Official Luthiers Forum!

Sorry fro the rush, but a quick response from the guys here would be appreciated as tomorrow evening I'll be going to get my wood. Im about to start another build. Its going to be a semi-hollow jazzmaster (thinline jazzmaster ) but I wont be using typical woods that would be used on a fender. The neck is going to be hickory with two walnut strips (excited to hear how hickory will sound) with a walnut fretboard. the body will be walnut too, but Im not sure what I want to use as a top. I'm thinking maybe basswood (this might be an interesting combination with the walnut body) but the options are ash, maple, pine, basswood and cherry. Im looking for something that will be relatively easy to finish but my main concern is sound. What do you folks think! (p.s. walnut is a rather bright sounding wood)

I'd go with maple or cherry. Both easy to finish, and both a relatively hard wood to stand up to the abuse a top sometimes receives. If you weren't so concerned about ease of finish, ash can have some rather lovely grain(my favorite body wood, btw).
p.s., about the "walnut is bright". Don't believe everything you're told about how wood sounds. For example, the guitar below is made from maple. People say maple is bright. There's nothing bright about that guitar, IMHO. In fact, it's got tone I've been searching for for 15 years. The only real way to know what any individual piece of wood, whatever the species, sounds like is to build with it.

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Mike

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

I vote for cherry

I love walnut! So that's my vote. I wouldn't recommend basswood. It is pretty soft stuff. I built a tele using it a few years ago and it mars pretty easily. Someday I would like to make a cherry solid body something......Good luck with the build!

Mike....That's a pretty killer sounding tele I wouldn't have guessed maple would sounds so good.

Fender has gotten lots of mileage with ash.
I always liked it. It sounded nice, looked nice, and worked easily.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks. It's actually more of a tele shaped les paul. 24.562" scale, mahogany neck w/tilt back 3x3 headstock, carved top and dual 'buckers. Love the tele shape, can't abide tele pickups.
IMHO, the beauty of building instead of buying is that you can use whatever wood floats your boat. I know that I'll make a guitar out of pretty much anything I have on hand. If it's built well, I believe it'll sound good, whatever the wood it's made from.

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Mike

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

I have a 70's reissue Japanese strat - blond, she is with an ash body - nice wood, nice grain and would be a nice contrast to the walnut!

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"Talking about music is like dancing over architecture".
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Ash it is! Thanks for the help. Im planning on doing and extremely thin poly finish (only three or four coats of hand rubbed finish). I will probably not be using and filler either. Do you guys forsee any problems with my plan as far a sufficiently sealing the wood? I know that ash has a very open grain so Im just a little questioning about that.

The tele above has a thin coat of wipe on poly. I applied it until I got a good gloss. Took 4-5 coats before the wood stopped soaking up the poly and the finish began to build, and I had to be real careful about sand through when buffing with steel wool. I stopped at 8 coats. Should have gone a few more. Wipe on coats are a lot thinner than you might think. I don't think 4 coats will do you. Try more like 8-12. Then the finish would still be pretty thin.
One other thing. If you go for no grain fill, I think you'll get a better finish with a satin or semi gloss rather than full gloss. I used the gloss wipe on poly, so I had to do more polishing with mine to make the gloss look good. If I ever use wipe on poly again(have to be an emergency for me to use it again. Nothing like lacquer, IMHO) I'll make sure it's satin or semi-gloss.

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Mike

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