Body wood that would match best with Miracle Man?

[Raysus]

This is my first post here and I think a lot of guys here are good at answering questions about pickups.  I already have a Schecter Hellraiser with a Nailbomb calibrated set(that I absolutely love) and wanted to try something different.

I am almost a hundred percent sure that I want a Miracle Man in the bridge with a Cold Sweat in the neck for a project guitar.  This guitar would be an Ibanez rg that I would buy in separate parts.  

There is a guy selling rg bodies that offers them in alder, poplar and maple.  There is also the possibility to go with an Ibanez basswood body that is already painted.

The tone I am looking for is an aggressive tone for mainly C standard tuning in the vein of Arch Enemy and In Flames.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Don't hesitate and recommend me another kind of pickup I might have overseen.

[Hell Hound]

Forget poplar or basswood. Poplar is somewhat dead sounding, I know MM use it but it's just not a tonewood. Basswood is very neutral, not a tonewood IMHO but it can be usefull with a high output pickup ( very good result with Warpigs as I've read here)
Alder would be your best bet, it's a little on the warm side, not too bright, not too neutral. Maple is a good tonewood too but it's VERY bright, it's perfect for ultra low tuned chug.

[JamesHealey]

i'd say miracle man in mahogany is what it was meant for..

[octavio_amzer]

Alder is bright and Middy  :?


Miracle Man sounds best with Mahogany Guitars IMO  8)

[Crazy_Joe]

Zakk Wylde uses a mahogany guitar, and it is named after his song so it's not a hard one really.

[WITH FULL DISTORTION]

Someone told me that Alder is kinda V EQ.
:(
never played an alder guitar .. or if i did, i canīt tell much. ahahah
need to play more alder guitars again.
i liked POPLAR. itīs bright, crunchy but not harsh or fuzzy.. well, except with a duncan distortion on bridge.
why donīt you go with a Mahogany, or korina body!?

[Raysus]

Then I guess I'll go with a mahogany guitar. The only thing is that I had planned to get an ibanez rg guitar and it might be complicated to get in mahogany. Thanks for all the replies.

[Philly Q]

Basswood is neutral-sounding and works well with high-output pickups.  Alder and poplar are a little brighter and will give a full, balanced tone similar to a Fender Strat.  Maple is very bright and also very heavy in weight (unless it's soft maple).

Having said that, assuming your guitar's going to have a Floyd and a bolt-on neck, the body wood will have less influence on the tone than it would with a set-neck, fixed-bridge guitar.

What I mean is, don't feel you have to get a mahogany body - an RG-style guitar, even a mahogany one, is always going to sound very different from a Zakk Wylde Les Paul.  Basswood's probably been the main wood used for RG guitars over the years, and they seem to work pretty well.

[Hell Hound]

You know poplar is used to make matches? that says it all, right?

[Philly Q]

It's also used to make snowboards, apparently.  Does that prove anything?  

So poplar's used to make matches.  It doesn't look very attractive either, but that doesn't mean it's a poor tonewood (for its price).  It seems to have pretty similar tonal properties to alder, so it makes a decent lower-cost alternative.  Companies like Fender and Music Man obviously want to make a profit, but they don't set out to rip off their customers by selling rubbish.

[gingataff]

And like any wood there's good poplar and bad, right? Besides Steve Morse could have a guitar made from anything but he has poplar so there must be something good in there.
That said it's not my first choice of wood, but 75% of my axes have basswood bodies so what do I know :lol:

[Sifu Ben]

People make the real mistake with guitar woods that they think that if a wood is inexpensive then it must be no good, but this is VERY wrong. The cost of wood is related to it's scarcity and it's demand for furniture manufacture. This is why things like south american mahogany and European and Claro Walnut are expensive. They are not too common and very in demand from cabinet makers, decorative woodcarvers and even gunstock makers. The impact of gutar manufacture on wood prices is pretty negligible really. Woods like Poplar and Basswood are quite good tonewoods, they're just too soft for furniture making, so they're cheap. Yes Basswood is tonally neutral, but THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. Tonally neutral doesn't mean it doesn't resonate, it just means it resonates evenly. Therefore it's great for metal and shred.
 Poplar may well be used to make matches, but it's also used to make 2 grand Parkers  :roll:

[Hurley]

People make the real mistake with guitar woods that they think that if a wood is inexpensive then it must be no good, but this is VERY wrong. The cost of wood is related to it's scarcity and it's demand for furniture manufacture. This is why things like south american mahogany and European and Claro Walnut are expensive. They are not too common and very in demand from cabinet makers, decorative woodcarvers and even gunstock makers. The impact of gutar manufacture on wood prices is pretty negligible really. Woods like Poplar and Basswood are quite good tonewoods, they're just too soft for furniture making, so they're cheap. Yes Basswood is tonally neutral, but THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. Tonally neutral doesn't mean it doesn't resonate, it just means it resonates evenly. Therefore it's great for metal and shred.
 Poplar may well be used to make matches, but it's also used to make 2 grand Parkers  :roll:

+100000

btw ihave a mahogony guitar and it sounds much thinner then my basswood one!

[Hell Hound]

emm OK, let's say I don't like poplar that's all. So if poplar is good, what about agathis?

EDit : I guess I don't like these cause it's all in the pickups, that's not the definition of what a guitar is to me. I'm not being agressive by any mean if some of you got it like that :)

[38thBeatle]

The solution is to make a guitar out of matches.