Hello The traditional wood used in guitar industry are good and you say that we can use a lot of other species of wood. You are right. I think we can search in locals woods where we live. I live in France and we have a lot cherrys wood, apple wood, alder, oak (which is a very good wood for electric guitars), beech, alder, elm, sycomore, walnut, locust, and a lot of others. I just want to say that you don’t need necessery to buy a piece of wood that comes from far away if you have what you need in your country. It’s just an act for the planet 🌎 For my guitars, i just use reclaimed local wood and i like it. I learn a lot of things in luthery with you and thank you very much. Ps: sorry for my english......I’m french 😋🇫🇷
Hey, another French man here! We also have a lot of spruce, fir, Douglas pine, many types of softwoods that, despite what people say, are also really viable for guitar making, add a lot of sustain to your guitar (which is a great thing), are easy to process and just work great. They were used for acoustic guitars for a reason. Yes, the spruce won't be as high-end as some from Scandinavia or high mountains, but, for instance, the one from the Vosges mountains I use for my 3 first guitars have a really interesting grain and sound heavenly. So I can only agree wholeheartedly with your comment. Use what you have on hand, upcycle old furniture, and make awesome stuff with that
Here, in Brazil, we have a lot of woods who can used to luthierie. I use some of them like marupá, muiracatiara, freijó, caixeta, sucupira, pau-ferro, etc, etc... All off them excelent, better than the "traditional" ones...
There is a Luther in NYC who uses 100+ year old pine from the Bowery. When he needs more wood he raids the dumpsters where old buildings are being demoed!
My favorite is people mystifying stuff Fender did early on. Meanwhile Leo Fender was changing body woods just to save money and was telling people to shove business cards in the neck pockets of their brand new instruments 😂
The Jazzmaster which I made for myself has a silver quandong body, Queensland Maple neck and an Amboyna (red rosewood) fretboard. It all machined pretty nicely on my router table so I was happy with the outcome.
Chris, you'd love this book: "The Guitar, Tracing the Grain Back to the Tree", by Chris Gibson. It was published last year. Here in Australia we have used Queensland Maple as a substitute for mahogany for decades. In the past it was stained brown and actually passed off as mahogany, because its grain is so similar. These days Maton and Cole Clarke use it extensively, but attempts at plantations have failed, and stocks are low and increasingly more remote. It will be interesting to see where the Aus manufactures head in future.
I heard that Leo Fender used plain old pine for his first guitars and they worked and sounded fine. maybe not what most guitar purists think of as a proper guitar wood ,but then Leo used what he had and made it work. I'm going to use plywood for a semi-hollow Tele body for cost as well as stability. I'm getting an inexpensive neck on Amazon and then the fret work will be evaluated and redone as needed. fret ends and rolling the finger board edges slightly too...the rest ...who knows what I might improvise...we'll see soon enough...
For anyone interested with access to some timbers from Africa (where i live) -Pod Mahogany, very similar to any other 'mahogany' -Kiaat, slightly less dense than pod mahogany, extremely stable. -Rhodesian teak, not to be confused with 'plantation teak' extremely dense and one of the best fretboard timbers out there. -Tamboti, similar in density, hardness and oiliness to Rhodesian teak, but with a really wild grain pattern. -Purple Jacaranda (jacanda mimosifolia) has a beautiful grain for a white colored wood, and is very consistent to work and stains beatifully. A very plentiful and under appreciated timber. Very good substitue for soft maple, as it often also has flame pattern in it. These are some of the timberd that are available and different to the usual sapele, iroko etc that are commonly used from here. Now if anyone wants what in my opinion is the best fretboard timber in the whole world, dalbergia melanoxylon is it. Of the rosewood family, it is much, much dwnser and harder than brazilian rosewood. It is also a jet black color, but with some barely visible streaks in it. It is harder and denser than the 'diospyros' ebony. In fact, it is the 'ebony' of ancient times. Unfortunately, it is all but extinct in the areas of South East Africe where it used to occur. It is being chopped out of Mozambique and Tanzania at a rate that is completely unsustainable. Turning it on a lathe is like working with mild steel.
❤australia has aprox 300 spiecies of forest trees and at least as many smaller species ,some very slow growing, including casurina, acacia, cyprus pines, and eucalypts . Some are extremely hard and heavy,reistant to decay and warping A book called" forest trees of australia " gives individual notes on these types and where they grow.
Built an ibanez style guitar, 20 years ago, using an ibanez neck that i had. Found 1 piece at specialty lumber yard, of cocobolo, a slightly oily hardwood. Worked in a machine shop, so, had access to various machinery, including a milling machine. Finished with boiled linseed oil. Still plays good today
I made a strat,out of a 12 by 12 inch 40 year old pitch pine post.the pitch had petrified.the guitar resonates through the whole body and neck ,better than any of my other builds.
As a person who has extensive experience with wood as a Woodturner, I can tell you that we are overlooking plenty of wood species that would make wonderful instruments - especially Osage Orange, Black Cherry, Black Walnut, Red Maple and Locust - Osage & Locust are heavy/dense/strong woods that I think would be excellent for guitars.
Thank you! We have problems sourcing out traditional wood for guitar making in my country. I'm from the Philippines and yes I do use the Philippine Mahogany and it is very good to work with. The problem is like as you said, it does not look like the Mahogany from Fender or any other major manufacturers so people are reluctant to buy guitars made from it.
It's silly, isn't it? I think it is safe to assume Leo Fender would have used other wood species if, at the time, they had been as readily available, inexpensive and easy to work with as alder and ash.
@@meadish I think this is part of the reason why some manufacturers like Ibanez prefer most of their guitars made in Indonesia because there are still a lot of wood there that are not typical but have great properties and can be bought cheap.
I have one of those American Rainbow playgrounds in my British garden - bought it for my kids- they now all grown up and I am very keen to repurpose the red cedar into bass guitars. I don't have the tools - thicknessor or table saw - but Tim Sway does a grand job of making beautiful guitars from reclaimed wood. All are works of art and boy can he play them well.
Good video! This is information that a few of us discovered 30-40 years ago but few people believed us until the start of the 21st Century, and even then the word was slow to get around.
Very informative video. I’ve actually used Pinas Radiata (New Zealand Pine) on of few of my builds. It’s a nice hard wood with a fairly open grain. It resonates real well. Easy to work with and the best part is it’s fairly inexpensive. Some people turn their noses up because it’s pine but it’s not soft like typical pine. In some instances it can be just as or harder than oak.
I have bought some wood from a company in north Alabama that sells onl wood grown in the area near the business. I bought some sycamore for a body and maple with long black streaks in the wood the makes it more interesting. If I'm able to go thee again, I may buy some persimmon an experiment with it as a fingerboard. Persimmon was used for golf club construction in the pre-meal wood days, soi it should be hard.
For my latest build I’m using Swedish. Birch, the wood was intended for a table 40+ years ago, but were never used, I got hold of a few blanks and making a guitar out of it. I made the exact same model and design as a previous guitar that was made out of swamp ash and mahogany neck, this one is maple neck and birch body and the acoustic difference between the two is crazy, these are electric guitars so it’s doesn’t matter but it’s eye opening the hear such a huge difference in the acoustic sound, birch have a much brighter almost brittle sound, the swamp ash much more warm, if you can say that of the acoustic sound of a electric guitar 😂
I appreciate the rational, fact based explanations you always offer. I believe Chechen is also called Caribbean Rosewood and is used on fretboards by Rickenbacker.
Great video. For solid body bass guitars, my favorite woods are woods that are easy to work with tools, durable, hit a certain weight range and look nice with clear finish. I prefer to use sustainable woods too. As for weight, I can control much of the weight with how thick the body is. Again, great topic. Keep up the great videos. Cheers.
Paulownia grows extremely fast and is considered invasive. But when it’s dry it’s almost as light as balsa wood but much stronger. Still isn’t a very strong wood, but I could see how that would be a useful wood in building guitar bodies.
I like Kentucky Rosewood, yes, American Black Walnut from the the hills of East Kentucky. Wolcutt's had a run of Tele's and Strat's done up in it for their 50th yr. Anniversary.
This week is my first time in woodworking. I'm currently in a process of learning luthery, making my first acoustic gitar from scrap woods I have available laying around. I plan to use gmelina white teak for the neck and heartwood of sonokembang as fretboard and bridge. I hope it will turn out okay.
Ive been using roasted sycamore for neck and fingerboards, its used as cladding, you have to select good bits but it is really cost effective, looks good, is stable and smells lovely.
I have one ibanez bass with a jotoba neck- 3 piece. I was skeptical when I first bought it, thinking it was going to be a bad neck, etc... The wood is heavy, but I'll say this: that stuff is stable- like, ironclad. Just another example of somewhat recent introductions into the build material cache that work out just fine.
I made a custom body using meranti. Density, thus weight, varies significantly from board to board. Has a number of alternate names, supply can be questionable. SE Asian rain forests basically cleared & many logs misnamed or seemingly new woods discovered. Try these imports for size available in Australia Meranti Dark Red Meranti Durian Nyatoh Bekak Kapur Surian Batu Mengkulang Melunak Rimu Danta Iroko Palapi Merbau Sungkai
Tas/Australian oak is very good for guitars. I’ve built four using it. Jarrah neck though, Tas Oak wings, Marri top is a typical set up. I only build neck through these days. On a cheaper build, with a Jarrah/tas oak/Jarrah laminate, I added pine wings. It’s shockingly resonant and totally caught me by surprise. I’m not against doing it more regularly. Just make sure the pine is really dry. Jarrah necks are awesome. Fretboards made from Jarrah are great too. Marri tops look really unique, but you need to make sure the wood is solid and not too fractured
Cedar is soft and light like spruce, and both are usually only used for the tops of acoustic guitars. Elsewhere on an acoustic and anywhere on an electric you probably want a denser and stronger wood, if only for durabity (e.g., to avoid dents, and screw holes stripping out).
At last someone tells things right!!i use oak, chestnut, walnut, pine, cherry, olive at least for body and tops.cherry and walnut make amazing neck too.i can always laminate wenge and oak.many combinations as many wood types!
Yes! Wenge and oak look sooo lovely together. I know Chris isn't much into laminated necks, but I've never had the issues he described in his video on the topic. My 3-piece wenge neck with 1.5 mm oak pinstripe veneers is to die for.
I’m experimenting with some cedar bodies using maple top/back. I haven’t finished one of these builds yet, but I’m optimistic at this point. I have been using big leaf maple for necks since I was able to resource it locally for cheap, and it’s a beautiful wood- it can just be difficult to find the desired grain pattern when shopping around.
I love Red Meranti. It is a joy to work with, especially with hand tools but my god it is easy to ding while working with it. You can dig your fingernail into it and will leave a deep mark.
It kinda depends on where you live too, I live in Dubai, I cannot find Alder anywhere at any time. It’s just not shipped here. But I can get great Okume, Obeche(wawa), Khaya meranti etc. So that’s what I use. Lots of these I now prefer as they are lighter. Great video 👍
at this stage of my game, i tend to re-purpose wood i've recycled, and experiment with non traditional woods, granted honduran mahogany and african mahogany are my preferred species of solid body guitar wood, my very first electric guitar build has a philippine mahogany plywood body with a 1/4 piece of masonite glued to the back for added weight and durability, mainly because no one told me i couldn't, long story short, i feel 100% confident that i could put it up against any name brand or custom built guitar for tone and quality of sound, personally, i am not recommending that people use plywood to build guitars, but i am saying do not let anything keep you from experimenting with non traditional materials when creating your "dream" guitar/s, 9:26 you break out the philippine mahogany, just what i was was talking about, i have used quarter sawn white oak that i infused with glass for fretboad material, of which i am very happy with, so yes i agree with non traditional woods/materials for use, when creating fretboards, one more thing, i've started using desert ironwood for my nut material, once again, i am very happy with it, very good video, subscribed
I just built a tele with an aged maple body and it sounds great. A lot of people would think a maple body tele would be way too bright, but of course that depends on the pickups used, the neck, strings, etc. It's a great player and has amazing clarity.
I think you got it exactly right and I am a old mahogany man myself but it's hard to find that type of wood now you're right about that when it comes to the Rosewood the type of Rose Woods that's where you're going to run to the problem of money but I could really appreciate everything you were talking about you were right on spot on the money
Godin uses Laurentian basswood and silver maple. Both plentiful in Canada. The basswood is different from the southern basswood used, in that it grows slower and is slightly denser. Beautiful grain too.
I have a funny project going on. In my garden grows bird cherry and one of them was destined to fall down on the first winter storm. I cut it down and have been drying the wood for three years. Now the quality of the wood is not the best but some of it could be used. Right now I am finishing off a Stratocaster project with that wood and are exited to hear the outcome. The neck and the electronics are from a Squire but the rest is from the tree I cut down. The wood has a very interesting pattern but I will dye it with some nitrocellulose paint. The shape of the body is a little bit odd compared to an original Strat. Anyway I can at least say that I built this guitar (with some add on from Fender).😁🤠😁
I don’t build guitars, but I make chairs. I love the plantation grown mahogany. There seems to be a lot of color variation, but to me that adds interest.
Just a heads up, Meranti is actually listed as "critically endangered" internationally, above Mahogany which is listed as "endangered". Maybe something to think about even though it isn't protected by CITES at the moment.
Love the myth busting approach, one has to wonder if the cork sniffers don't often get the cork out of glue bottles?. I grew up in South Africa where we use a lot of Meranti, and you can hunt around a bit and find quite dark Meranti that is quite heavy and very resonant. I once helped a friend of mine to turn a endgrain cutting board made of duglas fir into a guitar and supprisingly it worked really well at which point I started questioning the ''tone wood'' theroy. It's true that some woods inherently have diffrent tones but tone is a matter of taste and desired result. The pickups of a guitar are in themselves a source of tone, they can be bright or dark (muddy) so the matching of pickup to guitar for desired sound is as important as the wood at least IMO.
@@ememe1412unless you play a bass guitar and don’t use most of effects guitar players use. I do notice a difference in tone/sustain from my basses that have the exact same electronics but different woods.
I've done a number of experimental builds using radiata pine plywood - but it can have stiffness issues. I've also used red oak and bubinga. I want to try douglas fir (another stiff wood), and solid flamed maple.
Old growth trees grew slow and therefore are more dense, (harder) whereas fast growth trees (plantation grown) are much less dense (softer in comparison to old growth). That's why old growth lumber is so highly coveted. I've used old growth oak for mouldings and such, I had to predrill holes in order to put a nail in it, otherwise I would just bend nails when trying to hammer them.
Or you could go the route of brands like Aristides and use composites instead of wood. Carbon fiber and aluminum are also alternatives that have been used with some success. There's no rule that says you have to use wood at all. I suppose it all comes down to what you're comfortable working with, and as you stated, what is available.
can I call you "The Last Honest Man?" Not quite. I'm still here. Years ago I made a wonderful replacement neck for a Jazz Bass copy. The wood was Philippine Mahogany. Believe it or not, I rescued it from a wooden shipping pallet.
The power company ruined a black walnut tree in my yard so it had to be felled so I had it milled. Have a ton of walnut but made a Firebird out of it and it’s the heaviest guitar ever. You need a crane to pick it up. Next one will be be hollowed out !!
Great vid! I can certainly vouch for meranti. And for using different species other than the usual mahogany and maple. I'm making a guitar just now with a meranti body. I know it's good for necks too, because I've previously also made a guitar totally out of meranti. And it's holding up just fine!. The one I'm making now has a burr and spalted elm 6mm solid top on the meranti body. It's also got a keruing neck. Keruing is a hard, quite coarse mahogany-like timber usually used for making far-eastern plywood, but it's very strong and very straight grained - perfect for a neck (a bit stinky and probably poisonous too though). I've also just recently made another guitar with a neck made from a small tree trunk I had growing in the garden, which I converted a couple of years ago, and stored for seasoning. It's actually from a rowan tree ("mountain ash"). But the timber is beautiful, similar to maple, but slightly softer and with a lovely yielding (kind of "plasticy") consistency when you carve it, similar to alder or yew. In fact I've used yew many times on my guitars - GORGEOUS stuff!!! Cherry is another wood which is widely available and an excellent electric (and acoustic) guitar wood, but very rarely used. It's also interesting to think that when the Les Paul was developed, just as you point out, Gibson un-doubtably looked at the cheapest good quality timber that was around at the time and it was probably MAHOGANY (swietina macrophyla). How times have changed. And maple was used almost certainly because that was a bit denser (for more sustain) but also cheap because of the commercial maple syrup operations that grow maple trees in the USA. Had the Les Paul been developed in Europe instead of America, the company that developed it would probably have used the same mahogany (it was cheap here too, and used by pattern and model making workshops for patternamking), but would have used German BEECH for the top, as that was, and still is pretty much the cheapest hardwood you can get here. A good point there Chris, about the economics of timber over "tonewood" concerns. Totally agree. Glorious wood. It's one of the main reasons I build guitars.
Fantastic video! Thank you Chris. You speak the truth. I love all the "new" hardwoods. Guitar players are so conservative. We will need to change our taste because of supply. (OMG!!!)
I've designed and built three guitars on my own years ago not knowing much about tone woods, I just went to local lumber yards and picked what I thought looked and would sound good for guitar bodies. I used North American ash , some kind of mahogany and birch. They all have their own sound but of course the ash and birch are heavy. I don't understand why guitar builders don't use black cherry as a substitute for mahogany, the appearance and weight similar. I think one of Buck Dharma's SG's was cherry. There must be combinations of woods that would look and sound good together. A harder wood veneer on top and a soft wood for the bulk of the body. Ernie Ball uses basswood for bodies and that's relatively soft. This will be interesting in the future as many species are becoming rare. Swamp ash is disappearing fast, that's a shame.😢
Funny how pragmatism is often the guiding factor in many a decision. Speaking of Fender, the reason Leo went to rosewood fretboards was that he saw his guitars being played on TV, with what he thought were horrible wear spots, and basically decided on a darker wood to mitigate that problem.
Great video. Whether people like certain woods or not, there is a reason why certain wood species are protected. I won't call out any countries, but you probably know which ones I'm talking about. Quick furniture building from rare species. We need to plant as many trees as we can, they basically clean up the mess from all living creatures. So therefor, source reliably. Also, paying top dollar for AAAA graded wood is only making rich people more rich, so try to avoid it. It's okay to use "basic" wood. Just throw in a nice color. When I'm building guitars I'd like them to be as light as possible, whilst maintaining a reasonable counterbalance to the neck. Out of my experience, light guitars are played better (more movement, easier to pick up and noodle around with). I've seen so many weird woods, but not all of them I am familiar with and how they react to different environments. For example: I've seen pear wood with some great quiltiness to is. Pale, so it takes color very well. Still wanting to try it out with some experimental stains. I also still like swamp ash, although I pay a hefty premium for a decent piece since it's so popular for guitar builders. That wood is hard but is machined easily, light weight but feels solid and has a beautiful hairy grain that can be accentuated with dyes. Here in the Netherlands incoming ships of lumber are already sold before they reach land, so unless you have trusted contacts in S-America or Afrika you already pay a big premium. I do wish to point one more alarming thing out: Africa as a country isn't as modern as the western world and it's easy to get robbed by fake sellers even if they look real. A friend of mine build giant epoxy tables. He has had a few encounters where his 10.000 euro logs never arrived and the seller dissapeared. I've also heard (can't confirm it myself) that Africans are hijacking trucks loaded with lumber. And the driver's fate, well.. you can probably guess it. So it's basically "blood wood", like blood diamonds, not actual bloodwood. It's something you'll probably never hear from since there isn't as much social security as there is over here. So keep that in mind when trying to source foreign woods.
Love the message hear. Since I have to rely on on-line lumber suppliers, I'm at the mercy of them selling some of these maybe less popular woods. I've had some trouble finding them. Maybe that's down to demand, and again, the cork-sniffers leading the charge lol.
one of my bass guitar , a 80is italian eko is made out of plywood , was cover in paint so i will never notice if i don t have strip it , i use new vintage style fender picups and sound grate , and look cool on the side since is pywood , like a big skateboard ha ha
Just for fun & information .. I used to know an old Man who would cy in his Drink from time to time .. because as a young man in the Building trade he used to Pile up Wooden Adam's Style Fireplace surrounds from the Tenement's in Glasgow which had once been Luxury late Victorian style home's & Burn the Fireplaces & the Doors .. which he later knew were worth a fortune .. The same with the stained Glass windows .. Smashed & thrown away to install cheaper clear replacement's .. Oh well what can you do ? The worst one for me was I lived for a while in London near a famous Music Venue from the 60's etc & saw the stage & the fliers from the old stage in a Skip outside .. The stage were all the Bands used to play .. the /?? Irony ?? / is that they used ' rec-claimed timber to build a new stage .. But I don't know why ?? perhaps there were structural problems etc ?? anyway I was in the Bar one rainy lunchtime when John Mayall & a local Newspaper reported / photographer & the young Landlord were the only ones there & John was visibly angry & annoyed because they had come with the Blue Plaque .. " John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers Played here & no one cared .. The Landlord had never heard of them & John left upset .. I tried to buy the plaque froom the Landlord who had discarded it on the pile of bar towels for the wash .. But as soon as he smelled Money he asked for more than had to pay .. the plaque was never put up .. I am sure there are a million stories out there just like mine .. lol cheers keep up the good work ..
Chris, i'm sorry to say you didn't know what i was thinking. I was thinking "we really need another video about wood". but what matters is, that you thought it. 0:00
Very interesting with the Fijian Mahogany. A Mahogany tree takes around 80 years to get the point of being cut down, however in order to get stable in a natural way you have calculate about 25 years of resting before being cut to production, so we'll see where that lands. I have been thinking about the Cuban Mahogany, when will it be available again, the Mahogany Rush was in the mid 60's so we must be getting close getting that again. FWIW
Great video! I am setting up an octave mandolin shop in a couple of weeks and plan to build a bunch of prototypes. Mostly because I need one for my self for touring in the end of summer and fall. I will use birch for the bodys and maple for the necks - just because those woods are appropriate and available to me here in Stockholm. The tone in a solid body electric string instrument with magnetic pick ups is not in the wood, maybe for producing some kind of mojo that makes you happy, but not for the tone. A Rat pedal does more for the sound than any tropical wood ever would.
I have some great images of tour new shop - I bet it will be like Heaven in there :-). Don't that rats object to being trod on? :-). I am into digital FX pedals - close approximation to analog pedals. Totally agree with your observations.
Hi! We felled a mahogany at home about a two months ago. Planks are still here but I suppose it is too wet for guitar building yet. The tree was about 20 years old. I live in Kerala, South India.
Be careful with splinters from Meranti. They’re nasty! Also watch out for mineral deposits in it as well. I’ve cut a board a few years ago with a half inch seam of calcite running through it.
Plantation wood - being a fast-growing tree - probably has larger/wider growth rings, where wild/slow growth trees would have tighter rings; which might account for the lighter weight. It's the same when choosing wood with which to make bows. That's not to say that one is "better" than the other (though there are many 'cork sniffers' in the bow-making world who will tell you that "wood from slow-growth trees harvested by the light of a full moon in late September, from the north-facing side of land no less than 3,500ft above sea level" makes the best bows...). I live in Ireland so am limited to the woods available to me (not just native woods, but we just don't have the massive warehouses of vast varieties of lumber over here, that you do in America). I hope to some day make a matching set of a V and an Explorer (the ESP MX250 body design - larger & pointier than the Gibson original) out of osage orange (bois d'arc, maclura pomifera). They'll be heavy, but tough as iron! It ages beautifully, turning from a bright golden yellow, to a deep, lustrous golden-brown that catches the light. It's got a Janka rating of 2620, so I'm thinking it will also be suitable for a fretboard? Now I just need to find somewhere that will ship a few board feet to Ireland :D
Les Paul used a piece of railroad track to prove his concept of an electric pickup. How about choosing the hardest wood possible for the middle of the body (ie. like Les Paul's "log") and then use cheaper woods for the sides, which would be easier to shape, etc. I've seen a guitar that had snap on sides of different shapes, similar to the "log". I would think the harder wood would make the string vibrate as pure as possible, then the pickup does everything else. Les Paul used an Epiphone neck on his "log". The neck could be a harder type also.
Just to add one thing I'm not seeing in the comments... The "electric" part of electric guitars has a HUGE amount of influence on the bottom line tone. You can throw some good Seymore Duncan's into a cheap guitar and it'll sound great, and you can have the latest greatest Fender American made 2k MSRP guitar with triple binding everywhere but whatever garbage pickups Fender throws into it and it'll be a disappointment. (Been there, done that...) Acoustic guitars, on the other hand, well yes, the wood does matter.
Hey Chris, have you ever worked with Goncalo Alves? It's the easiest hard wood to get where I'm located, but I have mixed feelings about it as it tends to (as many other tropical species) move quite a bit. I feel like if you could reliably make it stay straight it would make for a perfect neck shaft wood as it is very hard and durable, aside from looking unique but not too flashy. Purpleheart is also cheap and not that hard to get, but being purple I feel like it wouldn't really sell that much, only in very specific cases.
As a Carpenter of nearly 40 years I agree that the quality of timber has greatly fallen below par. And with the huge price hikes globally, finding genuine quality wood is becoming a very expensive problem.
Hi and thank you for this video. Where could i possibly source some of this wood and get it delivered? I live in a very small town in texas and have nothing local. I am just starting to explore making my own guitars and thank you for this!!
The major builders are simply maximizing profit based on successes from years ago. 2 examples would be stratocaster and Les Paul. They have made improvements in years. Innovation comes from trying new ideas, evaluating, then combining things that work. Guitarists are either imitators or Innovators. If I wanted a fender I'd just buy one. If I wanted a custom build don't bring an overdressed stratocaster.
I think what you have said is 100% true for electric guitar bodies but it is a completely different story for acoustic guitars. I am not sure you delineated this in your presentation but most of your viewers come to you for primarily electric guitar info anyways. Keep up the good work and think about a haircut.
I’m gonna make a guitar from scratch but it’s hard to figure out what wood to use. No matter what you read or watch one person contradicts the next person. One person says do not use oak then someone builds one out of oak and it’s amazing. I think Brian mays guitar is made of oak. It’s just so much work to make a guitar then it sucks lol.
People should focus on the quality of the wood rather than the species. Although I believe wood has some impact on the electric guitar sound (I have two guitars of the same model same specs and same wood species but sound very different), I also believe that there are no bad or good wood species, there are good and bad wood pieces though.
I think I'd be happy with an all maple neck and alder or ash body. As far as I know these woods aren't endangered yet. Humans need to plant more trees.
Hello
The traditional wood used in guitar industry are good and you say that we can use a lot of other species of wood.
You are right. I think we can search in locals woods where we live.
I live in France and we have a lot cherrys wood, apple wood, alder, oak (which is a very good wood for electric guitars), beech, alder, elm, sycomore, walnut, locust, and a lot of others.
I just want to say that you don’t need necessery to buy a piece of wood that comes from far away if you have what you need in your country. It’s just an act for the planet 🌎
For my guitars, i just use reclaimed local wood and i like it.
I learn a lot of things in luthery with you and thank you very much.
Ps: sorry for my english......I’m french 😋🇫🇷
Hey, another French man here! We also have a lot of spruce, fir, Douglas pine, many types of softwoods that, despite what people say, are also really viable for guitar making, add a lot of sustain to your guitar (which is a great thing), are easy to process and just work great. They were used for acoustic guitars for a reason. Yes, the spruce won't be as high-end as some from Scandinavia or high mountains, but, for instance, the one from the Vosges mountains I use for my 3 first guitars have a really interesting grain and sound heavenly. So I can only agree wholeheartedly with your comment. Use what you have on hand, upcycle old furniture, and make awesome stuff with that
Here, in Brazil, we have a lot of woods who can used to luthierie.
I use some of them like marupá, muiracatiara, freijó, caixeta, sucupira, pau-ferro, etc, etc...
All off them excelent, better than the "traditional" ones...
There is a Luther in NYC who uses 100+ year old pine from the Bowery. When he needs more wood he raids the dumpsters where old buildings are being demoed!
My favorite is people mystifying stuff Fender did early on. Meanwhile Leo Fender was changing body woods just to save money and was telling people to shove business cards in the neck pockets of their brand new instruments 😂
Yet these are some of the most desirable.
Also, using flat sawn one-piece maple for the necks.
Tone business cards :-)
The Jazzmaster which I made for myself has a silver quandong body, Queensland Maple neck and an Amboyna (red rosewood) fretboard. It all machined pretty nicely on my router table so I was happy with the outcome.
Chris, you'd love this book: "The Guitar, Tracing the Grain Back to the Tree", by Chris Gibson. It was published last year.
Here in Australia we have used Queensland Maple as a substitute for mahogany for decades. In the past it was stained brown and actually passed off as mahogany, because its grain is so similar. These days Maton and Cole Clarke use it extensively, but attempts at plantations have failed, and stocks are low and increasingly more remote. It will be interesting to see where the Aus manufactures head in future.
I heard that Leo Fender used plain old pine for his first guitars and they worked and sounded fine. maybe not what most guitar purists think of as a proper guitar wood ,but then Leo used what he had and made it work. I'm going to use plywood for a semi-hollow
Tele body for cost as well as stability. I'm getting an inexpensive neck on Amazon and then the fret work will be evaluated and redone as needed. fret ends and rolling the finger board edges slightly too...the rest ...who knows what I might improvise...we'll see soon enough...
For anyone interested with access to some timbers from Africa (where i live)
-Pod Mahogany, very similar to any other 'mahogany'
-Kiaat, slightly less dense than pod mahogany, extremely stable.
-Rhodesian teak, not to be confused with 'plantation teak' extremely dense and one of the best fretboard timbers out there.
-Tamboti, similar in density, hardness and oiliness to Rhodesian teak, but with a really wild grain pattern.
-Purple Jacaranda (jacanda mimosifolia) has a beautiful grain for a white colored wood, and is very consistent to work and stains beatifully. A very plentiful and under appreciated timber. Very good substitue for soft maple, as it often also has flame pattern in it.
These are some of the timberd that are available and different to the usual sapele, iroko etc that are commonly used from here.
Now if anyone wants what in my opinion is the best fretboard timber in the whole world, dalbergia melanoxylon is it. Of the rosewood family, it is much, much dwnser and harder than brazilian rosewood. It is also a jet black color, but with some barely visible streaks in it. It is harder and denser than the 'diospyros' ebony. In fact, it is the 'ebony' of ancient times. Unfortunately, it is all but extinct in the areas of South East Africe where it used to occur. It is being chopped out of Mozambique and Tanzania at a rate that is completely unsustainable. Turning it on a lathe is like working with mild steel.
❤australia has aprox 300 spiecies of forest trees and at least as many smaller species ,some very slow growing, including casurina, acacia, cyprus pines, and eucalypts .
Some are extremely hard and heavy,reistant to decay and warping
A book called" forest trees of australia " gives individual notes on these types and where they grow.
Built an ibanez style guitar, 20 years ago, using an ibanez neck that i had. Found 1 piece at specialty lumber yard, of cocobolo, a slightly oily hardwood. Worked in a machine shop, so, had access to various machinery, including a milling machine. Finished with boiled linseed oil. Still plays good today
I'll bet it is really nice looking-How heavy is it?
This was a very good presentation. China seems to be a big buyer of rainforest clear cut wood.
Videos about wood are some of the best videos on the internet =)
I made a strat,out of a 12 by 12 inch 40 year old pitch pine post.the pitch had petrified.the guitar resonates through the whole body and neck ,better than any of my other builds.
As a person who has extensive experience with wood as a Woodturner, I can tell you that we are overlooking plenty of wood species that would make wonderful instruments - especially Osage Orange, Black Cherry, Black Walnut, Red Maple and Locust - Osage & Locust are heavy/dense/strong woods that I think would be excellent for guitars.
I've used Osage Orange for fretboards. Great looking wood!
I have used Osage orange to build hunting bows. It would be great for guitar necks and fretboards.
I'd love to see more guitars made with cherry and walnut, I even bought some cherry body wood for a guitar I still haven't gotten around to building.
Thank you! We have problems sourcing out traditional wood for guitar making in my country. I'm from the Philippines and yes I do use the Philippine Mahogany and it is very good to work with. The problem is like as you said, it does not look like the Mahogany from Fender or any other major manufacturers so people are reluctant to buy guitars made from it.
It's silly, isn't it? I think it is safe to assume Leo Fender would have used other wood species if, at the time, they had been as readily available, inexpensive and easy to work with as alder and ash.
@@meadish I think this is part of the reason why some manufacturers like Ibanez prefer most of their guitars made in Indonesia because there are still a lot of wood there that are not typical but have great properties and can be bought cheap.
Here in the Philippines,alama guitar maker uses mahogany,gmelina, and other Philippine native woods.
I have one of those American Rainbow playgrounds in my British garden - bought it for my kids- they now all grown up and I am very keen to repurpose the red cedar into bass guitars. I don't have the tools - thicknessor or table saw - but Tim Sway does a grand job of making beautiful guitars from reclaimed wood. All are works of art and boy can he play them well.
Good video! This is information that a few of us discovered 30-40 years ago but few people believed us until the start of the 21st Century, and even then the word was slow to get around.
Very informative video. I’ve actually used Pinas Radiata (New Zealand Pine) on of few of my builds. It’s a nice hard wood with a fairly open grain. It resonates real well. Easy to work with and the best part is it’s fairly inexpensive. Some people turn their noses up because it’s pine but it’s not soft like typical pine. In some instances it can be just as or harder than oak.
the first Teles were pine!
@@ronboff3461 Yessir!
I have bought some wood from a company in north Alabama that sells onl wood grown in the area near the business. I bought some sycamore for a body and maple with long black streaks in the wood the makes it more interesting. If I'm able to go thee again, I may buy some persimmon an experiment with it as a fingerboard. Persimmon was used for golf club construction in the pre-meal wood days, soi it should be hard.
For my latest build I’m using Swedish. Birch, the wood was intended for a table 40+ years ago, but were never used, I got hold of a few blanks and making a guitar out of it. I made the exact same model and design as a previous guitar that was made out of swamp ash and mahogany neck, this one is maple neck and birch body and the acoustic difference between the two is crazy, these are electric guitars so it’s doesn’t matter but it’s eye opening the hear such a huge difference in the acoustic sound, birch have a much brighter almost brittle sound, the swamp ash much more warm, if you can say that of the acoustic sound of a electric guitar 😂
I appreciate the rational, fact based explanations you always offer. I believe Chechen is also called Caribbean Rosewood and is used on fretboards by Rickenbacker.
Great video. For solid body bass guitars, my favorite woods are woods that are easy to work with tools, durable, hit a certain weight range and look nice with clear finish. I prefer to use sustainable woods too. As for weight, I can control much of the weight with how thick the body is.
Again, great topic. Keep up the great videos. Cheers.
Paulownia grows extremely fast and is considered invasive. But when it’s dry it’s almost as light as balsa wood but much stronger. Still isn’t a very strong wood, but I could see how that would be a useful wood in building guitar bodies.
I like Kentucky Rosewood, yes, American Black Walnut from the the hills of East Kentucky. Wolcutt's had a run of Tele's and Strat's done up in it for their 50th yr. Anniversary.
This week is my first time in woodworking. I'm currently in a process of learning luthery, making my first acoustic gitar from scrap woods I have available laying around. I plan to use gmelina white teak for the neck and heartwood of sonokembang as fretboard and bridge. I hope it will turn out okay.
Ive been using roasted sycamore for neck and fingerboards, its used as cladding, you have to select good bits but it is really cost effective, looks good, is stable and smells lovely.
We always need another video about wood. Wood is good. There's so many of them.
I have one ibanez bass with a jotoba neck- 3 piece. I was skeptical when I first bought it, thinking it was going to be a bad neck, etc... The wood is heavy, but I'll say this: that stuff is stable- like, ironclad.
Just another example of somewhat recent introductions into the build material cache that work out just fine.
I made a custom body using meranti. Density, thus weight, varies significantly from board to board. Has a number of alternate names, supply can be questionable. SE Asian rain forests basically cleared & many logs misnamed or seemingly new woods discovered.
Try these imports for size available in Australia
Meranti
Dark Red Meranti
Durian
Nyatoh
Bekak
Kapur
Surian Batu
Mengkulang
Melunak
Rimu
Danta
Iroko
Palapi
Merbau
Sungkai
Tas/Australian oak is very good for guitars. I’ve built four using it. Jarrah neck though, Tas Oak wings, Marri top is a typical set up. I only build neck through these days. On a cheaper build, with a Jarrah/tas oak/Jarrah laminate, I added pine wings. It’s shockingly resonant and totally caught me by surprise. I’m not against doing it more regularly. Just make sure the pine is really dry. Jarrah necks are awesome. Fretboards made from Jarrah are great too. Marri tops look really unique, but you need to make sure the wood is solid and not too fractured
Spanish cedar has frequently been used on nylon stringed guitars. The Tacoma guitar Company also used to use it on a number of their models.
Cedar is soft and light like spruce, and both are usually only used for the tops of acoustic guitars. Elsewhere on an acoustic and anywhere on an electric you probably want a denser and stronger wood, if only for durabity (e.g., to avoid dents, and screw holes stripping out).
Great clear-headed and pragmatic approach. I have just salvaged 30 year old meranti and Honduran mahogany from my daughter’s old window frames. Cheers
At last someone tells things right!!i use oak, chestnut, walnut, pine, cherry, olive at least for body and tops.cherry and walnut make amazing neck too.i can always laminate wenge and oak.many combinations as many wood types!
Yes! Wenge and oak look sooo lovely together. I know Chris isn't much into laminated necks, but I've never had the issues he described in his video on the topic. My 3-piece wenge neck with 1.5 mm oak pinstripe veneers is to die for.
I’m experimenting with some cedar bodies using maple top/back. I haven’t finished one of these builds yet, but I’m optimistic at this point. I have been using big leaf maple for necks since I was able to resource it locally for cheap, and it’s a beautiful wood- it can just be difficult to find the desired grain pattern when shopping around.
I love Red Meranti. It is a joy to work with, especially with hand tools but my god it is easy to ding while working with it. You can dig your fingernail into it and will leave a deep mark.
It kinda depends on where you live too, I live in Dubai, I cannot find Alder anywhere at any time. It’s just not shipped here. But I can get great Okume, Obeche(wawa), Khaya meranti etc. So that’s what I use. Lots of these I now prefer as they are lighter. Great video 👍
at this stage of my game, i tend to re-purpose wood i've recycled, and experiment with non traditional woods, granted honduran mahogany and african mahogany are my preferred species of solid body guitar wood, my very first electric guitar build has a philippine mahogany plywood body with a 1/4 piece of masonite glued to the back for added weight and durability, mainly because no one told me i couldn't, long story short, i feel 100% confident that i could put it up against any name brand or custom built guitar for tone and quality of sound, personally, i am not recommending that people use plywood to build guitars, but i am saying do not let anything keep you from experimenting with non traditional materials when creating your "dream" guitar/s, 9:26 you break out the philippine mahogany, just what i was was talking about, i have used quarter sawn white oak that i infused with glass for fretboad material, of which i am very happy with, so yes i agree with non traditional woods/materials for use, when creating fretboards, one more thing, i've started using desert ironwood for my nut material, once again, i am very happy with it, very good video, subscribed
Black cherry finished natural makes a beautiful instrument.
I just built a tele with an aged maple body and it sounds great. A lot of people would think a maple body tele would be way too bright, but of course that depends on the pickups used, the neck, strings, etc. It's a great player and has amazing clarity.
I think you got it exactly right and I am a old mahogany man myself but it's hard to find that type of wood now you're right about that when it comes to the Rosewood the type of Rose Woods that's where you're going to run to the problem of money but I could really appreciate everything you were talking about you were right on spot on the money
Godin uses Laurentian basswood and silver maple. Both plentiful in Canada. The basswood is different from the southern basswood used, in that it grows slower and is slightly denser. Beautiful grain too.
I have a funny project going on. In my garden grows bird cherry and one of them was destined to fall down on the first winter storm. I cut it down and have been drying the wood for three years. Now the quality of the wood is not the best but some of it could be used. Right now I am finishing off a Stratocaster project with that wood and are exited to hear the outcome. The neck and the electronics are from a Squire but the rest is from the tree I cut down. The wood has a very interesting pattern but I will dye it with some nitrocellulose paint. The shape of the body is a little bit odd compared to an original Strat. Anyway I can at least say that I built this guitar (with some add on from Fender).😁🤠😁
I don’t build guitars, but I make chairs. I love the plantation grown mahogany. There seems to be a lot of color variation, but to me that adds interest.
I did like the African Mahogany on my prized build. Used it for the neck core (neck-thru). White Limba wings!
Just a heads up, Meranti is actually listed as "critically endangered" internationally, above Mahogany which is listed as "endangered". Maybe something to think about even though it isn't protected by CITES at the moment.
Good to know!
I thought it was not available anyway. I certainly haven't seen it at my lumber dealers in southern California for at least 20 years.
Love the myth busting approach, one has to wonder if the cork sniffers don't often get the cork out of glue bottles?.
I grew up in South Africa where we use a lot of Meranti, and you can hunt around a bit and find quite dark Meranti that is quite heavy and very resonant.
I once helped a friend of mine to turn a endgrain cutting board made of duglas fir into a guitar and supprisingly it worked really well at which point I started questioning the ''tone wood'' theroy. It's true that some woods inherently have diffrent tones but tone is a matter of taste and desired result. The pickups of a guitar are in themselves a source of tone, they can be bright or dark (muddy) so the matching of pickup to guitar for desired sound is as important as the wood at least IMO.
By the time it's gone through pedals, shapers and amps... The tonewood factor becomes very insignificant IMO.
@@ememe1412unless you play a bass guitar and don’t use most of effects guitar players use. I do notice a difference in tone/sustain from my basses that have the exact same electronics but different woods.
I've done a number of experimental builds using radiata pine plywood - but it can have stiffness issues. I've also used red oak and bubinga. I want to try douglas fir (another stiff wood), and solid flamed maple.
That's my philosophy too, as long as the material is hard enough to withstand the tension it's viable.
Chechen is also known as Caribbean rosewood here in the UK
Old growth trees grew slow and therefore are more dense, (harder) whereas fast growth trees (plantation grown) are much less dense (softer in comparison to old growth). That's why old growth lumber is so highly coveted. I've used old growth oak for mouldings and such, I had to predrill holes in order to put a nail in it, otherwise I would just bend nails when trying to hammer them.
All trees grow fast when young to out compete the canopy. Old growth is just old and not growing fast
Or you could go the route of brands like Aristides and use composites instead of wood. Carbon fiber and aluminum are also alternatives that have been used with some success. There's no rule that says you have to use wood at all. I suppose it all comes down to what you're comfortable working with, and as you stated, what is available.
And what you are technically capable of working with.
@@HighlineGuitars True. Should have said comfortable/capable.
can I call you "The Last Honest Man?" Not quite. I'm still here. Years ago I made a wonderful replacement neck for a Jazz Bass copy. The wood was Philippine Mahogany. Believe it or not, I rescued it from a wooden shipping pallet.
The power company ruined a black walnut tree in my yard so it had to be felled so I had it milled. Have a ton of walnut but made a Firebird out of it and it’s the heaviest guitar ever. You need a crane to pick it up. Next one will be be hollowed out !!
Great vid! I can certainly vouch for meranti. And for using different species other than the usual mahogany and maple. I'm making a guitar just now with a meranti body. I know it's good for necks too, because I've previously also made a guitar totally out of meranti. And it's holding up just fine!. The one I'm making now has a burr and spalted elm 6mm solid top on the meranti body. It's also got a keruing neck. Keruing is a hard, quite coarse mahogany-like timber usually used for making far-eastern plywood, but it's very strong and very straight grained - perfect for a neck (a bit stinky and probably poisonous too though). I've also just recently made another guitar with a neck made from a small tree trunk I had growing in the garden, which I converted a couple of years ago, and stored for seasoning. It's actually from a rowan tree ("mountain ash"). But the timber is beautiful, similar to maple, but slightly softer and with a lovely yielding (kind of "plasticy") consistency when you carve it, similar to alder or yew. In fact I've used yew many times on my guitars - GORGEOUS stuff!!! Cherry is another wood which is widely available and an excellent electric (and acoustic) guitar wood, but very rarely used.
It's also interesting to think that when the Les Paul was developed, just as you point out, Gibson un-doubtably looked at the cheapest good quality timber that was around at the time and it was probably MAHOGANY (swietina macrophyla). How times have changed. And maple was used almost certainly because that was a bit denser (for more sustain) but also cheap because of the commercial maple syrup operations that grow maple trees in the USA. Had the Les Paul been developed in Europe instead of America, the company that developed it would probably have used the same mahogany (it was cheap here too, and used by pattern and model making workshops for patternamking), but would have used German BEECH for the top, as that was, and still is pretty much the cheapest hardwood you can get here. A good point there Chris, about the economics of timber over "tonewood" concerns. Totally agree.
Glorious wood. It's one of the main reasons I build guitars.
Fantastic video! Thank you Chris. You speak the truth. I love all the "new" hardwoods. Guitar players are so conservative. We will need to change our taste because of supply. (OMG!!!)
I've designed and built three guitars on my own years ago not knowing much about tone woods, I just went to local lumber yards and picked what I thought looked and would sound good for guitar bodies. I used North American ash , some kind of mahogany and birch. They all have their own sound but of course the ash and birch are heavy. I don't understand why guitar builders don't use black cherry as a substitute for mahogany, the appearance and weight similar. I think one of Buck Dharma's SG's was cherry. There must be combinations of woods that would look and sound good together. A harder wood veneer on top and a soft wood for the bulk of the body. Ernie Ball uses basswood for bodies and that's relatively soft. This will be interesting in the future as many species are becoming rare. Swamp ash is disappearing fast, that's a shame.😢
Another great video!! Appreciate the wealth of knowledge and experience I've learned from these videos.
Funny how pragmatism is often the guiding factor in many a decision. Speaking of Fender, the reason Leo went to rosewood fretboards was that he saw his guitars being played on TV, with what he thought were horrible wear spots, and basically decided on a darker wood to mitigate that problem.
Great video. Whether people like certain woods or not, there is a reason why certain wood species are protected. I won't call out any countries, but you probably know which ones I'm talking about. Quick furniture building from rare species. We need to plant as many trees as we can, they basically clean up the mess from all living creatures. So therefor, source reliably. Also, paying top dollar for AAAA graded wood is only making rich people more rich, so try to avoid it. It's okay to use "basic" wood. Just throw in a nice color. When I'm building guitars I'd like them to be as light as possible, whilst maintaining a reasonable counterbalance to the neck. Out of my experience, light guitars are played better (more movement, easier to pick up and noodle around with). I've seen so many weird woods, but not all of them I am familiar with and how they react to different environments. For example: I've seen pear wood with some great quiltiness to is. Pale, so it takes color very well. Still wanting to try it out with some experimental stains. I also still like swamp ash, although I pay a hefty premium for a decent piece since it's so popular for guitar builders. That wood is hard but is machined easily, light weight but feels solid and has a beautiful hairy grain that can be accentuated with dyes. Here in the Netherlands incoming ships of lumber are already sold before they reach land, so unless you have trusted contacts in S-America or Afrika you already pay a big premium.
I do wish to point one more alarming thing out: Africa as a country isn't as modern as the western world and it's easy to get robbed by fake sellers even if they look real. A friend of mine build giant epoxy tables. He has had a few encounters where his 10.000 euro logs never arrived and the seller dissapeared.
I've also heard (can't confirm it myself) that Africans are hijacking trucks loaded with lumber. And the driver's fate, well.. you can probably guess it. So it's basically "blood wood", like blood diamonds, not actual bloodwood. It's something you'll probably never hear from since there isn't as much social security as there is over here. So keep that in mind when trying to source foreign woods.
Love the message hear. Since I have to rely on on-line lumber suppliers, I'm at the mercy of them selling some of these maybe less popular woods. I've had some trouble finding them. Maybe that's down to demand, and again, the cork-sniffers leading the charge lol.
I'd like to try one of the traditional lute woods: pear, apple, plum.
one of my bass guitar , a 80is italian eko is made out of plywood , was cover in paint so i will never notice if i don t have strip it , i use new vintage style fender picups and sound grate , and look cool on the side since is pywood , like a big skateboard ha ha
finally, no BS! just info! thanks!
Just for fun & information .. I used to know an old Man who would cy in his Drink from time to time .. because as a young man in the Building trade he used to Pile up Wooden Adam's Style Fireplace surrounds from the Tenement's in Glasgow which had once been Luxury late Victorian style home's & Burn the Fireplaces & the Doors .. which he later knew were worth a fortune .. The same with the stained Glass windows .. Smashed & thrown away to install cheaper clear replacement's .. Oh well what can you do ? The worst one for me was I lived for a while in London near a famous Music Venue from the 60's etc & saw the stage & the fliers from the old stage in a Skip outside .. The stage were all the Bands used to play .. the /?? Irony ?? / is that they used ' rec-claimed timber to build a new stage .. But I don't know why ?? perhaps there were structural problems etc ?? anyway I was in the Bar one rainy lunchtime when John Mayall & a local Newspaper reported / photographer & the young Landlord were the only ones there & John was visibly angry & annoyed because they had come with the Blue Plaque .. " John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers Played here & no one cared .. The Landlord had never heard of them & John left upset .. I tried to buy the plaque froom the Landlord who had discarded it on the pile of bar towels for the wash .. But as soon as he smelled Money he asked for more than had to pay .. the plaque was never put up .. I am sure there are a million stories out there just like mine .. lol cheers keep up the good work ..
Chris, i'm sorry to say you didn't know what i was thinking. I was thinking "we really need another video about wood". but what matters is, that you thought it. 0:00
i want a guitar from the rarest brazlian wood ,, and ivory from the last elephant. and its gonna sound the best
Great lesson on woods!! I still lean to the traditional choices, but I will keep an eye out for some of the other 'off' types.
Very interesting with the Fijian Mahogany. A Mahogany tree takes around 80 years to get the point of being cut down, however in order to get stable in a natural way you have calculate about 25 years of resting before being cut to production, so we'll see where that lands. I have been thinking about the Cuban Mahogany, when will it be available again, the Mahogany Rush was in the mid 60's so we must be getting close getting that again. FWIW
Maybe Frank Marino knows more. 😉
Great video!
I am setting up an octave mandolin shop in a couple of weeks and plan to build a bunch of prototypes. Mostly because I need one for my self for touring in the end of summer and fall.
I will use birch for the bodys and maple for the necks - just because those woods are appropriate and available to me here in Stockholm. The tone in a solid body electric string instrument with magnetic pick ups is not in the wood, maybe for producing some kind of mojo that makes you happy, but not for the tone. A Rat pedal does more for the sound than any tropical wood ever would.
I have some great images of tour new shop - I bet it will be like Heaven in there :-). Don't that rats object to being trod on? :-). I am into digital FX pedals - close approximation to analog pedals. Totally agree with your observations.
I am going to try a Neem wood body! To start with, I sense it is going to be heavy, but can't say until I finish it.
⚓️ Thanks HG 😎 Fir, Pine, Spruce, Cedars……. Multiple species of cedars … spruce … pine … how about Taylor & the sustainability program urban woods???
Ain't marketing great! You can take something that is already sustainable and make the claim that you're using it more sustainably than anyone else.
Hi! We felled a mahogany at home about a two months ago. Planks are still here but I suppose it is too wet for guitar building yet. The tree was about 20 years old. I live in Kerala, South India.
I say MDF body and balsa neck.
You can get mahogany and other woods in architectural salvage yards
Excellent food for thought!
Really cool
Great video.
Be careful with splinters from Meranti. They’re nasty! Also watch out for mineral deposits in it as well. I’ve cut a board a few years ago with a half inch seam of calcite running through it.
Plantation wood - being a fast-growing tree - probably has larger/wider growth rings, where wild/slow growth trees would have tighter rings; which might account for the lighter weight. It's the same when choosing wood with which to make bows. That's not to say that one is "better" than the other (though there are many 'cork sniffers' in the bow-making world who will tell you that "wood from slow-growth trees harvested by the light of a full moon in late September, from the north-facing side of land no less than 3,500ft above sea level" makes the best bows...).
I live in Ireland so am limited to the woods available to me (not just native woods, but we just don't have the massive warehouses of vast varieties of lumber over here, that you do in America).
I hope to some day make a matching set of a V and an Explorer (the ESP MX250 body design - larger & pointier than the Gibson original) out of osage orange (bois d'arc, maclura pomifera). They'll be heavy, but tough as iron!
It ages beautifully, turning from a bright golden yellow, to a deep, lustrous golden-brown that catches the light. It's got a Janka rating of 2620, so I'm thinking it will also be suitable for a fretboard?
Now I just need to find somewhere that will ship a few board feet to Ireland :D
Excellent video!
The debate here is how important is the wood type vs sound. Otherwise why can they use resins? or Rubberwood?
Les Paul used a piece of railroad track to prove his concept of an electric pickup. How about choosing the hardest wood possible for the middle of the body (ie. like Les Paul's "log") and then use cheaper woods for the sides, which would be easier to shape, etc. I've seen a guitar that had snap on sides of different shapes, similar to the "log". I would think the harder wood would make the string vibrate as pure as possible, then the pickup does everything else. Les Paul used an Epiphone neck on his "log". The neck could be a harder type also.
That is what I plan to do on my strat build. Harder wood for the middle of the body and softer wood on the outsides.
The ultimate tone wood is still out there!
Ask a unicorn.😉
Just to add one thing I'm not seeing in the comments... The "electric" part of electric guitars has a HUGE amount of influence on the bottom line tone. You can throw some good Seymore Duncan's into a cheap guitar and it'll sound great, and you can have the latest greatest Fender American made 2k MSRP guitar with triple binding everywhere but whatever garbage pickups Fender throws into it and it'll be a disappointment. (Been there, done that...)
Acoustic guitars, on the other hand, well yes, the wood does matter.
Hey Chris, have you ever worked with Goncalo Alves? It's the easiest hard wood to get where I'm located, but I have mixed feelings about it as it tends to (as many other tropical species) move quite a bit. I feel like if you could reliably make it stay straight it would make for a perfect neck shaft wood as it is very hard and durable, aside from looking unique but not too flashy. Purpleheart is also cheap and not that hard to get, but being purple I feel like it wouldn't really sell that much, only in very specific cases.
I'm currently looking for some nice knot-less pine for my next build
As a Carpenter of nearly 40 years I agree that the quality of timber has greatly fallen below par. And with the huge price hikes globally, finding genuine quality wood is becoming a very expensive problem.
Hi and thank you for this video. Where could i possibly source some of this wood and get it delivered? I live in a very small town in texas and have nothing local. I am just starting to explore making my own guitars and thank you for this!!
The major builders are simply maximizing profit based on successes from years ago. 2 examples would be stratocaster and Les Paul. They have made improvements in years.
Innovation comes from trying new ideas, evaluating, then combining things that work.
Guitarists are either imitators or Innovators. If I wanted a fender I'd just buy one. If I wanted a custom build don't bring an overdressed stratocaster.
I think what you have said is 100% true for electric guitar bodies but it is a completely different story for acoustic guitars. I am not sure you delineated this in your presentation but most of your viewers come to you for primarily electric guitar info anyways. Keep up the good work and think about a haircut.
ohh..... interesting
I’m gonna make a guitar from scratch but it’s hard to figure out what wood to use. No matter what you read or watch one person contradicts the next person. One person says do not use oak then someone builds one out of oak and it’s amazing. I think Brian mays guitar is made of oak. It’s just so much work to make a guitar then it sucks lol.
Has anyone ever used Madrone or myrtle wood for a guitar? Either one would be beautiful. Spruce would also be awesome.
I've used Myrtle before. It's beautiful for a top.
Meranti is what cor tek uses and epiphone too... sadly sound too muffled for me...
People should focus on the quality of the wood rather than the species. Although I believe wood has some impact on the electric guitar sound (I have two guitars of the same model same specs and same wood species but sound very different), I also believe that there are no bad or good wood species, there are good and bad wood pieces though.
Anyone recall the Switch Vibracell guitars? Not wood...
Thanks for the great video! I’m thinking about building a guitar in cherry. Is cherry strong enough for the neck?
Just barely.
I’m making a guitar out of Live Oak. It is very very heavy. I’m gonna guess it’s about 20 25 pounds when it’s done. what usually does oaks sound like?
Was wondering if you ever tried to use hickory for necks, or anything else.
This timber is insanely strong.
I've used Hickory for fretboards. Works great. Haven't tried it for a neck simply because I haven't come across a board I like.
I think I'd be happy with an all maple neck and alder or ash body. As far as I know these woods aren't endangered yet. Humans need to plant more trees.
The Big manufacturers are still using the bottom line, they always were. Despite a lot of guitarists going on about 'Tonewood!' Lol
I know it's heavy but I've always wanted a guitar made of redwood.