Heath
Why do you not see guitars made out of pine ......
AlanRatcliffe
You do. There's a current trend to making Telecasters/Broadcasters out of pine - thanks largely to the fact that Leo's original prototypes were pine. And fans of the wood report that they get a good balanced sound without the icepick highs that sometimes plague Teles, but still with a well defined low end, unlike other softer woods like poplar, spruce and redwood.
A few years ago, Bob Tayor made an acoustic out of an old pine forklift pallet to prove that the skills of the builder are more important in getting good tone than the materials.
Pine is not the best wood for durability, being soft, but a harder finish helps with that. Also, the generally accepted species of pine for guitar-building tend to be the harder species grown in colder climates. White pine is the most accepted for electric guitar bodies.
Heath
Thanks for that Alan , the reason i ask , i thought it was almost guitar building no no to use pine .
about a year i built a body for a travel guitar i wanted , using pine , and since have had numerous requests by mates who want the same body and it has been bugging me if pine was the way to go . personally i love the sound of the guitar and the sustain was amazing (partly i think because of the rather small neck size , the whole guitar is 10" small then most electrics)
AlanRatcliffe
Don't forget pine is a relative of both spruce and cedar and similar tonally. It's not used for acoustics much because it doesn't have the same stiffness to weight ratio, which is all-important for acoustic tops. The problem with the local pine is it's all speed grown, so is very soft and rarely makes very big boards without lots of laminates. Knots are also very common in SA pine.
thewarthogg
Hi
I agree with alan, our pine in this country isn't any good
Have been looking at oregon pine and it seems a better option for building a solid body
