G. Bridge

I can't tell you much about how this type of bridge material will affect your tone, but I do know that a fixed bridge will best maximize your frequency response and sustain. If you have a floating bridge, you may lose a little brightness (or some thickness) - something to keep in mind for pickup selection and tone editing. You can use a Tremel-no or put a block of wood under the bridge to keep it from floating. I recommend the Tremel-no – it allows you to switch on the fly by turning a thumb-screw.

Also, if you have a Strat type bridge (whammy dives only) or floating bridge, I recommend stuffing the bear claw cavity in the back of the guitar with Kleenex or cotton balls or gauze. This will keep the springs from making any noise, so that they do not ring after you play a note. This is essential for hard rock and metal, where you use lots of compression/distortion and have to play punchy rhythm or lead sections that require you to quickly mute all the strings. This is a common technique, not some ill-thought-out hack. Similarly, mute the strings between the nut and tuner to prevent them from ringing. I like to use sticky-tack (earthquake putty), but you can also use foam or a wristband.

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H. Nut

The nut is an often overlooked area of the guitar. It needs to be positioned properly for the guitar to intonate correctly. It has a strong effect on the action. An improperly filed nut can cause tuning and sustain issues or cause buzzing/ringing on open strings. I recommend having a professional adjust your nut. To file it correctly it is best done with specialized filing tools, which are too costly to justify a one-time use. I like my nut to be like the 0th fret - providing a similar clearance over the 1st fret for open strings as they have over the 2nd fret when fretting the 1st fret. Any lower and they'll buzz. Any higher and intonation is off and action is unnecessarily high. The strings should make firm contact with the nut right where they leave the nut and travel over the fret board. The grooves should point directly towards the tuning pegs. They should be wide enough to fit the string in easily and so that it doesn't pinch when tuning or bending. It also has to be smooth so the string slides easily over it and doesn't break. But it can't be so wide as to allow the string to rattle in the groove. They have to be deep enough so the strings don't pop out, but shallow enough so the strings can easily fit into and out of the nut.

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I. Body/Fret board/Tuners/Neck-through/etc.

Some people claim all the "tone" is in other parts of the guitar. I've had people tell me I gotta get such-and-such tuners, or this kind of fret board, or a neck-through design, or a body made of this kind of wood, or this kind of paint job, etc. etc. While all these things certainly will affect the tone, I don't think they have nearly as much impact as the things I mentioned above. Very popular artists that have all achieved highly desirable tones throughout the ages have used a very wide variety of such things. Most fret boards are rosewood, but EVH played a maple one mostly. Jimmy Page used a 10+ lb. Les Paul, yet Steve Vai's Jem's are like 4 lbs.

Get tuners that help best tune your guitar. Set the guitar up properly. Worry about body weight and your bridge setting for sustain rather than tone. Paint the guitar the color you want. If any of these things really adversely affect the tone, you can generally use pickups that help counter these affects. For example, if they make your tone bright and thin, use pickups that are a bit darker. If your tone is dull, get bright pickups. Yes, you may lose a bit of potential tone; theoretically, you should maximize the richness of the tone towards your desired tone for every component. But you're not a rocket scientist, nor are you likely going to be able to build your guitar component by component.

Of course, this has limitations. If you're thinking about buying a guitar that sounds really dull, you won't achieve great results by getting really bright pickups. You can't EQ in frequencies that never existed to begin with. My main point here is don't sweat the small stuff. You'll likely get relatively larger tonal improvements by properly setting up your guitar and using good pickups than by spending a fortune building a 100% custom guitar. And your guitar will only get you so far. Even a great guitar still sounds like crap going straight to the board. You need the compression, EQ, and distortion that only post-guitar processing/amplifiers can give you.

Still with me?! Good, let's move on to...USING THE POD...