Official Luthiers Forum!

Owned and operated by Lance Kragenbrink
It is currently Thu Aug 21, 2025 9:30 am


All times are UTC - 5 hours


Forum rules


Be nice, no cussin and enjoy!




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 26 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next
Author Message
 Post subject: Myth about Maple Guitars
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 8:38 am 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
User avatar

Joined: Mon Mar 06, 2006 10:10 pm
Posts: 2485
Location: Argyle New York
First name: Mike/Mikey/Michael/hey you!
Last Name: Collins
City: Argyle
State: New York
Zip/Postal Code: 12809
Country: U.S.A. /America-yea!!
Focus: Build
Status: Professional
I just had a client come to my shop & try a used Maple & Spruce
Classical I made in 2002.
I bought it back when the owner needed cash for a divorce.
The new client loved it and gave me a deposit on it.
He then told his teacher,who told him Maple was a poor
mans wood and could NOT sound as good as Rosewood.
I asked him why violins & Arch
tops are made with it.
Price a Torres or Hauser I maple guitar.
Well the teacher insisited on coming to my shop to hear
the guitar himself .
He loved it !
He then told his student that if he didn't buy the guitars then he would!
Another myth busted
Mike

_________________
Mike Collins


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 8:58 am 
Offline
Contributing Member
Contributing Member

Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:51 pm
Posts: 1134
Location: Albany NY
First name: David
Last Name: LaPlante
Status: Professional
Hi Mike, Hope you guys are staying warm up there today!
I haven't used maple much over the years but I've made a few, including a guitar for my father about twenty years ago. It seems that it's a favorite of many people.
I'm just finishing up this one for a client presently, I adjusted the back and side thicknessing to get as similar a result to my other guitars as possible. We'll know in a few weeks. I think many perceive Maple as harder and denser than it really is and thus treat it like rosewood when building with it. I can see how that might produce disappointing results in some cases.
I really do like working with it as the wood is pretty, "cleaner" (none of that black RW dust)
and much easier to FP as it has no pores (YEA!!). BTW, the set below is Bosnian Bird's eye and considering what it cost my client, I would not consider it a "poor" man's wood!

Best
Attachment:
Laplante#96topfinish.jpg

Attachment:
Laplante#96Backfinish.jpg


You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.


Last edited by David LaPlante on Sun Jan 23, 2011 9:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 8:58 am 
Offline
Koa
Koa
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:51 am
Posts: 1310
Location: Michigan,U.S.A.
Focus: Build
Status: Professional
If maple was a poor mans wood, then why is a les paul or prs topped with it? ;)


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 9:02 am 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
User avatar

Joined: Mon Mar 06, 2006 10:10 pm
Posts: 2485
Location: Argyle New York
First name: Mike/Mikey/Michael/hey you!
Last Name: Collins
City: Argyle
State: New York
Zip/Postal Code: 12809
Country: U.S.A. /America-yea!!
Focus: Build
Status: Professional
Beautiful guitar David! [:Y:]
I to treat Maple differently then RW.
I make the back thicker especially.
Yeah-NO Pores -I love it!

Mike

_________________
Mike Collins


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 2:14 pm 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
User avatar

Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2005 6:16 am
Posts: 2692
Maple has pretty high damping. That's a good reason why it works well on bowed instruments. It may be some people's taste in a guitar, or a guitar for a certain purpose. But the high damping is not a myth.

_________________
Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 3:22 pm 
Offline
Koa
Koa
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 19, 2008 12:17 pm
Posts: 534
Great story Mike, sure nice when the nay-sayers are won over!
Well . . . , except for Howard. :lol:

Joe

No offence, just funning Howard. Listening and learning.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 4:10 pm 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
User avatar

Joined: Sat May 22, 2010 10:32 am
Posts: 2616
First name: alan
Last Name: stassforth
City: Santa Rosa
State: ca
Zip/Postal Code: 95404
Country: usa
Focus: Build
Status: Amateur
Hey, I guess I'm a maple freak.
flame maple back,
straight maple sides,
slightly figured maple bindings,
b.e. maple rosette and headstock.


You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 5:19 pm 
Offline
Contributing Member
Contributing Member
User avatar

Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 1:13 am
Posts: 451
First name: Tim
Last Name: Allen
City: San Francisco
Focus: Build
Status: Amateur
This thread showcases some beautiful instruments!

I love the appearance of maple, and have several sets, which I have not yet built with.

Most of the steel string maple guitars I've played have sounded kind of cold--a little bit dead at the edges. I am very happy to see this discussion. I am hoping to learn some ways to get a good sound from maple. I appreciate the tip to leave the back thicker.

I recently played an excellent Collings maple SJ, which was encouraging. And my personal favorite guitar at the last Healdsburg festival (of course there were many I didn't play) was a maple/redwood guitar by Bruce Sexauer. He said he'd been dissatisfied with other maple guitars he'd built, and tried redwood because he thought it would complement maple. It sure worked on that guitar! Esthetically, I wouldn't think of putting redwood with maple, but perhaps redwood's low damping compensates for maple's high damping. :?:

Any additional ideas for how to make maple sound as good as it looks are very welcome.

_________________
Tim Allen
"Never hurry, never rest."


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 5:29 pm 
Offline
Koa
Koa

Joined: Tue Feb 24, 2009 9:23 am
Posts: 1372
First name: Corky
Last Name: Long
City: Mount Kisco
State: NY
Country: USA
Focus: Build
Status: Amateur
Howard Klepper wrote:
Maple has pretty high damping. That's a good reason why it works well on bowed instruments. It may be some people's taste in a guitar, or a guitar for a certain purpose. But the high damping is not a myth.


Howard,

Do you know where I can find any data on the relative damping of woods (in general) for back and sides? Janka hardness is all over the inter net, but I can't find any data on damping.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 5:37 pm 
Offline
Koa
Koa
User avatar

Joined: Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:46 pm
Posts: 950
First name: Francis
Last Name: Richer
City: Montréal
State: Québec
Zip/Postal Code: H4G 2Z2
Country: Canada
Focus: Build
Status: Semi-pro
I was planning to build a maple OM for my next build, but my teacher discouraged me, saying it wounds like cardboard and it's good for fire wood. I have to say I was a bit vexed and sad, cause I had invested pretty much on a really nice flammed set and a curly maple neck. This thread please me! I'll keep this set for a future guitar. I also have a Adi top that I can't use because grain become really wide on the edges.. I was thinking of a parlor sized gutiar with this Adi top and B/S maple. Anybody tried this?

Francis

_________________
Francis Richer, Montréal
Les Guitares F&M Guitars


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 7:01 pm 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood

Joined: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:21 am
Posts: 4917
Location: Central PA
First name: john
Last Name: hall
City: Hegins
State: pa
Zip/Postal Code: 17938
Country: usa
Focus: Build
Status: Professional
I didn't think maple made a good guitar till I made one. I will say that there is more than one type of maple . I like used hard maple . The guitar had a sitka spruce top scallop bracing . This instrument had great tone not tinny and very balanced . Sustain is also very good . This guitar was a 14 fret dred and red spruce bracing .
Don't sell it short , it makes a nice instrument .

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 7:41 pm 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
User avatar

Joined: Sat May 22, 2010 10:32 am
Posts: 2616
First name: alan
Last Name: stassforth
City: Santa Rosa
State: ca
Zip/Postal Code: 95404
Country: usa
Focus: Build
Status: Amateur
I built another weiss out of plain soft maple,
cheap spruce top from Mac Beaths,
(got lucky!),
a few years ago.
That thing sounds fantastic.
Balanced and loud.
I've heard maple takes longer to "open up"?
I can't wait to finish the one in da pics,
because the build is going very well [clap] ,
and I'm doing some different structural things to that one. [clap]


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 8:18 pm 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood

Joined: Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:27 pm
Posts: 2109
Location: South Carolina
First name: John
Last Name: Cox
Focus: Build
Status: Amateur
Yep - I had a buddy that was a semi-pro guitarist on the side... He finally decided it wasn't for him and sold all his "expensive" guitars - he kept a maple body Japanese dread he found behind a friend's couch..... We were always jealous of him because that thing had such an amazing sound.

Unfortunately, most of the commercial Maple guitar offerings couldn't hold a candle to it....

On the whole maple classical guitar thing .... Well... It was the "Traditional" back and sides wood for classical guitars for a really long time..... Likely for good reason...

Thanks

John


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 9:17 pm 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood

Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2005 12:50 pm
Posts: 3933
Location: United States
Several years ago I started work on an OM in curly Eurpoean maple. The fellow who was teaching guitar in the shop saw it, and asked me why I was wasting my time. I put it aside for a while and worked on other things. Finally I got it back out and finished it up. Once it was out on the rack that teacher would pick it up every time he came to the shop: he loved it.

Howard is right: maple does have higher damping in general than the rosewoods, for example, although it's about the same as cherry, walnut or mahogany, any of which can make a nice guitar, I'm told. I do think that higher damping woods work better for smaller bodied guitars (pace, D-18 players). Maybe the tendancy of small guitars to be more 'treble balanced' helps here: higher damping tends to work against high frequencies.

Which brings up the question of why maple guitars are said to sound 'dry'. Frankly, I can't answer that one. You'd think offhand that a 'dry' sound would mean a lot of highs and not much fundamental, but maybe that's wrong. We need to figure out how the spectrum correlates with the various descriptors, and before we do that, we need to agree on what those descriptors actually _mean_.

Finally, another point about damping: it doesn't matter much what the damping factor of the wood is if it's not moving. A stiff, heavy back of wood that has high damping simply won't absorb much sound. The guitar I made using persimmon for the B&S had a reasonably 'rosewoody' sound, even though the back wood had fairly high damping. It was just heavy enough and stiff enough that it didn't matter. Aside from sounding pretty darn good, that was also the best street fighting guitar I've made: persimmon is hell for stout. If I were playing one of those places where they put chicken wire between you and the audience, that's the guitar I'd want.

So, go for it. Maple has it's own sound, and it can be a nice one, even if it's not the same sound as rosewood. And, in spite of 'Photoflame (TM)', curly or birdseye are effects you just can't get from plastic.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 12:32 am 
Offline
Koa
Koa
User avatar

Joined: Thu Aug 25, 2005 4:49 pm
Posts: 1209
Location: Ukiah, CA
I have a redwood and curly hard maple guitar that I have played for years. It certainly isn't dry sounding. There is a difference between the brighter tap tone of hard maple versus the cardboard tap tone of bigleaf maple.

David, that back is just beautiful.

_________________
Ken Franklin
clumsy yet persistent
https://www.kenfranklinukulele.com


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 7:28 am 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood

Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 9:34 am
Posts: 3081
Geez, I thought white oak was the poor man's wood!
I've used maple in mandolins for 20 years. Treated properly, matched with the top for the tone you want, it is a very fine back wood. You can pick from big leaf, Euro, red, and sugar AND combined with red spruce, German, Italian, etc., you have quite a range of tonal possibilities.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 7:59 am 
Offline
Koa
Koa
User avatar

Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:51 am
Posts: 1310
Location: Michigan,U.S.A.
Focus: Build
Status: Professional
Maple and Mahogany are the 2 most woods used for guitar building, so there must be a good reason for it. Right ;)


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 9:03 am 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
User avatar

Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 10:59 pm
Posts: 2103
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Country: Romania
Focus: Build
Status: Professional
Corky, I think you should only rely on how the actual piece sounds like. There is quite an obvious difference between high damping and ow damping pieces, with a lot of stuff somewhere in between.

Which leads me to my first maple guitar, which is currently in construction. It feels nice and dense (about 650Kg/m3) and the taptone is not that bad at all. Definitely not glass but not cardboard either. The top even if spruce is definitely low damping. Not quite like a nice WRC top but not far either. So all together I am confident this will make a nice classical.

_________________
Build log


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 9:27 am 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood

Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2009 9:34 am
Posts: 3081
I got news for y'all, taps like cardboard don't mean that much. Oak taps like cardboard. Mostly means less sustain...AND, in certain instances, that ain't so bad.
Oh, yea, IMO...


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 10:04 am 
Offline
Koa
Koa
User avatar

Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:55 am
Posts: 1505
Location: Lorette, Manitoba, Canada
First name: Douglas
Last Name: Ingram
City: Lorette
State: Manitoba
Country: Canada
Focus: Build
My most recent, a Torres FE19 build, was in hard maple with a nice curly grain. My best sounding so far, IMO. Last Saturday I took it over to a professional classical guitarist, guitar teacher, and president of the the local classical guitar society. He really liked it and must have played it for the better part of an hour. He had no prejudices about it being maple. Fortunately the maple prejudices are not universal!

I have plans on my next guitar being another FE19, but this time in EIR. I'll see if it makes all that much of a difference then.

And while we're showing maple...here it is.


You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

_________________
Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 12:46 pm 
Offline
Contributing Member
Contributing Member
User avatar

Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2005 3:45 pm
Posts: 4337
Location: United States
Great post, good discussion, beautiful guitars!
My favorite picture, though, is one of Al playing behind chicken wire.
wow7-eyes

Steve

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

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 1:34 pm 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
User avatar

Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2005 6:16 am
Posts: 2692
Corky Long wrote:
Howard Klepper wrote:
Maple has pretty high damping. That's a good reason why it works well on bowed instruments. It may be some people's taste in a guitar, or a guitar for a certain purpose. But the high damping is not a myth.


Howard,

Do you know where I can find any data on the relative damping of woods (in general) for back and sides? Janka hardness is all over the inter net, but I can't find any data on damping.


Ask Alan Carruth.

_________________
Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 1:42 pm 
Offline
Koa
Koa

Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2006 4:15 pm
Posts: 655
Location: Columbus,Ohio
There is defiantly a general aversion against light colored tone woods from the general public, then again, shiny guitars sell over not so shiny. People hear with their eyes, I can contest to that from working in music stores, in my youth. The factory makers can't afford to not follow the general consensus, even if they are based on unfounded prejudices, erroneous or not. Myself, it's a hobby, so building, experimenting outside the box, and even going as far as to prove the former prejudices wrong, is half the fun. ;) Clinton


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 2:13 pm 
Offline
Brazilian Rosewood
Brazilian Rosewood
User avatar

Joined: Mon Mar 06, 2006 10:10 pm
Posts: 2485
Location: Argyle New York
First name: Mike/Mikey/Michael/hey you!
Last Name: Collins
City: Argyle
State: New York
Zip/Postal Code: 12809
Country: U.S.A. /America-yea!!
Focus: Build
Status: Professional
Howard;
I've never seen anyone bow their Archtop Guitar!
Hee!
I work Maple like any other wood.
I weigh it & flex it & tap it & so on.
High damping woods can make great guitars-with some
pre-planning.
Mike ;)

_________________
Mike Collins


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 2:32 pm 
Offline
Mahogany
Mahogany
User avatar

Joined: Sun Aug 29, 2010 10:33 am
Posts: 92
First name: Damon
Last Name: Wack
State: FL
Country: USA
Focus: Build
As a dobro player for a while now, I can say that for many of us maple is the preferred wood for bluegrass style dobro. While the majority of the sound comes from the cone, most maple guitars seem to have some extra brightness to cut through the mix in an all acoustic environment. It's subjective, but I prefer maple over all the others I have heard and played, with Koa being a close second.

_________________
Damon Wack
https://www.facebook.com/LindamonGuitars


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 26 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

All times are UTC - 5 hours


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
phpBB customization services by 2by2host.com