Official Luthiers Forum!

I've been building solidbody guitars for about 10 years with the traditional
woods and thought about doing archtops. Well the European spruce with a
maple back, sides and neck worked nice but then after watching the
Benedetto DVD I saw some birds eye pine and some flamed poplar at Home
Depot and recalled his cooment there may be no such thing as bad wood or
bad tone wood. Sure enough that guitar sounds as good or maybe better.
Any comments or experiences welcome! John

Hi John, Welcome to the OLF.
Yes, a lot of "alternative" woods are great to make a guitar. There are some that are more "accepted" woods for luthierie, namely Indian Rosewood, Honduran Mahogany, and Sitka Spruce, if you are talking flattops. Ha, even that term has somewhat fallen out of favor these days, since we build dome tops.

There are many exotic woods that are just superior in looks to may others: Koa, Cocobolo, Ziricote, Madagascar Rosewood, Brazilian Rosewood, and many others. And as you mention, they all can build a great acoustic guitar.

Again, welcome and hello, Bruce

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Hi John,

Don't forget Tasmanian Blackwood and Tiger Myrtle. You can see examples of these at Australiantonewoods.com

regards

Tim
Australian Tonewoods

The problem with going too far off the beaten path is that if you don't have much experience you can't really judge the individual piece of wood. It is usually a good idea to use something common for the first instrument(s), it will give you an idea of how it each piece of wood is supposed to feel and sound. Then use that knowledge to evaluate other woods.

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Somebody on another forum lives in SOuth Africa and builds beautiful guitars from the local wood species. To them, the wood is common, to us, seemingly exotic.

here it is, made from Kiiat..and that's NOT a neck-thru lam you can see there...




WOW, this earth contains wonderful treasures!!!

John, welcome to the forum! Of course you know this is the best forum on the planet and beyond, regardless of the technical glitches we've been having lately...

Now for your question... I've also been interested in building with readily available, cheaper woods. Because lets face it. The only reason you'd think about using pine or whatnot, is because of the price, right?

But you know, after you tab out all the costs of building, your time and all the energy and emotions, it's just not worth it, to me, to use cheaper woods... IMHO, if you're going to make an effort, you might as well spend 100-200$ more and make that guitar with good quartered stock.

In the end, when all is said and done, you'll never regret building with true blue zoot. On the other hand, you might regret having used construction grade pine, no matter how good the guitar sounds. To me,at least, they always sound better if they're really pretty!!!

Cheers,

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I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

I'm with Alain. You aren't new to building guitars so if you are going to tackle an archtop and all the hours involved you might want to consider using nicely quartered tonewood for at least for the top. It's hard to argue with Benedetto as to the ultimate tone of his pine guitar -- but it sure isn't the best looking guitar.

Bill Moll once gave me a piece of good advice -- use good tonewoods as it'll keep you honest in the process.

Postscript -- Euro spruce and maple is very expensive. Big Leaf Maple and Engelmann or Sitka work great for Archtop's and is far less pricey.

Speaking of sitka spruce I bought some in billets last year from Alaska
Tonewoods and was very pleased with the quality (about 30 + lines per "). It
was around 18" wide with very straight grain. Now the question. Has
anyone used spruce for a les paul size chambered or hollowbody? I was
curious what if any difference it would make tonally. And is the air drying
time about an inch per year with this wood?

John: you seem to have found out the 'secret': anything can be a 'tonewood' if you use it right. Are you sure that 'birdseye pine' is pine, though? I'd think that White pine would be too soft, and not tough enough for an archtop. Then again, some folks have been making 'cellos of late out of balsa......

John -- Alaska Tonewood sells nice spruce. I don't know what benefit you would get from using primo spruce on a chambered guitar. Seems a waste and a totally opposite direction to where you were going with your initial post.

30 lines/inch sounds like it is deserving of being used on a nice 17" archtop.

Dry time is about a year per inch. If the spruce is from Alaska Tonewood I am surprised it was sold "wet".