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I'm trying to do some research on the different elements that effect the sound of a guitar. and I wanted to know how much the different parts of the guitar effect the overall sound of the guitar?. I hear the wood the neck is made out of is essential to overall sound of a guitar. But what about the body?, does it effect the tone of the guitar and how much does the body effect the tone?. Does the shape of the body change the sound too?, can it be shaped to optimize sound?.

I know solid body is preferred for electric guitars but I wanted to know how hollow and semi-hollow bodies effect the sound of an electric guitar. Oh and through neck designs as well, does that effect tone any at all?. This is all in preparation for a very ambitious project I have in mind which requires extensive research and design. I'm sure this project of mine has probably been done before and isn't going to revolutionize guitars but it's a project I'm extremely interested in. I'm really curious what of kind of sound I'm going to get out of this new guitar design I'm cooking up.

And since I'm new to Luthrie It'll probably be many many years before I can even complete this guitar.

This question can't be sated. I have an aluminum guitar that's nearly tonally indistinguishable from my Les Pauls when electrified. I personally construct a guitar around how I want it to play/feel and rely on pickups to dictate the tone. And that's all you're going to find - a bunch of personal stories because there's just no blanket "tone policy." Plus, you don't want to end up an old insane basement scientist fixated on finding the golden tone formula.

You'll get tons of helpful construction advice here though!

That's all I want, give me advice, I invite anyone to tell me about their own personal experiences with different woods. Actually I'm not necessarily looking for what material to use as I am wondering what percentage of a guitars tone is effected between the body the neck. I probably could have just come out and said that but I was in my super inquisitive mode yah know. Me being the kind of person that want's to custom make every element of the guitar as I humanly can I'm fascinated and very curious how one guitar sounds much different then another yet they were built the same way. I have an extremely curious mind, if something that interests me enough to get stuck in my head I actually do turn into one of those basement mad scientist.

And I'm looking for what is at the root source of acoustics, what are the key elements that shapes the makeup of sound.

Well this space is rich with content. Make sure you sift through it because most of these things are already addressed.

The most critical aspect to my builds (besides comfort) is scale length. This is a major influence on both tone and feel. How will a ukulele sound & feel tuned down to guitar tuning? How will a bass sound & feel tuned up to guitar tuning? For me the rest of the guitar is built around this. But this is subjective to your goals.

My body woods are chosen for beauty/weight, my neck woods I have no criteria except I like to avoid spalted maple. I don't use a truss rod but a solid metal slug that keeps things pretty rigid so I can gamble with the wood selection. But it's mostly cosmetic for me. Some neck woods feel better on the thumb also.

Acoustics..
There are many takes on this but for me.. The pickup tells the amp what to do. The strings (mostly) tell the pickup what to do. So what design elements will affect the way the string vibrates? Well if the neck material is softer it might absorb more of the string vibration, same with the body. If your neck or body isn't absolutely stiff it will absorb some of the string vibration and "reflect" that absorption onto the string's movement. And your nut stiffness, tuners, string length, scale length (not the same as string length), bridge material, fretboard material, depth of pickup cavities, string thru.. all have different potential effects on how purely the string is allowed to vibrate. Owning an aluminum guitar changed every opinion I had on this subject. It's all about your goal tone.

But a great sounding guitar won't sound better than other guitars - it will sound like other guitars. Because the history of guitar tone is really what we're referencing when we evaluate our sounds. They said to Bob Moog "That piano sounds awful!" Of course they were comparing it to the history of piano sounds. So if you want a great sounding guitar, you should consider the materials and methods used in making the guitars you find most pleasing. We can advance the instrument until it has it's own sub-category and people tell us it "..sounds awful!" but it's really history that tells us how we're doing.

Thank you cactus, I always wondered why it is that the wood effected the sound of the guitar so much. I always figured because certain wood had thier own acoustical values but you gave me some very helpful information that makes me think otherwise. I'm sure the natural tone of tonewood alters the sound in it's own way. but as obvious as it now sounds I didn't realize the softer woods would be a key factor in sustain roll off. This definitely gives me a better understanding of how wood effects tone, and I appreciate the tip about spalted maple.

You're welcome but I don't know that I agree with that comment. My point was that there's NOT much tonal difference between wood guitars and aluminum ones. So to compare this wood to that wood on electrics.. I just don't know. When Eddie Van Halen was prototyping his newest guitar with the (I think) Fender guy they used a basswood (very light & soft wood) body and it wasn't giving him the bite and sustain he wanted. So the guy made him the same thing with a maple cap and EVH claims that was what made the difference. Can EVH hear a difference? Can he hear anything but his ears ringing? I don't know, but I just don't have the experience to speak on it. There's theory.. and then there's the product.

I think everything makes a little difference. But there are so many GD variables.. Flat fret slots vs curved, headstock vs none, pickup differences, amp differences, room differences, steel vs brass hardware, hide glue vs titebond II, Alder wood from THIS state and not THAT state.. how could anyone know anything definitively on the subject?

My vote is to make the simplest guitar you can. Then make the best guitar you can. You'll make so many mistakes on that first one you just can't imagine! It might come out left-handed, even.

Ah.
Well, here's my thoughts (OTHERS will be along to deride them shortly).
You can make a strat out of ANY wood and it will sound like a strat.
You can make a tele out of ANY wood and it will sound like a tele.
You can make a Les Paul out of ANY wood and it will sound like a Les Paul.
You can record each of these guitars that you just made, playing the same riff, shuffle them around, play them back randomly for people and try to get them to match them to the guitar, and they won't be able to with anything approaching accuracy.
But when you play the instrument yourself, you will recognize it tonally for what it is.

After all that, I'm willing to say that more than anything, the scale length, the pickups, and the particular amplification will have the biggest influence over the tone, with the amp having a good portion of that all by itself.

Here's a video of Grammy Award winning artist Wayne "Animal" Turner of the world famous Bama Band, Hank Jr's backup band for almost 30 years, playing the Tele I made for him 12 years ago. It's still his favorite guitar.
it's made of Canary wood and Birdseye maple. It still sounds like a Tele.

http://youtu.be/rUn4ixO4FfM

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Yep. Except for the fact that I can take two teles(or two strats, or lp's, or whatever), same woods, same pickups, same everything, plug them into the same amp, and they won't sound exactly the same either. In fact, one of them might be the guitar of your dreams, the other might sound weak, thin, and atrociously bad. So, which strat, tele, or LP are we talking about here?
Teles, Strats, or LPs have a certain "general sound", that we are all familiar with, but there's a lot of variation in there, depending on the individual guitar. What accounts for that variation? I don't believe anyone can say with any certainty.
Don't get me wrong. I'm in the same camp as far as the fact that I believe scale length and electronics, along with the amp chosen, will make the largest impact on the tone of the electric guitar. Makes sense, too, because scale length can also have a huge impact on acoustic guitars as well. But I'm not ready to say unequivically that wood doesn't matter when it comes to electric guitars. The jury on that is still out, and probably will be for the forseeable future.
But since I can't control or even predict with any certainty what impact the wood will actually make, I prefer to chose good, well seasoned wood (whatever type it is), good quality electronics that have the reputation of delivering the general tone I'm looking for, and build the best instrument I can, with the closest tolerences I can manage, and let the outcome speak for itself. I believe if I do that, the guitar, while it might not nail the tone I'm looking for, will be my best work, and have a chance to be the best it can be. And maybe I can learn something along the way. IMHO that's the best I can hope for.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

When I was young I always fell into that it has to be a certain type of wood to sound good. You know it had to be mahogany or it will sound like crap. Or it has to be ash or it will suck. Yeah I fell for that for a long time. I have made electrics out of maple, fir, mahogany and even poplar plus many other non traditional lutherie woods. Yes if you plug them into the same amp with the controls set to the exact way they do sound different. If I plug in one of my maples into my amp that the tone settings were tweaked for my Les Paul yeah it does sound to bright or even brittle. But if I tweak them to benefit a maple body these guitars sound as awesome as my Les Paul. Also different pickups on the same guitar can add to its flavor but the difference is that radical. When it comes down to it a lot of the sound of a guitar comes from the player him or herself. Jimi Hendrix still sounded like Hendrix playing that Gibson flying V as he did his strats.

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Another day, another dollar.

I'm just thinking out loud, way past my bedtime.

I'd like to make a comment on SOLID woods.
If you ever study audio, you know that almost all sound is in the form of a wave. String vibrates, drum head vibrates.. even synths oscillate. When two similar and opposite (out-of-phase) waves collide they can cancel each other.
If you ever study mechanics you know that nothing is completely rigid. I put my drink down on an I-beam and it will give, if ever so slightly.

So how does the neck play against the string? A vibrating string will cause a wooden neck to vibrate, indubitably. So if the neck and string are both vibrating, could they cause cancellations in each other? I believe so, if even slightly. This may sound crazy, but what do we call a curved piece of steel designed to return a fixture to a specific location? A spring. This is what your truss rod is. It's not designed to keep the neck stiff, it's designed to return it to a "home" location. So the neck is really just a very stiff tremolo.
Now the average amplifier speaker produces frequencies from 20Hz to about 5000Hz. When I knock on a piece of wood I hear a sound about 500Hz or so (this is the frequency range of the Mids knob on the amp). When I knock metal, the fundamental can be 3000Hz or more. So if the wood won't vibrate below 500Hz, it can't cancel a frequency below 500Hz. But that means frequencies starting at the MIDS knob going all the way up through the HIGHS knob are all susceptible to cancellation. If we make a metal guitar (like Les Paul's rail road tie guitar) it's going to "knock" somewhere near the end of the speaker's voicing range - 2000-5000Hz. So the lowest frequency this neck will absorb is about where the speaker turns off anyway.

So this is not really a tone discussion, but I wanted to share my thoughts on density principles and how they could affect note clarity. I do believe that wood choice can make a difference, but I think the other variables overwhelm the affect of the wood. Sure its a Mahogany neck, but you cut a 3/16 channel out of it and shoved in a slinky steel rod wrapped in a thick plastic sleeve the entire length of the neck, added a maple fillet and left a long air pocket that you mostly filled with silicone to keep it from rattling and glued and glued a 1/4" block of Maple to the top of it. Is it still Mahogany? Can you still judge that neck as "Mahogany?" I'm sure the woods behave quite differently but my belief is that the shape and construction methods have much more say in the sound than the wood. I say make a pretty, comfortable guitar.