In this post, our second ever audio blog, we’re back with Paul Brzozowski from Tsunami Guitars talking about the different things that change the sound of the guitar a guitar makes. Paul is a luthier who has been making custom guitars for roughly three years. His work on Tsunami Guitars is absolutely beautiful (see above) and reasonably priced ($475-715). We were able to spend a few minutes picking Paul’s brain to get the dirt about how custom guitars are made. Here is the recording of our conversation with Paul:

StrumSchool: Tell us what are the parts of the guitar that make the biggest difference in a guitar’s tone?
Tsunami Guitar: It really depends on which type of guitar you are playing… 

Acoustic: If you think of an acoustic guitar, you almost have to think of it as a drum – where the top of the guitar  is the top of the drum. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of African drums that are completely made out of wood. You can see some of them commercially for sale in music stores. For a guitar the strings vibrate that top. The sound is projected down into the rest of the guitar which forms the body of the “drum” or in this case, the guitar. That is reflected out of the soundhole which is the round hole which is in top of the guitar. What changes is the harder the wood, the brighter the sound – because the sound waves reflect better off that type of wood. A maple guitar, which is hard, will reflect much brighter tones while the ones that have mahogany sides or walnut sides and back will be a lot darker because that is a slightly softer wood – some of the sounds can be absorbed by the wood.

Electric: In most electric with plastic pickguards, the sound is pretty much determined by the fingers of the player, the pickups themselves, the electronics between the pickups and the output jack. It is pretty difficult for any electric guitar to vibrate an eight or nine-pound piece of wood with the strings. There are some slight differences you can pick-up if you have a  really discerning set of ears and you know exactly what you are listening for. The truth be told, most of these will hear the pickups, the strings, the electronics driving those pickups and the fingers of the player – not so much the wood of the guitar itself. 

StrumSchool:  Walk us through the different body types and how they affect the guitar sounds. 
Tsunami Guitar: Again, this really depends on the type of guitar you are playing… 

Acoustic:  The larger the body, meaning the deeper and/or wider it is, the more of a booming type sound you are going to get. Acoustic guitars are made to project. Years and years ago in the 30’s, before electric guitars came along, bands had to use what they call Dreadnought which are the larger sized – Gibson have made a series of those. They were basically built because that large top was vibrating more, so the strings had more ability to push that wood and create more sound waves.
There are also smaller travel acoustics that we all have seen or even a ukulele, which is rather small. You will see a lot thinner and quieter sound which some people prefer… It is just a personal preference.
There are also guitars with cutaways. You will see lots of them with that single cutaway, which puts a lot of hard stress on the sides. It also restricts some of the top – it can’t vibrate as well with those sharp corners that it has to make, to maintain the cutaway. Those guitars have a tendency to be a little thinner and a little brighter. It gives big booming sounds from your standard acoustics that do not have a cutaway.

Electric: Like the acoustic, the bigger the body the bigger the sound for an electric guitar. In this case, it will be kind of a darker the sound. A small and thin electric Fender Lancaster [has a] slightly brighter and thinner sound than a Gibson Les Paul, which will be another half inch thick and would weigh another two pounds. So there is something to be said from the size and the shape.
The Flying V is a very odd unit. Not many people like them. The sound is surprisingly thin on them because a lot of the wood, a lot of the weight is on those V’s where it is really affected by the strings. If you get something like the Parker Flying V… Parker made a guitar that had a funny horn that stuck up in the air and they claimed that it would vibrate. Nobody ever really bought it but it looked cool. It made about the same type of sound as the Fender Stratocaster because it weighed about the same and is about the same size. So in both cases, size and depth in the electric side makes it a little browner. In the acoustic side, the big ones are louder.

StrumSchool:  What the options are for electronics guitar?
Tsunami Guitar: On an electric guitar, solid buy electric guitars, your pickups are your most important item – by far and away. You got your standard single coil pickups which are famous on your Fender guitars, they come with the styles and the brands of guitars have single coil pickups. It is one series – one wire wrapped around either a single blade magnet or six magnetic steel poles that are set in the middle. Usually they are held in place by wax or maybe a single piece of wood and they are magnetized in order to form a magnetic coil. When the strings vibrate, they impart an electric current into that coil. What changes the sound is the amount of wire, the thickness of the wire and the resistance of the wire. So if you have a single coil, like a Fender Stratocaster, the resistance is fairly low so the sound is fairly bright because most of the frequencies can get through.
Now if you go to the Gibson Les Paul, with those famous big chrome humbuckers, there are actually two coils in there and they are wound. One coil is wound in one direction and the other is wound in the other direction to create like a north-south polarity. And what happens is if they are wired together as one big long piece of wire which normally they are, then they will have a higher resistance. So when that wire has a higher resistance, it prevents your higher-sounding frequencies from coming through. A lot of people think that the body of a Les Paul causes it to sound darker and browner. In reality, it is the humbucker and the high resistance to the wire that causes the high frequencies to not exit the guitar – so it sounds browner. It also produces a stronger sound. The single coil pickups and a Fender are as much thinner – not powerful as they are in Gibson Les Paul or a similar guitar with a humbucker in it. The [onback] you have got some simple tricks and things that they use – pots, bi end pots, stone pots, [copasters] which is just a little deep for this conversation. But essentially, the major things for sounds in an electric are the pickups and the relationship of the wire to the pickups.

StrumSchool:  What are the major factors that can be adjusted in terms of playability of a guitar?
Tsunami Guitar: The relationship of the strings to the fretboard obviously, makes a big difference. You can have a height issue or you can use thicker or thinner strings. Sometimes people recommend when they start out, when a player starts out, that they pick up thinner strings. Well I am kind of the school lad that when you start off with a slight of thicker string, your fingers will puff up much faster. And also not so sharp, a very small fine string can act almost as a razorblade on your fingertips. A lot of teachers will recommend those finer strings [but] if you go a little heavier string, even though you might find it a little difficult at first to make your chords and to move the strings on the frets, you will quickly find that your fingers will thank you because they won’t be so prone to be cut-up and dented by the really fine string.

StrumSchool:  What are the biggest things that impact the price of the guitar that you make?
Tsunami Guitar: The neck. It is extremely difficult to lay down 20 to 24 frets in-lays, a rosewood fretboard or a maple fretboard, put a trust rod inside that neck, shape the headstock for the tuners – that is an incredible amount of work. The bodies, generally people pick 4 or 5 different types of bodies and that is it. So once any builder gets jigs set-up for those bodies, they actually become a lot easier to make than the neck. And there is a lot of differences as far as the neck. Hands are different sizes, so people want different thickness, they want different whips. There are a lot of things going on there. Bodies are pretty simple. You can have a cut-out in the back, what they call a belly cut – it tucks closer to your body. On the front, they can have what you call a forearm front. So when your right-hand arm, for right-handed players, comes over the top, there is a nice angle there for the arm to be closer to the guitar and make it easier to play. Beyond that, the rest of it is just basically making sure that the geometry is correct so the guitar will tune correctly – the angle of the neck, the scale length and so on. That is common to every guitar you build. But I have to say the neck. There is a lot of work that goes on the necks.

StrumSchool:  Any last thoughts on other things that impact the sound of the guitar?
Tsunami Guitar: Well from my perspective, the Tsunami Guitars since I have the old wooden pickguard that floats over a large chamber, the Tsunami tonal chamber, my pickguard actually does resonate a little bit similar to an acoustic. So I have to be careful in what kind of wood I use in that pickguard. As far as a player playing a standard solid body electric that you might buy off the shelf, I would say that the biggest thing right of the bat is – you want to pick a wood that feels comfortable to you. I can make a guitar right of a very dense wood that would weigh 13 to 14 pounds but you will never want to strap it across your shoulder for more than 10 minutes because it is just too heavy. So one thing that is nice is most of the guitar builders in the world today have realized that most guitars are coming down in weight – which is a good thing. They are using cheaper woods, unfortunately, so that means a lot of time softer woods that would dent more. But all that being said, guitar quality is on the rise [and] the ergonomics are being paid attention to. It is not very hard to find something that really should fit your body and fit your style pretty easy. That is what you have to look for. We talked about that a lot before. But then again I can’t emphasize that enough. If you are not comfortable with the instrument, you are not going to play it.

Well that just about wraps up this post again here with Paul from Tsunami Guitars. If you are interested about talking to Paul about having your guitar custom-made, you can go to TsunamiGuitars.com or find them on Facebook under Tsunami Guitars. We are going to be back here with Paul sometime soon to actually go through a process of ordering a custom guitar on StrumSchool.com. So until then…

Keep rockin!!!