Favorite back/side woods that are NOT Brazilian, Mahogany or Maple?

[saxonblue]

Originally Posted by Mycroft

Australian Blackwood. Sorry, but "Tasmanian Blackwood" sounds "Moon Spruce" pretentious to me, given that it grows all the way up the eastern Australian coast from Tasmania through Queensland. Great sounding tonewood. (I have two guitars with it)

TW

Agreed, no Australian based manufacturer seems to refer to it as "Tasmanian Blackwood", much if not most of what they use is harvested out of the state of Victoria which is on the mainland.

Things can be worse though. People... there is definitely no such thing as "Tazmanian Blackwood", I have bitten my lip up to a point seeing it on this site more than a few times but no more . Tazmania is not a place, it does not exist.

Anyway, moving on, Queensland Maple (which is definitely not a maple btw) is pretty well represented in Aussie built guitars as a back/side wood. I have it on a Cole Clark 12 string. Dry tone but still a solid bassy thump to it, works well.

Originally Posted by KenL

Todd Yates, that is spectacular. Love that center stripe!

Hope you'll post a few photos when it's done?

Thanks for the compliment. There is an ongoing thread in the Custom Shop section, with a link to that in my post above. I will post finished photos there.

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

Ah, very cool! Is that the OM that Howard Klepper is building for you?

As you might know, Howard built an Advanced Jumbo-inspired guitar for me out of black walnut. My Klepper KJ is an incredible guitar, and I'm really pleased with it.

It's actually closer to your guitar than an OM. I chose to go with Howard's SSD body. It's the same length as a 14 fret D and nearly as deep, but with a 15" lower bout. While I'm sure an OM would have been wonderful, I finally thought if I was going to have Howard build a guitar, why not let him use his own body design?

Part of my thinking is tone first, power second, but a close second. A couple of other builders have taken a similar approach with Bluegrass guitars, where the goal is get power out of a slightly smaller guitar without compromising tone too much. I'm looking at it from the opposite direction. I want get tone out of a slightly smaller guitar without compromising power too much.