Maple tops and what they do to tone?

[brokenvail]

This week I have been on a factory tour watching spree. I have seen EB, Tom Anderson, Suhr and PRS. I noticed that maple tops are kind of thin. It made me wonder how much does a maple top affect/influence tone? I then started wondering about all the other variables. You know neck wood, fretboard, body. What % of tone is dictated my all of these? The combination of woods is how we achieve the tones we have.

 

[Jack FFR1846]

Seems that people have strong opinions about this. Personally, I think that the woods/neck joints color the tone a bit, but the majority comes from the pickups. These aren't acoustic guitars. I've seen a pickup manufacturer demo some of their pickups without showing what they were connected to. After the audience got done oooooo'ing and ahhhhh'ing, they revealed that the guitar neck was bolted to a piece of concrete. Tone stone, I guess.

 

[Tim O'Sullivan]

I would imagine its very subtle, and probably impossible to distinguish in a blind test!

 

[Dr. Tweedbucket]

I think the wood makes a major effect in how the guitar sounds. I had a killer sounding Les Paul but was ready for something new and going to sell it. I considering keeping the pickups out of it because I thought they were the reason for the fat aggressive tone. I swapped pickups with another LP but the tone didn't follow the pickups. The killer sounding LP remained the tone king. Pups do make some difference, but I think a lot of tone is in the type, age and density of the wood.

Too, I've had an all mahogany LP custom and one with the maple cap. I like the crisp sound the maple top brings to the guitar. Too, an ebony fretboard will sound brighter as does maple when compared to rosewood. Just my experience / ears and 2 cents