Electric guitar tone enhancement - myth, mystery and method

 What effects the tone of an electric guitar?

Maybe pink guitars sound better?

While I don’t claim to have all the answers to this thorny question, there is so much misinformation on the Internet about this subject I thought it might be helpful to have some reflections from my years of buying, playing and fixing guitars, gathered here into one place.  

Pickups

It’s important to understand that the magnetic pickups used on a traditional electric guitar are designed to pick up the vibrations of the string NOT the acoustics of the guitar. They do this by creating a small electric current in conjunction with the vibration of a string that is then amplified externally. 

One of the most important considerations for good tone therefore is all the factors that surround and effect the vibration of the string. The construction of the pickup also has a major influence on the final tone of the guitar. A single coil pickup will give a more pronounced higher end, while a humbucker, designed to combat the hum associated with a single coil, gives a cleaner but slightly ‘muddier’ tone. There are lots of designs of pickups each with specific tonal variations.  Pickups can be wound to increase or decrease current output, however doing this has other tonal compromises.  

The beauty of the electric guitar is that the pickup system is a highly effective, but very simple concept and utilises a very straightforward electronic circuit, that hasn’t changed much since the 1930s. Not a chip or transistor in sight! 

Arguably the tonal results achieved using a magnetic pickup are nothing like the unamplified sound of an acoustic guitar, but rather have a degree of relationship to the acoustic instrument. However magnetic  pickups allow a whole new range of playing techniques, effects, tonal variations and the opportunity to use the instrument in different contexts that would be extremely challenging with a purely acoustic instrument.  

Simplicity - the lipstick pickup

We’ll say more about this later, but the amplifier and driver/speaker is just as important as the guitar in producing the final tone. In effect the amplifier and driver is the acoustic sound box of the electric guitar.

A big custom industry has built up around the production of pickups. Many guitarists, while maybe purporting to being avant garde and ground breaking in their art, are deeply deeply conservative when it comes to the instruments they play. Huge value is placed on historic instruments and historic accuracy in reissues. This has meant that someone who claims to be able to replicate the exact pickup winding processes of a former age, or a sought after artist’s guitar, can charge a very healthy margin in producing and selling these items. Many manufacturers will claim to have painstakingly examined old pickups and be making them according to the original specifications.  Some experiments have tried to demonstrate that the difference between a well made cheaper pickup and an expensive one is at best marginal.  It’s probably true to say a lot of other things in the signal chain will make much more difference to your sound than buying very expensive pickups.  However some pickup manufacture has become a real art form in itself and if you have the money and think you can hear the difference, once you have made other adjustments, the final piece in the chain might be to invest in bespoke pickups.

A quick survey of how pickups were made in the early days shows that a there was a lot of variation and imprecision even within a single brand. Manufacturers often used materials that were easily available and so, for example, the magnets used in a batch might vary depending on what could be obtained at the right price and easily.  Magnets degrade over time so it is almost impossible to know what a vintage pickup really sounded like when it was first produced 60 years ago.

The pickup being a very simple piece of engineering probably has less effect on the final sound of the guitar than you might be led to think from the hype surrounding there different brands. The main tonal difference is in the type of pickup (eg single coil/humbucker/lipstick) and the winding. Some slight differences may be related to the type of magnets used but this is difficult to test objectively.  

The wiring of the guitar probably makes a minor difference to the tone too, as differing resistances can be introduced in the circuitry. Some resistance is actually part of the classic sound of an electric guitar. A pickup wired directly to an amp can sound harsh and spiky.  Manufacturers of wireless systems sometimes include a ‘guitar cable’ effect to emulate the resistance of a guitar cable on the final sound.

Tonewoods

There is so much written about this all over the internet. Guitarists sometimes agonise over which combinations of tonewoods will give the exact tonal nuance they are looking for. Thousands are spent honing and polishing fine bits of dead tree, and some people swear that certain vintage finishes are critical to the ‘right’ sound.

I love a guitar that looks good, and feels good and balanced in my hands, but do the type of woods really effect the sound of an electric guitar dramatically? Les Paul is reported to have said that people hear with their eyes, when he enhanced his log guitar with a chopped up Epiphone body.

Again this is one of those questions that is really difficult to measure objectively, hence the existence of so much misinformation and speculation on the web. Someone who has invested heavily in fine woods and expensive pickups will have a high incentive to ‘hear’ the results of their investment. A manufacturer will want to create a mystique around the fine woods they have maturing in their stock piles to justify high retail prices.  A lot of early electric guitars were just made with materials that were readily available, and were quite variable in stock. It’s important to remember this when manufacturers hype the historical accuracy of expensive reissues.

My personal view is that tone woods may have a very marginal influence over the sound of an electric guitar, but it’s important to remember that the influence is probably very slight and a lot of other factors have a much greater influence over the sound than the material that the electric guitar is made from.

So what is important to the sound?

It’s important that we remember how a pick up works as we think about how to achieve the tone that we are after. As I said at the beginning, an electric guitar pick up really only picks up the vibration of the strings on a guitar. Try stringing an electric guitar with nylon strings and see how much body vibration comes through the pickups if you are sceptical of this. Different types of pickups really do have a major effect on the guitar tone (single coil, humbucker, lipstick). Within the constraints of each pickup type, to induce any significant change in  the tone of the guitar, one of the main factors is manipulating how the strings vibrate. 

This is much more complicated than it sounds. There are a huge number of variables. Some people swear by the maxim that if it sounds good unplugged then it will sound great plugged in. There are all sorts of problems with this statement, and I’d personally recommend a much less subjective approach.

One of the key ingredients in a multi stringed instrument is that the strings interact with each other to produce sympathetic overtones and harmonics. Wolf tones and nasty overtones are a related problem, likely to be increased the more resonant the body of the instruments is.  Managing this is one of the fine arts of instrument manufacture.  

I suspect one of the big differences in overtones comes from whether a guitar body resonates very strongly and passes some of that resonance back to the guitar strings, or whether the strings simply carry their own resonance. This is a complex set of interactions. I play a number of archtop guitars, they definitely sound different to a solid body guitar. Not a major difference but noticeable. Less sustain, as the resonance of the body absorbs some of the sustain, but a fuller bodied note with less high end. One of the sought after sounds with the traditional jazz tone is to roll off much of the top end to give a very mellow tone from the neck pickup. 

The problem with a hollow guitar is that it only really works efficiently at relatively low volumes. Once you get into a busy band environment the body of the guitar starts to interact with the strings in a most displeasing and alarming way. That beautiful tone you coaxed from the guitar and amp at low volume, becomes a feedback nightmare at higher volume in a new uncontrolled acoustic environment.  As the guitar body is vibrated by the guitar amp, pa, bass and drums, the strings start to create a negative feedback loop. This can be very frustrating and of course ruins the final live tone of the guitar.

Part of Les Paul’s research into solid bodied guitars demonstrated that a block of wood, a plank in effect, gave a high rejection of feedback and left a canvas that was far blanker for the guitarists to produce the tone they wanted at increased volume.  A plank of any material really doesn’t give very much back to the strings in terms of vibration. However this can be seen as an advantage in some ways, as the lack of vibration being absorbed by the body gives a sharper top end and much greater sustain.  It’s much easier to subtract these things if they are not needed than to add them in if they are not there.

In my experience far more important to the way strings behave in relation to the the pickup resides in much more easily adjustable factors that don’t always require huge investment.

The type, gauge and age of strings used will make a significant impact on the sound of a guitar. Using flat wound strings makes the guitar sound much mellower and reduces the whistle and squeak as you move up and down the neck, they also last for ages. For twanginess and top end a good set of round wound strings will make a huge difference. Heavier strings will give you more dynamic range controlled through your fingers, but of course until you develop strength, may lead to some choked notes and sore fingers.

The action of the guitar and the height of the pickups are both really important components of the final tone of the guitar. A friend of mine was complaining that his 335 didn’t have the clearer tone of my Ibanez. I looked at his guitar and the neck pick up was almost flush to the body of the guitar. I suggested that he raise the pick up to see if that helped.  Where the pickup sits in relation to the strings has a major impact on the sound.

For most of us when we start playing the guitar, low action is one of the things that we obsess over. Of course it makes the guitar much easier to play and quick lines much easier to execute.  People seem to like a guitar that plays ‘like butter’.  However I suspect that low action is one of the key factors in poor sound within a guitar. Django Reinhardt played with incredibly high action. On a Manouche guitar the volume and clarity of the sound is achieved by keeping the action high so the notes really ring out, with no need for amplification. On an electric guitar something of the same principle holds. The note will sound much clearer if it is not being choked by the string vibrating against neighbouring frets when it is played. A slightly higher action really does increase the dynamic range even of an electric guitar. Once you get used to it it is not nearly the obstacle to fast clean playing that many guitarists fear.

Don’t forget the intonation as well. The beauty of an electric guitar is that this is easily adjustable, unlike most acoustic guitars, and although the physics of a fretted instrument means any intonation is a compromise, you can normally achieve a very happy compromise with the right tools and a good tuner.

Fret work is really critical to sound as well. These days the best fretwork doesn’t necessarily come with the most expensive guitar. It’s a very labour intensive thing to get right, and labour is hugely expensive in some parts of the world that claim to make the best guitars. I have a cheap Harley Benton with lovely well dressed frets with rounded edges and a rolled fretboard, far superior to a guitar from a well known brand guitar I own that is worth many times more.  

Tuners and tremelos can sap tone very quickly. Those lovely rich overtones can quickly be destroyed if your guitar regularly slips out of tune during the set that you’re playing. Many players block off the trem on their Strat for this reason.

It may sound obvious but the playability of a guitar also makes a huge difference. If you are able to hold the guitar in the right way and it feels comfortable to play that really does have a huge significance on how it sounds. I personally find the kind of ‘wrap around’ feeling of an angled, ‘set neck’ guitar very comfortable and ergonomic. 

Amplification

While you can plug an electric guitar into any amplifier and boost the sound, as the electric guitar has developed, probably the most critical part of the sound guitarists have learned to love comes from how it is amplified.  Traditionally large, low wattage, over engineered, low fidelity drivers have been paired with simple valve/tube amps to produce a strong mid rangey sound that accentuates the more mellow attributes of the simple low fidelity, low output pickup coils in the guitar. The valve amp saturates (like a photo that is subtlety oversaturated to make the colours more pleasing) the sound near to the point of distortion for very rewarding clean sounds, and then breaks up into wonderful harmonic distortion when overdriven.  Solid state amplifiers designed for guitar on the other hand can give a beautifully clear and loud clean sound, that maybe just shows the hint of breakup as it meets the driver.

The interaction of pickup and amplifier and driver in conjunction with good playing and a well setup guitar is the Stradivarius moment of the electric guitar. Fortunately because the guitar is such a popular instrument, modelling has come almost all the way to recreating these sounds without having to crank up the volume and run the risk of an Anti Social Behaviour Order.  Modelling also means you don't have to be a weight lifter any more in order to play the electric guitar.

Where are you playing?

With all these quests after tone it is really important to remember that context and environment is as important as any other factors in the equation. What sounds great in your bedroom at home playing on your own, into GarageBand, or to a backing track, may well sound completely different when you are playing at volume against a band all trying to rob your carefully crafted sonic space. If you play solo finger style to an appreciative subdued audience, your home settings might have a chance to translate well. Even here the room, and the audience talking and moving about has a major effect on your final tone. Against a band, unless you have sound engineers and guitar techs running around in the background, you will probably appreciate in your signal chain a lot of parameters that can be adjusted quickly manually on the fly rather than buried deep in a software menu. Flexibility is critical to finding the right sound.

Where to spend the money?

It’s difficult isn’t it? There are so many exciting things that seem to promise to deliver that little bit extra. The temptation is to invest heavily in the guitar and some expensive pickups.  There is a rationale to this that goes beyond the simple pursuit of sound. Let’s not pretend that bragging rights and image don’t drive us as much as the end tone. Most of us want people’s jaws to hit the ground when we open the hard case.  Our initial estimation of someone’s musical ability does, however hard we try for it not to, often go with the gear they own.  And of course usually the more desirable a product the more it will increase in value.

However take a step back for a moment. The popularity of the guitar means that, with care, you can buy a truly excellent electric guitar for very little money. One that really will hold its own against any other electric guitar on the planet. You may not look super cool without the big brand name on the headstock but you can sound and play just as well or maybe better and you won’t have to obsess over keeping the guitar safe from harm.

A balance in costs between amp and guitar is almost certainly the most sensible option. No guitar is going to sound good if the amplification system isn’t up to the job.  If you want a wide range of tonal variations your best bet is a number of different guitars and amps. Sadly for most of us, once you start on that journey of acquisition it’s quite difficult to stop! 

Don't forget the fingers - they are the critical ingredient

The most important thing in the tone of an electric guitar is you!  Practice, understanding of harmony, scales and rhythm. Accurate fingering. Dynamics, touch. You will always sound like you, no matter what guitar you play, so put the majority of your time and energy into your technical skills to improve your tone. And don’t forget the technical skills are there, not to show off with how fast you can shred, but to help you to express your soul and communicate with other people, and to integrate with other members of the band. Very often in music less is more, the spaces are just as important as the notes themselves, the slow passages move us more than the blisteringly fast ones.  The best music in my opinion is the music we make with other people, allowing all the different musical voices space to bloom.