Dream guitar wood recommendations

[tpl2000]

Hey all.

Today, I'm posting with a question or two for you all, in regards to what woods would suit my desires, as well as distinct lack of certain practices (certain woods for certain things.)

First question being, why in the world does no one make a thin mahogany neck? (None of which I'm aware, at least.) We've come far enough with carbon fiber rods to counteract whatever leeway the mahogany may give inherently to the pull of the strings, as well as improved our truss rods. So, why does no one do thin mahogany necks for the warmer tone?

Next question being, what woods would you recommend for this build? Here are the specs I've got...

Note, my goal is smooth, rich tones on high gain amp for leads, relatively brutal on the rhythm end. Pickups undecided, but most likely Seymour Duncan.

Neck/headstock:
3L+3R locking tuners
Graphite nut
25 1/4" scale
2" nut
12" radius (flatter than PRS, but not as bad as ibanez or Schecter
24 jumbo frets
Luminlay side dots
Relatively visible but tasteful inlays, undecided
Thin profile

Neck joint undecided. If bolt-on, must be sanded down a considerable amount. I despise Fender neck joints, Ibanez not so bad.

Body:
Double-cut
Semi-hollow
At least beveled top, maybe carved.

Hardware:
Prs style tremolo, or something similar (not strat!)
Strap locks
2 humbuckers
500k Volume pot
Blend pot
Switches not decided, at least series/parallel for both pickups
No pickguard
(I will probably have someone make a tone pot pedal)


So, again, I'm looking for wood recommendations with this guitar. I know mahogany is often credited with the richest sound, and rosewood fretboards are often quite warm. I've been looking into bloodwood/pink ivory, but damn near no one will actually give you the acoustic sound of their electric guitar.

So, what woods are your recommendations?

 

[Berserker]

Choose the wood you like the look of.

 

[tpl2000]

Choose the wood you like the look of.

Er... Did you read my sig?

Even so, isn't wood choice for guitars generally more sound-oriented?

 

[GuitarBizarre]

You're just opening up the tonewood debate again.

My personal opinion is that the commonly accepted reasoning for woods having certain sounds, is so much bull..... I don't think grain structure or whatever makes a damn bit of difference.

What I do think makes a difference is how strong it is and how dense it is. Stronger woods will deflect and deform less under tension and load, meaning less energy lost in the structure of the guitar. Denser, heavier woods will have greater inertia, which will mean the energy you put into the string when you hit it, will stay in the string longer and you'll get better sustain.

Always remember that in theory a string will sustain longest if it's suspended between two infinitely heavy, infinitely strong points.

If you're set on using easily available and traditional materials, I would always recommend using maple - it's the hardest, strongest and densest of the "Common" guitar materials, and will give you the best sustain and brightest tone, all other things being equal.

As far as "Warm" sound, that's also so much bull.....

Guitars are a subtractive thing. If you hit the string and it's not bright enough regardless of your pick attack, you're screwed. Same with using a pickup that doesn't pick up high frequencies very well. You can boost the crap out of the treble and get lots of noise, but ultimately, the problem is you're trying to add in what was never there in the first place. I would always go with a very bright guitar and use a good old fashioned tone knob to tame the highs.

Hell, remember why people use different value potentiometers on tone controls - more resistance = brighter tone. When you turn a pot down you're just reducing the pot's value, so you can install a 1Meg pot, leave it in the middle of it's travel and effectively have the sound of a guitar with a 500K pot if you want to. Nothing complicated about it.

You can always take away something you have too much of, but it's a son of a bitch to add it back in if you designed a guitar too dark for your purposes.

 

[GuitarBizarre]

Also bear in mind, you mentioned better carbon rods and truss rods and so on.

Those are designed to counteract weaknesses in existing materials - Even if "Tonewood" works exactly the way most cork sniffers think (It doesn't), the fact is, changing the physical properties of the tonewood by reinforcing it would only make it sound different anyway, so you're screwed either way.

If you're interested in building a high performance machine, build a heavy, strong, solidbody, rigid guitar that won't let energy leave the string, and you will get the best possible platform from which to do basically anything else.

If you want to build in inefficiencies and poor design choices for a specific reason (Hey, there's a reason I own a strat even though I can point out all it's design flaws), then that's fine, but I tend to find that traditionally built guitars are one trick ponies. Happenstance found a combination that was good for something and people just mindlessly repeated it without ever questioning why, since 1958.

 

[4Eyes]

it dedends on what you prefer, do you have brands you like, or guitars you like? do you want to go with more traditional approach, or do you want to combine exotic woods. tonal characteristics are very general lead and you can't rely on them 100% as it depends on actual wood blanks how they sound. but with that said - you can't go wrong with wood combinations that are used for certain types of guitars by nearly every guitar company.

with exotic woods it's more hit or miss, it can turn to be an amazing instrument or an ordinary sounding instrument.

 

[tpl2000]

it dedends on what you prefer, do you have brands you like, or guitars you like? do you want to go with more traditional approach, or do you want to combine exotic woods. tonal characteristics are very general lead and you can't rely on them 100% as it depends on actual wood blanks how they sound. but with that said - you can't go wrong with wood combinations that are used for certain types of guitars by nearly every guitar company.

with exotic woods it's more hit or miss, it can turn to be an amazing instrument or an ordinary sounding instrument.

In short, my preferred brand is generally PRS. I've got an SE Custom Semi-hollow (2007), that I am rather fond of. However, I am ultimately trying to build a guitar that has a sound I prefer, a tremolo, a slightly different neck profile to fit my hands.

(the semi-hollow has thick mahogany neck, mahogany body, maple top. Fixed PRS bridge, I replaced the stock with a brass bridge.)

I'm not too picky on which woods I will be using, so long as it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.



And, to the gentleman former, the body and structure of the wood makes a huge difference. Seriously. Not saying that the density isn't a main component to the tone it puts out, or that stiffness increases sustain--I'm saying that chambered or semi-hollow bodies typically have a better bass response and less harsh treble. This is typically what I define as a "warm" sound. I do appreciate the point on carbon rods, however. Hadn't quite thought from that perspective.

 

[marcwormjim]

My Parker Fly Mojo was all mahogany, with a thin neck and carbon exoskeleton. I tell people it sounded like an SG, but really it sounded like a SD JB and Jazz in a guitar with low action, light strings, and anchored to light hardware, including a floating trem. In short, it worked alright - I still prefer lighter guitars (the 7 or 8 lbs it weighed was morbid obesity, by Parker standards).

Slightly off-topic, but it fascinates me that hypothetical "dream guitars" are always limited to wood by the imagination - The collective marketing of the guitar industry has literally put it in the public consciousness that wood is the closest we can come to realizing our dreams; as if we're yet to enter the Bronze Age.

 

[tpl2000]

My Parker Fly Mojo was all mahogany, with a thin neck and carbon exoskeleton. I tell people it sounded like an SG, but really it sounded like a SD JB and Jazz in a guitar with low action, light strings, and anchored to light hardware, including a floating trem. In short, it worked alright - I still prefer lighter guitars (the 7 or 8 lbs it weighed was morbid obesity, by Parker standards).

Slightly off-topic, but it fascinates me that hypothetical "dream guitars" are always limited to wood by the imagination - The collective marketing of the guitar industry has literally put it in the public consciousness that wood is the closest we can come to realizing our dreams; as if we're yet to enter the Bronze Age.

Well I mean, my DREAM guitar is pretty much a midi instrument that tracks way better than any actual midi instrument does, and has a much better sound, instantaneous response time, and so on.

But realistically, for a guitar that sounds like it actually sounds, this is what I'm trying to figure out lol.

 

[4Eyes]

In short, my preferred brand is generally PRS.

make it khaya mahogany body, maple top, rosewood neck - I would recommend ebony fretboard and probably ebony/maple stripes in the neck - it will ballance slightly rounder tone of the rosewood with extra sparkle in the high end

 

[Hywel]

If you're not bothered about making it look fancy then there's not much point making it anything other than a mahogany body (khaya, sapele, anything will do really) with a mahogany neck. If you want stability laminate the neck to 3 pieces and maybe stick some carbon in but it shouldn't be required if the woods well dried and laminated. Rosewood fretboard and if you're going semi hollow then a plain maple or mahognany top.

If you put some warm pickups like Duncan '59s in then it should fit the bill nicely.

 

[Berserker]

Er... Did you read my sig?

Even so, isn't wood choice for guitars generally more sound-oriented?

No I didn't... my bad, didn't mean to cause any offence.

The tonewood debate has been done to death here, but if you go with any standard guitar wood you'll be able to get whatever sounds you want out of it by choosing the right pickups and amp settings.

FWIW mahogany body with a maple top is a great place to start.

 

[GuitarBizarre]

In short, my preferred brand is generally PRS. I've got an SE Custom Semi-hollow (2007), that I am rather fond of. However, I am ultimately trying to build a guitar that has a sound I prefer, a tremolo, a slightly different neck profile to fit my hands.

(the semi-hollow has thick mahogany neck, mahogany body, maple top. Fixed PRS bridge, I replaced the stock with a brass bridge.)

I'm not too picky on which woods I will be using, so long as it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.



And, to the gentleman former, the body and structure of the wood makes a huge difference. Seriously. Not saying that the density isn't a main component to the tone it puts out, or that stiffness increases sustain--I'm saying that chambered or semi-hollow bodies typically have a better bass response and less harsh treble. This is typically what I define as a "warm" sound. I do appreciate the point on carbon rods, however. Hadn't quite thought from that perspective.

When you chamber a body you make it lighter, and you introduce an air pocket that can easily be made to vibrate if any part of the now thin structure around it is also made to vibrate. Since that structure is now thin, it will vibrate, thereby presenting a convenient and simple path for energy to leave the vibrating string.

People often talk about guitars sounding "Loud acoustically" - What they mean is "The body of this guitar can be readily made to vibrate by the energy present in the vibrating string".

In other words, guitars that are loud acoustically are lightweight and don't have enough mass/inertia to keep the energy in the string where it belongs. They allow it a way out, into the surrounding air. The string itself will do this to a small degree, as it flat out hits the air around it, but when it is louder than that bare minimum, all you're experiencing is a guitar that allows energy to leave the string early.

As I mentioned earlier, I do own guitars that are designed in this way and I do enjoy those characteristics sometimes - but only because those guitars are a one stop solution for a specific type of tone that I don't have to tweak. They're a specific set of losses and inefficiencies that sound pleasing. From a mechanical perspective, they're actually quite poor designs, and what they do could be done equally well by a guitar that was constructed to be high mass, high strength, low losses - as long as the tone controls etc were up to the task of shaping the resultant extra high frequency.

(As far as extra bass btw, that'll be because the low transient is less susceptible to energy loss of this kind - high frequency content will leave the string fastest in a lossy system, because it's the weakest portion of the energy present. You're not actually getting more bass, you're getting less treble and a faster decay, which makes the bass content left over seem more percussive. This can be desirable, but bear in mind why it's actually happening)

 

[tpl2000]

When you chamber a body you make it lighter, and you introduce an air pocket that can easily be made to vibrate if any part of the now thin structure around it is also made to vibrate. Since that structure is now thin, it will vibrate, thereby presenting a convenient and simple path for energy to leave the vibrating string.

People often talk about guitars sounding "Loud acoustically" - What they mean is "The body of this guitar can be readily made to vibrate by the energy present in the vibrating string".

In other words, guitars that are loud acoustically are lightweight and don't have enough mass/inertia to keep the energy in the string where it belongs. They allow it a way out, into the surrounding air. The string itself will do this to a small degree, as it flat out hits the air around it, but when it is louder than that bare minimum, all you're experiencing is a guitar that allows energy to leave the string early.

As I mentioned earlier, I do own guitars that are designed in this way and I do enjoy those characteristics sometimes - but only because those guitars are a one stop solution for a specific type of tone that I don't have to tweak. They're a specific set of losses and inefficiencies that sound pleasing. From a mechanical perspective, they're actually quite poor designs, and what they do could be done equally well by a guitar that was constructed to be high mass, high strength, low losses - as long as the tone controls etc were up to the task of shaping the resultant extra high frequency.

(As far as extra bass btw, that'll be because the low transient is less susceptible to energy loss of this kind - high frequency content will leave the string fastest in a lossy system, because it's the weakest portion of the energy present. You're not actually getting more bass, you're getting less treble and a faster decay, which makes the bass content left over seem more percussive. This can be desirable, but bear in mind why it's actually happening)

While I do appreciate the physics information, I'm ultimately going for a particular sound. Endless sustain (though theoretical and difficult to perform with gravity, and an atmosphere surrounding the strings) is seldom actually desired--only time it's really used, is with either feedback, an ebow, or the pickup equivalent to the ebow.

And when I say it has more bass, it's actually a combination of the louder volume (chambering as well as a soundhole) and the lack of treble. It's still a tribute of the bodily structure, though it may be combined effects.

 

[GuitarBizarre]

Acoustically maybe, when amplified, no. The body resonance won't be translated through the pickups to the amplifier unless the energy losses are far, far greater than they're realistically going to be in a design with a solid central block.

 

[tpl2000]

Acoustically maybe, when amplified, no. The body resonance won't be translated through the pickups to the amplifier unless the energy losses are far, far greater than they're realistically going to be in a design with a solid central block.

Anyways...

With the specifications I've come up with already, any recommendations for the woods?

 

[HaMMerHeD]

I'd go with woods that are rigid enough to be structurally sound, and light enough to be manageable to your specifications.

If you don't care how it looks, I'd go with a Genuine mahogany neck (paint grade is very cheap) and something like an Alder or basswood body, also painted. I rather like katalox and bloodwood fretboards, because I think maple and rosewood are overdone.

I think "tonewood" only matters if you only ever play it unplugged, and even then, there is a lot of disagreement. Best to take it all with a mountain of salt and get what you like, ergonomically.

 

[tpl2000]

I'd go with woods that are rigid enough to be structurally sound, and light enough to be manageable to your specifications.

If you don't care how it looks, I'd go with a Genuine mahogany neck (paint grade is very cheap) and something like an Alder or basswood body, also painted. I rather like katalox and bloodwood fretboards, because I think maple and rosewood are overdone.

I think "tonewood" only matters if you only ever play it unplugged, and even then, there is a lot of disagreement. Best to take it all with a mountain of salt and get what you like, ergonomically.

I actually do play unplugged a lot lol. Also leads me to wonder, how do you think bloodwood would work as a top on a semi-hollow? I have heard too few videos of bloodwood guitars, acoustic or electric.

 

[HaMMerHeD]

I actually do play unplugged a lot lol. Also leads me to wonder, how do you think bloodwood would work as a top on a semi-hollow? I have heard too few videos of bloodwood guitars, acoustic or electric.

No idea. It is a great deal harder, denser, heavier, and more brittle than the soft maple and spruce most of those are topped with.

But regardless, I bet it'd end up sounding like a guitar.

 

[Petar Bogdanov]

It seems many people's dream guitar is an exquisite semi-acoustic, but they settle for a solid body, because it's traditional. If you're going to settle, why go for a custom guitar at all?