i´m here just throwing some ideas...

what exactly gives each guitar it´s own "sound"?
a telecaster sounds different to a les paul. they sound different to a rickenbacker, a danelectro, a jaguar, or an ibanez jem (eww), and a crappy squier sounds also different. So, we have the pickups, the wood, the pickup config, the electronics, what else?

single coil pickups sound different than humbuckers. p-90s sound different too. what are the other choices? i think they make a very big difference in the sound - probably the biggest difference. what if i want to make a guitar that sound just really different to anything else? by different i dont´mean like "oh so pure and perfect" but just with some character on its own. i´m thinking a bit of pushing the limits, or perhaps making something sounding in a really different way - so u play it different. it can be a pickup? what makes a pickup sounding different than another? any ideas or concepts behind some odd guitars that may help?

or perhaps we should talk with some stuff outside of the guitar, like, effects, or amps, or whathever. any examples of people pushing the boundaries of what sounds can u do with a guitar?

Also:

The bridge itself, the metals used and the way it is married to the body, ie. is it floating, resting, bolted or glued.

The method in which the strings are anchored or attached to the body.

The strings "break angle" over the bridge.

The Location of a pickup; under which harmonic(s) the pickup is located.

Etc.

Scale length
String gauge
Tuning (are you using standard E?)

Neck type (bolt-on, set neck, neck-through)

Pickup phasing

Don't forget that piezo pickups give a very different sound from the types you mentioned as well. Very different.

These aren't guitar-specific, but they play a huge role in the sound you get...

What kind of pick you use
The way you hold the pick/ pick angle
Where on the strings you pick
Upstrokes vs downstrokes

I don't think there's really one good answer to your question of how to get a really unique sound. If there is one good answer, I would say that it's probably "Don't play a Fender or Gibson guitar, and don't use a Fender or Marshall amp."

Or you could just buy something like this or this or whatever.

thanks for the replies...

scott wrote:I don't think there's really one good answer to your question of how to get a really unique sound. If there is one good answer, I would say that it's probably "Don't play a Fender or Gibson guitar, and don't use a Fender or Marshall amp."

yeah, you got a good point.
but for example, some things change the sound completely while other less... i dont think that changing my gauge of strings and the type of bridge will make "whoa this guitar sound super different now omg!".
teiscos are odd beasts, yup. is it the pups and the wood right? it´s plywood? it´s the odd vibrato bridge?

perhaps the best way is to just use a different guitar tunning - i think that can make one sound reaally different in a kinda simple way.

i actually like standard sounding guitar sounds ( tele thru a twin ) but i will also enjoy experimenting with something really different.

If you've got the electronic know how, wire something in that doesn't belong in there.
One thing I've done is taken a good deal of my spare parts and built what I can describe only as a "resonance assembly". It involves vibrato springs stretched over the mounting bracket for a humbucker with telephone mic ran into a wah pot. Very nice with slides and flatwounds. Creepy/short reverb.
Of course, this is the sort of thing you do on that one guitar you have that you can afford to completely fuck up.

Saturday wrote:any examples of people pushing the boundaries of what sounds can u do with a guitar?

Tons. In rough historical order (and in no way complete):

Hendrix
Keith Rowe
Fred Frith (see the Guitar Solos albums, Live in Japan for the guitars-on-the-table approach, and Skeleton Crew, for which he'd build these rough guitars out of planks and drill into them)
Eugene Chadbourne
Glenn Branca (to a degree with his "harmonics guitar" in his duo and small-group performances and the "staircase guitars" of Symphony No. 2; otherwise it's through tuning and arranging massed players)
Ben Miller (ex-Destroy All Monsters, in his solo Degeneration performances; sadly his website's down right now)
Elliot Sharp
Sonic Youth
Kevin Drumm
Otomo Yoshihide

And many others, but that's what comes to mind at the moment. Do a search on the term "prepared guitar" or the term "extended techniques" for guitar, and you'll turn up a whole lot more.

great links, thanks.. *researching*

http://www.sonnysharrock.com

Most of the video footage is of him in the 80s when he was playing with rack effects which hasn't aged so well but in the late 60s/early 70s the man had a Les Paul (or hollowbody Gibson copy)/Marshall set up with an Echoplex delay and it was insane.

Saturday wrote:but for example, some things change the sound completely while other less... i dont think that changing my gauge of strings and the type of bridge will make "whoa this guitar sound super different now omg!".

Actually... you might be surprised.

For example, the stuff you can do with a whammy or vibrato bar can certainly change the sound. If you use a bar to detune your strings a good 7 frets or so, you have to play the guitar very differently than normal (while holding down the bar, quite a challenge) and it will sound very, very different from normal.

Also, if you put a set of 8's on your guitar and tune it down a couple frets, it will sound very different. Lots of detuning will happen simply because you won't be applying the exact proper pressure with your fingers, and it'll end up sounding much sloppier than what you'd get with 10's tuned to E, or for that matter, 13's tuned to E or D. 13's tuned to E are madness, so hard to play! If your guitar can handle them, you'll find that not only does it sound different from normal, but you'll be playing different things than usual. Like, barre chords kinda go out the window unless you're the hulk or something.

What I'm getting at is that though I agree with you that some things make a more noticable difference than others, even things like the bridge and string gauge can have a bigger effect than you might expect.

Picking location is huge. Pick about 1/2" from the ends of the strings, and then compare that sound with what happens when you pick above the fretboard at the 17th fret or whatever. Compare that with what it sounds like when you pluck strings exactly 12 frets above whatever fret you are, uh, fretting. Pick location has a huge effect on the sound of your guitar.

I didn't believe the guy who told me that a couple years ago. I have since very much changed my tune (pun intended).

If you don't want your guitar to sound like a guitar, try a ring modulator or a pitch shifter. Try a flanger or chorus set on an absurd setting, like maximum sweep range and maximum speed and maximum resonance or effect level or whatever it's called on the pedal you're playing with. Of course that isn't guitar specific, although the guitar you use will play a role in what kinda sounds you get even out of crazy pedal combinations.

One time I had the good fortune of being comissioned to do a score for a student film. After two rounds of submitting stuff to the filmmaker, he came back with the comment that he really liked what I had been giving him, but he really wanted something played on guitar that didn't sound anything like guitar...

I used a strat copy that I had severely re-pickup'ed. I ran it through four pedals... chorus->chorus->distortion->distortion, and played it through a '65 twin reissue that I had at the time. Fender strat-copy guitar and fender amp, as generic as it gets. But instead of normally playing the guitar, I scraped the strings instead of picking. And instead of using the frets to control the pitch of the notes, I used the tuners. I detuned the strings way, way down, and scraped at them and bent the neck and all sorta non-playing type ways of playing.

With all four pedals on, I could adjust the volume at really low settings and control the way it was feeding back, and with the two chorus pedals, it got some really crazy interactions. The noises that came from just messing with the volume control like that ended up sounding a *lot* like some kinda jungle animals, like monkeys or birds chirping. It was pretty cool. And he loved it. It's what ended up in the film.

All you gotta do to get really fucked up sounds is do stuff that doesn't make much sense. And figure out how to make something of it.

Another fun one is to use a shitload of effects, and aim a teevee remote into your pickups and press buttons. Or use a ton of effects, and lay your guitar flat and set a couple marbles between some strings, and balance it and have them roll back and forth, and tap them so one rolls one way and the other rolls the other way. Or hold a strong magnet so it grabs the strings, and then drag the magnet back and forth. Again, "tons of effects" is always a helper. Use an envelope follower/dynamic filter, whatever they call the auto-wah pedal.

Have fun!