Here's what I think people usually (choose to?) believe about guitars and amps and are badly mistaken or simply aren't thinking things through. And it seems to me that even if they do know these things they still seem to willfully ignore them when looking for that right elusive 'mojo'.

1. Guitar wood importance
2. Guitar pickup magic
3. Tube distortion importance

Explained:

1. Woods do change the sound even on electrics, but only a little. They matter the most if the material is totally not suitable, like soft plywood or any material that lacks a solid consistency, or just too soft for necks. You need good solid necks for sure. But between OK materials, you can build a guitar out of stone (I have) and it sounds just fine. Plastic, compressed paper mass, spruce, ash, aluminum, whatever. Leo Fender chose his woods because he wanted the cheapest and the least resonant ones to fight feedback, not for tone.

2. Guitar pickups do change the sound, probably the most on an electric. BUT people seem to think there is some mystery to it and one 200$ pickup is better than the next. This is wrong in that ALL that matters is a.)what magnets b.)what principle(bucker,single, stacked, active, P90 and combos) c.)cover and screw sizes/staggers etc. and the most important D: output power. If these things are pretty much equal it's nigh impossible to tell similar pickups apart.

3. Tube overdrive seems to be something everybody covets and speaks of, and most any modelers boast to mimic. While nobody remembers or wants to remember that pure tube distortion by and large sucks big time. YES tubes sound great but it's mostly the output where they're needed. And you need volume to get that. But hardly anybody EVER used 100% tube setups to get good overdrives. From Jimi Hendrix to ACDC to bloody beatles and Brian May, whatever, it's always been about clipping diodes at some point, usually by pedals or in the preamp. Now remember I love tube amps myself too and tubes are the s**t in rock guitar sounds but PLEASE stop talking about 100% tube as if it's a good thing, you NEED solid state clipping too to get any decent rock tones. And if you're playing a modern Marshal 100W JMV or whatever thing at under 100db levels, trust me, it ain't the power tubes that make it sound like that. It's the SS part of the amps driving the pre tubes or alone for the most part. Hell you can even have D/I outs on these amps so believe you me, the tubes aren't used for those AT ALL because if they were given 400V with no load they'd BLOW UP. I suspect also the pre tubes run lo-volt then. You can really only hear tubes when you push the poweramp or pre tubes but even then it will only sound great with a little SS in there. The freakiest idea by amp industry ever is to have a SINGLE tube preamp and a SS power stage when it should be VICE VERSA to get that real tube sound. BUT in 99% of those 'tube pre' systems the tube is just for show, ran on low voltage and barely in the circuit really. Trust me they do NOTHING for the sound. On many you can even just rip out the tube and notice no difference. It's just for show no matter how much the maker boasts real tube. Music Man had it right with the amps that had SS pre's and tubes for power.

Any other suggestions for the top 3 guitar myths?