Official Luthiers Forum!

A while ago, i posted a cheap guitar neck, and i was curious if it was really maple.  The builder mainly makes fiddles and such, and cheap guitars. They do state they use maple for their necks.  But I want to make sure :)  I cut it to make braces.
although it does not have any figure for most part, one end has some. What you see is less than 1 inch.
The color is very very similar to european spruce, but the light parts between grain are whiter, and it has a nice luster when planed.  There is no pink hue. Also some very very fine pores which are greatly exaggerated by the picture. You can't see them with the naked eye.
Thanks !

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Build log

It looks like Spruce to me. is it hard like maple or is ir soft like a spruce.

Those don't look to me like pores but rather fiber tear outs.

Looks like Maple to me. The darker patches being very short sections of medullary rays. Those rays can become prominent if the face of the wood is exactly at 90° vertical (quartersawn.) I'd guess this face is showing rift wood, probably close to about 70°.

Most luthiers are pretty insistent that their braces are very close to 90°, because there are so few grain lines that fall between two planes only 1/4" apart, (for example, in a 1/4" brace), though it is probably less critical for back bracing.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Certainly not spruce, even if it looks close.  This is from a neck, and it does feel like hardwood. Grains not vertical in the cross-section, about 60 deg as Dennis correctly guessed.  Seems that most neck wood is like this....

I need the maple for a central transverse on a classical top, this is the greg Byers method.  He likes a heavier, stiff rim around the lower bout, and that includes the transverse, so he is using maple for it, and solid linings.

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Build log

If it has pores ,I doubt that it`s Maple .Could be Luan which is a cheap South American knock off for Mahogany,only it`s a lot lighter in color.
                           James

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

Does not look like maple to me. Sycamore maybe?

Luan is from the Phillipenes. It is also known as Phlillipene mahogany.

Does anyone know how to spell phillipene correctly?

If it is, and it is quartered it might make good back braces, but I wouldn't use it on the top. I don't think that it is luan though. Luan is sometimes light colored, but it usually has a bit of pinkish brown color.

Al

Its from a guitar made in Romania. The factory is in a zone famous for the fiddles built with local European maple, their website states maple for guitar necks. But this one is 10y old and i wanted to make sure it's just another cheap hardwood available around here....

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Build log

[QUOTE=lex_luthier] Does not look like maple to me. Sycamore maybe?[/QUOTE]
I was just thinking that too.

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Guitars, guitars and more guitars.

Alex,

Looks like it could be Sycamore to me - but then that makes it a maple (at least in Europe) as Sycamore is Acer pseudoplatanus. I've also seen European maple Acer platanoides with similar figure - not all of it is flame or fiddleback

This is a neck I did in Sycamore on European maple back and sides:

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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

Dave, that looks great! Snakewood? 

The neck looks darker than the flamed maple, which also looks pinkier than my wood I never handled clear lacquered maple before, all the violins are stained

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Build log

Alex,

The bindings are curly koa.

Maple is a lovely wood

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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

On second look, I think it is maple if we're looking at a quartersawn face.