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I am convinced that the tone of the body/neck of a solid body is as important to the final tone as pups or hardware. The tone of the finished instrument will obviously be influenced by all things but I feel the body may be the root of that tone.
Do any of you gurus tap tune the body like an acoustic top, or a violin plate, in an attempt to achieve specific results? I have begun trying to tune my set neck solid bodies, but I am not yet sure what I am listening for. I am hearing huge variations in tone with comparatively small changes in mass and shape, using very similar maple drop tops, and alder from the same cant.

Tim,

I would agree that the "tone" of the overall wood composition is as important as the pickups and hardware - though arguably primarily for the looks, but also because IMHO it does in fact "colour" the tone.

In terms of "tap tuning" the body - well, I would also agree that there is probably intrinsic value in that, but obtaining useful information would be very difficult. In a set neck guitar, there is just so much mass - compared the thin plate of an acoustic top. The amount of force amplitude required to excite the body well enough to learn of its response seems like it would be very difficult - but I could be wrong.

When I am building - I can certainly feel whether a body wood choice combination is going to be musical or not - or better than others - and generally, my thoughts on the finished instrument are consistent. But I must confess, I have a carving style and more or less try to match it based on aesthetics in all my guitars - not based upon some form of voicing...

But you may be on to something here...maybe we can figure out a method to properly excite solid body guitars using some form of a heavy shaker table to glean some useful experimental data...

Stephen

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For electrics, I listen for an overall musical 'bonk' when I give it a good whack with a knuckle. No tuning for specific frequencies for me. I use CF in all my necks, which tends to give me longer sustain and a slightly higher base pitch than pre-CF.

I make sure that my body and neck have different tap tones .I don't want to have any one frequency dominate.

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How long is that in luthyears?

I read, in one of those books that we all have, that Buzz Feiten uses a piece of .008" rigid vinyl under the necks of the strats and teles that he sets up. He feels that the de-coupling of neck and body improves the sound, especially the bass. He doesn't mention sustain.
My experience dictates that a carefully designed set neck, or through neck especially with carbon reinforcement has much greater sustain than a bolt on, but I believe that with very careful attention to detail a bolt on socket could couple very well.
If Mr. Feiten is correct, it would seem that the higher frequency of the neck is adding overtones to the bass effectively killing the purity of the base notes.

I don't build electrics but I love talking about stuff I know nothing about ( ) so....

I wouldn't think that's how an electric works. I think they're kind of opposite the way an acoustic works. IIRC the theory of the Steinberger guitars was that the neck/body was so dense and rigid that "all" of the strings energy remained in the string. So, where am I going with this. Any time the body vibrates, it's "sucking" energy from the string. I'm sure that in the complex vibrations, it also gives back sometimes and "sucks" sometimes. That's why different woods have different aural characteristics with electrics. E.G. - let's say the neck/body has a mode at 100hz - if you hit a note near 100hz, it would probably be deader or perhaps out of tune compared to other notes.

One thing which might be an interesting experiment for the O.P.: Take a clamp and cauls and clamp it tight to the headstock of a finished guitar. You can vary the frequency of the first mode of vibration or the "Xylophone bar" type of mode. This should have a pretty dramatic effect on tone. Perhaps through experimentation one could add or remove mass to the headstock only to get the tone you're after.

p.s. I'm not joking that I don't know what I'm talking about so take this advice for what it's worth. For me discussions like this is how I learn. I do know that adding mass to the headstock of any instrument does drastically affect tone though.

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Overtones don't 'kill' the bass tones; they make the whole tone more complex, but none of my chambered, stiff, tightly coupled neck electrics have lacking bass tones.

Besides, pickups are a major consideration, and you amplifier is at LEAST half the instrument.