Electric Guitar Trends

One of the most obvious trends in electic guitar manufacturing is one you cannot see, and perhaps one you cannot even hear.  Electric guitars are getting lighter.

If you play guitar practicing at home sitting on the edge of your bed, you might not care how much your guitar weighs.  But once you start rehearsing with a band and/or gigging, the weight of the guitar matters, and could make an otherwise great guitar a pain in the back.

Various alternate materials have been used over the years, but electric guitars are still made out of wood.  That is, wood is used to make electric guitar necks and bodies. And wood is a natural product and varies from piece to piece.  Two identical guitars make look the same, but they likely won’t weigh the same.  Since electric guitars are mostly played standing up, the weight factor is another good reason to play a guitar before you buy it.

Let’s say a light weight guitar weighs 8 pounds or less, and a heavy guitar weighs 10 pounds or more.  The body of that light electric guitar weighs about 3 pounds, and a heavy electric guitar body weighs about 5 pounds.  So the electric guitar body is a major factor in the final weight of an electric guitar.

While each piece of wood has its own density, each variety of wood has its own weight tendencies. Common woods used in manufacturing electric guitars have not changed over the years and include: alder; ash; mahoghany; and maple. Weight-wise, maple and alder are light weights, while mahoghany is heavy, and ash is all over the place.  Trouble is, each variety of wood has its own sound.  You might want that round mid-range tone that mahoghany can give you.

Okay, you can still buy a Schecter Ultra Cure which has plenty of heft to it, but really guitars are getting lighter.  I am not sure when electric guitars started their diet.  Today, Gibson manufactures several Les Paul models that are either chambered or weight relieved, and trend is upward - many customers want a lighter Les Paul.

It’s not just Gibson that is making lighter guitars.  I have owned Fender Stratocasters for many years, and the new ones in the store are always what I would consider the lighter end of the scale even for a Stratocaster.

For a long time, I believed that an electric guitar needed a lot of weight behind it to sound good.  Sort of like an opera singer.  But I have purchased a few guitars over the past few years, and I have found that guitars are not only getting lighter, but more resonant and better in quality overall.

Does an electric guitar sound different if the body has been hollowed out a bit?  Gibson admits there is a slight difference in tonal quality.  To me, a light weight electric guitar is a requirement.  If it’s a heavy guitar, that’s a show-stopper right there.  Why carry more weight, if you don’t have to?