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any more info about that prs guy being upset?
https://guitar.com/news/gear-news/paul-reed-smith-tonewood-doesnt-matter-dipped-in-tone-rhett-shull-zach-broyles/
I haven't actually watched it, I just heard it talked about and found it through some Googling. For the record, I think that tonewood for acoustic instruments is hugely important, but almost completely irrelevant for solid body electric guitars.
I don’t think there’s a magical tonewood out there but I can see why PRS has issues with that video. If you read the comments there’s like 12,000 people crowing that it “proves” guitars have no intrinsic musical quantities beyond their pickups.
There isn’t really a big enough sample size to prove that different woods and bodies have no impact on tone. Different woods have different densities, different densities vibrate at different frequencies. That’s going to have an impact on attack, sustain, and brightness.
My friend has a cheapie Strat copy that feels like wet driftwood. Even with new strings, a fretted bar chord dies out in 3/4 of the time the same chord will ring on my old MIJ Squier Strat (alder and maple).
That his 2x4 sounded like the Tele was cool but maybe not surprising because a Tele is essentially a 2x4, he’s using a nearly identical neck, and the absence of a bigger body isn’t doing much to interfere with your basic Bright Ass Tele sound. Would a basswood body and rosewood fingerboard have made a difference? What about a chambered body?
The “air guitar” test seems mind blowing but it’s really more of a “no duh” thing. Identical open strings at identical tension
should sound identical. That doesn’t prove that any number of available combinations of materials, sizes, shapes, scale lengths, bridge types, nut materials, etc. will always sound the same - even with the same pickups.