Shaping Tone

What Determines Tone

The biggest influence on a guitar's tone is it's wood body (mass and wood type), neck, hollowed out space, paint finish, bridge, nut, and strings. The pickups also play a big role for the guitar's sound, but can only shape the basic acoustic sound of the guitar before it is even plugged in. You will find in most mass produced guitars that the wood connection between the body and neck is likely painted, rough and not making a good transfer of tone from the neck to the body. It is easy enough to just sand both the body and neck just enough to make a smooth connection, but not too much or else the set up process is made difficult or nearly impossible via action and intonation, or even cause fret buzz. The types of woods used and their sound characteristics are listed below. A link to Warmoth’s "Wood Types" is included because I think it does the best job describing wood characteristics on a scale of warm to bright. Listed below are the most common wood types and their tone characteristics. Some may say wood doesn’t have any bearing on tone, except acoustics. I beg to differ on that claim more than those people will ever know.

Common Wood Types

Agathis:  Sometimes referred to as commercial mahogany, a very soft wood that has a well balanced tone for the price, but is not like mahogany in a tonal quality sense, and is not a great choice for guitar. Cheaper mass production guitars use this.

Alder:  Has an overall rich sound with lots of bottom end and upper midrange, is also very lightweight.

Ash:  Usually Swamp Ash, is very comparable to alder in use, such as Fender Strats, but has a brighter sound with more pop. Ash is also referred to as the “musical wood” and the sound characteristics vary from one piece to the next.

Basswood:  Often used as a cheaper substitute for alder, like Agathis, is used widely in mass production guitars for its midrange tone characteristics. Basswood also has a different tonal quality when compared to alder and ash.

Mahogany:  Used in the body and neck, fairly heavy, packs a punch for metal and rock with lots of high and low end. It adds a thicker warmer sound to the high and low end. Mahogany is common to mass production guitars, but is a more expensive choice.

Maple:  Mainly used on fret boards, tops, and necks, has a faster attack than rosewood Maple is very strong and is in the brighter tone range. Maple is the most common wood found in a guitar except for use in the guitar’s body.

Rosewood:  When used in fret boards is very resonant, with a tone that is similar to mahogany,  has a solid bass and midrange, has tone characteristics that ring like a piano. Maple and Rosewood are the most common woods used for fret boards.

Ebony:  Is is very dense wood, and is very comparable to maple, but doesn’t require a finish. It has a very percussive and sharp attack, with a stronger tone than maple. This wood is common in mass production instruments, but is a much more expensive choice than maple.

Other Tone Enhancer's

The other modifications that benefit tone are changing the nut and bridge. Graphtec TUSQ nuts provide great tone transfer, and improved sustain a ton for the Pacifica. I also installed locking tuners and a vintage style X-Bridge. The combination of these products kept the guitar extremely stable, and all the strings stayed in tune quite well compared to the way it used to. Some guitars come with a fairly decent bridge already. I chose to replace the bridge with an X-Bridge because the X-Bridge has a larger mass, the saddles allow the strings to move freely, and the X-Bridge also acts like an additional bridge pickup. For the customized guitar I chose to keep the X-Bridge, but had a custom neck built with an Earvanna nut made with Graphtec material instead of a plain TUSQ nut.

The Earvanna nut has the same benefits as the TUSQ nut, but it also cures the small intonations that pop up all over the guitar before the twelfth fret. I did a vast amount of research to justify getting an Earvanna nut for the guitar, but from what I have heard myself it is worth it because I spend most of my time below the twelfth fret. There is also a You Tube video below that demonstrates a Strat after the Earvanna nut was installed. In the guitar lessons link you will see someone playing a black guitar that has the first and second frets bent in small kinks. I’m not sure how easy it would be to play a guitar like that, but that is another method to cure a guitar’s natural intonation problem.

If you do any research on chambered or hollowed out guitars you will find they have an exciting open tone quality to them. This can be accomplished somewhat on a cheap guitar that you already own that has a generic tone, and really isn't your favorite guitar. I would recommend doing this procedure at your own risk and to use common sense. It takes only one second to ruin your guitar completely if you do not do this properly. I have heard of people drilling holes in their guitar and getting great tone. To experiment with this myself I used a brand new 5/16" auger bit on a cordless drill and drilled several small holes on either side of the pickup compartment. When the guitar was put all back together, it seemed to have less of that thin bright sound and became very warm and open sounding. Not bad for a crappy agathis body. CAUTION: If you are unsure about this, don't do it. At any point in drilling you could crack the guitar if you go too deep or if you force the bit too much, but it works if you are careful, use a sharp bit, and use forward and reverse to prevent the bit from grabbing the wood and splitting it in two.

The information provided above is the biggest factor that makes up the personality of your guitar. When someone chooses a guitar they look for certain types of wood for the neck, fingerboard, and body to give them the sound they are looking for. It may also be to a players preference to use a vibrato bridge, or a hard tail bridge. The hard tail yields more tone transfer and sustain over the vibrato, but the vibrato can be adjusted flush to give good sustain and use of the tremolo bar. The set up of the vibrato is again a matter of personal preference. I have seen vibratos floating so bad in guitars that the string tension can be dropped just by pressing your hand on the bridge. This is not a bad set up, just something that the particular guitar player likes to use it for. Check out the book “How to Make Your Guitar Play Great” in the store link. It shows numerous tips for professional setup of your guitar, and even gives you entire setup specs that many popular guitarists use on their own guitar. You will find each of those guitars is setup differently. for Other than the hard physical characteristics of the guitar, the internal electronics plays a big role as well. This is especially true for the guitar's capacitors.

Capacitor's Effect on Tone

A capacitor is an electronic / electric device that stores electrical energy via two conductive plates separated by a non-conductive dielectric. It has two very distinct characteristics, it stores DC voltage applied to it for a period of time. If an AC voltage is applied, it’s ability to pass through the capacitor depends on the frequency of that voltage. For the guitar's pickups, this AC voltage is very small and has a range of different frequencies that make up the tone that you hear.

In my efforts to pull together information about this subject I have found several contradictions for which size or even type of capacitor to use. The big picture is that the pickup type, tone character of the wood, and personal taste of the guitar player makes this "value" vary quite a bit. I have known people to prefer a small capacitor value, such as 0.01uF, for their tone circuit. They say that it provides a more useful range of tones as the pot is turned down. The standard cap values used in most modern guitars is 0.022uF and 0.047uF. Fender's ,single coil guitars, have 0.05uF caps in the tone circuit and Gibson's guitars, using humbuckers, have a value of 0.02uF. I have found that the typical 0.022uF cap has a good tone range, but the 0.047uF allows the guitars tone to get even lower as the pot is turned all the way down, almost too low to be useful for my particular guitar set up. With my guitar modification I experimented with a total capacitance that allowed a low warm tone, but did not go too far and get muddy. If two capacitors are hooked up in parallel, then the total capacitance of the two is equal to their sum. I chose to use a typical 0.022uF cap and connected a 0.02uF cap in parallel. You can find a single capacitor that is close to this value, but not exactly. I have found this particular value useful, allowing a good tone range on the knob, and when turned all the way down, the guitar is very low and warm, but not muddy. This particular set up works for me mostly because my guitar mod has humbucker pickups. In certain cases a particular pickup manufacturer, such as Lace, may suggest using a 0.022uF cap for their particular pickup. If you see any notes on the pickup wiring diagram that strongly suggest a certain value I would follow it or at least try that value first. You can also benefit from trying a small value such as 0.01uF, or an in-between value like 0.033uF.

The physical type of capacitor to use in a guitar is also argued quite a bit from different sources all over. I have seen people that say they are in the "know" profess that it is only the value of the cap that makes its tone and not what material it is made of. From my own knowledge every little piece of matter from a peanut shell to a piece of wood has its own resonant frequency. For example quarts crystals in electronics, are cut in a certain way to make them vibrate at a certain frequency. This isn’t meant to say that the vibrations are making the capacitors tone, its just that different materials add their own unique coloration to the tone. A tone cap in a guitar isn’t in any position to add anything to the sound, but only can take away from the original tone. What it takes away can contribute to the overall sound you hear, and that would possibly explain all of the weird micro phonics associated with them. There are some expensive caps out there, so make sure you are getting what you pay for. To prove or disprove these theories is as impossible as arguing politics. In my own experimentation I have found ceramic capacitors add very harsh glassy tone to the guitar. I swapped those out with a polyester film capacitor and got much better results in comparison. The number one capacitor that seems to be the main choice for modern guitars is the Sprague Orange Drop capacitor. They are only slightly large in size and made with a Mylar dielectric.

I have seen a demonstration on You Tube where a guy has a card with various sized Orange Drop capacitors glued to it. He uses alligator clips to quickly connect these to the tone control while the guitar is working, and strumming chords for comparison. This is a great way to find what value of cap suits you best. The thing that interested me was that he also had a few odd-ball capacitors to try as well. He had used a vintage oil paper cap, a polyester, a ceramic, and a vintage wax paper cap. When I listened to the different sounds they all made I couldn't help but notice the vintage oil paper cap stood out with a very warm distinct tone quality. To follow up on this discovery I found that there are many capacitors out there, like black beauties and bumble bees, that are being sold for a hefty price. The prices varied quite a bit for the same capacitor type, so I shopped around. The vintage paper in oil capacitors are also much larger in comparison to modern caps, which can be a drawback when you try to jam all the components in your guitar. The size is a result of their max voltage rating, which has no effect in the guitar circuit world. In my custom guitar I actually experimented with an 0.01uF AmpOhm paper in wax , a 0.01uF Mojo paper in oil, and a 0.01uf Mylar Black Beauty. All of the pickups tested on a Z meter equally, and they all had a different quality. I am planning on building a 12 position Varitone guitar pedal with three of each value as proof positive that the difference exists. Types of guitar capacitors are pictured below so you can identify them. Check out the You Tube demonstration, below, for the sound that different capacitors make. You can hear for yourself and decide whether they sound the same or not.

Capacitor Types