Acoustic Resonance vs. Electric Resonance

[Brian W.]

Many years ago I had a few Gibson Les Pauls. I compared all of them as to their acoustic sound and than plugged them into the amp . My overall opinion was that the louder acoustic sounding LP's did not transfer their volume and tone to their electric sound. The "duller" ones seemed to be much fuller and "resonant" through the amp whilst the ones that everybody claimed had the "best acoustic sound" were overall thinner electrically. This YouTube vid is old but he touches on some accurate observations.

[g1]

Kind of like loud exhausts wasting horse-power. It's still energy.

[Mick Bailey]

I built an electric sitar a few years ago and it was frustrating that I never got the full acoustic sound out of the pickups. It really did have a convincing, complex and rich sitar sound. Originally I based the bridge on the Danelectro and made it from phenolic resin, but got a much better sound once I made it all in brass. I sectioned into individual bridge pieces adjustable for intonation, height and angle to get the most sitar-like sound.

Whilst it did work pretty well through an amp, the subtle bright overtones were lost. It would have perhaps needed piezo transducers and a body mic to blend in with the magnetic pickups.

[Brian W.]

As far as electric guitars go, I seem to prefer the electric sound better if the acoustic sound is duller and a bit "bass- heavy". The guitars that exhibited more so-called "resonance" were thinner when played through an amp.

[tedmich]

I believe its all about where the resonances are, solid body electric guitars dampen a TON of higher frequency resonance that acoustics are designed to project.
Some solid body electrics are so well damped people notice the decrease going from a bolted neck to a neck through/set design.

Even these few resonances present in a solid body electric were too much for the early Roland gr-707 Midi units so they extended the bodies top bout up to the peghead to dampen more. Fully synthetic guitars like the SynthAxe sound dead to many because they have such a simple waveform output.

There are very effective electric-> acoustic pedals which shape the sound pretty well, essentially adding back many of the overtones that solid body electrics and (by extension) synthetic instruments lack.

[Brian W.]

I love the sound of a big, loud, acoustic guitar but the dampening qualities of an electric [solid] guitar are a preference.

[Fluoroscope 5000]

Judging the string vibration tone from the acoustic sound can be deceptive because the guitar can either resonate or inaudibly damp string energy at various frequencies. Electric guitar builders and players still seem to think that better energy transfer from the bridge to the body improves sustain, but that actually drains more string energy. Increased unsprung mass reduces string energy drain, but that can produce a more metallic tone that players like me don't prefer. The new Novo guitars with the roasted Pine bodies sound really nice to me. Fender made some recent Strats with roasted Pine. I also really like the sound of the Eric Johnson Virginia model with the Sassafras body. Similar to Swamp Ash.