Maple for a Strat body?

XWulfhere

I'm just wondering if anyone has ever used maple for a Strat or other solid body guitar? I'm planning to make a strat body a bit later in the year - I've got enough ash but to be honest I much prefer maple to work with... on the other hand might it be a bit on the heavy side?

hobbio

Make it a thinline?

XWulfhere

Nahh, I'm just finishing up a thinline I don't want to do another one! Nice simple solid!

hobbio

Yeah, I've just spotted that thread! Sorry

octatonic

I wouldn't do it myself- it will be very heavy as you say.

Steinberger did maple bodies for some of their R series instruments.

Not a fan.

Aidanspaghetti

The fender John Jorgensen strat was a maple body iirc... Really heavy guitar too.... Sounded ace though..

WezV

I used to have a solid maple Cheri Superstrat.   It was nice enough, a bit bright.  weight wan't too bad but it was quite a slimline guitar and fully routed for a floyd

I still have a solid maple john birch les paul.   it weighs pretty much the same as an average les paul at just over 9lbs.

It has had period correct dimarzios and the original john birch pickups in it.  with the original pickups its quite bright and cutting, with the dimarzios its actually much more in normal les paul territory.  you can hear the extra zing of the maple but its a long way from being too bright.  The super distortion is quite brittle in my epi les paul, but actually sounded much more rounded in the john birch

I am not in a rush to make a solid maple guitar, but I no longer assume they will be too heavy or too bright

WezV

how about some real figures.

These are average weights:

Red Alder = 495 kg/m3

Honduran Mahogany = 590 kg/m3

White Ash = 675 kg/m3

"Swamp" Ash* = 509 kg/m3

Rock maple = 705 kg/m3

Soft Maple = 545 kg/m3

European maple = 615 kg/m3

lets use those figures to work out how heavy a 4lb alder body becomes with  those woods

Red Alder = 4lb

Honduran Mahogany = 4.8lb

White ash = 5.4lb

"swamp" ash  = 4.1lb

Rock maple = 5.7lb

Soft Maple = 4.4lb

European Maple = 5.0lb

now this only tells you so much because wood varies so much and some of these species vary more than others.  But it does show that you can get maple options well within the normal ballpark.

always best to judge the bit of wood you have in front of you

*not seperate species, but seperate classification of the same species

XWulfhere

Thanks for your answer @WezV

It might be something I could try, perhaps I could compensate by making the body a little thinner. The main reason was that I find maple easier to work with. However, I do have enough ash for one last body so maybe I will use that. I'll be using alder instead of ash from now on :-)

octatonic

You could always weight relieve the maple body.

ThePrettyDamned

I tried a les paul raw power (maple body, neck and board) and it wasn't too heavy (bit brutish but not awful) and it sounded huge, very fat - detailed but not bright and harsh at all.