"I've found through the years that certain paints sound better"
 

This is the most Spinal Tap statement I have ever heard.

i actually posted this on my FB and it incited quite a debate, and a lot of straight up corgan haters are agreeing with him on this.

"white sounds the best", oh, of course.

If he'd acknowledged that some of the tone is influenced by how a person plays their guitar, and that how a person regards their guitar, be it paint color or whatever, influences how they play, thus impacting the tone, I could see that, but because he doesn't, he comes off as just being fucking nuts. And it's no passing remark, he really digs in to the idea "Ive found through the years certain paints sound different." This delusion is years in the making.

I know things are bound to get worse from here on out, and yet I can't even imagine what worse looks like. Someone mentioned Gene Simmons, I think Billy past that post a few miles back.

How the fuck would paint have a discernable influence on the sound of an electrically amplified instrument?

It's even a stretch to believe it would do so for an acoustic instrument, but at least it's conceivable.

But when what's carrying the sound is moving magnetic fields stimulating currents in wires… yeah, no, the paint's not doing shit.

are you actually mad over this

Of course not, it's just business.

TONE BATTLE

Titanium White vs Zinc White

Well a lot of guitarists would strip the paint off their guitars, e.g. Lennon with his Epiphone. It led to a change in the tone.

Perhaps if he had said "heavier paints" or what was in the paint, and how it effected the tone, then that would've sounded better.

There's something in that. Although I think when you're dealing with an electrified, amplified and distorted instruments the difference is so minimal as to barely be noticeable.

And to think he has to cheek to call out nerds on Instagram who ask about gear.

add to that Rick Rubin recording an album and then the mastering further destroying any semblance of good sound and it's pretty fair to say that the colour of the guitar does not matter one tiny little shit

Real life response to this in an FB group:

Oh mate, this is sweet but Billy Corgan doesn't have magic ears and your daughter isn't better at colours than other children.

but yes billy does have magic ears when he was a child he did a music test and he was the best in the country he was a musical genius but his dad didn't want to pay for the school so too bad

The Dangers of Huffing Paint: Effects on the Brain and Body

The process of “huffing” typically involves putting the substance (e.g., paint) in some type of container, such as a bag, and then rapidly breathing in the fumes to achieve their psychoactive effects. Because these psychoactive effects are often very short-lived, individuals will continue to “huff” the fumes in order to extend the effects. The data from SAMHSA also suggests that younger individuals (under the age of 17) are more likely to inhale products like paint, paint thinner, etc., and older individuals are more likely to inhale products with nitrous oxide in them and write albums with titles such as Shiny and Oh So Bright.

https://americanaddictioncenters.org.../huffing-paint

interesting

i will discuss this with my team and come back to you

The way a solid body or chambered body guitar resonates acoustically does matter when put through electronics (pickups to effects to amps).

I asked my guitar builder/luthier about this. Different paints/finishes have different chemical makeups, so a blue could arguably have a different result than white has on how an instrument resonates. Ultimately going for no paint, and having just a wood finish would be best way to get the truest tone out of the instrument.

I can say I had changed the pickguard on my guitar once, and the thinner plastic made it sound more brittle and feedback in an unpleasant way. Changed it back and said issue was gone.

I had a well-respected luthier tell me something similar a few years ago when I took a g to him to get painted

Took it with a grain of salt, but still, this Corgo event wasn't the first time i'd heard that remark, & i'm inclined to believe it's not "utter malarky" as some are quickly labelling it

What's dumb about this is assuming that different colors of paint are how we should understand differences in the chemical composition of paints. I would think that the paint pigments are insignificant compared to chemicals related to gloss, hardness, etc.

The other silly thing is that in the era of people liking billy's music his guitars were covered in acrylic paint flowers, washes, words, etc. I used to think that was so cool and punk. Oh how times have changed.

On most all of the electrics Billy plays, the thickness of the paint itself is a tiny fraction of the thickness of the primer and polyurethane coat. The idea that the paint has structural consequence is laughable. It's possible that there are variations in the thickness of the finish for other reasons, but that would now go hand in hand with the color of paint.

Regardless of how many years he has been playing, if he has never done a blindfolded A/B test, then he should be disregarded. This is a folly, people thinking that just because they've been involved something for a long time, or have made money doing something, that this somehow makes their wild guesses more correct, when at the end of the day, it's still just a wild guess.

I don't get why you seem insistent that a coating no mater how thin it is on a material will affect the material.

This is like saying the weights put on wheels to balance them can not have any possible affect on the balance of the wheels, I mean the weights are a tiny fraction of what the car weighs.

scholars point to paint to show that the tiny fraction illustrates the sound of paint! this proves my point.

The resonance of the colour collects light at a sub atomic level which then sends a universal harmonic frequency up the neck of the guitar. You need to play the guitar with a mini obelisk to best understand this or you aren't a professional, like me.

Wheels spin around really fast, thus symmetry is crucial to their operation.

Guitars spin too, but as can be seen, the relatively low velocity reduces the necessity for such an exacting symmetry

https://media.tenor.com/images/4e720...1815/tenor.gif

I have a hard time believing that the tonal differences between different paints, as long as it was done professionally, is even perceptible. I understand guitars are really sensitive and respond to very minor things, but it seems more likely to me that guitarists, especially high end players, develop psychological particularities in their relationship to their playing and their instruments. I'm sure Billy does really feel the white color sounds better, so that probably translates into it actually sounding better whether it's literally because of the paint or because of something unmeasurable he perceives which improves his playing.

I mean it's possible, but I would have to see this demonstrated with the same setup and same guitar in two different colors to believe it... and even then, no two guitars ever sound exactly alike

Yep nothing moving really fast a on guitar that could be affected by minor changes. nope.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p5dtCeP6Q4...cy%2BChart.JPG

I'm once again honored to be the first to tell you that in fact it's the string that is moving fast, albeit not in a circular manner, while the paint, on the guitar, is still. If the string is damaged in such a way so as to no longer be symmetrical end to end, bad tones can result, similar to an imbalanced tire, but again, the paint, not involved in the matter.

Next Billy is going to claim the earth is flat.

I thought this was a typo