A lot of manufacturers, and the more hippie-esque musicians, see solidbody electric guitars as some kind of mystical creature that is made of wood and wire that has all these mysterious reasons for sounding or sustaining the way they do - it's not mysterious, get your head out of your ass, it's SCIENCE!

The sound coming from the guitar is a amaglamation of everything in it's construction, but all of the elements vary wildly from "has no effect on the sound characteristicts at all" to "this IS the sound".

There's two ways you can go about this, you can either be a smart consumer, and go after the guitar that feels and sounds best to you, or you can do like I do, and know too much about everything, and know exactly what you want if you're going to build it for yourself.

First off, the tone wood debate is bunk. Wood matters maybe 30% or less, and all that matters about wood is density, hardness, and pourousness. All of those affect a mild mild mild mild bit of absorbing treble frequencies and the sustain. Think of it as a slider, more dens, hard, and less porous, means you get more high frequencies, more sustain, a tighter low-end that's a little less "warm", and more "snap" to the sound. Slide the other way, you lose some sustain, gain some real warmth and resonance, less snap, and more of a mellowed out sound. But it's so tiny, it's almost not even worth mentioning. I have a Kramer Striker 100ST with very dense plywood, and I have a MadRite made out of pine. At the end of the day, both have sufficient sustain, and both are very gainy with a 12+K Humbucker at the bridge, and some of the wood effects are highly negated by pickup placement on the Madrite VS the Kramer. It's not species, it's those variables that matter the most.

Necks are made out of certain wood because it NEEDS to be dense, hard, and may need assistance in holding the 98-220LBS of pressure the tuned up strings are putting on the wood to hold pitch. Hence why Maple, Mahogany, Ebony, Rosewood, and also stuff like Carbon Fiber and Aluminum are used in neck construction. It's not about "tone" so much as it's about density. Now, let's debate a weird feature for a moment, Paul Dean's "resonance slots". How those works is it involves the neck in the sound of the body, and gives a faint modulation to the sound, a "Resonance", and it works. But people who check it out think it's going to be this big drastic thing, and many confuse Paul Dean's Wah Wah pedal with the resonance slots sound (raises hand - guilty). The resonance is a subtle thing that's mostly noticeable with single note lines during solos, and it works in tandem with a dense body wood, high breakover bridge, and high gain guitar tone. And it works by making the neck vibrate just a little more in sympathy with the body. But in the grand scheme, it doesn't make enough of a difference for people to say "hey, I need that". Most people don't even notice. I do, I'm a guitarist. But I also know the average non-playing listener isn't listening to that guitar tone except during the solo, and to them, could be a pedal for all they know making that sound, not the guitar's construction.

Tuners make no fucking difference whatsoever. The Tuners, or machine heads primary function, is to tighten or loosen the strings, that's it. Now, the methods you use RESTRINGING the guitar do make a difference when it comes to how well it stays in tune, as do the strings themselves to an extent - about 50% or less. Locking tuner