Chocklit_Thunda wrote:
Another thing I've heard (Big ears i guess) is that a majority of the tone comes from the neck woods rather than the body... Any truth to this? Because if thats the case then these weird and wonderful woods my wood guy (Yeah... I have a wood guy 8) ) is showing me would be feasable bodies
There are tons of myths about tone with regards to solid body guitars, I've heard everything from the neck being the biggest contributing factor to the wood itself playing no role whatsoever and the pickups being the only thing that counts, even read a study where someone analysed the frequencies of various guitars and came to the conclusion that the actual woods used altered nothing - Do I agree with this? Not particularly... I think that overtime you'll get your own idea of what does and doesn't affect tone, and even among the most highly regarded luthiers there are tons of different opinions so you really just need to read about and try out different woods and draw your own conclusions.
For what it's worth the opinion I've come to over time is that the most important aspects of guitar construction are the neck joint, scale length and weight - I think overall these have the greatest effect on tone, of course the pickups play a huge role but those are far easier to swop out than changing a bolt on into a neck through. Now with regards to weight there are also lots of differing opinions there, many claim that "heavy" mahogany is the best type and that old les pauls weigh a ton, this is not true (also I've played a few ?) as Honduran Mahogany, which was the staple mahogany for instrument building back then, is actually quite porous given that it grows near the equator in high humidity and heat and is generally lighter than varietes like Sapele. I'm just using that as an example but essentially what I'm getting at is that in my opinion lighter woods with more even grain patterns tend to sound best and resonate more, even in something like Basswood this is true - For instance your cheaper asian import guitars are made from the basswood found that side of the world which tends to be of a yellower hue and weigh more than North American Basswood (Tilia Americana) which is lighter and closer to white in hue and weighs far less than the Asian counterpart and that's what you'll find being used on Ibanez Prestige guitars or Ernie Ball Music Man, there's also a European variety which I believe is called Linden that is actually a medium between the two in terms of weight and colour and is popular for carving apparently.
What your preferences become and what works for you is going to be up to you and I think that's the main reason that people stay away from all these more exotic types of wood, it's hard to dictate what a wood is going to do tonally without having heard it before or without out the guidance of someone who's opinion you trust.
With regards to your initial list what others have said is true, I'd just like to add that I have seen Cherry used for tops on guitars and bodies on basses, pine is by no means exotic for guitar building at all, walnut I've seen used for bodies, tops and necks so it's probably cool though heavy, rosewood I see far more commonly used for necks and fretboards but there have been the odd rosewood bodied guitars I've seen around, I think the biggest setback is price most of the time and that not all species of these woods are able to be used for any application, for instance Indian Rosewood I believe actually requires more reinforcing to be used as a neck than say Honduran Rosewood.
Anyway in short use google get your own ideas and experiment cause most of these points can be put up for debate with convincing arguments from either side of the field ?
and here are is a useful website...
http://www.projectguitar.com/
* Note all my opinions are based on electric guitars not acoustic ?
