Is it more important to you how an electric guitar sounds unplugged or plugged in?

[teleman1]

I don't want a guitar that does notresonate nicely unplugged. I doubt its ability to sound good amplified if the body is kind of dead sounding. Especially on a 330 or 335. Good ones sound awesome unplugged.

 

[soulgeezer]

I don't want a guitar that does notresonate nicely unplugged. I doubt its ability to sound good amplified if the body is kind of dead sounding. Especially on a 330 or 335. Good ones sound awesome unplugged.

330 = hollow body (i.e. potentially resonant, though the laminated top argues against it), 335 = giant block of wood running down the middle under the laminated top with the specific purpose of... killing resonance!

 

[TG]

How if feels and plays...and looks....are the most important to me these days.
I'm only interested in a narrow range of models now.....I've owned and tried every type of guitar I was ever really interested in and I know what I like...so I've got a pretty good idea of what a guitar is likely to sound like amplified. I like to tinker and upgrade guitars anyway so if it has a good feel to it and seems to be put together ok with good materials chances are I can make it sound ok.

I'm not sure exactly how to define 'feel' though. Weight, balance, resonance perhaps...?
But the actual sound of an unplugged electric isn't important to me.

 

[beninma]

Every one of those things changes once you plug in. You’re actually making twice as much work for yourself by not just starting off plugged in.

Bingo... this is ridiculous. It's super hard to get string muting down correctly without plugging in...

There are at least 4 scenarios that all require adjusting your playing:

- Acoustic guitar unplugged
- Acoustic guitar plugged in
- Electric guitar unplugged
- Electric guitar plugged in

The only value in ever playing an electric guitar unplugged is if you need absolute silence.

You're never going to perform on a solid body electric guitar that's not plugged in, why would you ever want to play that way so much that you start adjusting your playing for it to the point it becomes automatic.

 

[gregulator450]

guys seem not to be able to wrap their heads around... ALL this tone bunk exists ONLY in the last few percent of the sonic total... for the most part it's much like going ape sh** because someone made your soup with Morton's table salt instead of Natural Sea salt.. is there a difference?? Yeah, but only in a laboratory..

A guitar is created with it's baseline voice... It will be present in everything you do to the guitar with the exception of the very extreme .. YOU, your amp and that baseline is well into 90%+ of the voice of a guitar... all this other "stuff" dwells in those last few percentile.. And the better the "YOU" is, the smaller that last few percentile becomes..

r

Love this. Table salt vs. sea salt. Dead on. "Tone bunk"- IMHO the vast majority of the "tone" talk is marketing BS.

The last few percent matter to some people.

I don't have Eric Johnson's ears, so that last few percent is indistinguishable to me.

This thread makes for some fun reading. Cool to see people's thoughts on the subject.

 

[gregulator450]

Every one of those things changes once you plug in. You’re actually making twice as much work for yourself by not just starting off plugged in.

John 5 says he ALWAYS practices plugged in. Probably for this reason.

 

[Steerforth]

So tell me, folks. What’s the best tone wood for a solid body electric?

 

[moosie]

Unplugged? Who cares. It's an electric guitar.

I do listen to the strings unplugged during a setup, to detect stuff like sitar on the G slot, or bridge rattles. Stuff that will make the plugged in sound better, but it may not be immediately apparent something's lacking.

 

[moosie]

My feeling is I need to hone my own playing skills, timing, accuracy, slides, bends, vibrato and every other trick before I plug in and show the world what I can and can't do. Especially if you don't use pedals, which I don't over use. I have a tuner and occasionally use a compressor. Everything else I need I squeeze out of a Brown Deluxe and 6G15 Reverb. I think I learn more unplugged.

There's a lot to be said for learning on an acoustic guitar, because they're harder to play (higher action, less resonant, etc). Less forgiving, no free lunch.

That logic does not apply to playing electric unplugged, though. It's not about being loud 'to show the world'. The amp is half of the instrument. Turn way up, pick softly, and practice the way you eventually play.

 

[Telenator]

Yeah, I already said sorry for my sarcastic post.

That's cool. I have a long history of failed sarcasm in plain text. It seems funny to me at the time anyway.

I once started a thread asking if I should route my 53 Tele for a Floyd Rose trem. I still laugh when I think about it.

 

[Marblatx]

I disagree with anybody who says a solid body electric sounds good unplugged.

 

[Anacharsis]

So tell me, folks. What’s the best tone wood for a solid body electric?

 

[Maguchi]

I have another Thread where it was brought up that some think that it's important how a guitar sounds when unplugged, whereas some think it's not ultimately important.


So my question is when you are deciding to buy an electric guitar, is how a guitar sounds unplugged ultimately more important to you than how it sounds when amplified?


I know some of you might answer both, but at the end of the day, one has to win out ultimately

I always audition a new electric guitar unplugged 1st, then through an amp. If it sounds good unplugged, that will usually translate into sounding good when plugged in, as long as decent pickups and electronics are used.

 

[Maguchi]

Mahogany, swamp ash, alder, korina (limba), not necessarily in that order

 

[soulgeezer]

So tell me, folks. What’s the best tone wood for a solid body electric?

Railroad tie. Obviously.

 

[Sconnie]

I wonder if I can make this statement without everyone thinking I'm making a tonewood argument haha...

If a guitar sounds good acoustically, it has a good chance to sound better plugged in than a dead sounding guitar with the same electronics. The pickups are ultimately reacting to what the strings are doing.

For me, plugged in matters most at the end of the day. But, all the best (solidbody, very important here) electrics I've ever played struck me by how good they sounded and felt acoustically before I plugged them in. YMMV

 

[zamdrang]

Idk about it being more important... But I don't own an electric that doesn't sound good unplugged.. It's part of the criteria for me. I find tons of inspiration by having the amp just loud enough for a stereo effect with the inherent unplugged tone... If that makes sense.

 

[Anacharsis]

I wonder if I can make this statement without everyone thinking I'm making a tonewood argument haha...

If a guitar sounds good acoustically, it has a good chance to sound better plugged in than a dead sounding guitar with the same electronics. The pickups are ultimately reacting to what the strings are doing.

For me, plugged in matters most at the end of the day. But, all the best (solidbody, very important here) electrics I've ever played struck me by how good they sounded and felt acoustically before I plugged them in. YMMV

I don't doubt you, but the idea of an unplugged electric sounding "good" is so foreign to me that I wouldn't even know what to listen for. They all sound plinky and one dimensional to me.

 

[soulgeezer]

Question for the people playing electric guitars acoustically:

Just how quiet is the room you’re in, that you can hear resonance in a solid block of wood with some wire stretched across it?

This whole discussion confuses me to no end.

 

[padreraven]

I have three electric guitars and I like to sit and noodle on them unplugged while I watch TV but I couldn't really compare how they sound; pretty similar, I guess. They're all solid body. But they all sound very different from each other plugged in, and that's why I have three instead of one. If I want something to sound good unplugged I pick up the D28 or the Tacoma 12-string. What I want to find out from an unplugged electric is how the neck feels.