What's more important? How a guitar looks, feels and plays, or sounds?
At this time of year many parents will be buying their kids guitars as xmas presents and thought I would start a debate on what everyone reckons is more important - Look, Feel (playability), or Sound?
When my kids were young and going to lessons with a local neighbourhood teacher he enlisted me to offer a cheap service to re-string and setup many of his student's guitars and I was gobsmacked at how crap most of them were. It is fair enough to say many were probably purchased based on their appearance as the actions were so high with machine heads that would not stay in tune. Strangely enough at the budget end of the spectrum sound quality was fairly even across them all and sometimes slightly better than more expensive traditional branded guitars. Some cheap and nasty Ibanez's come to mind whilst I never found a dud Yamaha irrespective of where they were built.
To me the most important part is playability, particularly for kids. For example if the action is too high it will be hard to play notes cleanly not to mention the accompanying intonation pitch issues. Therefore much time was spent on lowering actions, correct tensioning of truss rods, lowering height of both nut and/or bridge, and finally setting up the intonation properly. For electrics the next job was raising or lowering pickups to get the sound right and balanced from neck, to middle for strats, to bridge. Acoustic with electrics were a bigger challenge as I found most had dreadful EQ and there was nothing much you could do to improve the sound other than keep fitting new strings regularly. Muddy mid range droning sound seemed a quite common issue.
Once I got the action and intonation sorted it was on to the 'Blind Fold' test. This was good for focusing on the sound and not be influenced by the name on the headstock at the same time. Many times I was disappointed by some very expensive known branded guitars that you would have expected to be better. To me sound is important but second to feel as you can alter the sound by changing PUP's, using effects pedals, or changing the EQ tone settings on a half decent amp.
So by now you may have guessed that I ranked Look last which seems ironic given how we live in such a 'Visual' environment. In saying look I don't mean the shape, more the overall finish and method of construction such as bolt-on vs set neck, etc.
Interestingly a few years ago my eldest son then aged about 17 wanted to buy another guitar. He had a Gold Top LP Epiphone with a set neck and went to a reputable Guitar shop in Fortitude Valley (Brisvegas) to try some out. Thankfully he remembered what I had banged on about over the years as he did the Blind Fold test on several Eppi's as well as the Gibson equivalent with interesting results. For most parts the Epi looked good enough considering it was way cheaper than equivalent Gibbo. They even played similar however once plugged in that is when the quality of PUP's became evident. From here it had to be a Gibson but this is where it gets even more interesting as quality control across a sample in the store showed some up as quite poorly finished. Some were worse than an equivalent Epiphone.
Being a 2nd year Mechanical Engineering Uni student on a budget he wasn't about to spend $10k on an aged 59 LP replica and his lack of funds steered him in the direction of my favourite Gibson being an Explorer where they had about 4 of them for sale and were the cheapest Gibson's in the shop. They had 2 Black, 1 Cherry and 1 White to chose from. The Cherry looked OK but grain was dull to ordinary, both Black ones showed a shadow line where the bottom wing was glued on whilst the white one was good all over and as a bonus came with an ebony fret board whilst the others had rosewood.
Which one did he buy? The White one but not because it looked the best, was better finished quality control wise, but how the neck played and felt better with the ebony fret board, and they all sound awesome with the ceramic 496R & 500T PUP's anyway. Funny how most Explorers he saw in shops were Black and they all had the shadow join line visible which just goes to show that some solid colours are better than others for disguising such imperfections. Almost forgot to mention he paid just $1,600 and it came with the genuine white lined Gibson Hard Case when at the time most stores were asking $2,300. Pulling the poor Uni Student on a budget heart strings may have worked in his favour.
I write this as I am obsessing with striving for perfection with the finish on my EX-5 and yet have not heard how it sounds. From the mock build after final sanding I already know the neck and fret board are perfect and the overall weight and balance of the shape is great although it is one helluva long beast at 123cm's. Once hardware is fitted that determine how well counter balanced it is on a strap as when gigging that can have an impact on playability too.
Finally, I will share a short story on Look vs Sound. Mid 1980's I had switched from guitar to Bass, only had one and after breaking a couple of strings during a gig one Friday night went out next morning to buy a backup. As luck would have it I found an exact same Bass in a Pawn shop however it was more road worn than my main axe. Being young at the time I thought it would be good to paint it to cover up the imperfections and that was a big mistake as it killed the tone and I never touched it again. In hindsight I should have left it alone as some 30 years later road worn or reliced is now fashionable and it would have retained that same original tone.
Look forward to what you folk reckon is more important - Look, Feel, or Sound.
