We have finally reached the last part of this series. After talking about Playability, Comfort, Durability, Quality, and Features — wow that’s a lot of things — we finally reach the part where we can get a little exotic and talk about Aesthetics.
When it’s about guitars, aesthetics play an important role. However, there is not much to it more than raising the price tag.
If you’re a beginner, I advise you not to worry about the looks of your first guitar.
Let’s start with
Wood
When we talk about wood, we can’t but imagine the grain that runs through the pieces of lumber that we use on guitars. Woodgrain differs from a piece to another. Some patterns look nice and others don’t.
Woodgrain is basically the alteration of dark and light fibers that grow along with the logs. The sizes and colors of them are affected by the seasons in which the tree is growing.
The cut of the wood also affects the aesthetic of the grain. Also, sometimes the wood features some knots, fungus, or burls that would produce nice figures once the wood logs are turned into lumber.
To illustrate, let’s have a look at the following image.
These are from the same family of trees. However, some figures appear from a certain genetic mutation. To give an example the flamed maple appears when the fibers start to grow in a curly way. Similarly to human hair. The more rare the trees are, the higher the price of the lumber is, hence the more expensive the guitar is.
Moreover, some trees fall under endangered species and some of them exist only in few regions in the world such as the bigleaf maple. The authorities forbid cutting endangered species so only the trees that fall due to natural disasters like hurricanes are allowed to be processed and transformed into the timber.
Other than the different patterns, there is the grading. Sometimes in one piece of big timber, the fibers in one place are denser than in another. Woodgrain has grades when it’s about figures, for example, an AAAA Maple is less sharp than an AAAAA Maple. See the difference in the image below.
Continuing with wood, there is also another thing that affects the looks of guitars. Processes such as spalting and burning can create amazing patterns that raise the price of the Guitar.
- Spalting is when there are colonies of fungi inside the wood. The process can be naturally made or even manmade.
- Burning is when using high voltage electricity to add elements to the wood figure.
Finish
When we talk about the wood finish, we mean the paint job that is applied to the guitar body and neck. There are different techniques for finishing the wood. Some of them are more expensive and others are as simple as using a spray can.
The most notable finishes on guitars other than solid colors are bursts. Bursts are those finishes that start with a color on the perimeter of the body and fade into other colors. Typically this technique is applied to figured wood so it won’t make sense to put a thick coat of a solid color and hide the figure in the wood.
In order to achieve this effect of a burst, stains are used rather than paint. The stains that are used are mostly water-based dyes. You can see a stained guitar in the following figure.
Matching Headstock
A matching headstock is a totally aesthetic feature as well. It does not affect anything but the price tag of the guitar. It is when you see the finish applied on the front of the headstock similar to the one used on the body.
Some guitar enthusiasts like this feature while others don’t.
Binding and Inlays
Binding is also a nice aesthetical feature on some guitar models. It is mainly a strip of plastic or other material surrounding the body of the guitar in most cases and the fretboard in rare cases.
Inlays are the decorative materials used mostly on the fretboard of electric guitars. Most electric guitars have them displayed as dots. However, some more expensive guitars have different patterns engraved into their fretboards.
There are different materials used for inlays of which we cite plastic, wood, nacre, abalone, gemstones…
And there’s much more of decorative things you can find on guitars such as pickup rings, fancy knobs, body inlays, diamonds, etc…
With aesthetics, we reach the end of this series. I hope you enjoyed reading :-) …
