Do all electric guitars sound the same?
Over at Spectre Sound Studios on YouTube, Glenn conducted an interesting experiment:
Take 4 guitars, play the same thing on each one, and see how many viewers can accurately identify them.
More specifically, one of Glenn’s viewers was adamant that a Les Paul sounds discernible from a Strat with humbuckers. So Glenn tested the theory.
He not only put a Les Paul and a Strat against each other, but he also added an EMG-equipped PRS and a Harley Benton for good measure.
The parameters were simple:
Each guitar would be played clean
Each guitar would also be played at the edge of breakup
Viewers were told which guitars were in the experiment, but couldn’t see them being played
I’m a big advocate of this experiment. As guitar players, we can be prone to losing numerous hours (and even more numerous dollars) chasing tone, obsessing over the smallest nuances and convincing ourselves we can hear a difference.
And, sure, sometimes we can. But Glenn proved something important: we hear with our eyes a lot of the time.
The results were clear: viewers couldn’t accurately tell the 4 guitars apart.
So does that mean all electric guitars sound the same? And we should just buy the cheapest ones we can find and be happy?
Well, no.
And here’s why:
In any recording, you’re limited by the weakest link in the signal. Glenn used professional recording equipment, but we’re then relying on YouTube’s quality and your own speakers/headphones. If you’re using Beats, you’ll have a different experience than someone using a pair of $5,000 headphones. In either scenario, it’s not identical to what you’d hear in the same room as the guitars.
The experiment was specifically to compare humbuckers from one guitar to the next. It wasn’t to show that all electric guitars sound the same. Actually, the four didn’t sound the same — you could tell it really was four different guitars and not the same one being played each time. Rather, they just weren’t different enough to confidently identify each one.
Glenn wasn’t trying to prove that every guitar sounds the same, or that guitars can’t have their own characteristics. The 2 and 4 positions on a 5-way Strat are very characteristic to the Strat, and you’d be more likely to identify it in a recording. Likewise, the neck position on a Les Paul with the tone rolled back would also have a higher likelihood of being correctly identified.
All of which is to say, we need to bear in mind what the experiment was demonstrating — and that is, guitars can sound remarkably similar.
At the same time, guitars can also sound suitably different when we’re doing a full comparison of their tonal capabilities. Glenn wasn’t doing that, nor claiming to be.
In the below video, I look at some of the other considerations on this topic including what guitar players need to remember about their tone, and what this test was and wasn’t designed to demonstrate: