A discussion on use of different timbers for building guitars and basses

Kalimna

Rather than further derail the 'tonewood' thread, I thought I would start again here. Rather than argue over whether 'tonewood' as a distinct category exists, or what the scientifically measureable variables might be (of much more value in acoustic instrument tops and bracing, however), it would be nice to explore experienced builders' thoughts on timbers used.
Consistency between planks of the same wood, workability of the the timber, average density, hardness, ability to take a finish, cost/availability, that sort of thing.

To start the ball rolling, Ive built three electrics - one mahogany body/jarrah cap fixed bridge with Mark Bailey, a padauk bodied twin humbucker with maple neck, semi-hollow afromsosia single-coiled with rosewood neck and laburnum fingerboard. From my perspective, a huge range of timber and tones. The mahogany easiest to work, padauk looks fabulous under Tru-Oil and the afromosia is nothing short of an irritating bitch to work, but a nice woody through to Knopfler-twang tone and feels great with the Tru-Oil.

My next builds (see my new wood day post ) will be horse-chestnut bodied strat-a-likes and a mahog-with-rippled-ash-cap double neck. I also have some left-over sweet chestnut I would like to use, alongside more laburnum and hornbeam easily large enough for acoustic sets.

Thoughts? Comments?

Adam

WezV

I haven't got loads of time at the mo and I am away for the next 4 days, so don't take silence for lack of interest.

if you look at my last few build threads I tend to start with my thoughts on the wood choice and grain characteristics purely because that's where I start most builds- excited about the materials I have.

Lets not limit it to wood, alternative materials should be welcome.



we are still surrounded by wood in everyday life.  I tend to tap most bits I see.  Apparently it's a bit annoying when we are sat at the pub and I am considering if the table will make a nice guitar.

Danielsguitars

I built a set neck strat in limba with a madagascan fretboard
I used a schaller top loading hardtail bridge 

My observation was whilst it still very strat like to me, it was warmer sounding and more musical and tonally balanced to my ears

I've got loads of builds planned and not enough time, walnut, spalted beech caps, 100 yr old pine, zebrano caps 

One of my current favorite woods is limba, I made a Lp special with a bubinga fretboard which sounds fantastic to me 
Very raw, bright and loud unplugged
I used a normal long tenon rather than full width tenon on normal juniors
Can't say if it makes a difference but I like this the way it is

I have a dc junior build planned in limba with a full width tenon 

AustrianJohn

First, a big THANK YOU to @Kalimna for staring this thread (separate to the tonewood flamefest). I am genuinely intrigued by this subject, but also genuinely skeptical of those that say stuff like “a mahogany guitar is warm, an alder guitar is twangy etc etc”. However, when I find my opinion at odds with that of @WezV, I take that as a signal that I’m probably wrong!

I’m a mediocre amateur builder whose projects include a baritone guitar (ash body, spalted beech top), Strat (mahogany body, korina top), Tele (basswood body, korina top), pointy noisy thing (wenge body), very pretty pointy noisy thing (ash body, flamed maple top), Gilmour-inspired black Strat (alder body) and my current project which has an ash body and zebrano top.One of the themes you’ll have spotted is that I build guitars with pretty tops. I like wood. I like pretty wood. When I built the spalted beech baritone I said “never again” for spalted wood because it was really difficult to work with. But that guitar looks so f*cking cool that I WILL build another guitar with a spalted top. I confess that I have NEVER thought about using a particular wood because of the sound it might generate – until now (maybe).

A while ago I had four Strat type guitars, which I thought was too many. The one that I sold was my only real Strat – a Highway One. It looked great, and it played great, but it just sounded a bit “meh”. The two Strat’s I’d built sounded way better (black Strat and mahogany/korina Strat). But the one that sounded best (to me) was the Hohner Strat copy I’d bought as a project on eBay. When I stripped the body down I found it was plywood. Having rebuilt it from a wreck – I think it’s the best sounding of these 4 Strats.

In my limited experience, the thing that really affects tone is pickups. For my personal preference I guess I’d be happy to build single pickup guitars with a single coil in the neck position. But I tend to throw in a bridge HB for variety (current build is a P90 in the bridge).

In conclusion – I can’t tell the difference between guitars I have built using different woods. But I can tell the difference between guitars I’ve built using different styles or makes of pickup.

I have the wood for my next two builds. A one piece ash body, maple neck, quilted maple top, and my first acoustic (mahogany back and sides, cedar top). But these build will have to wait for next year as my workshop gets too cold from October through April.

OilCityPickups

Though I havn't built in quite a few years ... I love building in mahogany  ... something in the way it works under the tools. It smells amazing takes carving crisply, and yes ... sounds good. Not all mahogany is created equal mind ... 

WezV

TheGuitarWeasel said:

Though I havn't built in quite a few years ... I love building in mahogany  ... something in the way it works under the tools. It smells amazing takes carving crisply, and yes ... sounds good. Not all mahogany is created equal mind ... 

I think variation in mahogany is noticeably bigger than most other species. Even if you focus on just one of the types of mahogany.  Something like rock maple is really consistent and predictable in comparison.  

WezV

The important bit to me is that multiple approaches can produce equally valid results.  Some people think that is me sitting on the fence.  Nah,  that's me being open to options.

its a variable, and I think we all agree it's not top of the list.  You can ignore it or factor it out and still get good guitars.

i will use the John Birch example again because I own one and his approach does not match my own but the guitar is nice.  He factored the wood out by using a consistent supply of one species.  That left him free to play with pickups and wiring without worrying about the wood.


weight is still the primary factor which leads me to rejecting some woods, closely followed by workability 

Danielsguitars

WezV said:

weight is still the primary factor which leads me to rejecting some woods, closely followed by workability 

Same here wez

I built 2 Lp types same construction etc 
Both honduran mahogany but there was a pound difference in body weight
Anyway before I started weighing blanks out and working final weights out I put these together and this is why I started weighing everything btw

result was one was 8.5lb finished the other 9.5lb finished
Sound wise, I'm only talking unplugged tone, the light one just rang out nicely the heavy one just didn't have the jangle I'm looking for, imo heavy guitars aren't as versatile because of lack of jangle or top end, very difficult to explain for me but very noticeable

I didn't even finish the heavy one, I took the fretboard off and I'll take it apart at some point and do some weight relieving or belly contours

MartinB

I haven't built a large number of instruments, just two basses some years apart.  The more recent has an ash body with a bolt-on maple neck and fingerboard.  It has passive Jazz type pickups and the sound and response is very much in the sort of ballpark you would expect from a Fender-ish bass.  It's also not wildly different sounding from the alder/maple/rosewood Fender Jazz I played before that, and I doubt I could recall which one I was playing from recordings of them. 
The other one was built back in my late teens in my parents' shed, kind of crudely.  It has an American walnut body about 50mm thick, bolt-on maple neck with rosewood fingerboard and it weighs something like 12lbs.  It's had four different pickups over the years (and a second pickup added later) and two different types of bridge.  I also shaved the neck (which was initially very chunky) down after a few years of playing it.  Through all of the hardware and pickup changes it has kept a particular character which is different from a Fender type bass.  It sustains well and is very forward in the upper mids.  When listened to unplugged you can hear less low end than with my other bass, though there is usually enough there plugged in.  It takes a conscious effort to get a mellower tone out of it, even when I had flatwounds and a humbucker on there.  I don't play it so often now due to the weight, but it does make me think that something in the construction or materials of that bass contribute to the plugged-in sound. 

Roland

Has anyone tried composite or laminated necks?

The Parker Fly's carbon fibre and resin exoskeleton really impressed me. The sound was bright, with loads of attack and unamplified sustain. The down sides were little midrange, and I couldn't get the notes to develop and "bloom" when held or vibrated.

Fibre and resin would be difficult for the home builder to use. Parker had problems getting the process to work reliably on a commercial scale. Laminated wood necks are quite common for small scale manufacture of bass guitars. Has anyone got experience of using laminated for guitar necks?

lysander

Have you guys used Sapele for bodies or necks ?

It looks nice and is quite cheap, but having worked with it recently to make some tools I found it was a bit of a bitch to work with.

First it seems to have a tendency to warp, then in one batch I had some pieces that had straight easy grain and others that had crazy interlocked grain that wanted to split any other way than the one you were trying to cut.

Some sections were also ridiculously hard ( much more than maple ) while others were quite workable.

I also found it quite hard to plane, with a tendency to have small but deep splits that are hard to smooth out.

All in all I was a bit put off.

Danielsguitars

I've built a sepele body guitar and it sounded excellent but it's heavy even with it being thinner 

If I used it again I'd chamber it

earwighoney

customkits said:

One of my current favorite woods is limba, I made a Lp special with a bubinga fretboard which sounds fantastic to me 
Very raw, bright and loud unplugged

I played that guitar and f*cking loved it. 

In terms of other guitars of @customkits ;I've played I've noticed the Limba guitars in comparison to the Mahogany ones have a bit more brightness when played acoustically.  

The Limba Special really worked with the volume/tone rolled back for smoother, warmer tones and with the volume/tone rolled up it's aggressive character.

GSPBASSES

Roland said:

Has anyone tried composite or laminated necks?

The Parker Fly's carbon fibre and resin exoskeleton really impressed me. The sound was bright, with loads of attack and unamplified sustain. The down sides were little midrange, and I couldn't get the notes to develop and "bloom" when held or vibrated.

Fibre and resin would be difficult for the home builder to use. Parker had problems getting the process to work reliably on a commercial scale. Laminated wood necks are quite common for small scale manufacture of bass guitars. Has anyone got experience of using laminated for guitar necks?

Have a look at http://www.gusguitars.com/ he is the one maker who has broke the mould on guitar shape and the materials used in construction. Apart from the tuners and strings he makes every part thats on the guitar.

If you remember, he's the guy who made Princess last guitar.

Sporky

Roland said:

Laminated wood necks are quite common for small scale manufacture of bass guitars. Has anyone got experience of using laminated for guitar necks?

I've tried a few times, but they tend not to survive machining. Could be a duff lot of glue, could be insufficient prep of the timbers (though I don't think that's likely).

I'm not (yet) convinced it's more than an aesthetic thing for guitars - flatsawn maple is easily strong enough, so even the archtop technique of splitting a flatsawn neck blank into three, rotating each 90 degrees and gluing back together to make a sort-of-quartersawn arrangement seems a lot of work.

WezV

I have done Quite a few laminated necks, usually 5-7 piece of its balanced grain and cf reinforcement.  I have tried different styles of cf reinforcement too.  

Its possible to make a neck too stiff, it can sound too direct.

these days I still often laminate but try and limit the stiffness.  The neck is a big part of the sound for me, and controlling the stiffness of neck shaft AND headstock makes a noticeable difference between vintage and modern resonance.  Most vintage guitars have less stiff necks

WezV

Sapelli is an unusual one.  Lots of similarities with mahogany but it's often stiffer and denser.

its a great wood if you get a nice resonant bit

aord43

Where do people get these various woods?  What would be the result if I tried out guitar making using a bit of plywood from B&Q?

Andyjr1515

Good thread this, @Kalimna .  Nice to see an informed discussion without the dreaded 't***wood' morasse.

What 'Tom's African Build' taught me (one of my wierdest builds...I can find the thread if anyone's interested) is that as long as the neck is sound and everything is bolted one way or another onto that neck, there is a huge, huge, leeway within the 'functionally OK' spectrum for many interesting woods to be used.

In later builds I've tried to push the sides to see where the limit is.  I'm prepared to have a go with most woods, but by preference I tend to look at three or four key attributes:

• Visual look (plain contrasts as well as fancy figuring)
• Workability
• Weight
• Stability & Stiffness
  

There are some I love the look of but despise using them, such as:
cocobolo; wenge

There are some that are a dream to work with and look good too:
walnut....er....walnut.  Oh, and some figured mahoganies, figured sycamore.  Actually, loads really...

There are ones which look great but are more challenging with the weight or workability or safety:
pomelled bubinga comes to mind on the first two counts, camphor on the second point, yew on the last point.

And there are some which are nice to work with even if a little plain but, as above, great for contrasts of, say, back and top:
mahogany, alder, ash, poplar

I avoid discussions about tone, but am interested in the 'gravitas' of a guitar or bass.  I love the Ibanez SR range of basses, but some of the cheaper ones you can actually feel the string vibrations through the bodywood.  My fading engineering education tells me that's lost energy that won't get to the pickups (for better or for worse but logic would point to worse rather than better).  That's where my interest in the stiffness of woods starts getting awakened.... 

Roland

aord43 said:

Where do people get these various woods?  What would be the result if I tried out guitar making using a bit of plywood from B&Q?

As an experiment I made two Telecaster bodies out of B&Q "furniture board" which is made of 3mm wide strips of pine glued together. The board is thin, so you have to glue two thicknesses together.

The first had a @GSPBASSES maple neck, which is probably why it sounds bright and lively. The second had a cheap Chinese neck, and sounds dead.

Danielsguitars

WezV said:

these days I still often laminate but try and limit the stiffness.  The neck is a big part of the sound for me, and controlling the stiffness of neck shaft AND headstock makes a noticeable difference between vintage and modern resonance.  Most vintage guitars have less stiff necks

I have exactly the same view wez on neck stiffness, although I don't laminate I still want a neck just stiff enough to do the job, I want some vibrating movement when played if that makes sense
I think alot of vintage tone comes from the neck too

I'll probably laminate at some point just to try it