Tips
Reference Guide: Guitar Woods
Reference Guide: Bass Strings
How To: Replace strings on a resonator.
How To: Change a banjo head.
How To: Tune a mandolin.
What is a resonator guitar?
What is bell brass?
What is a roundneck or squareneck guitar?
What is a Fishman Transducer pickup?
What is an EMG-designed pickup?
What is a humbucking pickup?
What are active and passive pickups?
What does RMS watts mean?
What is Phantom Power?
What is impedence?
Wood is one of the largest determining factors of a guitar’s sound and longevity. Specific woods used to build guitars, acoustic and electric, are called tone woods. Tone woods have resonant properties that other woods do not. For example, oak is a beautiful and strong wood, but it has no resonant properties, which would not be best for guitar building.
Alder We find that alder has the richest tone, characterized by lots of fat low-end, well defined mid ranges and a lot of sustain. Alder is a light wood, which makes it more comfortable for lengthy gigs. It is one of the original woods used for solid body guitars. Although other manufacturers use woods like poplar and basswood, they are considered alder substitutes.
Solid Alder Alder is a fairly light and incredibly resilient wood that is a favorite amongst electric guitar makers. It is a close-grained wood with a naturally light tan color. Alder is mostly used for electric guitar bodybuilding because of its full sound, great sustain and density. It is a porous wood that takes quite well to a variety of finishes. This gives the guitar a richer sound because the solid wood soundboard can vibrate more freely and thoroughly.
Spruce Spruce is the most commonly used wood on acoustic guitar soundboards. The soundboards on acoustics are generally made of tightly grained spruce. Naturally yellow in color, spruce is a lightwood that has a very high degree of resonance, so it is a perfect match for acoustic guitars.
Solid Spruce Solid spruce refers less to a difference in the wood than to how it is actually cut for the guitar. Laminate spruce soundboards are built as layers of cross-grained wood glued to each other. Solid spruce soundboards consist of one piece of wood running all the way through. This gives the guitar a richer sound because the solid wood soundboard can vibrate more freely and thoroughly.
Canadian Sitka Spruce Canadian Sitka Spruce is a harder to find, more expensive variety of spruce. It has a light yellow color and is also used for acoustic guitar soundboards. It gives guitars a bigger more resonant sound, flush with crisp highs. It also improves with age more than other types of spruce.
Mahogany Mahogany is a moderately dense and very durable wood. It is commonly used for the backs, sides and necks of acoustic guitars. It is sometimes used on electric guitar bodies and necks. Because it is very sonorous and durable, mahogany is also used in banjos, resonators, ukuleles and acoustic guitar soundboards. It is lighter than maple and specifically provides acoustic guitars with great sustain. Mahogany also provides great weight balance between the neck and the body of an acoustic. It is reddish-brown in color and is incredibly strong and resonant, giving the guitar big, beautiful tones.
Maple Maple is a strong and extremely dense, heavy wood. It is excellent for guitar necks and bodies because it can handle an inordinate amount of string tension. Maple has a bright and crisp tone and is used on flamenco guitars as well as some electrics. It has a wide variety of exotic grains that show up quite well when finished. Flamed maple is a very popular and brilliant looking exotic type of maple. “Flamed” refers to the rippling, or curls of the grain of wood that run across the body. Flamed maple in generally “book matched,” which means that the body is made of two half pieces of a single cut piece of maple. This gives the guitar even weight, look and tone throughout the body.
Nato Nato wood, also known as Eastern Mahogany, is a reliable, strong wood used on guitar necks. It is a value-priced wood used more for beginner instruments. However, it still embodies all of the properties of more commonly used mahogany.
The history of the resonator dates back to the early 1920’s. This was an era when the resonator was a favorite among blues musicians. Resonators are also known as resophonic guitars and are characterized by a shaped cone for amplification, instead of a soundboard like on an acoustic guitar. The shaped cone is nestled underneath the bridge of the guitar. The bridge is connected to the cone so that when the strings are hit, the vibrations run through the saddle and then into the bridge, which resonates the cone. The cone acts like a built-in speaker and the body acts as a speaker cabinet. This made the resonator, a pre-cursor to the electric amplifier, one of the loudest stringed instruments available in its time. The sound produced by these specially shaped cones and bodies is very bright and snappy with great sustain and a slight attack. Resonators are still favored today by blues and country musicians as well as a new generation of players. All of our resonators feature excellent construction, design and plating and are known for their distinct projection and ethereal tone.
Bell brass is light and known for its resonant properties. It compliments the natural ambiance found on resonator instruments, adding to the complexity of the overtones. Bell brass is traditionally preferred over a steel body. .
How To: Changing Resonator Strings
The strings on a Resonator Guitar help hold the cone in place and prevent it from slipping. Adjusting all the strings at the same time will misplace the cone, which will cause a buzzing sound when played. When you do change your Resonator strings, it is best to only change one string at a time, paying particular attention to not upsetting the cone.
Don’t be a square, unless you are a slide player! Many of our resonator guitars come with a roundneck or squareneck option. The roundneck is the most common style found on most guitars. The squareneck is used for slide playing, since the nut sits higher and the strings set a greater distance from the fingerboard.
Johnson banjos use high crown heads for replacements. All of our banjos use 11” heads. It is good to note the type of head (frosted, fyberskyn, etc.) before buying a replacement.
Most bass strings consist of a central string that is wrapped in a second layer to make it thicker and more resilient to wear and tear. This second layer will also contribute greatly to the overall sound of a bass. The following are the most common varieties of bass strings:
Roundwound bass strings are the most common bass string. They are found on the majority of electric basses. Roundwound strings are characterized by giving off a very bright and pleasant tone but are known to give substantial wear and tear to fretboards over time.
Flatwound strings are very smooth and have a dark sound. They are preferred for fretless basses because they are gentle on fingerboards and have very even playability.
Tapewound strings are even kinder to your fingers and fretboard than Flatwound strings. They are quite light and give off a very warm and jazzy tone. Tapewound strings are also preferred for fretless basses because of their forgiving nature.
The mandolin is most commonly tuned in perfect fifths. The first string set is tuned to E, second set to A, third set to D and fourth set to G.
Fishman Transducer pickups are some of the best sounding onboard pickups for acoustic guitars. Johnson acoustic guitars are adored with Fishman Transducer pickups and the Fishman Classic 4 preamp. The preamp has a 4-band EQ with treble, mid, bass, brilliance and volume. The Classic 4 is an undersaddle, battery-powered transducer pickup and preamp. These pickups deliver the classic Fishman sound, making Johnson guitars great plugged or unplugged.
Johnson electric guitars and basses are equipped with pickups designed by EMG. EMG pickups are an industry standard known for their noise-canceling qualities and vibrant tone. EMG-designed pickups on Johnson electric guitars and basses are created using a precise method of coil construction for greater sonic tonality. Instruments with these pickups feature a "Johnson EMG" tag printed on the pickup.
Humbuckers are pickups that are designed with opposing polarities. This gives them a noise (hum) canceling effect, thus called “hum-bucking” or humbuckers. Humbuckers are generally known for having a thicker sound than a single coil pickup. They are equally good for both clean, low-volume playing and ear-splitting distortion.
Simply put, active pickups have a circuit that requires battery power, whereas passive pickups don’t require any additional power to operate. However, this simple difference can mean a lot to your guitar’s tone and overall output.
Passive pickups send a low output, raw signal to the amp that can only be affected by the volume and tone controls on the instrument itself. Passive pickups tend to lose the extremes of high and low frequencies, but still give a very even and punchy tone. This is because passive pickups tend to push out more midrange frequencies. While passive pickups might give players less dynamic control, their smooth sound is still very unique and desirable.
Active pickups have pre-amps that are built into the pickup housing, so they can drive the signal to the amp themselves. This pre-amp must be powered by a source other than the amp; so active pickups require a separate battery to operate. This allows the pickup to send a higher output signal, producing a more complete, full-range sound than most passive pickup systems and giving players more control of instrument dynamics, projection and tone.
RMS stands for “Root Mean Square,” which is a fancy mathematical formula for finding the average amount of power an amplifier can continuously produce. There is no legal standard for calculating RMS watts for an amplifier, but our amplifiers are tested by the Underwriter’s Laboratories (UL) to obtain a true RMS power rating.
“Phantom Power,” “Headroom?” — What are they talking about?
Though Phantom Power might sound like a superhero’s catch phrase, it isn’t. Phantom power simply powers the pre-amp of a condenser microphone. Many powered mixers feature phantom power (MX-300-8) so users won’t need to rely on additional batteries or power sources. While phantom power functions ideally on condenser mics, an unbalanced dynamic mic can be damaged. So, do not turn phantom power on unless a mic that needs it is connected to the mixer.
Headroom is a concept that refers to a system’s (amp, mixer, etc.) dynamic range, or normal working volume. Headroom refers to an average (in decibels) between the normal volume of a system and the volume at which it starts to distort. Basically that means if you have a system that sounds good at +6db and distorts at 18db, that system has headroom of +12db. Knowing how much headroom your system has will allow you to use it to its full capacity without damage the system.
In very simple terms, impedance is the ability to resist electrical power. Impedance is measured in Ohms. The lower the impedance, the more power the system will accept *because the resistance is low). Speaker cabinets are generally rated at 8 Ohms. If you plug them in to each other the Ohms are cut in half, and become 4 Ohms. This is because two speakers resist power half as much as one speaker. Power amps are sometimes rated at 4 Ohms, because it is expected that you will use two 8-Ohm speaker cabinets. A 100-watt (@ 4oms) amp will give each speaker about 50 watts. But, what if you only plug in only one (8 ohm) speaker, will it get all 100 watts? No, because the impedance and watts are related. If the impedance is doubled then the watts are cut in half, the single speaker will only get 0 watts. Never go below the minimum impedance of an amplifier. It can cause serious damage to the amplifier. So, don’t try to plug 8 speakers into one 100-watt amp to get more power, because it is a trick you can only try once.
