Guitar tone: Does burled wood deliver any lesser quality tone to an electric guitar?

Question

I'm thinking about getting a guitar from burled Bubinga wood and now I'm starting to wonder if the burl throws the tone.

Answer 1

Back in the early 60's, Paul Barth (who helped Leo start Fender guitar), Ted Peckels (who, along with Paul, started Bartell Guitar), and myself asked kinda the same question about how various woods affected the tone of an electric. So we built, IIRC, a couple dozen identical guitars out of various different woods and found that there *is* a difference in tone caused by the wood. But it's not a very big difference and can be easily compensated for by adjusting the tone controls on your amplifier. Mostly it's all about how 'rigid' the tailpiece is held that determines which overtones are stronger or less strong. Not too big a surprise actually, it's the same thing that causes the tone (or 'timbre' or 'sonority') of an acoustic guitar to change depending on the type of wood used. But, on an acoustic, the change(s) are obviously much more noticeable.

Doug

Answer 2

Music is in the ear of the drug-crazed maniacs who go to rock concerts. For them, the uglier the sound, the better they like it. They crank so much distortion into the amplification that you can't tell if the guitar is made of fine wood or dried up wads of chewing gum.

For sweet, soothing acoustic guitar music, my best advice is: Pick your favorite guitarists, check out their websites, find out what kinds of guitars they use.

Burled wood looks cool hanging on a wall.