It may be subtly discernible, but difficult to be predictable, and really difficult to be replicable.
One thing that seems to be pretty hot right now, is trying out variations of
@Bruce Johnson engineered build techniques. These include a firm bolt on neck joint facilitated by bolts that thread into inset brass bars under the fingerboard in the neck, the use of an inset metal plate in the body that the bridge can be bolted directly onto, the use of a virtually void-free single rod, double action trussrod that is somewhat complicated but still easily homebuilt, and then finally, the use of "chambering" of the body near the neck joint.
The chambering theoretically introduces some "mushiness" in the construction, that when coupled with the really firm bridge and neck joints, and void free neck construction, permits some capacity to play around with some "tone shaping", in a way that has not really been genuinely available in solid bodied instruments previously. When I use the term "theoretically", I don't mean unproven or unclaimable, I mean more like it has not been proven with serious rigour, but I think how it's laid out includes some good face and construct validity.
The way I've worded it here seems to almost make claims, but that's not my intention. I think these are early days for the wider body of builders with this kind of approach, however Bruce has been using these techniques in real world applications for some years and is satisfied with his results to date (I'm paraphrasing
).
I've used the BruceBars, BruceBridgeBase and chambering before, but I've not had a chance to use a BruceRod yet. (that last one might be better off being renamed?) I'm looking forward to trying all of them together a few times myself...
