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Hi gang -

Does anyone have experience in using native North American woods for backs and sides, other than Claro walnut or Maple?  I have several species offered to me (free if I want to have it re-sawn), including Box Elder, Sycamore, Hickory, and "black walnut".  Are any of these viable tonewoods?  I can imagine the walnut working out well, but didn't know about the others.

I read through this person's build process, he uses mulberry and red oak for this build which sparked my curiosity about native woods:

LINK

Thanks,

Jon

Jon buddy one of the guitars that I built that people really seemed to like was made from Black Walnut from Uncle Bob.  That guitar is now owned by Serge.

Ken has had great success with Sycamore and he can fill you in on his impressions.

BTW Walnut is one of the easiest woods to bend.

Tell Michael how easy Walnut is, Hesh.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I have built guitars with Maple, Cherry, Sycamore, walnut and ash. I am pleased with each one of them and they all sound excellent....slightly different tonal qualities, but excellent sounding guitars. Oh yeah, I just built one with Osage Orange, so you can add that to the list.

To me, the sound of walnut resembles EI rosewood. The Osage sounds really close to BRW. Maple is a bright sounding guitar...very clean sounding. the sycamore guitar came out sounding more like mahogany with a mellower tone. The cherry guitar is a very close relative of mahogany and came out sounding loud, punchy but definitely not brash. Closer sounding to mahogany. The Ash guitar is bright sounding, very loud and with good clarity. It blows away my martin D35 by a long shot.

The best sounding and playing guitar I have built so far has most definitely been made out of Flamed Oregon Myrtle. I liked the sound of this guitar so much that I have bought 6 more sets of it for future builds.

I now have a pallet load of ash to build with and I bought a pallet load of cherry neck blanks to build my necks with.

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Reguards,

Ken H

I've played a few of the guitars made from a Sycamore local to Santa Cruz.
They were Santa Cruz Guitar Co. OM's made for Sylvan Music. Another
luthier here on the board had some of it as well.

Those OM's has a great sound. Very characteristic of Santa Cruz Guitars,
they had a moderate fundamental with very nice overtones. That's, of
course, from the way they voice, but the Sycamore for me seemed very
similar to Koa without some of the high end reflections.

I think that a guitar made out of Box Elder would look really cool. That being said, I'm not sure how it would sound. Anyone built out of Box Elder?-----Snick

Several people have mentioned the good qualities (and poor sales potential) of white oak as a tonewood.

I think black locust would make really good guitars. Also, persimmon is a member of the ebony family and should work.

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Jim Kirby
kirby@udel.edu

[QUOTE=S .Hlasnick]I think that a guitar made out of Box Elder would look really cool. That being said, I'm not sure how it would sound. Anyone built out of Box Elder?-----Snick[/QUOTE]

Having never worked with it, I did a little digging.  Box Elder is actually in the maple family, but supposedly quite soft when dry.

Anyone?

[QUOTE=WaddyT] Tell Michael how easy Walnut is, Hesh.
[/QUOTE]

Hey!!! I have bent several side sets of Claro and Black Walnut. Some very figured! But the one dozen sets of binding I botch and suddenly I have a reputation Man you guys are tough

There's Myrtle too, which has been kicked around a bit, and especially suggested for novices, because it is so easy to bend. The curly stuff is jaw-droppingly beautiful and has been compared to Maple for sound.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

Jon,

Check out Ron's (Old Man) white oak OM posted last month. Beautiful!

Like Jim mentioned, some of the domestic tonewoods make pretty nice guitars but probably don't have the commercial appeal of the more common tonewoods. That said, I'm always on the lookout for wood that appeals to me.

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53% of all statistics are made up on the spot
http://driftwoodguitars.blogspot.com/

[QUOTE=MichaelP] [QUOTE=WaddyT] Tell Michael how easy Walnut is, Hesh.

[/QUOTE]



Hey!!! I have bent several side sets of Claro and Black Walnut. Some very figured! But the one dozen sets of binding I botch and suddenly I have a reputation Man you guys are tough [/QUOTE]

Michael I didn't even bring you up my friend it was all Waddy....  I've got Waddy's picture want me to turn him into a dog or something???

I think it's too late, Hesh!  

Sorry, Michael.   I was making fun of Hesh telling Jon how easy it was to bend walnut, and I couldn't help myself. .

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I'd like to point out that Claro, white oak, myrtle, Hickory etc aren't domestic woods. They come from the overseas colonies somewhere, America or some such place I believe it's called.

Colin

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

Cooooouuul

[QUOTE=jsimpson]

[QUOTE=S .Hlasnick]I think that a guitar made out of Box Elder would look really cool. That being said, I'm not sure how it would sound. Anyone built out of Box Elder?-----Snick[/QUOTE]

Having never worked with it, I did a little digging.  Box Elder is actually in the maple family, but supposedly quite soft when dry.

Anyone?

[/QUOTE]

 

I'm building one right now. I'll let you know how it turns out when I am done.  The only issues I can see so far is that it splits really easily.

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Reguards,

Ken H

Colin, don't tell me you're domestic and we're exotic!

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

[QUOTE=jtkirby] Several people have mentioned the good qualities (and poor sales potential) of white oak as a tonewood.
[/QUOTE]

The first I heard of this was Al Carruth telling me that one of the best and entirely unsellable guitars he ever made was white oak. I think it was eventually given away? If I'd been around and in cash...that was back before he came to his senses and started charging (a portion of) what he's worth, so a smokin' deal could have been had!

I'm excited by the growing use of many domestics. I'm not a big fan of maple acoustics, but I'm -really- interested in what people are doing with cherry, walnut, myrtle, etc. I've got an endless supply of insane-looking walnut, with the crazy sapwood and the black lines you can find in Bastogne, it's gently nudging its way toward my beloved Macassar ebony for prettiness.

We already have the best top wood around sitting (or standing) in Terrace, BC.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

 

I'm building one right now. I'll let you know how it turns out when I am done.  The only issues I can see so far is that it splits really easily.

[/QUOTE]

Ken,

Please keep us informed. I have a local source(my back yard) of box elder. Which part of the guitar are you using it for? Franz Jahnel in Manual of Guitar Technology indicates it as good for necks, backs and sides. (It's listed under maple).

Jon, I have built the grand total of *one* Boxelder guitar. That's not a huge pool of experience to draw from, but at least I can speak to my experience with the wood. Of course, I'm speaking of the Ambrosia Maple set that Uncle Bob sold a couple of years ago. That batch was Boxelder. It is the softest maple I've ever seen, and was not unlike poplar. It didn't give the rosewood zingle, but nonetheless the guitar turned out nicely and a couple of people even liked the way it sounded. My set had that beautiful red streaking, so it was a treat for the eyes. It bent somewhat like cardboard, and was a dream to finish.
I've got pix somewhere...if I find them I'll post a shot.

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

[QUOTE=Steve Kinnaird]My set had that beautiful red streaking, so it was a treat for the eyes. It bent somewhat like cardboard, and was a dream to finish.
I've got pix somewhere...if I find them I'll post a shot.

Steve[/QUOTE]

Excellent, Steve!  I'd love to see it!

hmmm, how does white oak bend? Could you just use any piece of domestic white oak? cause i've always thought of oak as a beautiful wood but unstable for acoustics.

I've used oak, hard and soft maple, cherry, black and claro walnut, Osage, myrtle/laurel, and persimmon for B&S wood. I have on hand some black locust, which tests out like Osage, and a set of burl Mesquite, which tests out a little worse than Masonite (R), but looks cool. I'm on the lookout for a good set or two of quartered hickory. I've got a piece of apple that I might be able to get a set out of, too. I've used persimmon, soft shell almond, and hard maple for fingerboards and bridges, and these days I use persimmon for bridge plates, although osage works well.

One of my students built a Flamenco recently out of butternut wood. It's a great substitute for cedro.

Oak is one of the easiest woods to bend, which is why they used it for so many bentwood chairs a hundred years ago. Quartered oak is not less stable than BRW. We have to keep in mind that the 'standard' guitar wood these days, Indian rosewood, is one of the most stable of all woods; nothing comes off all that well by comparison.

That last oak guitar I made was pretty good: not the best I've ever built, but far from the worst. I just got in some really nice quartered oak, and hope to have a guitar made from it for Montreal.

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that any wood can be 'tonewood' for the B&S, so long as you use it right. I admit that I would not want to have to make a guitar out of lilac wood; it would take about 500 pieces, but I bet it would sound OK once you got it done.    

[QUOTE=jsimpson]

[QUOTE=Steve Kinnaird]My set had that beautiful red streaking, so it was a treat for the eyes. It bent somewhat like cardboard, and was a dream to finish. I've got pix somewhere...if I find them I'll post a shot. Steve[/QUOTE]

Excellent, Steve!  I'd love to see it!

[/QUOTE]

Ok, Jon, I DID have some shots.

Here's the back, which as you see has bloodwood as a center inlay and binding. The blk/bloodwood/blk purfling also came from Uncle Bob:




Here's a good use for some spalted Amrosia:





Finally, my favorite shot of this guitar:





Thanks for looking, and appologies to those who've already seen this instrument.

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

wow, i thought that is painting, before seeing the hole picture. wow

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