Electric Guitar Tonewood Teardown: Can We Get Good Sounds From Cheap Guitars?

For this first installment, let’s have a closer look at the never-dying, snake-oil-drenched urban legends about tonewood on electric guitars and establish some parameters for our experiment. It’s very important to understand that we are talking about tonewood on electric guitars and their amplified tone exclusively; tonewood on acoustic guitars is a completely different thing. The rules for electric guitars are not applicable to acoustic guitars, and vice versa. In general, the whole discussion about tonewood is full of misunderstandings, inaccuracies, conclusions by analogy, biasing, and, of course, marketing bullshit of all kinds. And, sadly, a lot of this has developed into accepted internet knowledge by way of unfounded rumors.

Is the wood of an electric guitar the deciding factor of how it will sound? Or does the wood have no influence on its tone? I submit a resolute “no” to both theses: The truth here is much more complex, and, as usual, lies somewhere in between these two points. So, let’s try to find out exactly where that is!