Official Luthiers Forum!

I’ve built up a pretty big stash of Quilted Maple and thinking of building a couple of OM and an O Concert with it.   Any thoughts on using Quilted Maple for flattops? Reason I ask is that I haven’t seen any posted here using it.

I'm building a classical using quilted maple right now. If you look in the rosette thread you will see a sample of the maple in the rosette I made. The maple should make a very fine sounding instrument. In the classical world, it is used on instruments when you want a brighter sound, typically something you might hear when playing Bach, etc. When matched with a spruce top, I think you will have a very good combination of bright tone up and down the neck, quicker attack, and good seperation of voices. Let us know how it turns out.

Cheers!

John

Anthony quilted maple should make a fine acoustic guitar. Here is a link to an interesting article on tonewoods. I think we all have a tendency to put too much into the sound derived from various back/side woods.

http://www.guitarnation.com/articles/calkin.htm

_________________
Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Dude .. I have built a handful with quilt .. good stuff.

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

Hey guys thanks for the info. It's very much appreciated. I am working on a Quilted Maple Archtop and find it a lot less stiff than quartered Fiddleback Maple. I was worried it would be too "floppy" for a flattop.Anthony Z38734.4809143519

Hey Tony a picture or two is always nice.
We love to look at guitars.

_________________
Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Great article Bob. Thanks for posting the link.

Your welcome Roy. How's the shop coming?

_________________
Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

The shops finished. Now I'm building my first ( a concert uke) in there but I find myself spending quit a chunk of time just building jigs. Thanks for asking.

I'll post pics when I finish the uke.

Heres one from a few years back - my neighbour and I built this together, this is when we had jsut started finishing ..

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

Gorgeous guitar Tony.

_________________
Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

Very nice! The small backstrip works well and the bookmatch is perfect.

Great lookin guitar Tony!

And also welcome Roy!

Serge

In another thread some one was talking about a maple/cedar gutiar - well I found the pix of mine, this one was number 5 way back. The purf does indeed have a deep green line int here, the rosette is one piece quilt as well, and there are maple and oak leaves plus a big butterfly in the FB. Bridge is honduran RW.

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

And the back - I saw these billets in the kiln out at Pacific Rim TW back in 93 - had them ship me a set once is was all dry. It sat around for 7 years before I finally built with it.

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

Tony,

That was me asking some time back as I'm currently making a Cedar/European Maple Grand Concert'ish size guitar.

How did the wood combination turn out in terms of sound?

_________________
Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

The guitar sounds pretty good, warm tone, but still has some brighness from the maple - its a little over braced compared to how I build now, so it could be better as far as bottom and volume.

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

Maple seems to take a back burner in acoustic guitars. Folks have grown so accustomed to dark woods for back and sides and light wood on the top, that it is really a stereotype of what a "guitar" looks like. It's really ingrained into our psychye.

I've seen some really beautiful maple acoustics, the ones above are great examples too. The first I remember registering in my brain are all the blue guitars that collector commissioned. Some of those were blue stained maple and were stunning.

When finished natural maple is pretty, but has a mental effect on many buyers I think. The only thing I can think of to compare it to is Log Cabin Homes. A lot of folks like the look, but only 5 % of the buying public would consider one for their home. It's that sort of thing I think that we run into with maple.

I think part of the problem with stained maple back/sides is that there are a lot (and I mean MANY) cheap plywood acoustics out there with stained quilt maple veneer on back, sides, even top. I'm not crazy about it. And yes, it does look 'odd' to have light side woods and a dark top, but not necessarily in a bad way.

I'm probably going to stick with using quilt for my electric guitar tops, although nice fiddleback maple for acoustics is something I do quite like..quilt is a very strong figure, and can be overpowering quite quickly, especially in the fairly bold, large quilt patterns maple often exhibits.

That is really a shame too... because some of my very best sounding guitars have been maple.

_________________
Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Well count me as one of the oddballs that like quilted maple acoustics. Maybe we should educate our customers on the merits of maple. It is inexpensive, plentiful and a very good tonewood.

_________________
Beautiful and unusual tone woods at a reasonable price.
http://www.rctonewoods.com/RCT_Store
The Zootman
1109 Military Rd.
Kenmore, NY 14217
(716) 874-1498

[QUOTE=Bobc] Well count me as one of the oddballs that like quilted maple acoustics. Maybe we should educate our customers on the merits of maple. It is inexpensive, plentiful and a very good tonewood.[/QUOTE]

What you said Bob - and no pores to fill!!!

I pesonally like maple guitars. The only Martin I own is the EMP-NS Employee Model (Night Shift). It has a Pacific Bigleaf Flamed Maple back and sides finished in Transparent Black dye and gloss laquer. I've got a nice set that I picked up from Carl Barney at the last ASIA get together, well actually the wife picked it, and I can't wait to use it. I may try tinting myself.

_________________
Don Atwood
Arlington, VA