For years I've heard/read guys talk about the importance of testing the acoustic resonance of electric guitars in stores. "I always play it for a few minutes before I even plug in, just to hear the body wood vibrate. If there's no resonance unplugged, it would sound dead through an amp too!" so on and so forth.
With a fixed bridge guitar, I'll usually do a few quick hammer-ons to get a sense of whether it 'projects' well.. has good 'snap' to it. But lately I've been wondering -- how are you supposed to gauge the unplugged resonance of Stratocaster style guitars, where the cavity and springs in the back act like a reverb tank? If anything, I've found that cheaper MIM and Squier strats tend to sound much louder and brighter unplugged than more expensive MIA models, which often sound quite dull and lifeless unplugged. Does that mean the higher end models are transferring more mechanical energy from the strings to the wood instead of the trem springs? If so, is that good, bad, or irrelevant?
With a fixed bridge guitar, I'll usually do a few quick hammer-ons to get a sense of whether it 'projects' well.. has good 'snap' to it. But lately I've been wondering -- how are you supposed to gauge the unplugged resonance of Stratocaster style guitars, where the cavity and springs in the back act like a reverb tank? If anything, I've found that cheaper MIM and Squier strats tend to sound much louder and brighter unplugged than more expensive MIA models, which often sound quite dull and lifeless unplugged. Does that mean the higher end models are transferring more mechanical energy from the strings to the wood instead of the trem springs? If so, is that good, bad, or irrelevant?