Acoustic Guitar Tone Factors, What tones and what part?

What are the tone factors affected by which acoustic guitar parts?

The Guitar Neck

The most common woods used for neck construction are mahogany and, more recently,  Spanish cedar. The neck's properties have an impact on tone because when you play, as much energy as possible needs to travel to the bridge to get those soundboard vibrations cooking. A very thin neck may be easier to play but your notes won't last or sustain as strongly compared to a thicker neck. It's about compromising. Gain one and lost another.

The Guitar Soundboard

The soundboard is equipvalent to speaker cone on a speaker. The soundboard responds to the vibration of the strings and air movement. In general, thinner the wood, the more responsive the soundboard is with these vibrations. But it needs to be thick enough to be strong and solid.

The Bridge Saddle

Like the guitar nut,bridge saddles tend to be made from plastic, bone or synthetic ivory and have an impact on the string vibration and therefore sound of the guitar. Bone and synthetic bone are good for transferring the sound of your strings. Cheap plastics won't contribute much at all in comparison. On the whole, synthetic bone helps the tone sound a little brighter than the warmer bone. It's also more resilient so will need replacing less frequently.

The Guitar Fingerboard

Yes fingerboard can affect the sound too. The radius of a typical acoustic guitar fingerboard usually measures between 18", significantly flatter than most electrics guitar. Most acoustic guitar fingerboards are made from rosewood, ebony or amble on top range guitars: ebony is denser and tends to sound brighter, which is good.

Guitar Made from Spruce?

Spruce is ideal for tops because it has a good mix of strength, clarity and dynamics, and it looks good. There are a few different types. Sitka spruce is the most common, found in the US and Canada. The lighter Engelmann spruce is found in the same part of the world and is seen as an upgrade from Sitka. German spruce is often used for classical guitars and is similar to Engelmann, while Adirondack is the most expensive, it responds well to hard playing while delivering balanced dynamics.

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Unplugged Rock: Down In The Hole by Alice In Chain

If you're looking for an easy song with very cool acoustic guitar chords and easy to sing along (just don't sing this song in front of your parents and public places), here is the song you might want to try to master. Down In The Hole, both lyrics and music can really take where you've never been before. And it is definitely one of my favorite songs by Alice In Chain,  the long forgotten band by the main media.

Some gigs are as much about the circumstances surrounding them as the performance itself. Nirvana's Unplugged may have succeeded in the face of adversity, but Alice In Chains' MTV performance on10 April1996 in Brooklyn was even closer to never happening.

The band were well on the way to falling apart: after two years off the road, it was their only performance as a five-piece with second guitarist Scott Olson, but also one of the final appearances with a frail Layne Staley. After this show, his ongoing heroin addiction would lead him to live as a recluse in Seattle during the six years before his death.

On the night, main songwriter, co-vocalist and guitarist Jerry Cantrell had his own problems: a bout of food sickness (from a dodgy hot dog) meant he was sick immediately before and after the set.

Nevertheless, Cantrell and his Guild helped the band turn in one of the most starkly powerful demonstrations of their gifts in one of the all-time great MTV Unplugged performances.

The Seattlites were no strangers to the approach -1992's Sop and 1994's Jar Of Flies EPs both demonstrated a whole other side to their twisted riff age. That evening also showcased the power wielded by the vocal harmonies of Cantrell and Staley, even when the metal side of the band was
stripped right away.

Of all the fan faves the band played that night, their darkest song of all, Down In A Hole, is rendered the most haunting by this treatment. Without the layers of distortion found on the original version on 1992's Dirt, the picked verses and starkly confessional lyrics about the descent into addiction bring a new level of intensity, beauty and human fragility to their melancholy.

Unplugged Rock: Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin

Talking about a classic rocking acoustic and electric guitar song that became cliche and awkward to play in a guitar shop, you know what song I'm talking about...

Mexican nylon-string virtuosos Rodrigo Y Gabriela make no secret of their rock roots. The duo first met when playing together in a Mexico City metal band, have name-checked the likes of Metallica and Slayer as influences, and while they usually record and perform their own material, they're partial to the occasional rock cover.

For their excellent self-titled 2006 album, they took on the most imposing totem of the classic-rock era and managed to pull it off with an aplomb that's nothing short of astonishing.

Rodrigo Sanchez picks the opening verses, embellishing them with a series of arpeggios, jazzy flourishes and phrases that meander around the melody but always return to the central guitar line. Gabriela Quintero remains

in the background, playing the chord accompaniment, and between them the pair start to weave their spell, gradually building the song to its familiar climax.

And while you might not think a pair of acoustic guitars could in any way replicate the bone-rattling power of Jimmy Page in full flight, the pair rise to the occasion superbly: Rodrigo sweep-picks around the vocal melody in double-quick time, while his partner hammers out the riff as furiously as is possible on an acoustic. The result is a cover that manages to retain both the delicacy and power of the original.

Perhaps more than any other standard in the classic-rock repertoire, Stairway carries a huge weight of expectation and is a very easy song to get wrong - but here the Mexican duo got it supremely right.

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Unplugged Rock: Hotel California on Nylon String Guitar

A classic good old song with lots of guitar parts to learn from by Eagles.

When the classic Eagles line- up ended 14 years of acrimony and muck-slinging to play two MTV reunion shows in April 1994, there were nerves behind the scenes. "We were rusty," recalls guitarist Joe Walsh of the rehearsals, in one fly-on- the-wall video interview. "We were eager to get our chops back, and to show that we weren't has-beens..."

The US rock behemoths were also ready to put their balls on the line. When the two performances were released as a live album, Hell Freezes Over, that November,the high water mark and bravest moment was the reworked acoustic version of Hotel California.

The band's ode to LA crash-and-burn had eaten the singles charts back in 1977, with the original studio cut nailed on a Fender Tele (Walsh) and Gibson Les Paul (Don Felder). Here, it found both guitarists perching on boyband stools and proceeding to sprinkle a palpable flamenco flavour over the arrangement using nylon-string classical models (with Felder's virtuoso flamenco finger style intro setting the tone).

With Glenn Frey adding chiming 12-string fills (and with the lavish Hell Freezes Over concerts recorded on 48 tracks simultaneously), this seven-minute- plus version of Hotel California is shimmer in excels is, even managing to outdo the jangle of the original. As ever, the chorus lands like a right hook, but for guitar fans, the real magic arrives in the closing minutes, as Walsh and Felder, always a fiercely competitive axe pairing square up once more in an unplugged rematch of their famous1977 duel. The Eagles had landed. Again.

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