The greatest example of guitar voodo yet?

Three-ColourSunburst

Forget tone wood, old wood, crystal lattices, 'nitro', hide glue, molecular level plastic and all the rest of the mojo, voodoo and BS that infests the world of the electric guitar. The secret is out, it's the colour of the guitar that matters!

stickyfiddle

I think that Reverend is a great looking guitar. 

But when you're playing through a Big Muff I'm gonna argue that the finer resonant qualities of the specific instrument go out ot the window...!

Whitecat

Colour does affect perceptions of things. There's a famous story about vacuum cleaners in the 50s or 60s - they were all made in black when they were first released. Feedback from testers (housewives, mainly, at the time) was that they were good but they were too heavy. The designers couldn't easily make them much lighter at the time, at least not quickly, but they could "repaint" them - so they changed the colours instead to something lighter, and the testers said that they were much better and easier to use. The weight was unchanged, of course.

Three-ColourSunburst

Whitecat said:

Colour does affect perceptions of things. There's a famous story about vacuum cleaners in the 50s or 60s - they were all made in black when they were first released. Feedback from testers (housewives, mainly, at the time) was that they were good but they were too heavy. The designers couldn't easily make them much lighter at the time, at least not quickly, but they could "repaint" them - so they changed the colours instead to something lighter, and the testers said that they were much better and easier to use. The weight was unchanged, of course.

It is also true that expectations drive our perceptions. This is well documented in the case of vision, where we use prior experience and expectation to impose structure on the environment, hence all those ambiguous figures, optical illusions and so on.

Much the same happens with auditory stimuli so that the sound you 'hear' is often as much a creation of your brain (expectations, prior experience and so on) as it is an intrinsic quality of the instrument - people really do 'listen with their eyes'. A good example is the way even professional players will swear that a Stradivarius violin sounds and plays better than any other they are given to play - but only when they know which one is the Stradivarius first. Run a blind test and the 'Strad' will often be rated near the bottom of the list. 

Same with taste, run a blind test and 'experts' can't actually tell expensive wines from cheap plonk! (Despite the urban legend, they can reliably tell red from white though.)

And yet, despite all science to the contrary and the known limitations of human perception, some audiophiles will still claim they can hear the difference between an expensive 'directional' speaker cable and a cheaper one. It shouldn't be a surprise that many guitarists seem to be just as prone to self deception. Billy Corgan probably really believes what he says, and it may well have its own sound, but not because it is white!

http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/20/7168.full.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis

Philly_Q

Billy Corgan looks more like a Sontaran every day.

randella

I had to google Sontaran, and have to disagree with you on his likeness to Corgan.  I saw at least one still in which Sontaran is smiling.

All the above aside, I still like the guy (Corgan, that is).  He might be miserable and deliberately obtuse but he's a phenomenal player who wrote a couple of my favourite albums. 

From watching a video of Pumpkins performing in '92 to the point of the VHS tape destructing, he's solely responsible for my lifetime's overuse of pinched harmonics and pickslides.

Three-ColourSunburst

randella said:

I still like the guy (Corgan, that is).  He might be miserable and deliberately obtuse but he's a phenomenal player who wrote a couple of my favourite albums. 

As they say, 'It's such a fine line between stupid and clever'. 

danishbacon

He would fit right in on tfb

AlexC

I’m quite sure that there’s all manner of well made pro quality guitars that we wouldn’t play because of the colour and/or shape. It does seem trivial, but it’s human nature.

maltingsaudio

It’s very true that we buy with our eyes first, and colour and appearance affects our perceptions of how a guitar will play. Dave Hill’s super yob may play like butter but not going to get my juices flowing. On the flip side would love to own the Red Special but it’s a pig of a guitar to play

Sassafras

I don't particularly like white, black or purple guitars but if they sound good I'll play them. I'm not proud.