So here's the thing: in recent years, experience with various guitar finishes has convinced me that they contribute subtly to the sound of the instrument. I once felt differently about this, but I've changed my mind as experience keeps teaching me new things.
One of the things that convinced me of this is that I was a longtime Gibson player, and still have a '65 SG Special, a guitar whose tone I've got 50 years of experience listening to.
The SG sounded different from my PRS guitars for a ton of reasons, but there was always a sonic signature/overtone I heard on Gibsons no matter which model I played. I didn't hear this overtone on a PRS until one day I played a DGT that was finished in nitro (early DGTs were nitro).
Damned if that DGT didn't have that familiar overtone, even strummed acoustically. It made me start thinking I still had a lot to learn about the effect of finishes on instruments, and that I was wrong to be so quick to rush to judgment on the question of nitro finishes affecting tone.
More recent experience with both a V12 SC58 and my nitro Hammer of the Gods McCarty Singlecut reinforced my feeling about this. The nitro finished CU24 30th I have has even more so (I should point out that I like the tone of V12 instruments a lot, too!).
There's a lot of guesswork as to why this difference exists in various circles of guitardom, but a recent short article in Guitarist about nitro finishes speculates that they somehow let the instrument "breathe." This strikes me as nonsense, though we've all heard it many times.
It should be fairly obvious that instruments don't take air in and out as they are being played and vibrate. I think air and supposed porosity has nothing to do with it. A new nitro finish isn't porous, and it still sounds a little different from an acrylic finish. And it's not as though any finishes form a loose shell around the guitar that is not directly attached to the wood so that the wood and the finish vibrate separately. On the contrary, the finish is stuck to the wood. The wood and the finish vibrate together.
So why do finishes have characteristic sounds?
Here's my Wildly Speculative Theory of the Day: It's not about the finish allowing the wood of the guitar to somehow vibrate more freely. It's about the resonance of the finish itself contributing to the overall tone of the instrument.
Think about it - A plastic finish is a solid. Even nitro is a plastic finish whose solids are cellulose instead of other materials. Seems to me that all solids have various, and different, resonances depending on materials. Why should solid, dried paint be any different?
If you tap your finger on various different types of thin plastic, say a polyacrylic CD case, or a polyethelene CD case, both being of similar thickness, but different plastics, and you will observe that they resonate differently. I remember working on one of my old Rickenbackers with its whatever-stuff-they-use pick guard off, and thinking how much the pick guard's resonance affected the specific tone of the guitar. In fact, a Strat with a wooden pick guard does sound subtly different from a Strat fitted with the standard plastic pick guard. So it isn't just the matter of a body cavity being covered.
I don't recall how much the paint on a PRS weighs, I think someone mentioned it on one of the other forums a few years back, but I was surprised at how much paint there is on a guitar. It's substantial enough to be resonant.
So while I do not believe that the different finishes somehow let the guitar "breathe" or vibrate differently, I think that when dry, they might have their own resonances that make a contribution to the overall resonance of the instrument. And of course, these resonances would affect the resonances of the wood and metal parts as they all interact with each other creating slightly different harmonic signatures.
That's what I think we're hearing with different finishes (assuming that we hear them at all, which I do believe if one knows what to listen for). The different harmonic signatures are these various types of plastic.
Discuss gently amongst yourselves.
One of the things that convinced me of this is that I was a longtime Gibson player, and still have a '65 SG Special, a guitar whose tone I've got 50 years of experience listening to.
The SG sounded different from my PRS guitars for a ton of reasons, but there was always a sonic signature/overtone I heard on Gibsons no matter which model I played. I didn't hear this overtone on a PRS until one day I played a DGT that was finished in nitro (early DGTs were nitro).
Damned if that DGT didn't have that familiar overtone, even strummed acoustically. It made me start thinking I still had a lot to learn about the effect of finishes on instruments, and that I was wrong to be so quick to rush to judgment on the question of nitro finishes affecting tone.
More recent experience with both a V12 SC58 and my nitro Hammer of the Gods McCarty Singlecut reinforced my feeling about this. The nitro finished CU24 30th I have has even more so (I should point out that I like the tone of V12 instruments a lot, too!).
There's a lot of guesswork as to why this difference exists in various circles of guitardom, but a recent short article in Guitarist about nitro finishes speculates that they somehow let the instrument "breathe." This strikes me as nonsense, though we've all heard it many times.
It should be fairly obvious that instruments don't take air in and out as they are being played and vibrate. I think air and supposed porosity has nothing to do with it. A new nitro finish isn't porous, and it still sounds a little different from an acrylic finish. And it's not as though any finishes form a loose shell around the guitar that is not directly attached to the wood so that the wood and the finish vibrate separately. On the contrary, the finish is stuck to the wood. The wood and the finish vibrate together.
So why do finishes have characteristic sounds?
Here's my Wildly Speculative Theory of the Day: It's not about the finish allowing the wood of the guitar to somehow vibrate more freely. It's about the resonance of the finish itself contributing to the overall tone of the instrument.
Think about it - A plastic finish is a solid. Even nitro is a plastic finish whose solids are cellulose instead of other materials. Seems to me that all solids have various, and different, resonances depending on materials. Why should solid, dried paint be any different?
If you tap your finger on various different types of thin plastic, say a polyacrylic CD case, or a polyethelene CD case, both being of similar thickness, but different plastics, and you will observe that they resonate differently. I remember working on one of my old Rickenbackers with its whatever-stuff-they-use pick guard off, and thinking how much the pick guard's resonance affected the specific tone of the guitar. In fact, a Strat with a wooden pick guard does sound subtly different from a Strat fitted with the standard plastic pick guard. So it isn't just the matter of a body cavity being covered.
I don't recall how much the paint on a PRS weighs, I think someone mentioned it on one of the other forums a few years back, but I was surprised at how much paint there is on a guitar. It's substantial enough to be resonant.
So while I do not believe that the different finishes somehow let the guitar "breathe" or vibrate differently, I think that when dry, they might have their own resonances that make a contribution to the overall resonance of the instrument. And of course, these resonances would affect the resonances of the wood and metal parts as they all interact with each other creating slightly different harmonic signatures.
That's what I think we're hearing with different finishes (assuming that we hear them at all, which I do believe if one knows what to listen for). The different harmonic signatures are these various types of plastic.
Discuss gently amongst yourselves.
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