Guitar MYTHBUSTING
Well,
I had some time to kill so I went ahead and did my own 'mythbusting' thingy...I recorded a bunch of guitars, all more or less totally different, first unamplified, and then amplified with a straight cable to amp, low gain, to see if there are differences, which I expected there to be not much...
The truth is...there are differences but they leave me completely perplexed. Everything went totally the other way I would have expected. There were a couple of clear differences, but they were pretty much exactly the opposite what I had expected. The 'dark' guitar I had was pretty much the brightest on recording, etc. And I can't for the life of me detect the pickup type, even whether it is active or passive...but then there were some surprising differences that I had not expected too.
This whole thing really is a quagmire...and it just further reinforces my beliefs, and the most this: easily the greatest differences in the sound are achieved not by changing the guitar type very drastically (and I do mean drastically like from a passive Telecaster to an active SG) but simply moving your picking position 1,5" in either direction. THAT gave wayyyy more difference in how the sound recorded, than the change in guitars.
I regret I can't do a very scientific approach where each guitar would be perfectly portrayed and the changes in picking position effect demonstrated, so this is just a peek to what I myself gained from the experiment...all I can say is whoa. I always did claim the body woods etc. make little differences, but now I'm still left awestruck simply about the fact that what little differences there are, are very much the opposite of what I expected! I need to think about this long and hard.
Here is my video on the tests...15 minutes or so...go ahead and try to make sense of it. The guitars used are a strat, a tele, an sg, and two are my own 'builds' including the recent aluminum-top guitar.
I won't even ask anyone to guess which is which because it is indeed quite impossible...but any guesses welcome. Unamplified ones are in same order always from 1 to 7 and then A to G for amplified sounds, but A is not (necessarily) 1 etc.but the order is different for those two and totally random.
Dee
"When life's a biatch, be a horny dog"
Amps: Marshall JVM 410H w/ Plexi Cap mod, Choke Mod & Negative Feedback Removal mod, 4x12", Behringer GMX110, Amplitube 3/StealthPedal
Half a dozen custom built/bastardized guitars all with EMG's, mostly 85's, Ibanez Artwood acoustic & Yamaha SGR bass, Epiphone Prophecy SG, Vox Wah, Pitchblack tuner plus assorted pedals, rack gear etc. for home studio use.