So electric guitars use pickups to “pickup” vibration of strings to determine the sound. How does the body of the guitar play a role there? Moreover, how does the type of material the body is made of play a role?
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Knock on your table. It creates a sound by shockwaves in the material inserted from your knuckles hitting the surface with force. Now go to your car and knock on the hood and the front fender. It not only sounds different from the table ( different material), even the two knocks on the car sound different even though the material is the same. The shape of hood and fender guide the waves differently which creates different sounds
Edit: adding words
The shape of the guitar does affect its sound, however it doesn’t have as great an effect on an electric vs acoustic. In both cases the quality of the wood, amount of cavities, neck shape, etc will all change the resonance of the guitar. However an acoustic relies on these things to produce a good sound. Whereas on an electric the quality of the components will have the greater effect. You can see this when people make plastic guitars or even ones made of cardboard exist. These still sound pretty good for what they are. Of course you will notice a top of the line Gibson next to one of these, but the components will also be better.
Shape does not affect the sound.
The shape is done for look and for ease of use, some playing styles need certain shape, to rest arms, or to support the instrument, or to balance it in the hands, or to be comfortable to play while seated.
Electric instruments rely on pick ups, strings, the mechanics to support strings, the body rigidity and quality to keep the instrument straight and to provide proper contact between strings and board.
Friend of mine is a professional maker, the biggest part of the price is how precise you want it to be. Shape is last concern for him.
Electric guitar sounds are not affected by the body design or materials used, only the strings and pickups installed.
When a manufacturer touts a specific wood being used for the fretboard or body, they are talking more to the quality of the product being made and the way it feels when playing. For example a fretboard made a certain way, with certain materials may require less pressure to hold down a note, making it easier to play. It will still sound the same.
When you play a string on a guitar, the string vibrates and shares that vibration to the rest of the guitar. The build of the guitar affects how it carries that vibration.
Shape doesn’t affect sound in ELECTRIC guitars… there are some “tonewood” folks out there, but this has been tested and demonstrated false. In electric guitars, the pickups create a magnetic field that “pick up” the vibration of the strings. The sound is transmitted electronically to the amplifier. If there is ANY influence at all, it would be so incredibly minimal that you would not be able to audibly detect it.
In acoustic guitars this is vastly different where the density of the woods chosen and the shape of the guitar are what create the sound of the guitar.
It doesn’t. The reason different guitars are associated with different sounds is because of their scale length and the pickups, both the type of pickup and where that pickup is located on the body.
The scale length is the distance from nut to the bridge saddles. For Gibson’s this is usually 24.75 inches. For fender’s this is usually 25.5” or 24” for some of their offset shapes. PRS’ uses 25” or 24.5” for single cut shapes.
The reason for the sound differences between scale lengths is because all the harmonics and overtones produced along the length of the string are all closer together the shorter the scale length. It’s why a strat with humbuckers doesn’t sound like a Les Paul and a Les Paul with single coils doesn’t maintain the top end chime that strat players are looking for.
The other differentiator is the type of pickup and it’s location along the length of the string. Strats, teles, jags, and jazzmasters all use single coil pickups. But they are all inherently different and their exact placement along the string influences their tone.
Generally tone has more bass and less treble the closer a pickup is to the neck and more treble and less bass the closer you get to the bridge. Strat pickups are usually all the same in a single guitar, just in 3 different positions. Strat pickups are different than tele pickups. A tele neck pickup is smaller than a strat pickup. A tele bridge pickup is supposed to have a metal plate mounted to the underside of the pickup which influences the shape of the magnetic field. And it’s distance to the bridge is not the exact same as a strat pickup. Jazzmaster pickups are wound not very deep but cover a larger area. This gives them a distinctive sound. Jaguar pickups are surrounded by a thick metal enclosure on the sides and back.
Dylan talks tone is a pickup maker on YouTube that has done dissections and in depth discussion about the construction and subsequent tone of different types of pickups that is very interesting if you want more in depth information.
The shape and the material of the body affects how the body vibrates, and that affects how the strings ressonate (because they are attached to the body+neck), and the pickups also vibrate with the body.
If you record the sound of the exact same build of a guitar, but a body with different type of wood, and check the frequency spectrum, you’ll visualize the diifference.
HOWEVER
That difference is not audible. Whoever tells you otherwise, is either trying to sell guitars for absurd prices (I’m looking at you, PRS), or is the kind of person who listens with their eyes (and is trying to justify spending thousands of dollars in a single guitar).
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