Plywood Guitars

Jeremiah

I have a partscaster with a plywood body (which was found lying in a field, so I have no idea what guitar it came from originally.)

It sounds fine, but is significantly heavier than a similar shape alder body.

jeztone2

My Kramer Striker 300 was plywood. As was a mates Marlin S type. It's hard to take in for you " young un's ". But when the Yamaha Pacifica came out it really did change the budget guitar landscape. 

proggy

My first guitar was a Satellite Precision copy which was plywood.

It was also a piece of crap.

jeztone2

proggy said:

My first guitar was a Satellite Precision copy which was plywood.

It was also a piece of crap.

My brother had one, but his was a 3 piece Ash body. Weird?

proggy

jeztone2 said:

proggy said:

My first guitar was a Satellite Precision copy which was plywood.

It was also a piece of crap.

My brother had one, but his was a 3 piece Ash body. Weird?

I know it was ply because I passed it on to a mate and he decided to strip the paint off to leave a natural wood finish, but it looked so bad he painted it again.

Bridgehouse

Lol. Literally everyone knows that wood doesn’t affect tone. 

OilCityPickups

A few years ago I had a candy apple red Korean Squier Strat ... ply ... but sounded great

JezWynd

I'm pretty certain this is plywood too -

thermionic

                                                                          ^^^^
My first guitar was the six-string version of that.

My first bass was a plywood Marlin, and my first Strat, a late 80s/early 90s Korean Squier was also likely plywood.

vale

Funkfingers said:

Don't look, vale.

https://i.imgur.com/O7FqwmS.jpg?1

@TheGuitarWeasel was saying in another thread that hofner aquired the wire to wind their orignal pickups as ex us army stock, when the yanks cleared off home after the war.

looks like their plywood ammo boxes didn't go to waste either. oh me! oh my!

to make a thing of such profound beauty from such base raw materials was truly hofner's genius.

Bridgehouse

JezWynd said:

I'm pretty certain this is plywood too -

I have ply envy now..

skullfunkerry

My first guitar was a white Epiphone superstrat thing which was made of plywood. Sound was fine, as long as you remembered to put the trem back where you found it! It wasn't very good at returning to pitch  
Not sure that's the fault of the plywood body though  

pintspiller

My first was a Kay LP copy. I also had a Hondo II LP copy. All ply.

vale

i think it's funny when people turn their noses up at a lovely sounding ply guitar, purely for being ply, then spend an immodest fortune on a vintage silvertone literally made of freeze-dried dogsh*t.

Bridgehouse

vale said:

i think it's funny when people turn their noses up at a lovely sounding ply guitar, purely for being ply, then spend an immodest fortune on a vintage silvertone literally made of freeze-dried dogsh*t.

Stick me down at the head of the queue for some of this freeze dried dogshit pls..

thegummy

ICBM said:

I nearly forgot this... probably the most plywood of all plywood guitars!

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/75/3a/2a/753a2aa33bfb44a5df480266836b3ac7.jpg




(If you don't already know, it's a Gibson Zoot Suit.)

That is actually so cool!

prowla

I currently have 4 plywood guitars: a 60s Vox bass I'm restoring, two Hondo II Ric copy projects, and a Frankenstein P-bass to which I've fitted a Status Graphite neck.

WezV

I have had a few, including the satellite I ended up putting on a bonfire because it was so crap.

mostly, it’s a sign of a cheap guitar and many other factors will contribute to its shitness.  But there is a difference between good ply and bad ply.

335’s are a different ball game.  Firstly they have a lot of solid wood in them.  Most importantly, the ply is not your standard crap, it’s specially produced. This isn’t the stuff you can pick up at wickes with loads of voids- my old satellite wasn’t far off that.  

Same goes for Hofner.  Fairly sure from the unfinished body I have here that they were laminating their own ply in the molds.

you also have the recycled skateboard guitars out there, and Martin’s stratobond necks

lets go a step further.  A hippie sandwich on an Alembic is just fancy ply.

impmann

The red special has a large amount of block board in it...

baldy

I have an El cheapo guitar that has a body made up of many indiscriminate pieces of unknown wood & a hardboard top.
Everyone that has played it has commented on how good it sounds.