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I can't seem to find a definitive answer to my question. I have a Yamaha F335 acoustic guitar and I want to put a sticker that says "Supreme" (here it is on Amazon). But people have been telling me that it will affect the sound. It's just one sticker.
Will a sticker affect the sound? If it does affect it, how much will the sound be affected?
One sticker on the guitar body will by any reasonable metric make diddly squat difference to the sound being made. There's just no way such an imperceptible change in mass will affect the resonance, and it's not like a sticker is going to restrict vibration of the surface either.
I mean hell, most acoustic guitars have big plastic pickguards on them, and it's really just fine.
Use your sticker. As a bonus, if anyone starts talking to you about how it might affect your tone, you now know who to kill first when the time comes.
Edit:
BONUS MURDER ROUND:
anyone who can't play in time but tells you they get the better tone if they use the right brand of batteries in their tube screamer
Jokes aside, sticker your guitar all you want, and most importantly, enjoy playing it :)
I don't think it will affect the overall sound. Something like the freshness of your strings will have a much bigger impact.
Yes.
But it depends on what is your guitar, what's the wood, where you place it, how thick is the sticker.
I'm assuming your Yamaha F335 is made of a plywood, then if you place your sticker on the back of your guitar, it'll be fine I guess. But if you place it on your fingerboard, it will affect the sound so much. But I know you'll place it somewhere on the top of the body. Where 1/4 of the sound will be affected.
How to minimize that is by understanding your bracing, because it is some kind of road where your sound goes and bounces. If you put the sticker near the bracing, you'll get some buzz (on the sound that comes out — I don't know how to call it, but) caused by vibrating sticker. Relax, it's not caused by the strings, it's just the sticker against the audio signal from the guitar (cause my friend once got that problem). If you put it far from the bracing, where the signal is bounce freely inside your guitar body, like the edge of your guitar, I think it'll be fine and don't really affect your sound so much.
If your sticker is kinda thick, the sound you'll get is kinda darker. But if it's not really thick, it wouldn't affect the sound so much.
One sticker on a Yamaha F335 will not have a perceptible effect on the sound of the guitar. If you covered the entire soundboard (top) with stickers, you might notice an impact on the resonance of your tone.
Most of the sound from an acoustic guitar is produced by the vibration of the top - also known as the sound board. Anything that reduces or dampens the vibration can have at least a slight effect on the sound. But as another answer mentioned, a sticker is likely to have less impact on the sound than a pickguard would. Having said that, if given an option on an acoustic guitar, I personally prefer one with no pickguard.
Stickers on the back of the guitar will have very little or no effect on the tone. But then nobody will see the sticker when you are playing.
Something you may want to consider (besides impact on tone), is the potential for some damage to the finish should you ever remove the sticker. Two things can happen. First, the glue residue will be difficult to remove after the sticker has been affixed to your guitar for some time. And the solvents you use to remove the glue residue, could also damage the finish.
Secondly, exposure to light over time will impact the color of the wood. It will "age" so to speak due to exposure to light. This is why if you remove a pickguard from an older guitar, you will see a ghost or shadow of the pickguard where the coloration of the wood will vary. So it is likely that removal of a sticker after a year or more, could leave a ghost of the shape of the sticker from a variation in the coloration of the wood - unless you only take the guitar out of it's case occasionally to minimize exposure to light.
For these reasons, adding a sticker may slightly diminish the value of the guitar, if selling it in the future is a consideration. If you plan to keep the guitar in your collection forever, and you like the sticker, and if it will enhance your enjoyment of your guitar, by all means stick it on.
PS: I like stickers too - but I put them on my hardshell guitar cases where they can't possible effect the tone, and are easier to remove with no damage to the case. That's an option for those who read this who want to compromise and have their stickers but with no negative impact on the tone or value of their guitar.
