classic wood choice for chime?

[GaryMcT]

I'm digging the Hollow T with ash body and top with maple/madagascar rosewood neck wayyyy too much. I think I'm a treble-aholic and I may need to seek help.

Anyways, let's say I order a classic in the future. Would a classic with the chambering and the same wood choices and VA's yield a very chimey strat? Which aspect of the Hollow T lends itself to the chime? I realize that all of them do, but if you had to assign percentages to features that yield chime, what would they be?, ie:

1) body shape
2) chambers
3) body wood
4) fingerboard wood

(I'm intentionally leaving out pickups since I know they will be different on a classic.)

[GaryMcT]

Another possibility. . if I stuck a VA1 in the middle on this tele, how stratty would the neck/middle and middle bridge combos sound? I don't really use the stacked modes on the TD's, so it could be wired such that positions 1, 3, and 5 are straight single coil tele (ie. 3 is neck and bridge) and 2 and 4 are strat goodness. Is that how the three-pickup Anderson T's are wired? Seems like 2 or 4 would have to be noisy since the neck/bridge position is more important on a tele to me.

Hmmmm, sounds like I might need to put a pickup and pickguard order in.

[michaelomiya]

Anyways, let's say I order a classic in the future. Would a classic with the chambering and the same wood choices and VA's yield a very chimey strat? Which aspect of the Hollow T lends itself to the chime? I realize that all of them do, but if you had to assign percentages to features that yield chime, what would they be?, ie:

1) body shape
2) chambers
3) body wood
4) fingerboard wood


Gary, I need to understand by what you mean by "chime". When I describe a classic strats and teles, I use the words "quack, squawk, honk". And when playing BF Fenders, the terms "bloom and warmth" usually arise.

Assuming "chime" is referring to the overtones that a trem cavity and pickguard matched with a really resonant ash or alder provide, IMHO, the body wood always seems to have the most pronounced effect on tone. Chambers definitely 'soften' up what would otherwise be a pronounced low mid or high mid. The fingerboard wood can be dialed in or EQ'd on the amp in my experience. That maple "snap" or the roundness of the RW can be brought out by adding or substracting presence/treb or resonance/bass. And of course the player's technique can negate or enhance such qualities. I've got a friend who can take my Randy Rhoads Jackson (ebony fingerboard, alder body, Floyd Rose) and make that quack and sing like Luther Perkins on "Folsom Prison Blues". Body shape, IMHO has less to do with the sound as long as the neck is inserted deep into the body (like a wedgie joint or the neck pocket of a Wolfgang) and the area around the bridge is huge (like the Atom or the Cobra). The more surface area, the better the tone IMHO. Of course Steinberger players will definitely disagree!:D YMMV!

[googoobaby]

Speaking as a chime-a-holic, I'd say it was the body wood and the pickups perhaps followed by the neck wood and possibly shape. Empirically, my ash/maple Stratoid is incredibly chimey when my mahogany/rosewood one isn't. The latter is chambered though, so that's another variable. My ash/maple Tele is less chimey than the Strat-shapes, but I attribute that more to hotter pickups.