Major Factors in Acoustic Guitar Sound Quality

When people think acoustic, they often think vocals over guitar sound. This causes many people to fear that all acoustic instruments have the same tone and that couldn’t be further from what’s actually true. Generally speaking, guitars make or break an acoustic performance of a song; even if a the voice is great, if the guitar is out of tune or doesn’t have the right characteristics for your play style, then everyone will be able to tell.

The world of acoustics isn’t all black-and-white, though. The many gray areas of sound quality come from the guitar’s array of characteristics.

Main Influences to Consider:

• Body shape, size, and style have the largest effect on sound quality and musical performance. You can determine your idea body style, by researching acoustic body information. For example, delicate, small guitars with a 0(single ought) body style are much more fragile than the 000(triple ought), which can withstand aggressive play.
• The type of tonewood has a big influence as well. In fact, we’ve covered how tonewood affects sound in earlier posts.
• The way the guitar is built plays affects sound quality too. It all depends on the techniques used.
• Other materials used to make the guitar play a role too. For example bracing and fingerboard sometimes call for extra wood, which can dampen the guitar’s sound.

For more information about body styles and guitar tonewood, contact us or visit our main site!