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i'm considering building an OM with wenge b/s and a sitka top and wondering whether any of you have experience with wenge. the guy i'm building for wants bright and powerful, but my fear is that this combination might turn out so bright that i can't get any warmth and character out of the bass.
any thoughts?
my shape is an OM, with a little extra width across the lower bout and a bit of extra depth.
and while i'm asking about your experience with wenge, any pictures of your past builds with this wood would also be appreciated. might give me some binding color ideas.
thanks,
phil

Hey Phil-

I've never worked with wenge but heard it has a rosewood sound. I remember a guy at the 2003 Healdsburg guitar fest that had a classical made of spruce and wenge. The wenge was quartered and from a distance it looked like ebony until you got 10 feet away and could see the alternating black and dark brown grain lines. I found the below picture of an electric bass on the internet - I don't know who built this, it was on a webpage showing different shots of unfinished wenge. This wenge is flatsawn and the grain is more prominent than quartersawn stock.

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John Lewis
Wannabe builder owned by 2 crazy dachshunds

I have a wenges sitka Om in the guitar room right now.. its wonderful guitar, beautifully even across the register, tapered bracing (do I use any other kind ??? NOT). Go for it - the bottom will come from the way you brace the top , not the B&S.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Phil, I'm another whose experience with wenge is anecdotal. (Haven't used it myself--always meant to try--but have heard the stories of others.) At the GAL convention, the question was put to Ervin Somogyi about "under-appreciated alternative tonewoods". Was there one (or more) he could recommend?
Well, he waxed nearly poetic singing the praises of wenge. I can't remember all the details of his remarks, but we mostly came away with the impression that we are first-rate doofusses if we don't at least try it.

Give it a shot. Rid yourself of your doofus status. And let the rest of us doofi know how it performs.
I would say this, though, take care re. splinters.
The stuff has a well-earned reputation along those lines.

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

Wenge is underappreciated. For the price, it is a terrific tonewood. It is quite dense and will respond much like rosewood. What I find striking about it is its uniform, dark chocolate color. It is a beautiful pallate where you can apply ab purfling to excellent effect.

Caution should be used when handling as it is notorius for splintering. It is quite brittle. The slivers are terrible and will go deep into your fingernails. Don't say I didn't warn you. I was picking those things out of my fingers for weeks.

To me, it sounds as if you are overestimating the extent to which wood choices--especially back and side choices--determine the sound of a guitar.

I don't like wenge because it is so brittle.

Is a "past build" a musical instrument?

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

thanks for all the encouragement and warning.
is wenge any more splintery than padouk? and is it tough to bend? or just prone to little explosions when routing the binding channel?
thanks tony and howard for the wise reminders about the significance of the top. i'm only on my 5th guitar right now - 4 rosewoods and 1 padouk - so i haven't yet realized for myself how subtley the back and sides affect the instrument.
i do know that in factory instruments the difference can be huge. for instance, i still have not found a factory guitar built out of maple that i like, but i know that many luthiers build great ones. perhaps i need to find a way to play more luthier built guitars - or just learn to build them faster so i can discover my own answers.
phil

[QUOTE=Steve Kinnaird]

Give it a shot. Rid yourself of your doofus status. And let the rest of us doofi know how it performs.
Steve[/QUOTE]

doofi

I like that, Steve.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

I just sent a guitar off to Addam Stark to get finished and I had used
wenge for the neck. It is very splintery wood. I use a template to route
my headstock shape and this normally takes me under 10 minutes to
approximate the shape on my bandsaw and then route away the rest on
my router table. Well, I spent a good hour or so getting the shape right
up to where it needed to be before I took it to the router table. It is also
extremely dense and made the heel area much harder to carve. But it is
beautiful wood and has a great tap tone. I am looking into building an
adirondack/wenge guitar in my next batch.

I would recommend it but just be aware that it does like to splinter along
the grain. So when you route the binding ledge, I would take a lot of
precautions to avoid tear out, especially on the lower bout where you are
cutting only end grain.

But it is a beautiful wood under a finish. Here is a picture of the neck:



--
Simon
SimonF39020.6869097222

the rest of us doofi ??? .. I believe the plural would be doofii, as in radii.

Do we have to sign up somewhere to join, or is memebbership implied !!!

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

I think the Wenge would be great it's the Sitka I would worry about .

ColinColin S39020.7291666667

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Aside from the splintery aspect, I've heard it is hard to bend? True?

A yard here in the Philly area often carries lots of Wenge, which gets scarfed up by a local furniture builder. I've passed up at least one killer board there, for fear of the down side factors. If the concern is unwarrented, I'll keep my eyes open for the next one. (Oh, the one that got away, though ... I could wax poetic)

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

simon, the guitar looks gorgeous!! hope to see it once the finish is done. thanks for the adivce. maybe i'll even go as far as watering down some titebond and shmeering that around the perimeter a few days before i route the channels.
colin, i'm sort of with you on the sitka comment. my ears much prefer the two guitars i've made of engleman, but a few of my friends feel just as strongly about the two others i've made of sitka. and these guys are not hacks. they're great players and they've got great ears and i trust them. guess it just proves that sound is really a matter of taste.
tony, any chance of seeing that om?
phil

You know, Doofi would be a great name for a rock band.

Doofii--you probably are right about that.

Oh, and phil, go with the great players.
Sitka will make a fine guitar.

SK

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

No, I think it's Doofi. Like "fungi."

"Doofii" would be pronounced "doo-fee-eye." Radii only has two i's
because radius already has one in the singular. Fungus has none, so it
only gets one in the plural version, just like doofus. Of course, I'm talking
out of my butt, so what do I know.

Simon, that wenge neck looks awesome!!!

Mike

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

Alumnus... alumni? That sort of thing?

And doesn't that bass that John pictured look great?

Steve

_________________
From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

[QUOTE=Steve Kinnaird] Alumnus... alumni? That sort of thing?

And doesn't that bass that John pictured look great?

Steve[/QUOTE]

Yes, and yes!!! SniderMike39021.0380787037

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

Phil, go with your own ears. If you don't hear what is so great about some of your guitars, how do you go about recreating that sound? By aiming for something that sounds less than great to you? Build guitars that sound to you the way you want a guitar to sound. Then you will have an identifiable sound and people who like it will come to you for it. Building something that you think is less than your best because someone else (a lot of successful pros who play well have little idea what to listen for in a guitar) likes it is going down the wrong path, IMNSHO.Howard Klepper39021.0753240741

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Here is the OM .. looking thru the pix I also found/remembered that I made a long scale parlour venetian from the same board. This one is bound on wenge as well, and the purf is blk/red/blk, the rosette is gold MOP. Bridge is afr blackwood, the neck has been stained darker to match the back a bit better. I usually dont do that, but this one I tried it out. Just going to show you never know what you might find, that is an A grade top, but shows lots of pretty shimmer ... cheap too !!!

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

tony, beautiful instrument. thanks for the picture.
howard, thanks for the advice and wise words. i should say that the difference between the sitka and engleman instruments i've made has not compromised the sound i'm after. just highlighted the subtle difference i was expecting from each species. the sitka is brighter and has less of the overtones that i enjoy from the englemann. to my ears, each of the notes in the englemann instruments just sound more 'interesting.'
but still howard, i very much appreciate your advice to a new builder and the sort of informal mentorship that happens here at the forum. i love it that people like you and tony share practical answers as well as stuff that's more about the spirit of the craft. so thanks again.
phil