sicman said:
now i also admit that steve vai could pick up a ibanez gem or a sears flat top with 3 rusted strings and still sound like vai. but he would not hear the same sound. dig what im saying? so ya if playing guitar is not your living "which its not mine" i think the whole tone thing is not a issue that some of us can even see hear. but a dude like eric johnson would talk to you and boar you to death about tone. and i promise he does hear it.
I agree with most of what you say here. Yes, Eric Johnson might hear a difference, but anyone else would be hard pressed to notice a thing.
I have a bud who is an amazing guitar player. He's also a mastering engineer, so he has a pretty good set of ears. I've spent years in the music business, and have thousands of hours recording and mixing myself. He and I got into long discussions on tone. We both can tell a tube amp from a transistor in a heartbeat. But he has several guitars, and would switch between them telling me what he heard differently. They sounded absolutely the same to me. I was pretty sure at that point that the only difference he "heard" was what he felt as a difference between them.
I decided to test this theory once. My son had a $50 piece of crap guitar with a body made out of hardboard. I stuck a Seymour Duncan '59 in the bridge, did a recording, and then swapped out pickups to a DiMarzio Breed. The hunk of junk was transformed from a creamy Les Paul type sound to a screaming brute instantly. I also recorded a Big Apple strat I had at the time, and a Les Paul '57 Goldtop reissue. I used a DI rig which consisted of my old ADA MP-2 all on the same setting. I played the same thing on all 3 guitars (one twice with the different pickups) and used 4 separate recordings.
I sat it up as a blind test between the 4 different sounding guitars. People easily picked out the DiMarzio pup as being different. But the battle between the real LP, the hunk of junk, and the humbucked strat was a straight up draw. The push told me people were pretty much guessing. It was a very surprising result, because to my ears as I was playing I was convinced that the strat and the beater sounded way different than the LP. But when I played back the recording, I was very glad I had labeled them. I wouldn't have had an easy time picking which was which. (BTW, this was YEARS ago for a paid subscription music and recording site so don't ask me to dig the files up. They are long gone.)
If tonewoods matter, a Steinberger guitar or bass would be useless. Not to mention the BC Rich acrylic bodied guitar line. There's also the 20th anniversary Jem 7 that is acrylic. I've played one of those, and I can attest to the fact that is sounded just like my Jem 7VWH. Go figure.
For that matter, look at acoustics. Mr. Kaman poked holes in the whole "wood matters" theory with the Ovation/Applause lines. The only reason I didn't like them much was because I hate to have to use a strap playing an acoustic while I'm sitting down. Tonewise? They worked well and sounded great. Not to mention being very stable in high humidity environments. More that I can say for a Sitka spruce topped Taylor...
It would be pretty fun to find a beater LP and stick a Tele or Broadcaster pickup set in it. I may just see if I can do that.
EDIT: Here's a vid of my bud Danny that I talked tone with. The little bastard can play
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLCq2phm_k
