unconventional woods

[Bob Johnson]

Martin do an acoustic that has a neck made of thin strips (1.5mm - 2mm thick?) of timber glued up into a block that the neck assembly is machined from . The body back and sides are made from some sort of plastic laminate (wearite / formica?) with a wood grain finish but glued together in the traditional way. The top (sound board), is a nice piece of Sitka Spruce and the overall sound is really quite impressive. Of course the Martin purists are not too impressed but what the hell; a Martin that actually sounds like a Martin for £300; gimme more!

Just to clear up a point about me trying to advance the cause for meranti as a tonewood; it has to be Dark red meranti; DRM as it is refered to at timber suppliers. Unfortunately the price of DRM has more than doubled in the last year and is about three times the price it was three years ago. You just can't keep a good thing secret.

Having worked with Mark (MDV) for the best part of a year on this idea of a guitar fabricated from different materials to nail a particular, very specific, tone I'm seriously considering specialising in this form of guitar construction in future. It holds great promise!

[Zaned]

Hi Bob,

could you (or any other luthier here) enlighten me? What are the aspects on which you rate wood for instrument use? Weight, grain orientation, visual aspects, tap tone..especially the tap tone interests me, what are you looking for? Different things of course for body and neck woods. Like I said in a previous post, I genuinely want to know. Still the daydream of finding some old wood stashed somewhere and having a guitar made of that.. :lol:

If it's a personal recipe or something like that, it's ok 8)

Thanks in advance!

-Zaned

[MDV]

Well, I'm not a luthier and cant speak as to wood selection as per specific peices of woods tonal properties in that regard, but with the legra I have (c'mon bob, its been ~3 years or more in the making, really! The MDV602 was the seed), the MDV602, and with the design of the current one, the tone of the woods (however bob selects/determines that) AND the structure of the guitar were considered in great detail to achieve the desired tone.

[Bob Johnson]

Hi Bob,

could you (or any other luthier here) enlighten me? What are the aspects on which you rate wood for instrument use? Weight, grain orientation, visual aspects, tap tone..especially the tap tone interests me, what are you looking for? Different things of course for body and neck woods. Like I said in a previous post, I genuinely want to know. Still the daydream of finding some old wood stashed somewhere and having a guitar made of that.. :lol:

If it's a personal recipe or something like that, it's ok 8)

Thanks in advance!

-Zaned

Basically woods used in guitars need reasonable mechanical strength to withstand string tensin and handling. Ideally it should also be free from resin pockets ('cos they're just plain messy) which unfortunately excludes some very usefull woods.

After that it's a matter of thinking about what type of sound you want; harder woods like maple tend to accentuate high frequencies and softer materials tend to favour lower frequencies. There are exceptions to this general rule; really light swamp ash for instance has a lot of open grained pulpy material between harder strata so it tends to be warmer sounding but with loads of attack and sustain. Brian May's guitar is made out of oak, blockboard, mahogany veneer and an old stainless steel knitting needle; you won't find that in any of the text books.

Theres's more detail here http://www.legraguitars.co.uk/construction.htm and even more detail from the link at the bottom of that page.

Hope that helps,

Cheers

[Zaned]

Great, thanks!

-Zaned

[CaptainDesslock]

Basically woods used in guitars need reasonable mechanical strength to withstand string tensin and handling. Ideally it should also be free from resin pockets ('cos they're just plain messy) which unfortunately excludes some very usefull woods.

After that it's a matter of thinking about what type of sound you want; harder woods like maple tend to accentuate high frequencies and softer materials tend to favour lower frequencies. There are exceptions to this general rule; really light swamp ash for instance has a lot of open grained pulpy material between harder strata so it tends to be warmer sounding but with loads of attack and sustain. Brian May's guitar is made out of oak, blockboard, mahogany veneer and an old stainless steel knitting needle; you won't find that in any of the text books.

Theres's more detail here http://www.legraguitars.co.uk/construction.htm and even more detail from the link at the bottom of that page.

Hope that helps,

Cheers

Hey Bob,

Just where did you dig up that info on May's guitar? Have you ever actually held the red special!?!?!?!?

[Bob Johnson]

Hey Bob,

Just where did you dig up that info on May's guitar? Have you ever actually held the red special!?!?!?!?

I've built a couple of replicas and the guy I built the first one for had a huge portfolio of info including photographs of the guitar taken when it was being worked on by someone he knew (pic attached; hopefully)

Since then I've done more research on it; there's tons of stuff on the net and there's even a guy in Japan that produces replicas of all the bridge and trem parts as well as complete guitars.

[Bob Johnson]

Just wanted to add that the pics are of the original Red Special not one of my replicas!

[MDV]

Just wanted to add that the pics are of the original Red Special not one of my replicas!

Phew

Good catch

I mean

errrr

I wonder why you'd say that?

[JDC]

slightly off topic but what about combining woods with something like carbon fibre? the process parker flys use seems expensive, but I've seen sheets of carbon fibre for a tenner, so I was thinking it might be cheap and easy to add to the body of a guitar so you could make the body thinner or add more sustain, or maybe use it for floyd rose blocks and plate thingies

would any of this work or is it more about the wood mass than the strength?

[Alex]

I have been intrigued by Walnut forever.

[CaptainDesslock]

Just wanted to add that the pics are of the original Red Special not one of my replicas!

Phew

Good catch

I mean

errrr

I wonder why you'd say that?

lol, not sure, but now I'm really curious how much a Legra take on the red special would look/sound/set me back, given my fandom of Queen and my penchant for red guitars......

Bob when you do these one off replica's of other signature guitars do you have to refrain from posting them on your site to avoid getting tangled in legal mumbo jumbo?

[Bob Johnson]

lol, not sure, but now I'm really curious how much a Legra take on the red special would look/sound/set me back, given my fandom of Queen and my penchant for red guitars......

Bob when you do these one off replica's of other signature guitars do you have to refrain from posting them on your site to avoid getting tangled in legal mumbo jumbo?

That's a complicated question 'cos the answer is different in almost every case. What is embarrasing is when people use words like Tele or Les Paul when they review them as these are registered trade marks that I would never use myself but could still drop me in the proverbial cr@p.

In the case of the Red Special the replicas differ from the original in a number of ways; for instance the bridge and trem arrangement isn't very user friendly and the short scale very fat neck would be unplayable for many people so those features tend to get changed. Andrew Guyton has done a limited run of replicas with Brian May's co-operation and these are accurate in every  respect except the neck profile I think. The guy in Japan who's name escapes me for the moment also makes fairly accurate replicas.

[syr2012]

I have two strats, one made of alder and the other of agathis. The former is bright, slightly twangy and has an overwound MQ sitting comfortably in the bridge. The latter is a bit dark and not too clear acoustically, but a Holydiver in the bridge has actually managed to work wonders for it.

When new guitar time rolls around, I definitely want to try a new wood that sounds different from the norm and from what I already have. I don't mind heavy guitars (for now) but I don't want mahogany 'cause it's become typical and is rather expensive. Any "unconventional" woods I could get from warmoth on the cheap?

I'm considering ash since I like the way mids sizzle on it, but that's conventional.

[MDV]

Agathis is one of the woods that gets used in place of mahogany for being pink and more readily available/cheaper. I dont have terribly good experience with it (same as yours - lifeless, dead) but I dont know if thats indicative of the wood in general or just horrible bits of it that end up in £300 LTDs. I've heard mahogany sound as bad in far more expensive gutiars...who knows.

Good on you for wanting to go out of your way to try something different! 'Fraid I cant really recommend any for sizzly mids specifiically. Maybe DRM though, given the references to ash and mahogan