“Tonewood is a Myth!”: Zakk Wylde Explains Why Electric Guitar Wood Doesn’t Matter
It does not take much to get guitar players arguing with each other. But there are few topics that get people going quite like the infamous tonewood debate.
Some players will die on the hill of mahogany bodies making for warmer, fuller-sounding electric or acoustic guitars, while others insist it is a total myth. Generously, the latter group will tell the former that it's all purely psychosomatic—that the brain is simply tricking the ear. Less generously, they'll tell you that you're full of crap. And so the endless cycle continues.
It doesn't matter that Paul Reed Smith, who knows a thing or two about building high-end instruments, chooses tonewoods with the exact same painstaking care as a Michelin-starred chef sources their game and seafood. Some players remain totally unconvinced, and one in particular even runs his own signature guitar company: Zakk Wylde.
In a recent interview with Guitar World, Zakk Wylde discussed how he selected tonewoods for Wylde Audio's brand-new lineup of acoustic guitars. The Grand Auditorium series represents the first acoustic instruments for what has previously been an exclusively electric brand specializing in some of the most aggressive shapes you will ever see on the market. Zakk Wylde confessed that his personal perspective on tonewood has shifted dramatically over the years.
«There are tried-and-true woods for guitars, even more so with acoustics than electrics,» says Zakk Wylde. «When I was younger, I remember reading a thing with Yngwie Malmsteen where he was talking about the different tones that come out of Fender Strats made out of different woods. He also spoke about how he'd change from a maple neck to a rosewood neck and notice how the overall sound changed.»
Yngwie Malmsteen: there's one legendary virtuoso we can certainly count on to back up Mr. Smith from Maryland's stance. However, Zakk Wylde insists all of this is virtually irrelevant when it comes to the electric guitar.
«On electrics, your pickups work as a microphone,» he explains. «I saw this one guy who did a test where he took the pickups out of his guitar, put them on a cinder block attached to a neck – and it sounded identical.»
These viral videos do indeed exist. There are even more dramatic examples—some truly wild experiments designed to disprove the tonal merits of having a gorgeous AAA figured maple cap sitting on top of well-cured mahogany, effectively proving how the pickup is doing all of the heavy lifting.
«That's where a lot of the tone is coming from,» says Zakk Wylde. «Just to disprove all the people who spend their lives arguing about which sounds better out of ash, maple, alder, mahogany, or rosewood. One guy even recorded a microwave with some pickups on it and a guitar neck. And when he A/B'd that against his actual electric guitar, it sounded the exact same.»
But Zakk Wylde is a savvy businessman too. So what about those striking Grand Auditorium acoustics, featuring his signature Norse snake and bullseye graphics?
«If you listen real hard, you'll be able to hear the difference in tone,» jokes Zakk Wylde. «My friends come round and say they can't tell the difference. But they're not listening hard enough. [Laughs] It just might depend on how many adult beverages you'd had that evening – because I heard that can affect how you hear things!»