Tone Wood for Electric Guitars

[Dan Smith]

In the last couple years I've built about 50 guitars, all pretty much identical except I've used a few different pickups, and many kinds of wood for the neck and body. The design is very simple, with a minimum of parts.

If any two were brought back to me, and played through the same amplifier, I am fairly certain I could not tell you what wood they were made of. If the same test were done with one of my guitars and something from another maker, I'm pretty sure I would know which one I had made.

I usually tell my customers to pick the neck wood based on the look and the feel, and the body wood based on the look and the weight.
In general, the heavier bodies like Walnut and Sapele sustain a little more, and the lighter bodies like ash or alder sound a little brighter, The stiffer necks seem to be a little brighter, but in general the stiffer necks, like Ipe, are heavier, and they have a little richer sound.

One of the key factors for me is certainly availability. If it's not available, I don't buy it. Other than that, I'll try most anything. My preference is for very hard wood for the neck (no separate fretboard), and body wood that will bring the whole guitar in between 7 and 9 pounds. Lately I take my bathroom scale and calculator to the lumber yard.

I have to admit I do try to play up the positive aspects of different timber. The lush sustain of Walnut, the pop of Ash, the richness of Ipe. It's a bit marketing and bit of just trying to be helpful.

For bodies I have used
Meranti
Mahogany
Ash
Alder
Sapele
Walnut

For necks
Ipe
Merbau
Kayu Kuku
Lyptus
Maple
Wenge
Locust
Sapele
Goncalo Alves

Dave, I really dig the look of your guitar design.
I've wanted to do a non-cutaway design and you have given me some great ideas.
I'll not copy your design, I'm just a hobby builder.
Thanks,
Dan

[Jedi Clampett]

There is no tonewood for solid body guitars, that is why it is called the "tonewood myth" lots of things effect tone in a solid body electric guitar and lots of marketing to get you to pay extra for "tonewood" Fender used swamp ash (not a species but a nick name and Gibson used mahogany because they were CHEAP. If the wood makes sense mechanically, it makes sense for the guitar, wood is not magnetic and most of the proponents who "know the secrets of tonewood" are marketing their guitars and trying to get you to spend extra. There is a good discussion of this very thing on mimf, look for the Marvin Hiscock interview. This is the same smoke and mirrors approach where camera mfg try to get you to buy on the number of megapixels or stereo people on "specs" all to get you to pay more money. Some other old wife's tales frquently touted with "tonewood myth" tone pickguard material, the shape of the headstock and body affect tone, dark woods sound dark, the heavier the wood is the more it sustains and other silly things to sell guitars.

[Jason Rodgers]

When you look at what folks are doing with wood selection, body design, and components, and STILL making amazing instruments that people want to play, it's easy to understand that it's not all about a couple recipes written by Leo and Les. Mind you, following those recipes can give you more predictable results, and perhaps results that a wider audience will appreciate/recognize, but it doesn't have to stop there. It all depends on your goals.

Another way of looking at this is that ALL woods are tonewoods, whether you're talking about electric or acoustic guitars, because any wood will color the tone in SOME way. However, popular use of the word "tonewood" has very loaded meanings, because it is used to refer to "this" tone, "that" tone, "the" tone, "my" tone, or "their" tone. In other words, it has value, specifically, a particularly attractive, sought-after, or elusive tone, and especially one that comes at a price.

I tell this story: I met a fellow music teacher years ago at a workshop. We got to talking guitars, and he tells me that he has his brand new Breedlove guitar with him and he'd like to show me. It's one of their top-of-the-line instruments, with macassar ebony back and sides and all the trimmings. Stunning guitar, but he starts telling me how he came to purchase it. Apparently, he bought another guitar first, with myrtle back and sides, which was equally beautiful, and was, "the best sounding guitar I've ever played in my life." But, while in the showroom, his ears were telling him one thing, and his eyes another. He walked out with the myrtle guitar, but kept thinking about the macassar ebony. After a week, he took the myrtle back, paid over half again more, and took home the ebony. As we were looking over and playing this guitar, he now tells me how he sort of regretted the switch. "But," he told me, trying to justify parting with the best guitar he'd ever briefly owned, "I consider myrtle to be an inferior tonewood."

[Dan Hehnke]

Jedi, I agree with Jason. There is absolutely no way for different materials with slightly different properties NOT to color the sound differently. I don't see how anyone who has played more than a few different electric guitars can not know this purely from experience. If it sounds different unplugged, it will also sound different plugged in. Obviously though if you plug into a huge chain of overdrive and effects pedals and play purely high gain it won't usually be noticeable.

And yes, the hype about certain "tonewoods" is total BS, but certain woods definitely do work better for electric guitars.

My experience is about 11 years of building my own guitars, usually with alternative woods, and different wood combos every time, so I have gotten a pretty good feel for the way they sound different.

[Greg McKnight]

You can make anything work. There's guys at the TDPRI build forum that have made working guitars out of everything from MDF to hollow steel to concrete. Obviously the pickups mean everything in such cases since you're not getting much resonance from those materials. I think the pickups are the more important factor for wood guitars to, to an extent.

I generally think that a lightweight body and a dense neck are the best options. Certainly has worked for me and plenty of others. But you don't have to have an unbelievably expensive piece of Honduran mahogany for a nice body or neck when that walnut in your back yard is just as good.

[Andrew Berry]

I'm fairly surprised that he made a 50 minute introductory video on the effects of different woods on tone and never defined tone. That said, I enjoyed his video and it makes sense if the only thing that pickups pick up is waves from the strings. Is that true? I have no clue. The different sound clips sounded different to me. Not enormously, but that's what I would expect from an electric where the strings and pickups make more of a difference. I just don't know if I believe that they make all the difference.

[Jason Rodgers]

Over on the MEF right now, there is a VERY technical conversation going on about inductance and magnetic permeability of core materials and their contribution to tone vs. wire gauge and number of turns per coil... so far over my head that it looks like wisps of con-trails on the horizon.

Pickups, pot values, tone caps, length of your guitar cable, they all make a difference. Wood does, too. And scale length and string gauge and composition. And density and weight of your hardware. Does one more than the other? Sure. Yes. Maybe. No. Sometimes.

And that's ok. But that doesn't make a great marketing pitch.

[Jamie Unden]

How about this guy. I made this for a friend of mine out of really thick cutting board material and he said it sounded great!

[Dan Hehnke]

Jami, do you have finished pics of that thing? I dig the funky shape.

[Jason Rodgers]

How about this guy. I made this for a friend of mine out of really thick cutting board material and he said it sounded great!

Paper stone? A garolite/phenolic blend? Was it like working with lignum vitae or some iron wood?

[Jamie Unden]

No finished pics, I just drew and cut the body for a friend. He's close to going public with his guitar company - I just did the prototypes. It's high-density polyethylene plastic (HDPE) and it cuts really smooth but makes a horrible mess. The final design will be in wood - this was just an experiment.

[Jason Rodgers]

No finished pics, I just drew and cut the body for a friend. He's close to going public with his guitar company - I just did the prototypes. It's high-density polyethylene plastic (HDPE) and it cuts really smooth but makes a horrible mess. The final design will be in wood - this was just an experiment.

That's cool... but wouldn't a chunk of poplar or pine have been cheaper? (Unless the material was free as a countertop sink cutout, of course.)

[Jamie Unden]

It was just an experiment. He wanted to explore the properties and finish characteristics of the HDPE.

[Jason Rodgers]

That's commendable: as resources of some "tone woods" get scarce, somebody has to experiment with other materials.

[Gordon Bellerose]

I'll dive into this discussion, right into the Deep End.
My opinion, for what it is worth, is that the wood used does make a difference. The difference can be fairly subtle.
I know that is really vague, so I will elaborate a bit.

I hand pick all the wood I use, using tap tone as my baseline.
I have built guitars out of maple, walnut, ash, alder, zebrawood, padauk, purple heart, and mahogany.
As stated earlier in this discussion, I find that the denser, heavier woods seem to sustain more.
Fret board wood seems to change tone also.
This of course is a variable that changes with construction methods, and quality of construction.
A well fitting neck joint, and solidly mounted hardware are important also.
I also try to use the same hardware, so that can be ruled out as a difference.

A question we must ask ourselves is this.
As we all know there could be 10 Strats (interchange your favorite model) hanging on the wall of your local music store. All built out of the same materials, with the same electronics.
As the pickups are wound in the same fashion, possibly even on the same machine, there is little difference in them.

Out of the ten, maybe a couple will really sound great, Only a couple more may be above average, and the rest may be real dogs. Why is this?
The only real variable is the wood. It could even be the same type of wood, just a different piece.

Just my opinion.

[Greg Martin]

if you can find a copy of this book:A guide to useful woods of the world by JH Flynn and CD Holder (international wood collectors society) you can compare different woods and their specific hardness and other useful properties. Great for the builder .

[Jason Rodgers]

This is good, too. (Find Wood Properties in the right side bar, by hardwoods and softwoods.)
http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/research/cente ... /index.php

[Melvyn Hiscock]

Interesting to read this as there is a lot of rubbish talked about this subject. There are many factors that affect sustain and tone. I have listed some of them before, but the bottom line seems to be that different densities of material absorb frequencies from the vibration and different levels. Therefore saying something heavy will sustain better is not necessarily correct, it will absorb a different band of frequencies than other materials.

From a purely subjective viewpoint, my favourite guitars (and the ones that sounds best played unplugged) are some I made with red cedar bodies. They really bark and sustain for weeks.

Melvyn Hiscock

PS, I have used Douglas Fir on necks too!

[Jedi Clampett]

Leo Fender did not believe in tone wood for solid body elect guitars, wood is not magnetic, the tone wood myth is one of a number of myths for solid body electrics:
The shape of the guitar affects the tone, which is why telecasters always sound like telecasters no matter if using HB or SC.
The heavier the wood, the longer the sustain.
dark woods sound dark, light woods sound light.

All the homemade scientific tests ignore set up, construction quality, amp choice, speaker in amp, new strings/old strings. Pickup height, guitar cable and the list goes on.

I do know from conversations and from articles that Hartley Peavey, Chip Todd, Leo Fender, Roger Smirnoff all are disbelieves
in "tone wood" for solid body electric guitars. All these people held patents that all major factory guitars use. Fender and Gibson used Swamp Ash and Mahogany because it was cheap and available, Fender moved to Alder for the same reason plus they could eliminate a finishing step saving money. The persistence of the tone wood myth by mfg esp the Fender Custom Shop has to do with money not reality. It is a sales gimmick designed to make you pay big bucks by deception. This is nothing new, the myth was debunked years ago, but yet it persists but like PT Barnum said "there's a sucker born every minute"

[Jedi Clampett]

The biggest thing that affects tone is technique or lack of technique.
That is why Robben Ford sounds like Robben Ford on every guitar he uses and no one sounds like Robben Ford when using Robben's personal Dumble amp and guitar.

With any scientific study or pseudo scientific study you have to have a base line to reference too, a repeatable base line to compare. Good luck finding that.

Psychosomatic science if a huge factor, you get the results you want because you believe in them. So every experiment or experience becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.

The solid body tone wood myth is mostly used to con buyers into paying more money. I use hoo doo, juju, mojo instead, I find these far more effective for tone than tonewood.

Finally if you are a believer or a disbeliever, if you build a good quality guitar, that plays well and sounds well to the CUSTOMER, then who cares? It is a funny fact that a well designed and well made guitar always sounds good.

Another brief experience, I started playing electric guitar in the mid 60's I used a sears silvertone guitar and amp, I could hardly wait till I could afford a real fender, gretsch or gibson that had real tone, this includes amps and guitars. I did pull out my dearmond pickup that sounded sucky and put in a real pickup.

I think my feeling was pretty common about cheap equipment and eventually get a real guitar and a real amp. Now all those guitars and amps that I had that sucked, but were cheap are now vintage and recreated and valued for their tone! What would acoustic blues be like without a plywood Harmony Sovereign Guitar? (this is an acoustic guitar not electric) It was a cheap guitar that early blues guitar players could afford, because they were broke, now valued for its tone. My point being, what is considered tone or lack of same is very cultural, there is no base line and the very instruments that had no tone are valued today for their tone.