Official Luthiers Forum!

I have these funky ideas since i have a old 30 year old light swamp ash air dried body , and recently acquired a Koa ( which is similar to Mahogany if I am not mistaken) neck with Ebony fretboard.
Will this oddball combination work ? I had planned ,and still do , to find an old Maple/Maple neck. Right now, I have no Tele, so would I be committing a Mortal "tone sin" by using the Koa neck and Swamp Ash body other?

You can use whatever type of wood you want for guitars. Bodies, necks, fretboards, etc. There really are no rules. As long as the wood has sufficient physical properties for the intended use. As an example, I wouldn't use pine or poplar for a fretboard because it is too soft to hold the frets in, and would wear too easily. As long as the physical characteristics are suitable for the application you can use what you want. If the neck and body are compatible(scale length is the same, and neck mates up to the body properly) you can do what you wish with it.
I build with whatever I can find. I have used everything from maple, cherry and mahogany for necks, to chestnut. For bodies I've used pine, poplar, white ash, and even an old cutting board. They all worked out just fine. I have yet to find any differences in the tone of the instruments I have built that can be directly attributed to the species of wood used. IME.
As for tone, IMHO that's more about scale length and electronics. But that's a hotly contested subject, and everyone has a bit different take on it. In my limited experience scale length and choice of electronics have been the two things that has affected tone the most in my builds.
Were I you, I wouldn't worry about whether the neck or body wood affects tone. I'd just build with what I have, and see what I get. That's usually the best way, again IMHO.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Those arent mainstream ideas guys. You know that right? Check all online info. on tonewoods, and you have a fairly bizzare viewpoint on this. I appreciate ya, but even i don't subscribe to the anything flies-wood-don't matter- deal. I put a great deal of faith in proper tonewoods and matching. I have assembled lots of guitars. Pickups do matter a great deal to me also, in carefully chosen symbiotic relationship with the wood, I have put together hard maple guitars that sounded too bright, and all things being equal I believe wood is paramount to tone. In fact, i was asking specifically about the specific matching of the type of woods I mentioned

Not again Bullwinkle!

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

Swamp ash, mahogany and ebony is pretty standard woods for electric guitars. If you have all of this experience, if you've already assembled all of these guitars, carefully choosing the "symbiotic relationship" with the wood, and all that jazz, why are you asking us? Obviously you know more than I do.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

your just an amateur like me.

Amateur describes me perfectly. But I know what I have learned and understand from my limited experience in building. And, no offense, but I don't really care what the "consensus" about wood and tone is on the internet(I don't believe there is any consensus). I care what I have experienced myself.
And if you truly have researched this subject on the internet, then you know that there is truly no agreement on this, one way or another.
There are those that wax eloquent about the influence of "tonewood" in an electric guitar, those that think it's a crock, and those that stand somewhere in the middle. And the subject is pretty well known to cause arguments, disagreements and flat out fights in most circles.
Just because you don't like my answer doesn't invalidate it. Hopefully someone will come along that agrees more with your viewpoint, and can give you the answer you're looking for. Good luck, and welcome to the forum.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

^ I respectfully disagree. Tone wood is of paramount importance. It is ALL! IT IS EVERYTHING! Witness Maple. No pickup will tame that. Maybe older high quality silver leaf ..maybe..I couldn't ever tame a maple bodied guitars with a pickup, and i tried maybe a dozen different pickups. Say, I was asking for opinions on the specific combinations. I guess I wore the 'ol asshat , and I apologize,. I really don't believe any opinions/ideas so far though, and welcome others more to my way of thinking.

(On the other hand I have had good results with Hard Ash, with a pickup swap, and old quality black walnut does sound amazing- witness Gibsons "The Pauls", but I could also never quite tame my new Walnut body, although its more responsive to pickups/parts changes than Maple.)

PS- don't worry, I really wont be one of those guys hanging around causing a commotion.

Why don't you just try it?

Is is flame figured koa?

Try it and tell us how it works. You may find someone here who has built with this exact combination (though not the exact bits of timber you have), but it's a crap shoot. And then you'd likely only get one or maybe two samples...not enough to be definitive.

Too many amateur luthiers want a magic formula or want to be reassured that what they want to try with wood on hand will be perfect. There's only one way to find out if it isn't a tried and true combo like Adirondack and Brazilian for an acoustic. Build it.

This is a bolt-on, right? You can always swap out the neck if you don't like it.

Just do it.

+1. This is what I was trying to get at with my first post. Build with what you have and see what comes of it. Who knows, you might learn something about that particular combo. And it would be YOUR EXPERIENCE, not a couple of guys on an internet forum miles away from you. I have always learned more by doing. One man's clear is another man's bright or ice picky. One man's warm is another man's mud. Your own observations are 10 times better for you than anybody else's. YMMV.

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I'm not, I'm a pro. I make my living doing this stuff.

I've made many instruments from scratch, asembled hundreds of kits, and worked on over ten thousand instruments for customers, and have personally seen and handled hundreds of vintage instruments of many different woods.

The biggest factors in the tone of the solid body electric are the scale length, the type of pickups, and the type of bridge.

If you make a Les Paul out of Alder, with a one-piece maple neck, but keep everything else the same, it'll sound like a Les Paul.

If you make a Strat out of Mahogany, with a carved maple top, mahogany neck, and rosewood fretboard, it'll sound like a Strat.

Yes, the wood has a slight influence on the final sound, otherwise they would all sound identical, but frankly, not as much as you think.

If you change the strat single coils to humbuckers, you'll have a bigger effect on the character of the guitar than if you swap out the neck or body. I've made all those changes hundreds of times each, and can attest directly to that.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

Check out this guitar, it's a maple neck, maple body, flamed rosewood fretboard.

It seems pretty tame in HER hands, at least, it's been doing exactly what she wants it to do for over ten years now.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

Check out the "Model June" post by Stuart.

IMO it just seems that doing and then talking about it works out much better in many aspects. Tone results being one. Besides, if you don't manage to build it - it's nothing but talk. Good luck.

For what it's worth, I believe wood choice does make a significant difference in tone. That's based upon irrefutable theory as an acoustic engineer, a lot of playing experience, and a modicum of building experience, so take it for what it's worth. To me the evidence is there for all to see - 2 les Pauls with identical hardware can sound noticeably different when the only significant variable is wood, and that's with the same species. Between species differences are more profound.

I agree that the change between a high output humbucker and a low output single coil will usually be more significant than the difference between ash and alder, but it's a completely different type of difference, on a different scale. The two factors operate at different points in the signal chain - the wood (and scale length and bridge and nut and neck joint) affects the harmonic makeup the of the string's vibration, the pickup can only overlay a second filter on to what the strings are doing, and cannot add what isn't the in the stings to begin with.

Anyway, to answer the question, I don't know about koa but I've built a 25.5 scale bolt on with ash body, mahogany neck and ebony fretboard and it worked fantastically. To me the ash maintains a lot of overtones (complex/bright sounding) which is very pronounced with a maple neck, and nicely tempered with a mahogany neck.

Of course I could never say which elements of my build were responsible for the tone, but the net effect was a great success.

Pickups are windows into the tone of the instrument. They are filters, emphasizing or minimizing vibration characteristics that are there. The materials the guitar is made of determine how the strings will vibrate; pickups then sense what the strings are doing, add and subtract some frequencies, alter the phase response, and there you are. Sure, pickups all have their own signature sound, but a D-28 with a humbucker will sound a lot different from a Les Paul with that same exact pickup. That may be an extreme example, but it's true and the concepts hold even between two guitars of the same model with wood of the same type from different trees. And...this is all scientifically verifiable should one have the means and time to do all of that.

I've made many comparison tests using guitars made geometrically accurately but with numerous different types of wood. The only only time wood makes anything more than a subtle difference in tone is when dramatically differing woods are compared. When comparing a guitar with a Port Orford Cedar body and neck to a guitar made of mostly Sapele....of course the Cedar is warmer.

But if you take the pickups off a Strat and put them on a Les Paul...and then put the humbuckers on the Strat...does anyone seriously believe that the humbuckers and the single coils would be even remotely difficult to identify in a blind hearing test? The question is rhetorical because pickups actually DO represent the vast majority of the tone on an electric. Scale and bridge comes next in importance but are a ways down the ladder in importance. Unless you go out of your way to build with truly unconventional woods...wood will play a far more subtle role in tone than many gurus would have us believe.

I'm not a guru...I'm an empirical kind of guy. If a theory greatly appeals to common sense then I may accept it at face value. If it's at all fishy...I'll test it if a test can be developed to truly isolate the variables and if it doesn't take gobs of work to dial in a meaningless point. I believe I can empirically state that wood plays a role in tone...just nowhere near as LARGE a role as the electric guitar world seems to desire. But...having wood choice as a field of critical expertise allows for a larger number of mystics to operate in this area of interest....so...on and on the discussion goes.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

Stuart, I'd guess that you have not built a lot of guitars using the same electronics but with different woods.

And I'm going to leave it at that...

.....way, way, way too much cork-sniffery in the world of solid electric guitars, and that translates directly to "ok, i'll pay my way into rock god-dom, rather than practice 6 hours a day for 25 years...". doesn't work that way, guys. nobody gives a crap if you have an expensive guitar in your living room, if you can't play it. most of the world's most revered and iconic electric guitar recordings came from cheap instruments made with cheap wood, played through cheap amps. boutique wood/components/ etcetera is no substitute for skill and talent and never will be.
....yet another entry in my railing against "searching for the holy grail, when you should instead be playing yer f***ing guitar" thema

That's incorrect.

I've used Seymour Duncan P-Rails in six guitars and DiMarzio Air Classic / Air Norton in four. I'm in the process of getting four more guitars set up...all using a DiMarzio P-90 emulator. These four are of my new model "June" and they too are made from different wood combinations. Like I said...accurately made guitars from different woods. I thought that since I said I was comparing woods then it would go without saying that the rest of the components were identical...which they were. There is little point endeavoring to test theories and then doing sloppy tests.

I'll play these and then switch a few of them out with P-Rails to see how they sound next to other guitars with identical wood schemes but different internal and external shapes. then I'll have more knowledge of how (or if) shape affects tone.

_________________
I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

My half a cent point of view here

I don't care if the nice and shinny guitar on the shop are made of a very rare special type of wood. i?ve been using beech, mahoagany, teak,oak and made wengue.
My new five strigs bass has a body made out of beech, the neck was some nice looking wood given to me and the fretboard is also beech with mahogany binding.
An acustic with a beech soundboar wengue fretboard and tge rest mahogany.
A mini size bass with oak body, teak neack and mapple fretboard.

Ususlly i ask for good quality woods with no knots or defects. sometimes i get leftovers for free.

If wood plays a role in the tone well, unless they're made out of something tht's not wood it shouldnt
But they are made out of wood so they should count for something. Anyway my hears and experience don't have the acustic ability to tell the diference between mapple and a beech made guitar or bass.

_________________
The sharpest the tool, the fastest it will find its way to my hands :p
https://www.facebook.com/capricornbasses?fref=ts

They still sound like Les Pauls, and no species has a distinct tone that no other species can produce.

Frankly, the differences, if there are any, are extremely subtle. I maintain that if you change the humbuckers in a Les Paul to single coils, you will have a greater impact on the one than if you swap out any of the woods for any other wood.

So I don't see how difference s between species can be so profound.



Hmm. I think more so the material the STRINGS are made of, and the tension at pitch IE scale length have a greater impact than switching one type of wood out for another especially when dealing with electronic instruments that sense the string movement magnetically.



A D-28 has a long scale and bronze strings, a Les Paul has a shorter scale and steel or nickel strings.

A MAHOGANY dreadnaught would sound vastly different amplified with a humbucker than a Les Paul would. Different scale and string composition.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

I'm sorry. I'm afraid that I'm just going to have to agree to agree with Chris on this one.

The idea that this wood matched with that wood always produces crappy tone IS voodoo BS.

I've heard mahogany matched with maple that sounded pretty crappy. New pickups were in order. But then, how could it be said hat the pairing was bad if the ultimate result was good?!?

Pretty much any wood can be matched with any other wood so long as the stiffness/density of the material yields correct strength for the intended purpose.

Witness Alembic.

They pretty much build with whatever the heck they want to with no regard for species whatsoever!

Sorry Chris..

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

I've been using local trees.
I mixed and matched Chinaberry, Pecan, Walnut, Mesquite, Sycamore, etc. based primarily on appearance.
The Teles all sound like Teles and the Humbucker Gibson types all sound like Humbucker Gibsons when amplified with pickups. Un-amplified, they do seem to have unique sounds, but it is not carried through the pickups.
However, Chinaberry seems to impart increased sustain, but I don't know if it is the wood or other factors.

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

You all obviously have a lot more experience in this realm that I do...but...does that humbucker sound just the same whether it's on a Les Paul, an SG, a 335, or a Strat? Now put it on a D-28...

And the Alembic example shows just how much you don't know about Alembics. It's the central core...the neck and the fact that it's going through the body...that is primarily responsible for how the instruments sound. And if you take that same exact neck lamination setup and put it on a set neck guitar with a mahogany body, it sounds different yet.

There is a kind of feedback loop between the strings and what the strings are attached to at both ends that has major effects on both sustain and harmonic content.

I am not saying that the pickups do not affect tone, but they are literally filters in addition to being transducers. They color the vibration pattern of the strings, each in it's unique manner.

But what the strings are doing is determined by the materials to which they are attached. These materials...in our case mostly wood...all have unique signatures made up of stiffness to weight ration (Young's Modulus), resonant Q, density, strength, toughness, etc. The stiffness to weight, density, and resonant Q are the most important issues we deal with in terms of tone.

I hope to be studying a lot of this stuff in conjunction with a major research university over the next couple of years and hope to have real numbers to help clear away some myths and prove others to be true.

Okay, I'll bite.

With all due respect:

The point I'm trying to make is that there are a lot of different design elements to ALL those guitars BESIDES the wood that have an effect on how the string vibrates. Sure the wood has an effect, but that small effect is trumped by the much larger difference created by differing the physical and functional design elements.

Take the Les Paul/D-28 humbucker comparison for example. The exact same pickup will sound different on each of those guitars, EVEN IF THE DREADNAUGHT WERE TO BE BUILT OUT OF MAHOGANY!

SO we can see that the material is irrelevant in these cases, as the DESIGN ELEMENTS are dictating the string vibrations presented to the pickup, not the wood.

That's my point.

I realize you're an industry legend, but you are failing to make your point as your examples are not fully relevant.

You should be giving examples of how you've been able to shape the tone of an instrument purely by varying the wood elements while keeping the design elements including the electronics, scale, and hardware identical, if indeed the wood is so influential in what the pickup "hears".

My own meager experiments in guitar design and construction tell me this: A Les Paul made out of any wood combo will sound like a Les Paul, ditto for a strat, ditto a tele, and any copy guitars based on similar design elements.

Otherwise, one could make a Les Paul sound like a Strat, just by picking the right woods.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!