. Its one of my better builds sound wise.

It will make you sound like dragonforce :poke: