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Old 03-27-2018, 01:03 PM
steveh steveh is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Knives&Guitars View Post
Can you describe the Tonal qualities you believe your Paduak guitar has.
In a few words, it's fabulous and has absolutely everything sonically that I could want. Build thread is here:

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...ighlight=sands

However, I think - as has been said already - that the sonic fireworks are more to do with the luthier and style of guitar than the precise type of wood used. A Martin dread in padauk would sound very, very different to my guitar, obviously.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ernesto View Post
Nothing has been said about sonic differences between the two so far. Did anyone detect any?
I have played at least two guitars in wenge from Tom Sands (who built my guitar) and I did detect big differences between those guitars and my padauk version. However, once you start getting into the fact that they are different sizes, with different neck/body joins, different tops, voiced differently...and the fact that no two pieces of wood from even the same billett are the same, then separating out the contribution of padauk vs. wenge (or indeed any other wood) gets a bit silly. I will say that all of the guitars sounded great; the luthier is the most important factor.

I like responsive fingerstyle guitars with lots of delicious overtones - both wenge and padauk provided that in abundance. To my ears they all sounded like "vitreous" rosewood guitars. I have a mahogany Claxton OM here that sounds more like an uber-fabulous rosewood guitar than it has any right to. It's the luthier...

Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveS View Post
You have selected a builder based on his ability to build a guitar that sounds like you want it to sound. Trust his judgment.
This is good advice but the fact is that sometimes the luthier will not express a clear preference. That was the case for me regarding exatcly this point. Tom said he could build a great guitar from either wenge or padauk and he didn't push me hard either way - he didn't think the decision was anyway near as important as some other decisions you have to make when speccing a guitar (size, top, scale-length etc.). Ultimately, I made the final choice based on aesthetics of the sets I was offered (wenge is a bit boring guys!), and what I'd heard about splitting, durability etc.

Cheers,
Steve

Last edited by steveh; 03-28-2018 at 03:56 AM.
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