Does more bling mean better tone wood

dreadnut

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With Guild, more bling typically meant higher-graded tone woods.


Seems to me they were offering more deluxe appointments on their standard models than their competitors did. You have to get pretty far up the food chain with Martin and others to get inlaid headstock logos like Guild provided on D40s, D50's and many other standard models.
 

bluesypicky

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With that said, and to put a bit more meat behind my bony response for our Canadian friend Clyde, the reason for my "yes" is that of all the guitars I owned, and own, the DV 72 is the better sounding one to my ears, and although I challenge those claiming it is "overblinged", (yes that's you Sandy :tongue-new:), I will admit to the fact that it does carry some bling.

Hope all is well in Montreal! (29 degrees ain't bad at all for the season)
 

swiveltung

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I think the answer is "it depends" Some manufacturers models may be spec'd with AAA or AAAA wood tops etc. If those models happen to have a lot of binding and inlay bling, then the answer is "yes". But generally I dont think buying an upscale model necessarily gets you a higher grade of wood than another good quality model in historically produced guitars. In foreign manufacture I would say yes quite possibly you are getting a lower grade wood.
 

Kitarkus

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I think the answer is "it depends" Some manufacturers models may be spec'd with AAA or AAAA wood tops etc. If those models happen to have a lot of binding and inlay bling, then the answer is "yes". But generally I dont think buying an upscale model necessarily gets you a higher grade of wood than another good quality model in historically produced guitars. In foreign manufacture I would say yes quite possibly you are getting a lower grade wood.

But do the AA AAA or AAAA tops LOOK better....or do they SOUND better <-- rhetorical question

There ain't a doubt that folks are not going to pull the biggest wallets out for shoddy looking tops...but I've seen plenty of big wallets buy fair sounding guitars that look great. Looks may not always translate to sound....but the money shot (more these days than ever) is how good does it look.
 

adorshki

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Adorshki, I haven't been here long, but you are obviously the resident Guild Guru here at LTG.
You flatter me, and it's appreciated, but not quite accurate.
There's quite a few guys here who have knowledge equal or superior to my own especially in their areas of expertise. Some guys like TXBumper really know their New Hartford stuff.
GAD's the '80's era shredder electrics guru..
Some guys are just really great detectives and I've called Ralf, SFIV1967, the next best thing to Hans when it comes to some really dusty old mysteries.
I happened to have come in with a love of dreadnoughts based on my D25 ownership experience but discovered the place when I was looking for background on F65ce's.
I'm one of those guys that when he finds something he likes he wants to know as much about it as he can, whether it be a brand of car, or guitar, or sushi.
Or beer.
This place seems to attract the kind of person who likes to share what they know and have a few laughs while doing it.
How do you know all this stuff?... I am but a mere peasant :)
8 years a member, 5 days a week.
In my youth I had an almost photographic memory but truthfully in the last 5 or 6 years I've been forced to realize it's really true, memory does fade with age and even re-writes itself.
I've become painfully aware that I do have lapses of memory and sometimes present something as fact that I've remembered incorrectly.
My sincere hope is that when that occurs other members will speak up to keep the record straight.
Being a 5-day a week member over the years I've been able to read about 100% of the posts in the acoustic forum since I joined then, and just about everything I posted above I learned here.
As somebody once said "I stand on the shoulders of giants."
We've had folks who worked in Westerly post here, folks who've x-rayed or otherwise examined their bracing, and of course Hans himself who contributes stuff even he might not have known when he released the Guild Guitar Book (of which I have a copy)
I'm just one of those guys who's pretty good at remembering stuff I've read here and elsewhere and reading it back.
Picture this:
When I first joined I thought I would be something of a heavy hitter with 3(yeah, 3!!!) Guilds to my name.
And yet I'd never heard of a neck reset or why NCL gets better as it ages, or why necks eventually need to be reset, or that there were different and industry-standard nut widths and scale lengths on different models.
AHAHAHHAHAHHA!!!!!!!!
:glee:
But I'm sure anything I said today about D50's/DV-52's/D-55's is correct or else I mentioned I wasn't sure.
 
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adorshki

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My pleasure Tom.
Al and I have an unspoken agreement: He gives the long answers, I focus on the short ones.

Well, you know, we all tend to do best with what comes naturally....
PS: Glad to see you pokin' yer head out lately!
 
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fronobulax

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Random comments

Collings Guitars used "tone tapping"while selecting and shaping the tops for all their guitars, at least several years ago when I took the tour.

New Hartford occasionally used tone tapping but not for every instrument.

New Hartford would go into the stockroom to look for the "best wood" when making expensive and/or limited editions. I understood "best" to mean potential tone and visuals.

Based upon various definitions of bling and the idea that sometimes "less is more" I would expect the target MSRP to correlate better with wood "quality" than "bling".

Guild also changed bracing at various price points so to say that two Guild models are the same except one has more bling requires some elaboration on which models and when they were made because the generalization is not always true.
 
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Back in the sixties, a friend had his guitars worked on by Bozo Padunovac when he had his shop in Chicago. Bozo told him that he put the most ornate decorations on guitars that sounded better to him. May well have been because of better tone wood.
Brad

Kudos to your friend for allowing somebody by the name of Bozo to work on his guitars. That took a lot of guts.
 

Westerly Wood

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Random comments

Collings Guitars used "tone tapping"while selecting and shaping the tops for all their guitars, at least several years ago when I took the tour.

New Hartford occasionally used tone tapping but not for every instrument.

New Hartford would go into the stockroom to look for the "best wood" when making expensive and/or limited editions. I understood "best" to mean potential tone and visuals.

Based upon various definitions of bling and the idea that sometimes "less is more" I would expect the target MSRP to correlate better with wood "quality" than "bling".

Guild also changed bracing at various price points so to say that two Guild models are the same except one has more bling requires some elaboration on which models and when they were made because the generalization is not always true.

And Westerly used the tops as flying discs, aka frisbees, around the warehouse, and the ones that flew the furthest won!
 

Kitarkus

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Kudos to your friend for allowing somebody by the name of Bozo to work on his guitars. That took a lot of guts.

Don't judge a book by its cover. I recently had work done on my guitar by a well known guy whose name was not Bozo.....but he ended up being a Bozo nonetheless. :)
 

Rayk

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But do the AA AAA or AAAA tops LOOK better....or do they SOUND better <-- rhetorical question

There ain't a doubt that folks are not going to pull the biggest wallets out for shoddy looking tops...but I've seen plenty of big wallets buy fair sounding guitars that look great. Looks may not always translate to sound....but the money shot (more these days than ever) is how good does it look.

The uglier the wood the better it sounds same for why ugly dogs are soooooo cute ! 😁

I’ll say it again daggers be thrown just because it’s graded well and looks Purdy don’t means itz gunna sounds wellz .

I think I got lost in this thread is it just about the bling models getting higher graded wood then the none bling models and tone having nothing to do it ? Lol

Heck I don’t care bout none of it (just saying ) fancy three pc necks don’t mean much to me but I do like Ebony appointments but there’s many who prefer Rosewoods interaction to a guitars tone over Ebony for fret boards and bridges .

Ps I’ll buy that shoddy looking top if it rocks ! And I get a deal lol
 

adorshki

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The uglier the wood the better it sounds same for why ugly dogs are soooooo cute ! &#55357;&#56833;

image-35861-galleryV9-oeaw-35861.jpg

Twins in a litter, even better!
I think I got lost in this thread is it just about the bling models getting higher graded wood then the none bling models and tone having nothing to do it ? Lol
No. OP's fighting the good fight on another forum arguing against small-minded penny-pinchers who believe that the big bad guitar manufacturers are in a conspiracy to force you to pay for bling you don't need, in order to get the best wood they have.
We're just givin' 'im ammo and pointing out that good looking wood don't necessarily sing well is one more bullet.

Hey, that reminds me:
Ever heard of the Taylor pallet guitar?

Taylor-Shop-Pallet-Guitar-Closeup.jpg
 
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walrus

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I think the Taylor Pallet guitars are cool! Supposedly they made a very interesting argument for the answer to the OP's question being "no".

walrus
 

Rayk

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image-35861-galleryV9-oeaw-35861.jpg

Twins in a litter, even better!

No. OP's fighting the good fight on another forum arguing against small-minded penny-pinchers who believe that the big bad guitar manufacturers are in a conspiracy to force you to pay for bling you don't need, in order to get the best wood they have.
We're just givin' 'im ammo and pointing out that good looking wood don't necessarily sing well is one more bullet.

Hey, that reminds me:
Ever heard of the Taylor pallet guitar?

Taylor-Shop-Pallet-Guitar-Closeup.jpg

Cool , you find some pretty exotic woods in pallets . I made my dart holder out of some unique wood very pretty stuff not sure what it is though.
 
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