Replies

1. 
   EdHarrison | Jul 02, 2004 04:26am | #1

   I think it would be pretty cool.

   My theory is that on Strat-style electric guitars the wood that the body is made out of doesn't make much of a difference - this is only an opinion - this and about $4.00 at Starbucks will get you a cup of coffee - but I think that for the "sproing!" - y sound of a strat, the bridge, the springs, the pick-ups, the neck, the strings - everything else makes a bigger difference. A Les Paul-style might be a different story with respect to tonal quality of the wood. Wasn't some kind of Danelectro guitar made out of masonite in the 60's?

   My two strats have alder bodies, but are quite different due to pickups, etc.

   At any rate, I think a guitar made out of cherry would be cool. You make one out of cherry and I'll make one out of air-dried walnut with burl and we'll have a battle of the bands. Whoever can play the Jimi Hendrix version of Kum-Ba-Ya the loudest with the most feedback wins. Post pictures if you do it.

1. 
   aguita | Jul 02, 2004 03:39pm | #3

   Your on, I'll give it a shot.  What do I have to lose, right.  To be honest the Cherry was rather inexpensive and this is my first attempt at a guitar, that is primarily why I want to use it.  If it turns out nice I want to make one out of curly bubinga or curly maple.  I send some pics throughtout the process.  That was just the push I needed to get rolling.  Thank You.

1. 
   OneofmanyBobs | Jul 03, 2004 02:01pm | #4

   The wood does make a difference.  You may find cherry is too light to get quite as much sustain, but it won't be bad.  Certainly no worse than the imported guitars made from some unknown soft white wood.  I've seen some nice cherry electrics.  If you have balance problems, a little lead in the pickup pockets will fix it.  Go for it.

2. 
   stancalow | Jul 02, 2004 04:34am | #2

   if the piece of wood you have is really spectacular, go for it.   Personally, I think cherry is too light to make a decently balanced solid body, but I would really suggest you vist http://www.mimf.org - the musical instrument makers forum for some really good advice. 

3. 
   DaveHeinlein | Jul 03, 2004 03:41pm | #5

   I question the stability of a solid cherry slab, specially for a guitar. 90% of guitar builders use a Mahogany body(I'm talking real guitars, not bolt-together Fender's, et al) with a top of whatever exotic wood you choose.

   There are a couple reasons for this, stability, sustain, and tone(ok, that's 3 reasons). Those makers that don't use Mahogany, use another wood of known stability, like Ash, or Alder. There may be a reason I've never seen a Cherry guitar, and I've been playing for 38 years.

   This is the axe I have been playing since '75. It's 100%Mahogany, and has tone and sustain like no other guitar I have ever touched. And that's without any plug-in gizmo's.

   
1. 
   EdHarrison | Jul 03, 2004 08:05pm | #6

   Dave,

   With all due respect, I think the quality of "sustain" is sort of a mythical quality that relates more to the early days of electric guitar than to the quality of pickups being used today. I have a very heavy mahogany Les Paul but with the right pickups (overwound Texas Special single coil, alnico magnets), played through the right amplifier (60 watt, tubes), and using technique, I can make one of my little Fender Stratocasters sustain until long past Carlos Santana's bed-time.

   I haven't been playing for 38 years, but I have gotten paid for playing in bar bands and even been on television once (humbling).

   As for tone, the same thing applies. If you are getting 99.9% of your tone based on the pickups and amplifier, and even the strings (threading the finger-shredding replacement bridge cables onto my guitar now), who really cares what the guitar body is contributing?

   I realize that there are some really expensive guitar makers like Paul Reed Smith charging 3 to 5 grand per guitar and these "no guitar before its time" folks would only use mahogany, but I gotta believe they are running in the same league (and appealing to the same demographic) as the folks selling gleaming, brassy infill planes for thousands and thousands of bones.

   BTW, I thought Flying V's were made out of korina?

   Just opinions here, your mileage may vary.

   Ed

1. 
   DaveHeinlein | Jul 03, 2004 09:41pm | #7

   Yeah, you're probably right about the electronics thing, maybe I'm just an old-school relic, but, what the hey?

   I'm pretty positive my V is Mahogany, but I won't cut it up to find out for sure. Isn't Korina a Mahogany?

   I do have to disagree about the tonality of woods, though. You work with wood, and I'm sure you have noticed that different woods vibrate, or sound better than some. In terms of sustain, a wood that vibrates more freely and truly can't *not* contribute to sustain more than a 'dead' wood like basswood or poplar(IMO).

   The good ones apparently are Mahogany, Ash, Alder, Maple, Spruce. There's undoubtably others, but they are escaping me at the moment.

   Edited 7/3/2004 2:57 pm ET by DAVE HEINLEIN

2. 
   OneofmanyBobs | Jul 04, 2004 01:50am | #8

   The fit-up of a guitar radically changes everything.  Strings, fretting, nut, bridge, pickups, etc.  I can easily take a piece of firewood and make it sound halfway decent.  The fit of the neck joint (if its a bolt-on) has a major effect.  Through-necks have a major influence.  Tuners and their mass have a big effect, as does the neck and headstock.  Mahogany is a popular core material, but by no means the standard even on expensive custom guitars.  Cherry will do just fine.  Its plenty stable.  For a beginner, all the other things will swamp the effect of the body wood.  In the hands of a master craftsman, maybe the body will make a 5% difference.  Assuming the player can hear it.  Most can't.  Certainly can't after it goes through an effects box and 3000 watts of amplifier going into a speaker stack suitable for 50 watts in a club with worse acoustics than your average bathroom.

   Despite the hype, playability is the key thing.  How well its fretted, the choice of hardware and strings and pickups, and how well its set up.  I've seen beautiful custom guitars that were barely playable and ugly cheap ones that play like a dream.  Cherry is fine.  If you're a halfway decent woodworker the body will look fine on the first try and be plenty stable.  Nicer than basswood that has to be lacquered.  About as difficult as making a coffee table.  Getting everything else set up perfectly is not quite so easy.

1. 
   EdHarrison | Jul 05, 2004 04:32pm | #9

   I pretty much agree with most of that, Bob.

   I guess we're at the point where the question becomes, "Is there some metric which can be used to predict the tonal quality of wood?"

   To state is practical terms - I've got this one slab of jarrah left from all the lumber I brought back from Australia years ago that is just about big enough for a Stratocaster body. Jarrah is a hard, heavy, dense stable wood that machines and finishes well.

   Is there some sort of mathematical metric where I could say, given this specific gravity, given this T/R shrinkage ratio, or given this chemical compositiion of lignin, I could predict that this wood would have these particular tonal qualities?

   Or is everything just based on decades of tradition and trial and error in the luthier's trade?

   That would be an interesting question to kick around but we're probably at the "Hey Jon Arno!" point in this thread as I have no idea about the answer.

   By the way - I agree with you that sometimes you see really ugly guitars that play well and sound fantastic.

   Happy guitar playing. Ed

1. 
   OneofmanyBobs | Jul 05, 2004 11:00pm | #10

   Hmmm.  A trick question.  No, there's no formula.  There's art and tradition and trial and error and a few concepts from physics and acoustics that are generally considered applicable.  You'll get a good bit of discussion on this point, but I believe that the body resonance on an electric guitar has a only small effect on the tone.  Easily swamped by other effects.  Electric guitars are very stiff.  Totally unlike an acoustic guitar.  No air resonance at all.  Several odd body resonances.  Stiff solids do not have a nice harmonic progression to the resonances.  They are what's called enharmonic.  The shape matters considerably.  The first resonance may be 500 Hz or so.  Any notes below that would not be influenced by the body resonances.  The length flexure mode likely would be the lowest, then the width flexure.  Nobody I know makes an effort to "tune" the body; make the width and length modes some harmonic interval.  If the body resonances were "important", people would do that.

   The bridge really doesn't move much.  Its metal and massive.  There is often some deliberate effort made to decouple the body and strings.  Otherwise the ambient acoustics would couple back into the strings and give feedback.  Electrics are often played really loud.  You could deliberately design the guitar so the body has more effect.  Hollow-body guitars do that. 

   If you made the body from something very light, like balsa or styrofoam you'd notice the difference.  Less sustain, not as bright.  For the normal range of densities used - basswood, mahogany, tropical hardwoods, there's not a huge difference.  I think most of the tonal change results from the mass rather than the species.  Strings make a big difference.   Thicker ones are less harmonic and have a harder sound.  Thin ones are more harmonic and not as bright.  The mass of the bridge makes a difference.  The stiffness of the neck and fingerboard and mass of the tuners makes a big difference.  Stiffness of the neck/body joint makes a difference.

   If you built several otherwise identical electrics using different body materials, but weighted them so they had equal mass, I think the audible difference would be very small.  I've seen electrics with bodies made from glass, aluminum, MDF, plywood, and virtually every known species of wood.  Can't say that I could associate a specific tone quality with any of them.  Different sounds, surely.  But, not so much due to the body material in my opinion.  I've seen acoustics and electrics made from jarrah.  No reason I know why it wouldn't be just fine.  So far as a quantitative prediction using actual numbers, I have no clue whatsoever.  But, if you made one from cherry and one from jarrah and did not weight them, the jarrah one would likely be a little brighter because it is heavier.