Blog on pine as a guitar wood

MikeM

Guys, I've REALLY been loving pine relics lately, and people often don't have a good view on it as a tone wood. Read this article earlier and thought it worth sharing.

http://www.tdpri.com/2009/07/07/pros-and-cons-of-pine-2/

Cheers
Mike

Bob-Dubery

MikeM wrote Guys, I've REALLY been loving pine relics lately, and people often don't have a good view on it as a tone wood. Read this article earlier and thought it worth sharing.

http://www.tdpri.com/2009/07/07/pros-and-cons-of-pine-2/

Cheers
Mike

AFAIK pine is from the same family of trees as spruce.

It gets used for acoustic guitars as well.
Go to http://www.fyldeguitars.com/guitars.html
Click on "Single Malt Ariel". Those guitars have pine tops - and the pine in this case is reclaimed from distilleries.

In this article that I posted to this forum recently, Mervyn Davis talks about top woods and says that he's used Oregon Pine and South African Pine. I have also seen pictures of a Smoothtalker that he built using Russian Pine for a top.

Heath

my travel guitar was made with pine , nice sounding wood , and sustains like hell

AlanRatcliffe

All very true - particularly the bit about "all pine is not created equal" the guys using pine for bodies are very specific about the species. COmpare characteristics of SA pine with Oregon, you'll get what he's on about.

Also, the lighter, stiffer woods like spruce and pine tend to be quite resonant at particular features, which is why they are not often used for solidbody electrics. The Tele is a different case in many respects...

MikeM

I don't know about the genealogy so cannot comment.

I remember noting that Davis uses pine, which made me research it further! I'd like to try make a SA pine body soon and see how it holds up to regular use.

Aged pine is amazing for tone. Some reissue champs came from pine that was in an old church's floor (Normal un aged pine didn't sound the same. I'm thinking of buying some wood and just leaving it to breathe in the garage for like a year before building), cause of input from Clapton saying that they didn't sound authentic. I'm not sure which but I definately remember reading it.

@Tailon, I read that it does on the Tele Forums.

@Alan, that's definately true. I want to try use some cheap SA Pine and see how it goes. What do you mean about Teles Alan?

[deleted]

Bob Dubery wrote AFAIK pine is from the same family of trees as spruce.

AFAIK too

I saw a top that Mervyn is using to build himself a double neck guitar/Mandolin Smoothtalker... The top is Pine, and when I asked he just laughed and said yes. SA Pine...

How bad can it be then? I would love to hear a guitar made from Pine ?

MikeM

Well, after my tele (Pretty close to finishing now) I'm doing a flamed maple strat, THEN only am I going to do a relic'd SA Pine esquire ?

Wonder if I'll be able to find quarter sawn pine.... Hmmm