[nikpearson]

I’ve found that a bevel-up plane is very useful in these situations as you can easily swap a spare blade in with a higher bevel angle. For that type of wood I’d use a 50 degree bevel (or micro bevel) which when combined with low angle bed of 12 degrees produces a 62 degree angle - closer to scraping than planing. You can add a steeper bevel to you existing blade and then grind it back out after you’re done, but blades aren’t very expensive so it’s good to have at least one spare and set up that way.

Toothed blades allow you to hog away wood much quicker but you’ll likely still need to plane smooth with a high angle blade afterwards. As Charles suggested keep the plane mouth very tight to support the wood and avoid tear out.

I’d avoid planing perpendicular to the grain but diagonally can help at times.

You can achieve a similar result with a standard bevel-down plane by adding a back bevel. Again, better to make use of a spare blade. I’ve used low-angle bevel up planes almost exclusively for the years because they just seem more versatile, are quicker to set up, change blades, etc. A low-angle jack and block plane will cover nearly all guitar making tasks. I’d always choose low-angle models because they can double or triple up as standard and high angle planes by swapping blades with different bevel angles.

If the wood is still causing problems (and you don’t have access to a drum sander) then a cabinet scraper plane will work on even the most figured and tricky woods. They’re not expensive and can prove very useful for other jobs. I often use mine for final smoothing of figured woods.

Hope that helps.