I've build (and sold ) more than 100 guitars in french ash, body, neck, frebaords, tens in oak and cherry. I live in France only using locals woods no need to import. Use your local woods !
@DoktoRVoLoXGuitars I agree with you, I build guitars in Spain, and only use local woods, only natural woods from my village, wallnut for everything, elm for fretboard, holm oak that is incredible hard for fretboard and nuts, and chestnut, for me the best and beautiful for every part too.
I've built 2 guitars and 1 bass with hornbeam as fretboard wood. Initially, the reason I've used it is because I'm a hobby builder and this wood is relatively cheap (at least were I live), so in case I've screwed it up, I won't waste expensive wood. As I've gathered, it's not as hard as traditional fretboard woods, but it worked fine for me (the oldest instrument with is over 2 years old), none of the instruments had any problem with it. In 1 case it was roasted hornbeam, so it kinda look like rosewood, in the other 2 cases it was black hornbeam (as I understand, it's the same species, but the trees were fed certain chemicals, while they were growing, so their wood turned black). From the distance black hornbeam looks like ebony, but if you'll look close, you will see beautiful dark brown rays. Also it has sweet smell when you work with it. Not really useful info, but kinda curious. Something something tonesmell 🙂
I've used Cherry once for a neck to great result and would definitely do so again. Walnut works well, too. Bloodwood makes a great fretboard choice for a bold look and I used it once for an acoustic back and side set, as well, and loved the end result. I don't personally care for using "traditional" woods just for the sake of following tradition because in reality the options are nearly endless. On the electric guitars I've built I have often stayed close to more traditional selections because they either fulfilled the aesthetic I was going for (what can I say, I'm a sucker for curly maple any day of the week) or because it was what I had on hand in the needed size, but I'm always up for using non-traditional options and have never been disappointed in terms of performance. Kevin La Due (The Pragmatic Luthier here on UA-cam) has a good video from about a year ago discussing his preference for North American hardwoods and has used quite a few non-traditional woods in his builds (Hickory, Butternut, etc). While he is an acoustic builder, his points on the topic still apply to electric guitar building, so definitely worth the watch for another take on the subject
I used a piece of flamed walnut for the fretboard of my first build. People said it would be too soft and that it would need to have a finish on it. I oiled it and nothing else. It worked perfectly. It held the frets without glue and hasn't worn any more than the rosewood and pau ferro boards I have used on the next 2 builds. I also built a body out of a piece of cherry. It looks beautiful with just tung oil on it but it is rather heavy even though I made it 1 5/8" thick instead of 1 3/4" Like you said Chris, any wood that has the necessary strength to hold together and resist the tension of the strings will work. It's a matter of finding a wood that does so at a reasonable weight.
One of the guys I play music with plays a hollow body tele that I made him that has a walnut board. It’s just oiled and has been going strong for several years now and he plays the piss out of it so it was going to wear unduly it already would be.
I have yet to compete a total instrument (only bodies thus far), but that hasn't stopped me from stockpiling some wood! I'm trying to source mainly from a local lumber supply, so I don't always have the most options, but sometimes there are gems that just might make for, say, a cool top or a laminate in a neck. I'm still too green to venture outside the typical body woods, but I've found some nice wood locally that might make for interesting tops. For example, I have a couple amazing pieces of highly figured cherry, with a quilted effect and some serious chatoyance. I also grabbed some yellow heart, purple heart, jatoba, walnut, etc., for laminates when I start learning to work them into my projects. (Ibanez, incidentally, uses jatoba frequently in its bass necks.) I know this doesn't exactly speak to your questions for us, the viewers, but it seems to me that one way to approach "non-standard" instrument woods is to try working them into your design more aesthetically than functionally. Like a top, a laminate, a control cavity cover, headstock veneer, etc.
I made a guitar out of oak, with a carbon-reinforced neck and cherry fretboard. He had a good voice. It is similar to ash, with a little less treble. For a headless project, I made the neck with green ebony and bubinga, the fretboard is also ebony. For this, the body is made of okoume wood. It turned out to be quite a hard-sounding guitar, with a lot of overharmonics. I got access to almond wood, from which a fretboard was made. This is also some kind of rosewood, but not dark, but brownish-yellow. Great material.
I have built a couple of guitars complete, European walnut for neck and body, with 2 wengé laminated strips of 5mm in the neck, very satisfied with the tone in combination with P100 and fishman fluence pickups, and now working on a semihollow les paul with mahagony back and sides en walnut top, with a meranti neck with 2 wengé stripes.
I have used both cherry and oak to make guitars; both are plentiful here in NC. Downside is both are dense and make for quite heavy solid body guitars. I always ended up removing most wood leaving a shell of back and sides and adding a cap top. I do like cherry for necks. The most exotic wood I have used is Indonesian red palm: made a clone of an Emmet Chapman Stick.
I rescued the soundboard from a Packard piano c.1938. There is just enough in between all the holes and bridges to make a front and back for a small electric body. The spruce is 5/16 thick, and I planed the ribs down to 7/8; so when assembled it is 1 3/8 thick or so. I ran two pieces of mahogany full length to take the screws to attach the neck, but most of the body is hollow in line with the neck, with each rib touching the front, back and the rib next to it. Gave it a single pu in the middle position. Fun to play and the shellac has worn in a very satisfying pattern that helped me design the shape of a pickguard for my next one.
I did a bunch of research on wood properties for compressive strength, hardness, stability, weight, porisity, colour, figure, seasonal stability, and density. There are a couple of wood databases and some very good info from an American Forest agency. Below are some of my recollections of North American commercial lumber varieties. Regardless of the wood type for a neck, it ideally will be quarter sawn. Body on an electric has significantly less conserns on the propeties due to the thickness, so figure, weight will generally be more important for astetics and comfort. Body on an acoustic everything is important and warrents a small series of novels. So my discussion here will be mostly focussed on necks, and electric bodies. While there is a correlation between hardness, strength, and density. It's not direct and there are some very strong woods that are relatively light. There is a reason why hard maple is the standard for necks. It is because it checks all of the boxes for desired properties, while being relatively easy to work with and reasonably affordable. Hickory is very strong but also heavy. It is also uncommon to find in thickness over 2" due to tendency to crack during the drying process. It may possibly be great for a fingerboard. Red oak, if I recall, or could have been white oak, is often used by coopers to make barrels. It is comparable to maple for hardness and strength. It is very stable through humidity and temperature changes and is relatively inexpensive. Leo Fender had experiments with it for necks but went away from it due to it being hard on production machinery cutters. The other type of oak is also good, but it won't be as stable due to being open pore. Fir also has comparable strength to some of the softer maples and at a lower density. Easy to machine, but is more open pore and possibly prone to seasonal warpage. Cherry is quite good overall, but is not as strong as maple. Purple hart wood from lilac bush is very strong, stable at a low density. But it's hard to come by and is very hard on tooling. Box Elder, poplar, birch, most pines, and spruce are a bit weak. Some varities of Locust and ash could be interesting for both neck and body, while others would be too soft and porus. Walnut is ideal and very comparable to maple, but is more expensive. Plus finding good quarter sawn stock for necks is not easy.
I've made several electric bodies out of Douglas Fir. Yes, it's soft but it works and was good practice for me. The cool part was I cut the trees down and milled them into boards and then shaped them into bodies. Sort of like farm to table....tree to axe maybe?
Hi Chris, I really enjoy your channel - congrats on the 100k subs! I'm a hobbyist, still in the early stages of my building journey. So far, I've used maritime pine for a short scale bass (body) and marine-grade plywood + masonite for a guitar (body), in a similar way as Danelectro Guitars are build. Pine is actually a really nice wood to work with and has imo beautiful grain patterns, especially after applying an oil finish. It can be a bit on the heavy side though, due to its resin content.
I used Ulmo for the body, Raulí for the neck and walnut for the fretboard, all Chilean native woods. Raulí was too soft, Ulmo very heavy but might be because of the extra size of the guitar. Chilean Walnut for the fretboard was great! Happy new year Chris, thank you for your videos!
As an amateur luthier I built a semi-hollow jazzmaster body with oak from a reclaimed table top, which I found sounds nice with lots of treble but some weird compression resonance, a loudness that reminds me of the loud resonance of our oak kitchen... Does anybody notice this strange resonance of oak ? I built as well a semi-hollow neck-through bass out of reclaimed cherry which sounds perfect to my ears, great wood to work with ! Thank you for your great posts !
I have been using 150 year old Scots Pine from an old victorian theatres ceiling joist. With that kind of age the resins in the wood are fully hardened and it makes it much harder than modern pine. As its old growth the rings are 80-90 per inch in comparison to modern farmed pine where the rings are so wide due to intensive growing like 5 or 6 per inch
I've used cherry reclaimed from old furniture for several basses. Since most of the pieces are 3/4" thick, I have added a 1/8" maple slice in the middle of a cherry sandwich. Looks sharp and holds up well. However, I wouldn't want to use just cherry for a bass neck - maybe in a laminate with maple.
I've used pine plywood, pine, knotty pine, cedar, and red oak for non-traditional woods for electrics. Plywood can have strength issues (bending), cedar can be fragile, and red oak is hard to cut and drill - but not as bad as bubinga. Pines and cedar tend to be bright like maple. Oak seemed to be rather tone neutral, neither bright like maple, nor dark like mahogany. I suspect that specific stiffness has a lot to do with "brightness". I've always wanted to do a Douglass Fir build for that reason.
Great video. I think that wood comes down to drying the wood completely out...this would require stability and adding the right time/heat.. Occurs difficult on doing, sometimes!.. But when a wood like maple, can be very stable on being a neck-wood.. Alder is ok, but density will differ..
I'm down in NZ and most of the woods you use I don't because the stuff just doesn't grow here.. One of my go to woods is Jarrah, it's dark red and really hard but the sustain is amazing even with a really cheap pickup but there's no fancy grain... Tasmanian Blackwood is another favorite, as a solid body it's fantastic, great grain patterns, hard enough to be mark resistant but not so hard as it's heavy on the shoulder.. Another wood we have here is a native called Rimu (pronounced ream you).. colour and grain vary a lot as does the hardness but the further you get to the heart wood the darker and tougher it gets.. Kauri (cow ree) is another staple, not much grain but a golden colour that is hard to beat, very versatile and works easily, shavings just glide off it with ease and tonally it's really warm, a lot of acoustic guitar builders like it.. Matai (mat eye) is also brilliant.. Personally I rarely buy wood, I'll use old fence posts, floor boards building demolition stuff.. Yeah you have to de-nail the stuff and work around the holes but some of it is the best part of a century old and is as stable as it's ever going to be and generally free.. It's amazing what woods are just what is around you, all have good points and bad points.. I've grabbed old fence posts that look like they're not much good for anything other than firewood but once cleaned and dressed look a million dollars..
The guitar I'm playing in my profile avatar, has a back of body made from Victorian Blackwood from Australia. It's close to Koa in all aspects. A more figured variant is the Tasmanian Blackwood. Tbh, the Sitka Spruce top and the Ebony fretboard lend more to the acoustic tone, but I like to think the guitar's projection is helped by the properties of the Victorian Blackwood. Beautiful guitar, custom made by Andy Allen when he ran Maton Custom Shop.
One of my models uses ash for a neck. It’s my favorite neck wood by far. Feeling the grain makes the instrument feel much more organic. I’ve also used bog oak for a fretboard and much preferred it to ebony in appearance and feel. I also made a poplar neck with Bolivian rosewood fingerboard. I actually love the feel of it. 5:08 - One thing I’ve used AI for is to create a table for woodworkers which is the ratio of Janka rating to weight. It’s actually a great metric for looking for neck woods.
As I am in Ky. cherry is readily available and reasonably priced. it is an excellent tone wood, kind of midway between mahogany and ash, great for a LP when you are looking for a little more punch and clarity. It's easy to work,looks great and smells wonderful.
To practice routing I am building prototypes of composite rubber tree (latex) wood. It is popular for furniture making here in SE Asia, and very cheap. It has the same light colour as basswood but seems more heavy. My first neck blanks are from mahogany. We will see how it works out. Jackfruit and mango are popular for making traditional musical instruments here, so I intend to try those as well.
About 3 years ago, I decided to build my first Telecaster using a precut neck and body. The neck was a standard maple neck, Rosewood fretboard, and the body I chose was Sycamore. It has a resemblance to maple, but is a softer hardwood than maple. It's way easy to work with, so I reshaped the body a bit. The resonance is good, but it is waay light, to the point of neck dive. I used a different pickup layout, using a neck humbucker rated at abt 8 k and a Telecaster bridge pickup rated at abt 9.3k ohms. It sounds great with the exception that the bridge by itself is a bit edgy.
I've made at least 5 guitars using pine plywood (body) and masonite, and birch (plywood) for top and bottom. Similar to Danelectro style of guitars. Necks are bought online. 2 of them are acoustic (acoustasonic style) They sound fine.
I built a guitar out of Mountain Ash, and it has good sustain and a nice tone, It is a full electric guitar has a set of humbucking pickups in it. I built it probably 30 years ago.
I myself have never built a guitar from scratch, but I used to own a couple of old Carvins, one with a maple body and neck, the other neck-through maple/poplar, both with ebony fretboards. As a body wood, maple gives you almost no low end - had to turn up the bass on my amp to compensate. Maple/poplar is extremely balanced. I've had other poplar bodied guitars before, and though it is compared with alder, from my experience it is darker sounding, and works extremely well with high-output pickups. Currently I have a cheap strat-style guitar with a sycamore body. It's lightweight and the tone is pretty warm, similar to poplar. Oh, yes, and ebony fretboards are described as "bright," though I would say they give you a tight attack without being snappy like maple.
I've used cherry and Northern elm bodies, weight reilief if needed.. both are wonderful but the ash is difficult to grain fill. For necks, I've used Walnut, african mahogany and flamed birch. All work as well as maple for stability, not much different for tone- but my favorite is walnut. I laminate all these woods, usually 2 peices. Fretboards, besides the usual, I've used ambrosia maple and purpleheart. Both are amazing and the tone depends on the specific peice but about what you'd expect. Ambrosia maple has to be just the right piece and care must be taken through all aspects of working it... but it is worth it.
Thinline Nashville Tele with a Bigsby. The body neck and fretboard all out of beautiful quartersawn red oak. It weighs 7.3 lbs. Sound is beautiful. It has been completely stable (in Minnesota) for the past 5 yrs. I plan to build more.
I want stiff and stable woods for necks, and I love wenge and padauk for bass necks. Wenge is a pain to work with though. This spring I will be making a katalox neck and it's extremely stiff. For bodies, dense and heavy woods work well if you simply make the guitar or bass thinner. I know that folks tend to think 1.75" is the standard, but there nothing wrong with a body between 1-1/4" to 1-1/2" thick as long as the neck joint is designed for the thinned body. It's why I like SG's more than Les Pauls. As far as how the woods affect tone on a solid body electric guitar or bass, I think it falls into to conversations. First, I notice a big difference when playing the instrument unplugged. Second, once plugged in those differences mostly go away in my experience and the electronics account for most of the difference. So I'm not concerned with the tone wood side and more concerned with stability, feel and looks to be honest.
I have made an explorer inspired bass that I made out of aka-matsu (Japanese red pine, I'm in Japan) that has a beautiful grain and is totally stable. Zero complaints. :)
I've used cherry, pear, and apple for bodies. I stick yo mahogany or spanish cedar for necks, i like ebony, rosewood, maple, and cocobolo for fretboards.
I made a headless guitar with a sweet cherry neck (with carbon reinforcement), maple fretboard and walnut body, with a linseed oil finish. Working really well, is stable and strong enough. The sweet cherry has a beautifull color, uniform and fine grain, very smooth to the touch. A very easy wood to work with but it is prone to dents. The headless guitar body is very compact, and the weight of the walnut is not an issue (a plus actually). The walnut as a nice complex pattern which works well with all the bevels and curved surfaces. Really worth trying something else, especially if you go for a natural look with light oil finish to reveal the wood.
And for the tone and sustain, it is pretty good, overall comparable to mahogany in my opinion: not overly bright or bassy. The sweet cherry and walnut combo sound quite mellow and mid focused (taping test) on their own but I think that the carbon reinforcements and the maple fretboard brings some more brightness in the attack which is a nice complement and gives a nicely balanced sound.
Like cherry for bodies. Seems similar to alder in weight and finishes well with dyes or paint. I made one cherry neck, but it was too soft for my liking. Beech works well for guitar necks, feels a lot like maple. Where I live it is slightly less expensive than hard maple, but not as pretty, so I generally stick with maple. Have use hackberry for a guitar body. Kind of soft and requires a lot of grain filling. Inexpensive but I would not recommend it. Just started using Richlite for some fretboards. It is a paper and resin composite material (think carbon fiber for wood). It is very hard (harder than ebony) and comes in different colors to really customize a guitar neck. My favorite is probably walnut. It is heavy so I will chamber the guitar body, but walnut looks so good with a clear poly or tru-oil finish. Walnut also works well for necks, but I have yet to use it for fretboard. Just finishing a Tele style guitar with a chambered walnut body with a zebrawood top and am very happy with the look and weight of the body.
Cherry works well for bodies. Its weight and hardness are similar to mahogany but it has a finer texture. You can find lots of exotic hardwoods at Woodcraft that can be used as unique fretboards. You may also find boards there that are flat and straight enough to be used for necks.
I've used hickory for a neck and fretboard. Used a lacquer finish and liked it a lot. Wood was hard to shape and sand smooth but man was it solid and heavy. I probably wouldn't used hickory for the neck but I'd used it for a fretboard again. Used cherry for a tele body, liked it a lot very light but it was soft, easily dented. Used tru oil to finish the body.
I've always wanted to build a guitar body out of cedar, a very soft and light wood, with layer after layer of paint colors. The idea would be that as it gets played, it gets easily dinged and dented, the paint will chip to reveal the different colors and eventually the wood underneath. It's a great way to start with a shiny new guitar get a relic'd guitar relatively quickly without "relic-ing" the guitar.
I'm currently building a telecaster from a large beech pallet (4 parts glued for the body and 1 for the neck) and oak for the fretboard. It is very machinable and pleasant to work, although it is my first guitare !
I considered using beech for a guitar neck, but since beech trees grow with a pronounced twist, and beech planks have a tendency to "untwist", then any beech neck may start out straight, but may warp due to this.
@@1man1guitarletsgo I just finished the guitar so I will see in the next months if it moves... But since I machined it and glued the truss and the oak fretboard I havent noticed any twist.
I've used clear pine on a body. Sounded good. Not the most durable but I wasn't too concerned with it getting dinged up. I don't think it's non-traditional but I like using Sapele on necks over mahogany. It's somewhere between mahogany and maple in terms of strength and hardness. Very stable so far. I also really enjoy using macassar ebony on fretboards. Very nice looking and very hard.
Being in the UK, oak is really prevalent. Truth is, it makes fantastic necks and the 'weight' myth is nonsense compared to other hard woods. A few ounces at best. Interestingly I'm just making a Charlie Starr Haggis commission for a client. Charlie's is 11lb's. I made this one semi hollow to get closer to 8. Love the channel brother.
I have used roasted curly birch, carelian birch (both hard to get), roasted ash, aspen (too soft), linden, tulip wood and pine I almost excessively use roasted wood for its stability. So there you have it.
Made a carved ES335 hollow body out of sepele. Honduran mahogany neck through w/ f holes, ebony fret board. Heavy, sounds like a good solid body Les Paul. Interesting. No hint of ES335 tone or feel. Has a tone all it's own!
A wood i've been interested in trying for a top or fretboard is osage orange. I've done gamecall bodies but never a guitar. Its a very hardy wood but works easy.
My last build was a thin line hollow tele out of red oak, maple neck, ambrosia maple fret board, and pick guard. Been playing it daily with no issues for a year...enjoy your show!
Built a neck with Curupay (also called Patagonian Rosewood) and a Leopardwood fretboard. Looks-wise it's incredible, but both woods were difficult to work and rough on my tools, and to my ears it sounds unpleasant and brittle. It was definitely worth trying out, but I doubt I'd do it again. Curupay might be a decent choice for a fretboard on a neck made of a warmer-sounding wood, though.
I think with necks you can experiment with nontraditional woods because the two way truss rods and carbon fiber rods that are available make it intriguing.
I'm thinking about building a guitar. I've put a kit guitar together and stained it and changed tuners and adjusted a nut slot, which I was pleased that super glue and baking powder worked. I was wondering if being a member would give access to any step by step builds. I think I'd like to build a body and buy a neck and all the other parts for my first try. Step by step builds for all the major styles with affiliated links to parts and templates and gear and tools would be awesome. You'd get money from the memberships and if people buy stuff through your links. Just curious. Another thing you could do is have a "buy me a coffee" feature. That way people can make a one time donation, if they want.
I’m a hobbyist builder so I only build for my own playing pleasure. With that said, guitar weight is not much of a factor to me since I almost exclusively play sitting down on my handmade guitar stool. I used highly figured ziricote on the back of a guitar. Make sure you test your finish on scrap pieces before applying it to your guitar. Anything solvent based will dissolve the black resin and stain the adjacent lighter colored wood pattern. Beware! I built a solid body electric with a thru the body neck. Neck is Bolivian Rosewood and the top is a thick pice of Bolivian Rosewood. Beautiful guitar but way heavier than anything you would ever find in a guitar store. The guitar is very bright, lots of highs. Also, due to the natural oil in the rosewood, gluing can be an issue. In a similar manner to the ziricote mentioned above, beware of any solvent because it can pick up the dark resins and instantly ruin the beauty of the wood. Built a solid body electric using black walnut grown in Louisiana. Sound lacks highs. Huge difference in sound in comparison to the Bolivian Rosewood guitar. The difference in sounds between the two guitars is very evident even without plugging them into an amplifier.
I made a v with a jarrah body , and stringy bark neck with merbau strips (5 piece neck) . It turned out awesome ... It is heavy though. I am not a subscriber to the tonewood thing - what i think is the most important is 1. Stability of the species 2. Hardness 3. Workability and tearout and how it dulls tools 4. Availability If anyone has wood and it is dry and want to build a guitar from it , i say go for it !!!
With regards to sustain - rings for days !!! Even though "tap testing" the wood itself is quite dead ... I have a tonerider alnico 2 set on it and downtuned to c standard ... On low gain through my jcm 800 is has a perfect traditional doom metal tone !!! And the neck pickup with the colume slightly rolled back is 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Hi, you have talked about this in some videos years back I think, but ill ask anyway, pros and cons about using a CNC for carving a whole neck through guitar, instead of just ordering something similar from overseas with cost for expensive shipping and customs taxes and things like that ? I am thinking more like having my own brand and making just one or two different models both neck through design and very limited manufacturing per year, and paying someone to make a 3D STEP model for me that I basically can just use in my CNC. The knowledge of building a guitar is not a problem, just curious about what you think about it. Thanks for great videos.. :D
I know since This is on non traditional Woods for guitars Brian mays red, special the body was made from oak that came from his yard and the neck was made from cherry wood that came from his fire place mantle and it works for him. And he made it himself with his dad. And like I said my made on India jackson the body was made from Indian cederwood. Which is fine for acoustics but I hate the tone on my electric guitar for that. Also why are people in the comments section calling traditional ebony wood or gabboon ebony purple heart acting like purple heart is non traditional wood it's not. It's the same as gabboon ebony. Madasgascan ebony is a diferent type of ebony wood and may be slightly non traditional. Now perhaps one day I may experiment with oak but may experience is especially with red oak is its overly grainy to the point even grain fill would not work or a lot of sanding if you wanted to paint it. But might be interesting to test as a top wood or body wood and try a diferent wood top material or mix I would just have to figure it out but maybe red oak with popler or maple perhaps with thin peices for the top sides and back but then again red oak, I think for me with me getting older. Might be too heavy. And that's why I lean towards woods like basswood mahogany maple perhaps popler.
Just for clarity and many kinds of wood work but the body of the Red Special was made from blockboard common at the time in the uk which was soft blocks laminated between ply in Brian's case, they covered it also with a mahogany veneer. They put oak inserts into that to add strength and the fingerboard was also Oak. The neck material came from a fire place so may is presumed to be old mahogany.
I am reading through all of the comments below. There are great descriptions of many species used. I love the variety. What amazes me is that there are so many builders who describe the tones that they are getting from the different species used. Really? "Tone wood" and how it can even matter in a solid body guitar has been so thoroughly debunked. I just have to say 🤔.
I've built a couple of what I call ghetto electric guitars using necks I've gotten from cheap craigslist purchases and inexpensive hardware and pickups. One is a Strat body made from southern yellow pine that were roof decking from an old factory building and the other is a Les Paul shaped body made from laminated pallet wood. I'm not what you'd call a great player, but I've real musicians play them and they've told me they play well and sound fine.
Just a select few from my experiences- Blue Mahoe One of my favorite woods ever to have worked with. Light and strong like maple. Very beautiful and working with it very pleasant. If only it wasn’t so rare. It used to be easy to get at Woodcraft. Built a multi laminate 8 string neck with it and purple heart. Very stable. Ebiara Mahogany ish wood. Beautiful strong and stable. Just look out for checking. You can find consistent pieces if you look. Used in a 7 string neck and body(chambered) Snakewood Tricky as hell to work with, insanely dense, checks and warps all over the place, you have to make sure it’s adequately air dried. Can’t kiln dry. Expensive. Won’t work with again unless a client pays handling fee. Polishes nice though and looks high end. Spalted Tamarind Used a fretboards. Unstable, weak and soft. Warps. Tricky to finish. Stains easily. Keep in mind you typically see the sapwood being used not the much denser heart wood, looks much different. Won’t use again. Had a neck that required constant truss rod adjustments with it. Looks really cool though. Not worth the unreliability. Use carbon fiber without a doubt. Cherry Beautiful body wood, great experience with both guitars and basses. Like other woods it can vary greatly in weight so find something light and you’ll be happy Afrormosia Used as a body wood. Extremely oily and difficult to finish. Sticky wood. Clogs vaccuums. Kind of a cool looking wood, nice color but wouldn’t work with again. Not too heavy but not too light either.
Sure but traditional pickups tend to work best with traditional woods. Standard tele pickups don’t really like bodies denser than ash or alder. Walnut makes a nice looking body but comes off really bright so a darker or boomier pickup should be used.
Yes, good. About OAK I wanted to say that it conducts sound very poorly, and the echo after hitting a plank of oak sounds dull and unmusical in timbre, unlike mahogany, or merbau, or walnut, for example. Therefore, this oak (at least as far as what grows here is concerned) in acoustic and classical guitars (I repair them and play them) no one, thank God, uses these types of guitars). I have been interested in this topic for 9 years, and I don’t remember anyone promoting their use (oak wood), especially on UA-cam. Hard and heavy wood is good, but it muffles the sound! It probably could be, if some kind of oak has a "good response to a blow" in a musical sense, but I have not yet encountered, and have never heard such a statement on the Internet. I am also interested in information about electric guitars, and I do not remember anyone saying on the Internet in the last nine years that some kind of oak is suitable for making an electric guitar body out of it, or a fingerboard) for one. Please post me for a large amount of printed information, but otherwise, having reduced it, I would not be able to say what I wanted to say.
I did my own research and discovered that wood is a terrible choice for instruments. The only adequate materials for electric guitars are actually concrete and styrofoam.
I've build (and sold ) more than 100 guitars in french ash, body, neck, frebaords, tens in oak and cherry. I live in France only using locals woods no need to import. Use your local woods !
@ewm416 🤣🤣🤣 I thought this was a guitar building video not a place for shity historical analysis
I blocked him. That was uncalled for. Not to mention really weird.
@@HighlineGuitars thx mate. Continue your good and inspiring work!
@DoktoRVoLoXGuitars I agree with you, I build guitars in Spain, and only use local woods, only natural woods from my village, wallnut for everything, elm for fretboard, holm oak that is incredible hard for fretboard and nuts, and chestnut, for me the best and beautiful for every part too.
I've got a cherry neck in production now. It is laminated and seems like it's going to be quite resilient.
I've built 2 guitars and 1 bass with hornbeam as fretboard wood. Initially, the reason I've used it is because I'm a hobby builder and this wood is relatively cheap (at least were I live), so in case I've screwed it up, I won't waste expensive wood. As I've gathered, it's not as hard as traditional fretboard woods, but it worked fine for me (the oldest instrument with is over 2 years old), none of the instruments had any problem with it. In 1 case it was roasted hornbeam, so it kinda look like rosewood, in the other 2 cases it was black hornbeam (as I understand, it's the same species, but the trees were fed certain chemicals, while they were growing, so their wood turned black). From the distance black hornbeam looks like ebony, but if you'll look close, you will see beautiful dark brown rays.
Also it has sweet smell when you work with it. Not really useful info, but kinda curious. Something something tonesmell 🙂
I've used Cherry once for a neck to great result and would definitely do so again. Walnut works well, too. Bloodwood makes a great fretboard choice for a bold look and I used it once for an acoustic back and side set, as well, and loved the end result.
I don't personally care for using "traditional" woods just for the sake of following tradition because in reality the options are nearly endless. On the electric guitars I've built I have often stayed close to more traditional selections because they either fulfilled the aesthetic I was going for (what can I say, I'm a sucker for curly maple any day of the week) or because it was what I had on hand in the needed size, but I'm always up for using non-traditional options and have never been disappointed in terms of performance.
Kevin La Due (The Pragmatic Luthier here on UA-cam) has a good video from about a year ago discussing his preference for North American hardwoods and has used quite a few non-traditional woods in his builds (Hickory, Butternut, etc). While he is an acoustic builder, his points on the topic still apply to electric guitar building, so definitely worth the watch for another take on the subject
I used a piece of flamed walnut for the fretboard of my first build. People said it would be too soft and that it would need to have a finish on it. I oiled it and nothing else. It worked perfectly. It held the frets without glue and hasn't worn any more than the rosewood and pau ferro boards I have used on the next 2 builds.
I also built a body out of a piece of cherry. It looks beautiful with just tung oil on it but it is rather heavy even though I made it 1 5/8" thick instead of 1 3/4"
Like you said Chris, any wood that has the necessary strength to hold together and resist the tension of the strings will work. It's a matter of finding a wood that does so at a reasonable weight.
One of the guys I play music with plays a hollow body tele that I made him that has a walnut board. It’s just oiled and has been going strong for several years now and he plays the piss out of it so it was going to wear unduly it already would be.
I have yet to compete a total instrument (only bodies thus far), but that hasn't stopped me from stockpiling some wood! I'm trying to source mainly from a local lumber supply, so I don't always have the most options, but sometimes there are gems that just might make for, say, a cool top or a laminate in a neck.
I'm still too green to venture outside the typical body woods, but I've found some nice wood locally that might make for interesting tops. For example, I have a couple amazing pieces of highly figured cherry, with a quilted effect and some serious chatoyance. I also grabbed some yellow heart, purple heart, jatoba, walnut, etc., for laminates when I start learning to work them into my projects. (Ibanez, incidentally, uses jatoba frequently in its bass necks.)
I know this doesn't exactly speak to your questions for us, the viewers, but it seems to me that one way to approach "non-standard" instrument woods is to try working them into your design more aesthetically than functionally. Like a top, a laminate, a control cavity cover, headstock veneer, etc.
I used cherry with thin superglue as a finish. I love it. The color has changed quite a bit as it aged. Looks amazing
I made a guitar out of oak, with a carbon-reinforced neck and cherry fretboard. He had a good voice. It is similar to ash, with a little less treble. For a headless project, I made the neck with green ebony and bubinga, the fretboard is also ebony. For this, the body is made of okoume wood. It turned out to be quite a hard-sounding guitar, with a lot of overharmonics. I got access to almond wood, from which a fretboard was made. This is also some kind of rosewood, but not dark, but brownish-yellow. Great material.
I have built a couple of guitars complete, European walnut for neck and body, with 2 wengé laminated strips of 5mm in the neck, very satisfied with the tone in combination with P100 and fishman fluence pickups, and now working on a semihollow les paul with mahagony back and sides en walnut top, with a meranti neck with 2 wengé stripes.
Congratulations on the 100k by the way. Very well deserved.
Thank you so much 😀
I have used both cherry and oak to make guitars; both are plentiful here in NC. Downside is both are dense and make for quite heavy solid body guitars. I always ended up removing most wood leaving a shell of back and sides and adding a cap top. I do like cherry for necks. The most exotic wood I have used is Indonesian red palm: made a clone of an Emmet Chapman Stick.
I rescued the soundboard from a Packard piano c.1938. There is just enough in between all the holes and bridges to make a front and back for a small electric body. The spruce is 5/16 thick, and I planed the ribs down to 7/8; so when assembled it is 1 3/8 thick or so. I ran two pieces of mahogany full length to take the screws to attach the neck, but most of the body is hollow in line with the neck, with each rib touching the front, back and the rib next to it. Gave it a single pu in the middle position. Fun to play and the shellac has worn in a very satisfying pattern that helped me design the shape of a pickguard for my next one.
I did a bunch of research on wood properties for compressive strength, hardness, stability, weight, porisity, colour, figure, seasonal stability, and density. There are a couple of wood databases and some very good info from an American Forest agency. Below are some of my recollections of North American commercial lumber varieties.
Regardless of the wood type for a neck, it ideally will be quarter sawn. Body on an electric has significantly less conserns on the propeties due to the thickness, so figure, weight will generally be more important for astetics and comfort. Body on an acoustic everything is important and warrents a small series of novels. So my discussion here will be mostly focussed on necks, and electric bodies. While there is a correlation between hardness, strength, and density. It's not direct and there are some very strong woods that are relatively light.
There is a reason why hard maple is the standard for necks. It is because it checks all of the boxes for desired properties, while being relatively easy to work with and reasonably affordable.
Hickory is very strong but also heavy. It is also uncommon to find in thickness over 2" due to tendency to crack during the drying process. It may possibly be great for a fingerboard.
Red oak, if I recall, or could have been white oak, is often used by coopers to make barrels. It is comparable to maple for hardness and strength. It is very stable through humidity and temperature changes and is relatively inexpensive. Leo Fender had experiments with it for necks but went away from it due to it being hard on production machinery cutters. The other type of oak is also good, but it won't be as stable due to being open pore.
Fir also has comparable strength to some of the softer maples and at a lower density. Easy to machine, but is more open pore and possibly prone to seasonal warpage.
Cherry is quite good overall, but is not as strong as maple.
Purple hart wood from lilac bush is very strong, stable at a low density. But it's hard to come by and is very hard on tooling.
Box Elder, poplar, birch, most pines, and spruce are a bit weak.
Some varities of Locust and ash could be interesting for both neck and body, while others would be too soft and porus.
Walnut is ideal and very comparable to maple, but is more expensive. Plus finding good quarter sawn stock for necks is not easy.
I've made several electric bodies out of Douglas Fir. Yes, it's soft but it works and was good practice for me. The cool part was I cut the trees down and milled them into boards and then shaped them into bodies. Sort of like farm to table....tree to axe maybe?
Axe to tree, tree to axe
@@finnancahill2644 I love it!
Hi Chris, I really enjoy your channel - congrats on the 100k subs! I'm a hobbyist, still in the early stages of my building journey. So far, I've used maritime pine for a short scale bass (body) and marine-grade plywood + masonite for a guitar (body), in a similar way as Danelectro Guitars are build. Pine is actually a really nice wood to work with and has imo beautiful grain patterns, especially after applying an oil finish. It can be a bit on the heavy side though, due to its resin content.
I used Ulmo for the body, Raulí for the neck and walnut for the fretboard, all Chilean native woods. Raulí was too soft, Ulmo very heavy but might be because of the extra size of the guitar. Chilean Walnut for the fretboard was great! Happy new year Chris, thank you for your videos!
As an amateur luthier I built a semi-hollow jazzmaster body with oak from a reclaimed table top, which I found sounds nice with lots of treble but some weird compression resonance, a loudness that reminds me of the loud resonance of our oak kitchen... Does anybody notice this strange resonance of oak ? I built as well a semi-hollow neck-through bass out of reclaimed cherry which sounds perfect to my ears, great wood to work with ! Thank you for your great posts !
I have been using 150 year old Scots Pine from an old victorian theatres ceiling joist. With that kind of age the resins in the wood are fully hardened and it makes it much harder than modern pine. As its old growth the rings are 80-90 per inch in comparison to modern farmed pine where the rings are so wide due to intensive growing like 5 or 6 per inch
I've used cherry reclaimed from old furniture for several basses. Since most of the pieces are 3/4" thick, I have added a 1/8" maple slice in the middle of a cherry sandwich. Looks sharp and holds up well. However, I wouldn't want to use just cherry for a bass neck - maybe in a laminate with maple.
I have built two acoustics with ash back & sides with Douglas fir tops and are quite pleased with the result.
I've used pine plywood, pine, knotty pine, cedar, and red oak for non-traditional woods for electrics. Plywood can have strength issues (bending), cedar can be fragile, and red oak is hard to cut and drill - but not as bad as bubinga. Pines and cedar tend to be bright like maple. Oak seemed to be rather tone neutral, neither bright like maple, nor dark like mahogany. I suspect that specific stiffness has a lot to do with "brightness". I've always wanted to do a Douglass Fir build for that reason.
Great video. I think that wood comes down to drying the wood completely out...this would require stability and adding the right time/heat.. Occurs difficult on doing, sometimes!.. But when a wood like maple, can be very stable on being a neck-wood.. Alder is ok, but density will differ..
My last guitar was a spalted hackberry top and bottom with a figured cherry neck. It's been a good instrument so far.
I'm down in NZ and most of the woods you use I don't because the stuff just doesn't grow here.. One of my go to woods is Jarrah, it's dark red and really hard but the sustain is amazing even with a really cheap pickup but there's no fancy grain... Tasmanian Blackwood is another favorite, as a solid body it's fantastic, great grain patterns, hard enough to be mark resistant but not so hard as it's heavy on the shoulder.. Another wood we have here is a native called Rimu (pronounced ream you).. colour and grain vary a lot as does the hardness but the further you get to the heart wood the darker and tougher it gets.. Kauri (cow ree) is another staple, not much grain but a golden colour that is hard to beat, very versatile and works easily, shavings just glide off it with ease and tonally it's really warm, a lot of acoustic guitar builders like it.. Matai (mat eye) is also brilliant..
Personally I rarely buy wood, I'll use old fence posts, floor boards building demolition stuff.. Yeah you have to de-nail the stuff and work around the holes but some of it is the best part of a century old and is as stable as it's ever going to be and generally free..
It's amazing what woods are just what is around you, all have good points and bad points.. I've grabbed old fence posts that look like they're not much good for anything other than firewood but once cleaned and dressed look a million dollars..
The guitar I'm playing in my profile avatar, has a back of body made from Victorian Blackwood from Australia. It's close to Koa in all aspects. A more figured variant is the Tasmanian Blackwood. Tbh, the Sitka Spruce top and the Ebony fretboard lend more to the acoustic tone, but I like to think the guitar's projection is helped by the properties of the Victorian Blackwood. Beautiful guitar, custom made by Andy Allen when he ran Maton Custom Shop.
One of my models uses ash for a neck. It’s my favorite neck wood by far. Feeling the grain makes the instrument feel much more organic. I’ve also used bog oak for a fretboard and much preferred it to ebony in appearance and feel.
I also made a poplar neck with Bolivian rosewood fingerboard. I actually love the feel of it.
5:08 - One thing I’ve used AI for is to create a table for woodworkers which is the ratio of Janka rating to weight. It’s actually a great metric for looking for neck woods.
As I am in Ky. cherry is readily available and reasonably priced. it is an excellent tone wood, kind of midway between mahogany and ash, great for a LP when you are looking for a little more punch and clarity. It's easy to work,looks great and smells wonderful.
I've used Beech for fretboards twice with excellent results. Very happy with the results
To practice routing I am building prototypes of composite rubber tree (latex) wood. It is popular for furniture making here in SE Asia, and very cheap. It has the same light colour as basswood but seems more heavy. My first neck blanks are from mahogany. We will see how it works out.
Jackfruit and mango are popular for making traditional musical instruments here, so I intend to try those as well.
About 3 years ago, I decided to build my first Telecaster using a precut neck and body. The neck was a standard maple neck, Rosewood fretboard, and the body I chose was Sycamore. It has a resemblance to maple, but is a softer hardwood than maple. It's way easy to work with, so I reshaped the body a bit. The resonance is good, but it is waay light, to the point of neck dive. I used a different pickup layout, using a neck humbucker rated at abt 8 k and a Telecaster bridge pickup rated at abt 9.3k ohms. It sounds great with the exception that the bridge by itself is a bit edgy.
I've made at least 5 guitars using pine plywood (body) and masonite, and birch (plywood) for top and bottom. Similar to Danelectro style of guitars. Necks are bought online. 2 of them are acoustic (acoustasonic style) They sound fine.
I built a guitar out of Mountain Ash, and it has good sustain and a nice tone, It is a full electric guitar has a set of humbucking pickups in it. I built it probably 30 years ago.
I myself have never built a guitar from scratch, but I used to own a couple of old Carvins, one with a maple body and neck, the other neck-through maple/poplar, both with ebony fretboards. As a body wood, maple gives you almost no low end - had to turn up the bass on my amp to compensate. Maple/poplar is extremely balanced. I've had other poplar bodied guitars before, and though it is compared with alder, from my experience it is darker sounding, and works extremely well with high-output pickups. Currently I have a cheap strat-style guitar with a sycamore body. It's lightweight and the tone is pretty warm, similar to poplar. Oh, yes, and ebony fretboards are described as "bright," though I would say they give you a tight attack without being snappy like maple.
I've used cherry and Northern elm bodies, weight reilief if needed.. both are wonderful but the ash is difficult to grain fill. For necks, I've used Walnut, african mahogany and flamed birch. All work as well as maple for stability, not much different for tone- but my favorite is walnut. I laminate all these woods, usually 2 peices. Fretboards, besides the usual, I've used ambrosia maple and purpleheart. Both are amazing and the tone depends on the specific peice but about what you'd expect. Ambrosia maple has to be just the right piece and care must be taken through all aspects of working it... but it is worth it.
Thinline Nashville Tele with a Bigsby. The body neck and fretboard all out of beautiful quartersawn red oak. It weighs 7.3 lbs. Sound is beautiful. It has been completely stable (in Minnesota) for the past 5 yrs. I plan to build more.
I want stiff and stable woods for necks, and I love wenge and padauk for bass necks. Wenge is a pain to work with though. This spring I will be making a katalox neck and it's extremely stiff.
For bodies, dense and heavy woods work well if you simply make the guitar or bass thinner. I know that folks tend to think 1.75" is the standard, but there nothing wrong with a body between 1-1/4" to 1-1/2" thick as long as the neck joint is designed for the thinned body. It's why I like SG's more than Les Pauls.
As far as how the woods affect tone on a solid body electric guitar or bass, I think it falls into to conversations. First, I notice a big difference when playing the instrument unplugged. Second, once plugged in those differences mostly go away in my experience and the electronics account for most of the difference. So I'm not concerned with the tone wood side and more concerned with stability, feel and looks to be honest.
This guy has helped me out with many good ideas
I have made an explorer inspired bass that I made out of aka-matsu (Japanese red pine, I'm in Japan) that has a beautiful grain and is totally stable. Zero complaints. :)
I've used cherry, pear, and apple for bodies. I stick yo mahogany or spanish cedar for necks, i like ebony, rosewood, maple, and cocobolo for fretboards.
I’ve used both leopardwood and canarywood for necks and they work great. I also use limba for fingerboards occasionally.
I tried Leopardwood for a fretboard that worked ok, but it sure looked cool.
I am using sassafras for the first time on my current build I love it.
I made a headless guitar with a sweet cherry neck (with carbon reinforcement), maple fretboard and walnut body, with a linseed oil finish. Working really well, is stable and strong enough. The sweet cherry has a beautifull color, uniform and fine grain, very smooth to the touch. A very easy wood to work with but it is prone to dents. The headless guitar body is very compact, and the weight of the walnut is not an issue (a plus actually). The walnut as a nice complex pattern which works well with all the bevels and curved surfaces. Really worth trying something else, especially if you go for a natural look with light oil finish to reveal the wood.
And for the tone and sustain, it is pretty good, overall comparable to mahogany in my opinion: not overly bright or bassy. The sweet cherry and walnut combo sound quite mellow and mid focused (taping test) on their own but I think that the carbon reinforcements and the maple fretboard brings some more brightness in the attack which is a nice complement and gives a nicely balanced sound.
Like cherry for bodies. Seems similar to alder in weight and finishes well with dyes or paint. I made one cherry neck, but it was too soft for my liking.
Beech works well for guitar necks, feels a lot like maple. Where I live it is slightly less expensive than hard maple, but not as pretty, so I generally stick with maple.
Have use hackberry for a guitar body. Kind of soft and requires a lot of grain filling. Inexpensive but I would not recommend it.
Just started using Richlite for some fretboards. It is a paper and resin composite material (think carbon fiber for wood). It is very hard (harder than ebony) and comes in different colors to really customize a guitar neck.
My favorite is probably walnut. It is heavy so I will chamber the guitar body, but walnut looks so good with a clear poly or tru-oil finish. Walnut also works well for necks, but I have yet to use it for fretboard. Just finishing a Tele style guitar with a chambered walnut body with a zebrawood top and am very happy with the look and weight of the body.
Cherry works well for bodies. Its weight and hardness are similar to mahogany but it has a finer texture. You can find lots of exotic hardwoods at Woodcraft that can be used as unique fretboards. You may also find boards there that are flat and straight enough to be used for necks.
I'm working on a cherry neck at the moment. And I just got home from Woodcraft lol. Bought shellac flakes.
Oak is high tannins, and you can easily end up with a very astringent guitar if you use too much.
I've used hickory for a neck and fretboard. Used a lacquer finish and liked it a lot. Wood was hard to shape and sand smooth but man was it solid and heavy. I probably wouldn't used hickory for the neck but I'd used it for a fretboard again.
Used cherry for a tele body, liked it a lot very light but it was soft, easily dented. Used tru oil to finish the body.
I've always wanted to build a guitar body out of cedar, a very soft and light wood, with layer after layer of paint colors. The idea would be that as it gets played, it gets easily dinged and dented, the paint will chip to reveal the different colors and eventually the wood underneath. It's a great way to start with a shiny new guitar get a relic'd guitar relatively quickly without "relic-ing" the guitar.
@@HandlebarWorkshops cedar works great, and it's nice and light. And it smells good years later
I know several builders who use Spanish Cedar and they seem to like it.
You can make a guitar out of anything if you’re able to keep it stable. I like mahogany or maple for necks because I like the way they look and feel.
I’ve used lots of Virginia black walnut. Makes great bodies, tops, or necks!
I'm currently building a telecaster from a large beech pallet (4 parts glued for the body and 1 for the neck) and oak for the fretboard. It is very machinable and pleasant to work, although it is my first guitare !
I considered using beech for a guitar neck, but since beech trees grow with a pronounced twist, and beech planks have a tendency to "untwist", then any beech neck may start out straight, but may warp due to this.
@@1man1guitarletsgo I just finished the guitar so I will see in the next months if it moves... But since I machined it and glued the truss and the oak fretboard I havent noticed any twist.
I've used clear pine on a body. Sounded good. Not the most durable but I wasn't too concerned with it getting dinged up. I don't think it's non-traditional but I like using Sapele on necks over mahogany. It's somewhere between mahogany and maple in terms of strength and hardness. Very stable so far. I also really enjoy using macassar ebony on fretboards. Very nice looking and very hard.
Sapele is so nice to work with
Being in the UK, oak is really prevalent. Truth is, it makes fantastic necks and the 'weight' myth is nonsense compared to other hard woods. A few ounces at best. Interestingly I'm just making a Charlie Starr Haggis commission for a client. Charlie's is 11lb's. I made this one semi hollow to get closer to 8. Love the channel brother.
I've had the same experience with Oak. The guitar in the video was surprisingly lightweight.
I have used roasted curly birch, carelian birch (both hard to get), roasted ash, aspen (too soft), linden, tulip wood and pine I almost excessively use roasted wood for its stability. So there you have it.
Reminder set.
Made a carved ES335 hollow body out of sepele. Honduran mahogany neck through w/ f holes, ebony fret board. Heavy, sounds like a good solid body Les Paul. Interesting. No hint of ES335 tone or feel. Has a tone all it's own!
A wood i've been interested in trying for a top or fretboard is osage orange. I've done gamecall bodies but never a guitar. Its a very hardy wood but works easy.
I used it for a fretboard once. It worked great and looked amazing with just some boiled linseed oil.
I’ve used padauk , stupid heavy but beautiful and sounds good, I also used some reclaimed Hawaiian mango topped with maple that made a nice guitar
Never tried mango, but reclaimed wood always seems cool.
My last build was a thin line hollow tele out of red oak, maple neck, ambrosia maple fret board, and pick guard. Been playing it daily with no issues for a year...enjoy your show!
quarter sawn European Beech for necks and Spanish Cedar for lightweight body equivalent to old growth mahogany
Used a beautiful black walnut chunk once.
Built a neck with Curupay (also called Patagonian Rosewood) and a Leopardwood fretboard. Looks-wise it's incredible, but both woods were difficult to work and rough on my tools, and to my ears it sounds unpleasant and brittle. It was definitely worth trying out, but I doubt I'd do it again. Curupay might be a decent choice for a fretboard on a neck made of a warmer-sounding wood, though.
I think with necks you can experiment with nontraditional woods because the two way truss rods and carbon fiber rods that are available make it intriguing.
Bodies can, and have been made out of just about anything from wood to acrylic and particle board.
I'm thinking about building a guitar. I've put a kit guitar together and stained it and changed tuners and adjusted a nut slot, which I was pleased that super glue and baking powder worked. I was wondering if being a member would give access to any step by step builds. I think I'd like to build a body and buy a neck and all the other parts for my first try. Step by step builds for all the major styles with affiliated links to parts and templates and gear and tools would be awesome. You'd get money from the memberships and if people buy stuff through your links. Just curious. Another thing you could do is have a "buy me a coffee" feature. That way people can make a one time donation, if they want.
I built a semi hollow tele style with some 100+ year old oak, it was a pain to work with, but man I love it
Sounds interesting. I used lots of oak over the years for furniture until I got sick of it. Very durable but hard to work with and very porous grain.
I used cherry for a neck and purple heart for the fretboard.
I’m a hobbyist builder so I only build for my own playing pleasure. With that said, guitar weight is not much of a factor to me since I almost exclusively play sitting down on my handmade guitar stool.
I used highly figured ziricote on the back of a guitar. Make sure you test your finish on scrap pieces before applying it to your guitar. Anything solvent based will dissolve the black resin and stain the adjacent lighter colored wood pattern. Beware!
I built a solid body electric with a thru the body neck. Neck is Bolivian Rosewood and the top is a thick pice of Bolivian Rosewood. Beautiful guitar but way heavier than anything you would ever find in a guitar store. The guitar is very bright, lots of highs. Also, due to the natural oil in the rosewood, gluing can be an issue. In a similar manner to the ziricote mentioned above, beware of any solvent because it can pick up the dark resins and instantly ruin the beauty of the wood.
Built a solid body electric using black walnut grown in Louisiana. Sound lacks highs. Huge difference in sound in comparison to the Bolivian Rosewood guitar. The difference in sounds between the two guitars is very evident even without plugging them into an amplifier.
Cherry has become one of my favorite body woods. I find it's a great mid point between Alder and Ash in terms of density and tonality.
I made a v with a jarrah body , and stringy bark neck with merbau strips (5 piece neck) . It turned out awesome ... It is heavy though.
I am not a subscriber to the tonewood thing - what i think is the most important is
1. Stability of the species
2. Hardness
3. Workability and tearout and how it dulls tools
4. Availability
If anyone has wood and it is dry and want to build a guitar from it , i say go for it !!!
With regards to sustain - rings for days !!! Even though "tap testing" the wood itself is quite dead ... I have a tonerider alnico 2 set on it and downtuned to c standard ... On low gain through my jcm 800 is has a perfect traditional doom metal tone !!! And the neck pickup with the colume slightly rolled back is 🔥🔥🔥🔥
I bought a maple body pretty light
Hi, you have talked about this in some videos years back I think, but ill ask anyway, pros and cons about using a CNC for carving a whole neck through guitar, instead of just ordering something similar from overseas with cost for expensive shipping and customs taxes and things like that ? I am thinking more like having my own brand and making just one or two different models both neck through design and very limited manufacturing per year, and paying someone to make a 3D STEP model for me that I basically can just use in my CNC. The knowledge of building a guitar is not a problem, just curious about what you think about it. Thanks for great videos.. :D
I started using solarez sealer and lacquer (not lacquer). 😅
I really like sapele for necks.
I know since This is on non traditional Woods for guitars Brian mays red, special the body was made from oak that came from his yard and the neck was made from cherry wood that came from his fire place mantle and it works for him.
And he made it himself with his dad.
And like I said my made on India jackson the body was made from Indian cederwood.
Which is fine for acoustics but I hate the tone on my electric guitar for that. Also why are people in the comments section calling traditional ebony wood or gabboon ebony purple heart acting like purple heart is non traditional wood it's not. It's the same as gabboon ebony.
Madasgascan ebony is a diferent type of ebony wood and may be slightly non traditional.
Now perhaps one day I may experiment with oak but may experience is especially with red oak is its overly grainy to the point even grain fill would not work or a lot of sanding if you wanted to paint it.
But might be interesting to test as a top wood or body wood and try a diferent wood top material or mix I would just have to figure it out but maybe red oak with popler or maple perhaps with thin peices for the top sides and back but then again red oak, I think for me with me getting older. Might be too heavy.
And that's why I lean towards woods like basswood mahogany maple perhaps popler.
Just for clarity and many kinds of wood work but the body of the Red Special was made from blockboard common at the time in the uk which was soft blocks laminated between ply in Brian's case, they covered it also with a mahogany veneer. They put oak inserts into that to add strength and the fingerboard was also Oak. The neck material came from a fire place so may is presumed to be old mahogany.
I have a bass (didn’t make it) with a jatoba neck with bubinga stripes
I am reading through all of the comments below. There are great descriptions of many species used. I love the variety. What amazes me is that there are so many builders who describe the tones that they are getting from the different species used. Really? "Tone wood" and how it can even matter in a solid body guitar has been so thoroughly debunked. I just have to say 🤔.
I've built a couple of what I call ghetto electric guitars using necks I've gotten from cheap craigslist purchases and inexpensive hardware and pickups. One is a Strat body made from southern yellow pine that were roof decking from an old factory building and the other is a Les Paul shaped body made from laminated pallet wood. I'm not what you'd call a great player, but I've real musicians play them and they've told me they play well and sound fine.
Just a select few from my experiences-
Blue Mahoe
One of my favorite woods ever to have worked with. Light and strong like maple. Very beautiful and working with it very pleasant. If only it wasn’t so rare. It used to be easy to get at Woodcraft. Built a multi laminate 8 string neck with it and purple heart. Very stable.
Ebiara
Mahogany ish wood. Beautiful strong and stable. Just look out for checking. You can find consistent pieces if you look. Used in a 7 string neck and body(chambered)
Snakewood
Tricky as hell to work with, insanely dense, checks and warps all over the place, you have to make sure it’s adequately air dried. Can’t kiln dry. Expensive. Won’t work with again unless a client pays handling fee. Polishes nice though and looks high end.
Spalted Tamarind
Used a fretboards. Unstable, weak and soft. Warps. Tricky to finish. Stains easily. Keep in mind you typically see the sapwood being used not the much denser heart wood, looks much different. Won’t use again. Had a neck that required constant truss rod adjustments with it. Looks really cool though. Not worth the unreliability. Use carbon fiber without a doubt.
Cherry
Beautiful body wood, great experience with both guitars and basses. Like other woods it can vary greatly in weight so find something light and you’ll be happy
Afrormosia
Used as a body wood. Extremely oily and difficult to finish. Sticky wood. Clogs vaccuums. Kind of a cool looking wood, nice color but wouldn’t work with again. Not too heavy but not too light either.
Awesome info! Thanks for sharing it.
Really. Paloneia for a solid body.
Freaken great
Sure but traditional pickups tend to work best with traditional woods. Standard tele pickups don’t really like bodies denser than ash or alder. Walnut makes a nice looking body but comes off really bright so a darker or boomier pickup should be used.
I have used cherry for bodies.
Plywood & formica. Oh wait, that's my Danelectro 4,6 & 12 strings....
If you get one made in the 60s, it was made with old growth plywood… Much more resonant
Hey Chris have you ever thought of building acoustic guitars? I think they are more open to strange and new wood species.
I bet persimon would make a nice neck.
My wife wants me to get some hardwood
Really? I doubt it.
Yes, good. About OAK I wanted to say that it conducts sound very poorly, and the echo after hitting a plank of oak sounds dull and unmusical in timbre, unlike mahogany, or merbau, or walnut, for example. Therefore, this oak (at least as far as what grows here is concerned) in acoustic and classical guitars (I repair them and play them) no one, thank God, uses these types of guitars). I have been interested in this topic for 9 years, and I don’t remember anyone promoting their use (oak wood), especially on UA-cam. Hard and heavy wood is good, but it muffles the sound! It probably could be, if some kind of oak has a "good response to a blow" in a musical sense, but I have not yet encountered, and have never heard such a statement on the Internet. I am also interested in information about electric guitars, and I do not remember anyone saying on the Internet in the last nine years that some kind of oak is suitable for making an electric guitar body out of it, or a fingerboard) for one. Please post me for a large amount of printed information, but otherwise, having reduced it, I would not be able to say what I wanted to say.
I like lightweight guitars not wood that weighs like granite.
I made my finger board out of teak. Every piece of advice I got said it wouldn't work. They were all wrong.
I did my own research and discovered that wood is a terrible choice for instruments. The only adequate materials for electric guitars are actually concrete and styrofoam.
With liberal use of JB Weld!
My styro-strat is amazing ❤
First guitar ever was neck made from oak flooring, ebony board and a body made from two layers of plywood lol. Put nice pickups in it sounds great.