stains tend to give a warmer deeper tone , Pastels a somewhat brighter sound in the upper mids. Never get a bowling ball finish it just confuses it
Kandinsky, the great modernist painter, claimed he could hear color(s).
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How does colour affect tone?
- Thread starter BassyBill
- Start date
Kandinsky, the great modernist painter, claimed he could hear color(s).
Maybe it depends on the type of guitar? The Beatles had Epiphone Casinos in the mid 60's, on which John and George sanded off the finish. George said that once they’d removed the finish, they became much better guitars. “I think that works on a lot of guitars,” he explained. “If you take the paint and varnish off and get the bare wood, it seems to sort of breathe.” Of course, those Casinos are acoustic instruments, to an extent, not solid body, no center block. So there's that. They did change the color, by scraping it off to the bare wood, though this may be more about finish than color. Anyway they felt it made a difference, and they were pretty savvy about music. For what that's worth.
Yeah, then when he got a Strat, he painted over the existing paint with more paint, which apparently didn't affect it's sound. Strange, because surely if less paint made a guitar sound better, more paint would make it sound worse...
But then John was doing a lot of drugs about then and George was all into Indian mysticism and the stuff, so maybe not in the best places for clear analytical thinking? (Plus you never know what makes guitar players think what they think, some recon they can tell which brand of 9v batteries are in their effects pedals, by the difference in their sound...
)
Post title should really be corrected. It's not so much color (or colour), but whether having a glossy finish (instead of oil or matte) affects tone.
OP is asking a legit question. What some posters (who only read the title) think he's asking is just silly.
OP is asking a legit question. What some posters (who only read the title) think he's asking is just silly.
If this is indeed the question, I can verify that layers of paint most definitely affect the sound. I had a 1964 Precision with original paint job. A friend of mine stripped off all the layers of paint right down to the wood and put on a clear finish - no paint. The sound was never quite the same - it still sounded good, because of that amazing 1964 neck, but it DID sound different - hard to describe - it was a long time ago, but just a little less resonant - it lost something. And the body was now lighter in weight resulting in a bit more neck dive. Also, having owned a Rickenbacker 4003 that's just covered in paint AND lacquer - even the fretboard, I do think it's part of what give Rics their sound.
This is one of those things that need experimentation.
Get a body, record it unpainted, put bulletproof poly paint, record again, strip it, put thin nitro, one more recording.
Get a body, record it unpainted, put bulletproof poly paint, record again, strip it, put thin nitro, one more recording.
People may claim anything they want to. We now have nine more pages confirming this. Claiming something does not make it so.
It may have a psycho-acoustic effect in your head but beyond that, it does not affect the tone.
Everyone knows red cars are faster... so of course it also works for this. Makes perfect sense.
Lennon and Harrison stripped their guitars during the hippy years when anything "natural" was better. At the same time, if you painted something on that was "psychedelic", that was better too. They did that to their guitars and cars at the time.
Yeah, but wood is not as dense as thick metal so the affect would be a little more noticeable. Imagine dipping an acoustic in paint. Noticeable difference. Dip an solid electric, a very little difference. Like many have said, noticeable change in sound comes from electronics. I still say that a bass pressed against your body will decrease the resonance/vibration in the bass. More than a finish will affect it.
I still say black is the best sounding color!!
How much, is the whole cruciferous of the matter! As you said, electronics make a bigger difference, but what's missing in these conversations is not simple order, but orders of magnitude: sheer audibility aside, if it turned out a coat of paint is equivalent to, um, blowing on the tone control knob so that it turns the fraction of a degree, well, anyone would conclude that the impact of the former, while there, is not something to fret over.
It may be proportionally a lot more impactful for all I know, but as others pointed out, it's hard to isolate variables: a stripped (and/or repainted) guitar is also a guitar that has had its hardware removed and reinstalled, and screws retightened.
This is an above reply. Maybe you need to discuss this with this person:
If this is indeed the question, I can verify that layers of paint most definitely affect the sound. I had a 1964 Precision with original paint job. A friend of mine stripped off all the layers of paint right down to the wood and put on a clear finish - no paint. The sound was never quite the same - it still sounded good, because of that amazing 1964 neck, but it DID sound different -
I definitely do not need to do so.
Here's a part of my own post you already quoted twice [EDIT - pardon, only once]:
Indeed. I never quite believed Kandinsky in that respect although he may have believed it himself.
The general phenomenon is callen synaesthesia:
Synesthesia - Wikipedia
If I remember correctly, Adam Neely, a well known music YouTuber (and TalkBasser), sees notes and chords as colours. I guess for Kandinsky it was the opposite.
