User:Vienna Guitars

6 STRING ELECTRIC SOLID BODY GUITAR SPECFICATION

A Personal and Controversial View

Introduction

By way of background let me explain my position when making the following observations. I have been playing guitars for over 45 years and during the last 5 years I have also been making guitars for my own use. I currently own 25 guitars of many different styles and makes. (Stratocasters, Telecasters, Gibson ES 335, Gibson SG, Gibson Les Paul, Burns, Variax and many acoustic 6 & 12 strings). I have also played, owned and sold many others. Guitars are works of art that make music, but in order satisfy the demand for exotic instruments manufactures have raised specifications way above that need to make good music. This allows the owners of such instruments to make statements on wealth, good taste, individuality, etc. As a comparison, a watch given away free with oil will tell the time just as well as a Rolex. A Mini and a Rolls Royce both have 4 wheels, doors, seats and a steering wheel and will both get you to the local shops. I am the first to admit collecting guitars for their reputation, looks, sound etc, but have found over the years that when it comes to designing and building a good, fit-for-purpose electric solid 6 string guitar there are some basic rules that should be followed and many that are not. Design/specification features provided often fall into the category of Design Masturbation for the rich with no proven way to verify the claims made to sound improvement.

Body

With a solid body electric guitar all the discussions on expensive woods are relatively meaningless. The majority of sound quality comes from the pickup selection and controls. Yes you must have a good quality tone wood for the body, but many of the exotic woods used today are unnecessary. If you read the early 40’s/50’s design experiments/requirements for solid electric guitars they wanted the body to be as dense as possible so that it added nothing to the work being done by the pickups and strings. Notwithstanding all of the above, semi-acoustic guitars do derive tone and sound from their body construction. Some notable examples being the Gibson ES 335, Gretsch and Rickenbacker.

Neck

Here conventional wisdom that correct woods must be used to ensure the neck will not warp and sound well are correct. Having said that I have worked and played with necks costing from £45 up to £500 and found that due to modern mass production techniques, quality control and computer controlled manufacture all necks performed well if adjusted correctly with the truss rod. There is however one standard design fault that I find amazing in almost every neck manufactured. The nut forms the first fret, this makes no sense as a standard 22 fret 6 string guitar can produce 132 notes of which only 6 maximum rely on the nut material for any sound benefit. As soon as any string is fretted the nut material plays no further part in the notes sound.

Also the set-up of the nut to ensure correct string height to the first fret is at best problematic and intonation relies on the nut being perfect in position and cut to match the stings being used. I except that the Fender ‘Roller Nut’ goes some way to address this problem. The only guitar I have found that addresses this intonation nut fault is the Burns, where there is a fret directly in front of the nut (zero fret). The intonation and playability of this guitar on the lower chords is amazing. Try one, you won’t be disappointed.

Now to the truss rod adjustment, this is where manufactures have a competition to find out who can make it the most difficult thing to adjust. First prize goes to those necks with the adjustment at the connection to the body. This is great fun as you sometimes have to remove the neck to adjust the truss rod, re-string and then see if it’s ok. Next is the adjustment at the nut. This is better, but still you have to slacken at least 2 strings to make the adjustment and then re-tune to check if ok. I have found two necks that overcome these stupid problems. One is fitted to the Burns, the other is manufactured by Warmoth from the USA. Both necks have adjustment without needing to remove or de-tune any strings which is the way it should be.

Tuners

Tuners must be locking..! Any guitar sold without locking tuners should be made illegal.

Bridge

This is probably the single most importance fitting on the guitar and should have as many fine tuning adjustments as possible. This is where the all important 12th fret intonation can be corrected for each individual string. This where the height of each string can be set and fine tuned when thicker or thinner strings are fitted. So many quality guitars offer very little adjustment with a view that they make them so well to start with, no further adjustment is needed. IN YOUR DREAMS...!

Pickups

This is where I really start to get annoyed with many existing guitar specifications. A solid bodied electric guitar should have 3 pickups. Even if some players do not use or need the middle pickup they can always turn it off, hopefully. The middle pickup is the neutral sound of the guitar before adding bass with the neck pickup or treble with the bridge pickup. Pickup manufacture and design is an individual choice. There are many excellent pickups made. All have different sounds and qualities and I have most types fitted on my guitars. The only two observations I would make is:

1 The ability to adjust each individual magnet up and down with a screw for each string is a nice feature if you find that the bass E is too loud or the top E to quiet.

2 Overall I prefer to use single coil pickups as they produce a clearer change in sound between each pickup. A Humbucker gives a nice sound but it can get a bit muddy as this wider pickup starts to blend into the next pickup (see below)

Controls

I am only here discussing guitars with Passive controls. There are many excellent guitars with electronic circuits in-built and provide a huge range of excellent sound. The Variax being a prime example as it is a computer with a neck and 6 strings. The ‘villain of the peace’ here is the Fender Stratocaster and its many copies. How can you have 3 pickups with a 5 way selector switch? 3 pickups provide the possibly for 7 selections.

(T) = Treble pickup (M) = Middle pickup (B) = Bass pickup

1 = (T) 2 = (T+M) 3 = (M) 4 = (M+B) 5 = (B) 6 = (T+B) 7= (T+M+B)

Also this inadequate 5 way switch is positioned at such angle it is difficult when playing to be sure that you are on the desired settings for 2,3 or 4. 1 & 5 are ok and clear. The Stratocaster also has a volume control so close to the top E that it is easy to unintentional re-set its position when playing near the bridge. Why this guitar is so highly rated is difficult to understand. Overall volume control always seems lacking on so many 2 pickup guitars. The Gibson Les Paul is a classic example. It has 2 pickups each with its own volume and tone control, fine, but once you have the sound mix you are happy with you cannot turn the whole guitar up and down without having to change the mix settings every time with both volumes.

Tone controls are the next mystery area on many guitars. Some guitars have one tone control for 2 pickups but two volumes. Others have 3 pickups but only 2 tone controls.

Each pickup should be switched ON/OFF with a small slide switch above each pickup, making it very easy for the player to know what pickup is selected. The VOL/TONE control should be a combined dual pot, positioned below each pickup, so again the player is in no doubt as to what pickup is being controlled.

Tremolo

This additional fitting can provide some nice effects if used selectively, but is more often over used in the wrong place during a song and makes the guitar sound like an out-of-tune Hawaiian guitar. Good tremolo units are very few and far between, there have been many attempts to perfect a design for returning a slackened or tightened string back to perfect pitch. Having tried nearly all designs, here are my thoughts on the matter.

Bigsby : A very old design that will never work. It uses one spring, off-set to one side of the strings. If it had two springs, one on either end of the tension rod it might just work. I think these units are still fitted for the nostalgic times of the 50’s, certainly not as modern tremolo units.

Fender : Another old design but better conceived. It uses 3 to5 springs, evenly spaced to return the strings to pitch. Can work well. But many copies screw the unit to the body with wood screws, this will not allow the unit to move freely. Later designs with 2 metal pins work better.

Burns : This ‘Rez-o-tube’ design raised tremolo units to new levels when introduced in the 60’s. The engineering is excellent with top grade materials and a knife edge balance. The unit has many adjustments for bridge height, arm position, arm tension and a clever cover bar so you can vamp the strings without affecting the tremolo.

Floyd-Rose : Another fine tremolo unit, which when correctly set up is very good. The only trouble with this unit is you need the patience of a saint and lots of spare time.

Kahler : This is a very good tremolo unit from the USA. Not cheap but very well made with many adjustments, different models and spare parts to customise your design. By choice this is the unit that I would always use.

Strings

These are the cheapest things on the whole guitar and the most important. Like the tyres on a car which connect you, the driver and car to the road, they transpose all your hard earned skills to the instrument. String choice is a very personal thing. I use Martin strings with a wound G as I find that wire G’s can sound harsh on many songs.

Conclusion

So there you have it, a very personal and controversial view on the correct design for a, 6 string, solid body, electric guitar. I am not aware of any guitar that has all my preferred preferences with one exception, and that hangs on the wall in my music room.