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Guitar tone: Does burled wood deliver any lesser quality tone to an electric guitar?
I'm thinking about getting a guitar from burled Bubinga wood and now I'm starting to wonder if the burl throws the tone.
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