ruso":2onirc9j said:
That is absolutely beautiful!
Ed, can I just fly out to California so I can try out and see all the available options in person? At the rate I'm going it'll take me a year before I can decide on what to order. How would you recommend choosing woods? Should I treat it more like mahogany = Les Paul, Alder = Strat, Basswood = Superstrat tones?
Well, all of the guitars we have around are pre-sold (we're 4~5 months backordered), so we can't have visitors checking out these guitars and we may not have any guitar around with, say, Mahogany body and neck with Pau Ferro board around at a given moment. There are so many possible options (into tens of millions when you consider the wood combinations on different models, the neck shapes, the fingerboard radiuses, fret sizes, bridges, pickups, electronic wiring options, and finishes) that it's just not practical to have many around.
The first thing to start with is getting familiar with most of the most common different wood combinations and how they sound
acoustically. Generally speaking, as you pointed out, the following is a guidance to the electric solid-body wood combinations:
Alder body, Maple neck, Rosewood board - 60's-style Strat or Tele
Ash body, one-piece Maple neck - 50's-style Strat or Tele
Basswood/Maple body, Maple neck or Rosewood board neck - superstrat
Mahogany/Maple body, Mahogany neck with RW or PF board - in between SG/LP and superstrat
Contrary to popular belief, John Suhr and I do not consider Mahogany to be dark. Les Paul is often cited as being dark but that has more to do with the thickness of its body combined with the shorter scale length and its set-neck construction. Mahogany is more focused on mid-midrange while Alder has more low-mids and Swamp Ash has more high-mids. The tactile response characteristics between these three tone woods is quite different as well. Alder is smooth in its attack while Ash is snappy and tight while Mahogany sits somewhere in the middle.
I think Mahogany is a great all-around tone wood. On a 25.5" scale bolt-on guitar like ours, we feel it gets a nice compromise between the traditional Gibson-type of sound and feel and the traditional Fender-type of sonic and tactile characteristics. The Maple top extends the highs and lows on the body side and Pau Ferro will add more snappiness and quicker attack while adding more high-mids (but not as much high-end presence as Rosewood does).
This is going to be a rough generalization, but if we broke down how each type of wood contributes to the overall tonality of the guitar, this is how it would come out:
Body back: 45%
Body top: 5%
Neck wood: 25%
Fingerboard: 25%
Yes, the neck contributes at least 50% of the overall acoustic tone of the instrument. John thinks it may even be a little more - perhaps another 5% or so but not anymore than that. Obviously, on a Carve Top, the thicker top will contribute more to the overall sound - perhaps around 10% or a little more. The thickness of the body and/or neck will also affect the mix as well. John also feels that Flame Maple top sounds a little more even and tighter than Quilted Maple.
