Has anyone seen a chart or document listing which guitar brands sound similar?

ToneControl · January 2020

You know, like a mind-map

Maybe showing family-trees, which brands are a hybrid of 2 others

I have a rough idea of certain brands I like that share qualities I like, but little knowledge of the relative strengths of other brands

ESBlonde · January 2020

I think when you get down to subtleties, an individual example of a model by a particular brand can be light and day different. So listen to the old sage players you like, but then go use your ears and hands to select your weapon of choice. There are some great modern makers of quality guitars as well as the trusted old brands.

artiebear · January 2020

Wow, I really like this in principal. Very hard to do if based on subjective testing, but would be very interesting based upon scientific audio analysis based upon the same body shape, same conditions, absolutely the same player/technique and piece of music. I would assume that it would need, say, 3 samples of a given guitar from each company per style, which could then be averaged in terms of various response frequencies and overall db. I remember Fylde participating in a scientific study across same build but different woods, I always thought that to get a definite conclusion it needed multiple examples of each wood combo to give some kind of consensus.

ESBlonde · January 2020

artiebear said:

Wow, I really like this in principal. Very hard to do if based on subjective testing, but would be very interesting based upon scientific audio analysis based upon the same body shape, same conditions, absolutely the same player/technique and piece of music. I would assume that it would need, say, 3 samples of a given guitar from each company per style, which could then be averaged in terms of various response frequencies and overall db. I remember Fylde participating in a scientific study across same build but different woods, I always thought that to get a definite conclusion it needed multiple examples of each wood combo to give some kind of consensus.

The science and a yootoob video of the results would be an interesting exercise, BUT my touch on guitar A compared to guitar B might be different to your touch on the very same examples. You might save time going directly for certain makes/models and completely miss a real gem which has the combination of woods/struts/finish/nut width that when played by you sounds like heaven to you! Don't get too specific until you try lots of guitars side by side.

artiebear · January 2020

So true, that's why I believe the only way to do it would be under control conditions. Actually. the one area which would need to be discounted immediately would be the subjective element, ie "this one sounds great". It would be much more interesting to read a comparison of EQ responses, as well as overall db and decay of the sonic envelope. It's all a bit scientific for a real world " this guitar speaks to me" approach, but it would provide some interesting background perspective to the many "what would this "model/brand/wood/size sound like" that recently crop up. Personally, I'm probably not the the guy who would be most helped by this having played and owned a helluva lot of guitars over the years, but it would help may entering into the confusing array of possibilities, while stilll needing to do exactly as you say and play a lot of guitars just to be either pleasantly surprised or being able to strike one from the list.

jellyroll · January 2020

Couldn't one adopt a more generic approach by making assumptions about the "recipe" for a guitar being X% shape, Y% wood, Z% bracing pattern, W% top thickness, etc and then producing a map of manufacturers whose guitars' characteristics match?

So, if the assumption (just for illustration) is that each of the above "ingredients" contributes 25% to the recipe and Manufacturer A and Manufacturer B both use the same shape, wood grade and bracing pattern for a particular model (but they use different top thicknesses) one might conclude that the guitars of those manufacturers share 75% DNA.

Or not

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Has anyone seen a chart or document listing which guitar brands sound similar?

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