Whether you’re in the market for a new acoustic guitar or dreaming about building your own, one of the most important things to consider is which type of wood is best for your needs. These are some of the questions I get from customers who are trying to select their next guitar:
Should I get a solid wood top?
What type of wood is my guitar made from?
What’s the difference between a solid back and sides and laminate?
Why does this guitar sound so different than another one just like it?
These are all great questions, but often times I need to take a step back and ask another equally important question: “What kind of music do you like?”
The reason I ask this is because not all woods sound the same, and they don’t work in the same situations. For example, if you play open tuned slide guitar with an aggressive attack, then you probably want a mahogany top on your instrument. The softness of the wood allows for a strong attack without being too brittle sounding as some other woods can be. On the other hand, if you play bluegrass with a lot of hard driving chords and banjo rolls, then you probably want a spruce top on your instrument that responds well
The type of wood used to build a guitar has a very strong influence on the sound of that guitar. For example, guitars made with solid spruce tops have a noticeably different sound than those made with mahogany tops. So if you hear a guitar that sounds really good to you, it’s worth trying to find out what kind of top it has, and choosing another guitar with the same kind of top (assuming they’re both in the same price range).
However, most guitarists don’t take this trouble because they’re not sure what kind of wood they should be looking for. The purpose of this blog is to help you become better informed about this issue so that you can make a better decision when buying a guitar.
In general, there are three main factors that affect the sound of a guitar: the type of wood used for the neck and body, how thick the strings are, and how much tension on them there is. In this blog I’ll mainly focus on one aspect: how thick the strings are.
Woods with thin strings tend to produce brighter tones than woods with thicker strings. This is because thin strings vibrate more quickly than thick ones. However, thicker strings produce more sustain than thinner ones do because they take longer to stop vibrating
The first thing to consider when choosing the right wood for your guitar is the type of music you want to play. If you’re playing a style of music that has a lot of heavy strumming, like folk or bluegrass, you will want a wood that can handle the pressure. Maple is a great choice for this, because it has more mass and can handle more damage.
If you play something that isn’t quite as hard on the strings (jazz, classical), then you can probably get away with something a little softer, like mahogany.
There are also some other factors to take into account, such as climate and environment. Some woods are better than others in certain situations. For example, if you live in the desert, rosewood might not be the best choice for your guitar, because it tends to dry out more quickly than other woods.
The acoustic guitar is a great instrument, whether you want to play classical, jazz, country or rock. Its tone, which can be quite mellow and warm, can also be quite bright and loud. And, as any guitarist will tell you, the type of wood that’s used in the construction of the guitar makes a big difference in how an instrument sounds.
Not all woods are created equal when it comes to guitars. The top of the guitar (the sound board) is made from spruce or cedar. Spruce tends to produce a clearer tone and cedar produces a warmer tone. Both types of wood are excellent for soundboards because they’re light and resonate well, but which one is right for you?
The back and sides of the guitar are usually made from mahogany or rosewood. Rosewood produces a deep bass sound while mahogany produces a brighter sound with great sustain. For this reason, many electric guitars have mahogany bodies.
The neck of the guitar is usually made from maple or mahogany and the fretboard is usually made from rosewood or ebony.
If you want to make sure your next guitar sounds great, choose wisely!
Guitar wood is a vital component in the sound and tone of your instrument. It also affects the playability and overall weight. Ultimately, picking out the right wood for your guitar is a personal choice, but if you are looking for guidance, we can help.
There are many different types of tonewoods available, with each type having their own unique characteristics. Two popular tonewood choices for the body include Maple and Alder. Both Maple and Alder are great choices, but have different characteristics that make them distinct from each other.
Maple is a dense hardwood with a close grain pattern and light to medium brown coloration. Maple provides a crisp and articulate snap to the tone of your guitar. It has an even response across the entire frequency spectrum which makes it ideal for heavier genres of music like metal and rock where you need tight sounding distortion or overdrive tones. The downside to Maple is that it can be heavy which can cause fatigue on long sessions.
Alder is slightly softer than Maple, but still maintains a solid feel overall. It has more mid range than maple resulting in less clarity and tighter sound when used in distortion or overdrive settings. Alder is great for all styles of music, especially blues and classic rock because it
Musicians who love woodworking and music are often in search of the best wood for there guitar.
To understand why some building materials are chosen over others, we first need to understand how the sound is generated.
A speaker for a stereo system produces sound by pushing air and our guitar does the same thing but it has six different speakers called strings. The strings vibrate and this movement pushes air (sound waves) through the sound hole into our ears.
The wood that makes up your guitar is essentially a large speaker cone that moves back and forth as the strings vibrate. Each type of wood will have its own tonal characteristics which will determine how your guitar sounds.
While a guitar built from two identical pieces of wood will sound pretty much alike, a guitar made from different types of woods will produce surprisingly different tones. The tone of an instrument is determined by many factors: body size, body shape, bracing pattern and thickness, neck attachment point (14th fret or dovetail), neck size, neck angle and most importantly, the woods used in construction.
The Back & Sides
The back and sides of the guitar is where most of the tone comes from. The top (sound board) vibrates and resonates, but what gives a guitar it’s character is the back and sides. They also determine how loud a guitar will be.
Traditionally rosewood has been used for backs and sides, but maple, mahogany, koa, ash, walnut, cherry and other woods have been used as well. Lately there has been a lot of talk about the sustainability of rosewood due to the CITES restrictions that were put in place on January 2nd 2017. This has driven up prices for all rosewoods.