Quinlan Kok wrote:
Ya the guitar is the RG 2570 Z Prestige if i remember correctly with the pup replacement in sig.
I mostly use the green channel on my amp, which tends to kick out a lot of bottom end - think i must just set pup hight also. What i can remember of tonewood is that basswood covers the whole freq, mahogany is more mid range and alder and ash high. Would actually be nice to have a alder or ash top on the prestige.
The old school mythology is that Basswood is flat with a hump in the mids, Alder is flatter which is sometimes perceived as a slight dip in the mids, mahogany is more prominent in the lower mid range giving the illusion of warmth and ash tends to be a bit more peaky in the upper mids giving it that brightness or some such of that vein.
There's also a huge debate about whether the top wood really does that much seeing as it's such a small percentage of the total wood mass, likewise with the fretboard.
Personally I take it all with a grain of salt as it's all just basically marketting hype to play on these old beliefs, when a brand says they use Mahogany for instance they're essentially not telling you anything as Mahogany is a family of wood, and within it there are many different variations in grain, density and rigidity, and even further still the climate the species is grown in plays a huge role in also alters these various factors.
I'm personally a tonewood agnostic as though there may be a pronounced difference in tone between guitar A & B I'm not 100% sold on the idea that the wood is a very important factor in play, if anything it's a small part of the total tonal make up and to me nowhere near as important as pickups, scale length and construction type (Bolt on, Set, Neck-Thru).
I personally think that you can't judge a guitar's tone till you've played it, and that doesn't mean a specific model, I mean a specific guitar as sometimes you just get complete freaks. For instance someone I was once talking to swore that their maple bodied RG had far more low end and warmth than their Les Paul Standard (New one so not Honduran), now everything about the old debate basically points to that not being possible, it's also possible that he simply wasn't hearing or perceiving frequencies the way I do, I personally don't think I'll have a set opinion on it till I've tried both guitars in question up against each other.
