Conference napalm::guitar

    	Ash
    	Alder
    	Maple? (as in Curly Maple)
    

    In general, the more dense woods (maple and ash, for example) have
    better sustain qualities, acoustically speaking. This is msot apparent
    in the higher frequencies which contributes to their perceived as being
    brighter sounding. Trouble is that they're heavier and harder which
    makes them less easily used in manufacturing. In addition to its
    density, Ash is also an open grain (pore?) wood. This means that there
    is an additional step of filling the grain before finishing.

    Alder and similarly Poplar are light and easy to shape and finish but
    they absorb vibration more than the denser woods so they have less
    sustain. Also, like Maple, these are closed grain woods and so require
    no grain filling before finishing.

    FWIW, my dream guitar is an Ash body, non-trem Strat with a one piece
    Maple neck and maybe a Tele bridge and pick-up. Blonde finish.
    ooooohhh...I'd better stop here.

    --ron

    I found some very helpful information on types of wood, their sound-
    enhancing properties, woods that are and are not recommended for use
    as guitars, etc. Just pickup a copy of the Stewart-Macdonald guitar
    workshop catalogue. They have literature available for purchase that
    can really be of assistance in every phase of guitar building.
    

    
    There are an awful lot of new guitars -- solid- and hollowbody,
    electric and acoustic -- made with "highly figured" wood tops, among
    them "flame-topped," "tiger-striped," "birdseye," and "quilted."
    
    Am I right in thinking most of these beautiful woodgrains are maple?
    
    Are these woodgrains something you find by accident when you saw up the
    log? Or do they show up on particular varieties (subspecies) of the
    tree? Or are they created due to some external influence on the tree
    (i.e., like the grain you find in a burl)?
    
    I'm just curious, so any additional info about other woods, other grain
    patterns, etc., would be very welcome?
    
    JP

    If I remember correctly, the figured maple comes from the base of a
    large(er?) tree, where the pressure of the weight of the rest of the
    tree has disfigured the grain.
    
    Yes, most of what you see in figured wood is maple because it has some
    very dramatic figuring.  You can occasionally find figuring in other
    woods, but they're generally not as common or as dramatic.
    
    Greg

Maple can be birdseye, curly ("flame top" and "tiger striped") and quilted.
This is what you most often see on such things as high-end Gibson and PRS.
However, other woods can have these growth characteristics.  For example,
Martin offered a limited edition quilted mahogony D-18 model.

I don't know how these trees grow this way.

Jim (who is expecting a quilted maple top PRS this week)

    re: .4, Greg
    
    >If I remember correctly, the figured maple comes from the base of a
    >large(er?) tree, where the pressure of the weight of the rest of the
    >tree has disfigured the grain.
    
    Neat. I've never notice anything like this when splitting
    firewood...I'll have to look more closely. I _have_ noticed an
    interesting "curliness" to the grain when splitting beech, but this
    doesn't appear to be a wood used for instruments.
    
    To Jim (who is expecting a quilted maple top PRS this week), may I be
    the first to say ooh and aah. These things look spectacular in the
    magazine ads. Did you get a transparent finish, a translucent color,
    or a sunburst?
    
    No offense meant to anyone, but I've never understood why anyone would
    perpetrate a tobacco sunburst on a perfectly good piece of wood, let
    alone a highly figured one...
    
    JP




    

I find this discussion very interesting because I have the scrap of wood
that was cut away before the top to the PRS was bookmatched.  This scrap is 
from the outer part of the log where the bark was growing.  It has a very 
undulating grain and looks like the surface is wavy despite being perfectly 
flat.  I sanded one side of this scrap smooth in my workshop.  I could bring 
it into ZKO sometime if anyone is interested.  I've split a fair amount of
wood and have never seen anything like this.  I have my doubts if it 
*could* be split since the grain seems to undulate in two directions.

Can anyone confirm that the weight of the maple tree causes this effect?
Given this scrap, I can imagine some kind of compression causing the
wavy and wrinkling of the grain.

The top on this PRS is being stained a light amber, no sunburst.  I chose 
this because I think this color shows off the grain of the wood best - far 
better than if the wood is left uncolored.

Jim

>Can anyone confirm that the weight of the maple tree causes this effect?
>Given this scrap, I can imagine some kind of compression causing the
>wavy and wrinkling of the grain.
    
    As far as I know, nobody has a very good reason for why trees develop
    the curly (often called "tiger" because of the stripes) and birdseye 
    figures.  Some people attribute it to the genetic makeup of the tree.
    I'm 99.9% sure, however, that it is not caused by the weight of the tree.
    
    As a scrounger in many a wood place around the area, I've spoken with
    the owners of several saw mills to see if they can determine if a tree
    will have figured wood or not.  The answer is always "You never know. 
    You can cut down a tree and get nothing.  Then you can cut down a
    nearly identical tree right next to it and get the most beautiful
    figure you've seen in your life."
    
    I will re-read my Bruce Hoadley (the god of wood) book tonight to see
    if I missed anything regarding figured wood.
    
    Will, a keyboard player, a lurker, and wood hacker
    

I don't know what the whole log that my scrap came from, but the outside of
this scrap that would have been the outside of the log would have made me
think that there was something potentially interesting inside.  It may be
the case that you can't see any difference from the outside for birdseye or
curly maple.  The piece I have is quilted maple which is supposedly harder
to find.  Anyway, I brought by scrap into ZKO today.  Send me mail if you
would like to take a look.

Jim

    

    I posted the same question in the woodworking notesfile and got an
    answer that matches Will's:
    
   <<< NOTED::DISK$NOTES6:[NOTES$LIBRARY_6OF4]WOODWORKING_AND_TOOLS.NOTE;2 >>>
                           -< Woodworking and Tools >-
================================================================================
Note 1944.1                         Woodgrain                             1 of 1
STAR::DEAN_G                                         14 lines  10-MAY-1994 09:58
    
                             -< other woods also >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi,

I have some very nice figured cherry and birch.  I asked someone at a lumber
yard and they told me that they don't know if a tree will have figured wood or
not.  They will just plane some down and see.

From the price sheet I have in front of me, I see the following figured wood:

	Cherry	Curly		(I have some of this and I really like it)
	Birch	Flame		(I have some of this and I really like it)
	Maple	Birdseye
	Red Oak	Curly

Dean Gagne
    
    I also had a look at Jim's scrap of quilted maple. The outside of this
    piece indeed makes you think there is something interesting inside (and
    its appearance would easily explain the belief that figuring is caused
    by compression of the tree -- this piece looks as though the whole tree
    was vertically squished). But I'm not sure the interesting part would
    be visible until the bark was removed.
    
    I wouldn't mind seeing a guitar made from figured cherry. Or oak
    (I can see the ads now: "Heavier Than A Les Paul!" "Pete Townshend
    Couldn't Break This Guitar!").
    
    JP

    

    >I wouldn't mind seeing a guitar made from figured cherry. Or oak
    >(I can see the ads now: "Heavier Than A Les Paul!" "Pete Townshend
    
    Oh, sure, get me going now...  I think maple is denser than cherry
    and oak, so you might have to say "A guitar for the '90's:  the new 
    diet Les Paul has all the figure with less weight."  Maple is something 
    like 4 lbs. per board foot, though it is nowhere near the density of 
    Lignum Vitae.

    
    Well, understand that most of my experience with wood is from preparing
    to burn it. My impression has always been that there is nothing heavier
    than an armload of red oak.
    
    Maple comes in several flavors, too. They don't call it rock maple for
    nothing, but "swamp" or "red" maple is much lighter/softer. I thought
    swamp maple was the wood of choice for guitars -- a "soft" hardwood
    like basswood, poplar, alder, etc.
    
    I really like "all the figure w/less weight" tho...
    
    JP

    My impression was that "rock" maple was the wood commonly used in
    guitar construction.  I can't imagine a neck made of something akin to
    basswood!!
    
    Greg

    
    Oops. I was thinking of swamp ash (a subject covered in 2837.various).
    And I was thinking of bodies rather than necks...  A little knowledge
    is obviously a dangerous thing.
    
    JP

   I think that "Hard Rock Maple" is our Sugar Maple, and Quilted Maple

generally comes from Red Maples. Flamed maples (I think) can come from

either tree.


/J

    Maple varies in hardness (density?).  Rock maple is very strong and
    stiff, and used a lot for necks.  Softer grades of maple are often
    used in bodies.  Pedulla uses soft maple in their basses; these
    instruments have a bright but also quite woody sound.
    
    I'm still looking for a guitar made of unobtainium.
    
    /rick

    Just to clear up a few misconceptions:
    
    "Curly" refers to any figured wood--it's not a specific pattern.
    "Flamed," "Tiger Striped," "Bubble" and "Quilted" are descriptive terms
    used by the musical instrument community, but not generally accepted
    elsewhere. "Flamed" technically refers to wood that has been exposed to
    an open flame to bring out the grain; this is obviously not the usage
    in guitars . "Bird'seye" and "Burl" are correctly used--both refer to
    patterns caused by physical defects in the tree.
    
    During the '70's, there was a quest for sustain at the expense of all
    other attributes of tone. This led to numerous guitars made of exotic
    woods as well as lots of different laminates. I've seen teak, cherry,
    oak, ebony and even ironwood. Some of these horrors weighed 15-20
    pounds. These experiments proved that Fender and Gibson got it right in
    the forties and fifties.
    
    
    Danny W.

Danny,

If you ever find the time and inclination, I'd purely love to hear some
of your experiences along the lines of "wildest wood I have known"...

After all, it is thanks to your notes that I know enough to sneer at a
volute and ask for bound f-holes (though when I asked Spouse if I could
get my f-holes bound, she smacked me before I could add, 'on my next
guitar').

All kidding aside, lots of people have said how much they enjoy your
postings and you can count me among them.

JP
    

re       <<< Note 2338.18 by SEND::PARODI "John H. Parodi DTN 381-1640" >>>

	Who said, "opinions are like f-holes" ?

	R

    re: 18
    
    I mostly like curly maple, spruce and ebony, but I did use guitars of
    more exotic wood in the past. I had a Moonstome M-80 with the deepest
    quilting you can imagine. Too bad it wasn't a very good guitar. I also
    had one of their burl solids, which weighed almost as much as a twin
    and didn't sound half as good.
    
    I had a really nice BC Rich Mockingbird Supreme in very attractive koa
    and an Eagle Supreme that had a fabulous piece of bird'seye maple. The
    former was an excellent guitar, but the Eagle never seemed quite right.
    
    When Alembic was hot I looked at some of their multi-ply guitars, but
    never found them attractive despite the fancy wood. Although I never
    bought one, I played several Veillette-Citrons with stunning wood about
    10 years ago--Joe Veillette was a childhood friend of mine and when I
    read about his guitars in GP, I called him up to check them out.
    
    Gibson has an annoying habit of mixing curly wood with plain wood on
    their archtops. An example--a 1969 S400C with very curly back and neck,
    and dead plain sides. A great guitar, but what a mismatch. I once had
    an LP 25/50 in antique sunburst that had a two piece top with amazing
    curl--too bad the pieces didn't match at all. To make it worse, it had
    the most figures neck I've ever seen. Guitars like this make you wonder
    what the heck they were thinking about in the factory the day they made
    it.
    
    One of my favorite guitars is a 1971 S400 CES in cherry sunburst that
    has perfectly quartersawn maple without a trace of figure. Each cell in
    the wood is lined up is a straight line and it looks stunning without
    being curly. I think it would look terrible in a natural finish--the
    sunburst makes it work.
    
    Certainly the weirdest wood I've played was the Fender "Wildwood"
    series which had dye injected into it to make it look suitable for the
    psychedelic crowd. Unfortunately, the guitars it was used in were not
    exactly the best instruments Fender has ever made, but it was fun to
    look at.
    
    Danny W.

    
    Re: .-1
    
    Thank you -- you do not disappoint...
    
    Re: .19
    
    >Who said, "opinions are like f-holes" ?
    
    It wasn't me. Let's blame it on Steve D'Andrea.
    
    JP
    
    

>    I mostly like curly maple, spruce and ebony, but I did use guitars of
>    more exotic wood in the past. I had a Moonstome M-80 with the deepest
>    quilting you can imagine. 
    
    I remember those.  Saw a Moonstone Flying V in a little shop awhile
    back that had a killer figured maple body on it.  Absolutely beautiful! 
    I personally thought it was kind of a waste on that style guitar, but
    hey, to each his own.  The guy was selling it for some astronomical
    price too, I said "No thanks!".
    
    Greg