out of it, and all the different combinations. You can try to narrow it down and say,“ I always like ash over alder”, but once you really get into it you realize it’ s just something that grows out of the ground and there’ s no way of telling which plank of ash is going to sound exactly the way you want. There’ s such a varying degree in tonal response in every plank of wood that gets fashioned into a body, it’ ll keep you guessing for the rest of your life. But the whole idea about tone woods is a good generalization to an extent of how you want the instrument to be used. I learned how much of what I do is based on the sound of the pickup and the interaction of the electronics- minimal as they are coming out of the guitar, and how they interface with the amps. If you’ re playing without distortion, you’ re going to pass on more of the elements of the wood. If you’ re making guitars for the marketplace and you’ re aiming for vintage or blues purists, it would be silly not to understand wood and pickup strength because you’ d be missing your core audience. If you’ re looking to sell guitars to people who are into Metalcore, why would you even bother with all that vintage stuff? They have other things that they need in that style of music. Those guitar players place demands on the instrument that make sense to address before you think of making an instrument for them. One of them though, is not the thing about the wood because you’ re never gonna hear it. Their style of the music does not take those elements of the instrument and put them in the forefront of the recording. Those things are important to know if you’ re thinking about designing guitars. I’ ve always liked both- sometimes I want people to be confused as to what instrument it is that’ s making that sound. Other times I want them to be bathed in some beautiful vintage quality of the guitar. How do I get that and how do we pass that along?
When John Cuniberti and I started making records, we’ d had some experience in the studio when we were recording The Squares, my band in the early 80s. As we learned about recording, amps and studios together, we arrived at a point where we wanted to plug the guitar directly into a DI, that would go directly into a vintage mic pre, and then right to tape. We were so interested in what the guitar actually sounded like without any amplifier and with the shortest cable. For most of the clean guitar sounds you hear on those early records, that’ s exactly how they were recorded. It was fascinating to take a guitar you always plugged into your Marshall turned to eight, and hear it into a mic pre with nothing on it. With no guitar amps scripts all over it, and we’ d go,“ Wow that’ s what the guitar sounds like”. We could mold it any way we wanted it.
Years later, John Cuniberti invented the Reamp so we could take those DI-recorded performances and put them back into a variety of amps in the studio. That was a very interesting step in capturing the true essence of the guitar and seeing really what is was and how it was ultimately morphed into something entirely different simply by putting it into the front end of an amplifier. People tend to forget that when they’ re playing, because they’ re getting so much visceral feedback as they play the guitar. It’ s a very narrowly focused experience you’ re having with your gear. But take a piece of music that you recorded with a DI and keep running that out into different amplifiers, you remove yourself viscerally from the equation. It’ s almost like you hearing the guitar speak for itself. Then you start manipulating the amplifier in a way you wouldn’ t if you were actually standing in front of it playing. This also shines a lot of light on the intrinsic qualities of the instrument coming from its design- the wood, the kind of frets you’ re using, the strings, what kind of
46 May � June 2016 CollectibleGuitar. com