Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom

Does anyone have access to professional articles about guitar tone?

No one? I am preparing an informative speech about guitar tone production. I am using Jimi Hendrix and Joe Pass as examples. Explaining why they are different. I am having a hard time finding articles on databases, and also finding anything other than guitar blogs. Which are credible, but if anyone has any leads on papers about guitar tone, or video lectures on this kind of thing would be wonderfully helpful. Maybe even on the GW video lessons possibly.

-LaVoy

I don’t have anything

That is a difficult speech LaVoy. Probably search on the myths of tone and truths of tone based on what guitar builders have experienced in their knowledge. Name brand builders of guitars and what they view as tone and what sells. Tone changes over the decades of pickup wiring 50's vs 60's vs 70's evolution. Speaker technology from inductive speakers that are part of the amplification vs. 8 ohms that is part of the load, even 4-ohm loads. There are lot's of opinions on everything from tubes, transistors, and digital modeling amplifiers. To break all that into an artist's tone could be their gear vintage or era of selection - technique, finger style, picking styles, no pick. What about strings and fretboard techniques, clean vs. sloucho or distorted. I hope it is a good speech. Maybe that has some leads for you. Good Luck!!
-johno

Probably not that helpful but John Taylor wrote a book called "Tone Production on the Classical Guitar." I know that you're not thinking about classical guitar, but he goes into quite a lot of detail about what he calls the "starting transient" - which is to do with how the tone is affected by exactly how and where (along its length) the string is plucked. This must also be true of steel string and electric guitars - fingers (with or without nails), pick angle of attack and material etc. A very dry and academic book if I remember well, although it has been years since I read it. Probably out of print now but you might find an online version.
Good luck with your talk!

Thank you guys. It is hard to find peer reviewed papers on this stuff.

-LaVoy

Not sure how you're searching LTR, but here are a few that might be helpful. They might have links to other papers as well:
https://www.purdue.edu/science/science-express/labs/labs/Physics%20of%20the%20Guitar.pdf
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4108333/
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-07-24-physics-lead-guitar-playing
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344300656_Translated_Physics_of_the_Electric_Guitar
https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/article-abstract/135/5/3045/968191/Predicting-the-decay-time-of-solid-body-electric?redirectedFrom=fulltext
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102088
https://www.scienceopen.com/document?vid=d961f2b4-44bb-4a53-af58-8f6a366e5b3c
https://indico.ku.edu/event/134/contributions/86/attachments/71/165/An%20Introduction%20to%20the%20Physics%20of%20Electric%20Guitar%20Pickups.pdf
https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/25/13/3989

Look at this teamwork!
LaVoy, I'd also browse Reddit. That may lead you to some names and peer-reviewed studies.

Hi Lavoy,

Beginner on electric here but I love to browse around. Please take my view with a BIG pinch of salt:

First of all, the theory/narrative is different for electric, classical and acoustic guitars. And there might be differences on cleaner vs more distorted tones for electric guitars. I'll focus on electric.

Guitar Amps (more specifically the sound speaker of anything if you're using plugins or live on stage) take a huge role in guitar tone. To say 50% will be an understatement but how high there might be debates (the percentage isn't really important in my opinion. The immediate after is Pre-/post-FX and EQs.

Then, I'll see a combination of guitar pickups, the player('s style and skills) and guitar construction (especially on the side of acoustic feedback to the player - but NOT tonewood). Why I say it's a combination - because the "sound" we hear affects how we play. The guitar pickup is like a mic (like how the amp is mic'ed during recording). We will inevatibly be affected and adjust our touch with it - same for the guitar construction. Some electric guitars are very well built that the (combination of) neck/fretboard/body wood material can give vibrations simliar to classical/acoustic when it's played to the player. Needless to say, the fretboard quality needs to be top notch (no fret issues, sprouts; very smooth and fitting to personal taste).

One myth that has been debunked in my opinion is the "tonewood" for electric guitar (has to clarify that it affects more more the other two types instead). Some people may still disagree, but I would believe that the more distorted the tone is (again, electric guitar), the less important tonewood is to the tone.

I have the first hand experience, which is almost like and A-B test. I brought my own guitar (some call it "session weapon") to my teacher who almost didn't play it at all. Obviously, he is familar with the classroom setup (amps, everything) way more than me. We play on the same piece with my guitar and it sounds totally different, but I can still recognize the pickup identity (though I cannot verbally describe it of course).

Venue size also plays a role (feedback, echo, reverb, relative placement of all things, listener, mic, etc) but the overall identity retains unless we set values or allow room parameters to go to the extreme.

With all these said, I think the "great" tone argument goes immediately to what Tomo said in various videos about practice amp tone setting. Say, for clean tone, the first thing to do is to pick a good amp (or plugin "veg burger" which is essentially modelled after those expensive amps). Then, we need a good guitar pickup and well built guitar to set the overall identity. Next, we need a good player. Voila!

It is something that a beginner like me can understand but the devil lies in the details (otherwise there won't be heaps of products in generations). It's the same for distorted sound, but when we add effects, etc - they function as variables which exponentially complicate things. The only comment (more like speculation) I can give for distorted sound is that more pedals do not mean better. I run plugins with various presets and saw that not everything is used at the same time, nor the knobs are turned up (e.g. in some Japanese Pop/Rock songs, they use chorus and delay, but it's set so low that it felt invisible to the listener. However, if you remove it, the player immediately can feel it and it's not the tone.)

Hope you like it!

Hugo

[EDIT: In case it's too abstract/look meaningless, I'll exemplify with the John Mayer plugin (which I use for practice now). I run the exact settings with Tomo's secret tone video (i.e. essentially with 1. lowered bass and bringing up treble; 2. no pre-/post-fx and esp. no gate and compression; 3. quite loud volume on the amp (if hit on full force, it's too loud - that's it); 4. guitar's volume on 8 (which we can do small adjustments) and tone on 10. The tone is fantastic - especially for styles that rely on the player's prowess on feel, touch and dynamics. Broken chords - that's what I practise/play with.

Then, we can consider adding reverb and/or delay... whether it needs a little more drive in certain song sections (the famous Ibanez green one.. TS-8?), compression/noise gate if we're not practising, etc...]