Wood combos that do NOT work.

[ClaptonWannabe2]

All of the experimentation that I know has gone on here, I know some people have made some clunkers. I'm thinking a Sitka back and sides with rosewood top.

What are some combos that do not work? Woods that either can't, or take a MASTER to bend into sides, and for really no benefit.

Woods that may look great but are too dense to make a responsive top.

[LouieAtienza]

Originally Posted by ClaptonWannabe2

All of the experimentation that I know has gone on here, I know some people have made some clunkers. I'm thinking a Sitka back and sides with rosewood top.

What are some combos that do not work? Woods that either can't, or take a MASTER to bend into sides, and for really no benefit.

Woods that may look great but are too dense to make a responsive top.

Purple heart, no fun to bend, and turns brown in not the most attractive way. I bent some Philippine mahogany that bent like Styrofoam. Then again I bent padauk, wenge with absolute ease, even at a thicker dimension. Walnut is supposedly one of the easiest to bend, though I came across a perfectly quartered set that gave me fits.

Usually for the top, we seek woods with a high strength to weight ratio. One reason we use the woods we do. Some hardwoods have been used, though their densities can overlap those of softwoods. In my opinion, they generally give a more mellow sound than spruce or cedar. Probably have to work them a little thinner, which can pose its own issues as well.

[Alan Carruth]

I've never had any luck bending bloodwood. Some pieces of mahogany can be difficult. I don't get along with sapele either.

LouieAtienza wrote:
"Usually for the top, we seek woods with a high strength to weight ratio."

I'm going to get a little pedantic here: both strength and weight are structural properties. You can talk about the strength to weight ratio of a top, but not of the woods that make it up. Density and Young's modulus are the materialproperties we look at. Young's modulus is the measure of how much force it takes to stretch or compress a piece of material by a given amount, and largely determines how stiff a piece will be at a given thickness. Density is the mass per unit of volume. Basically a piece of wood with a high Young's modulus along the grain and low density will end up making a lighter top. Since there's only a limited amount of horsepower in a plucked string, a lighter top will get you more sound output and (usually) more high frequency sound, all else equal. Most hardwoods tend to be denser at a given Young's modulus, and make heavier tops. That produces a particular sound which is nice if you like it, but not as powerful in general as you'd get from a better piece of softwood.

Note, too, that we're not generally focused on the strength of a top, but on the stiffness. In general, a top that is stiff enough will be more than strong enough. I've seen lots of tops fold up because they were made too thin or not braced well, but I can't think of one that was actually pulled apart when it was strung up.

[Silly Moustache]

Didn't Grammer make a guitar with a rosewood top once?

[John Arnold]

Several have made rosewood-topped guitars, including one Gibson Nick Lucas. IMHO, rosewood topped guitars look fine, and sound like they were built for looks. Rosewood is about twice as dense as spruce. A heavy top will not be as loud, though the sustain will increase.
To better understand the concept, consider the guitar with the heaviest 'soundboard'.......a solid body electric. Plenty of sustain, but no acoustic volume.
At the other extreme, you have a stringed instrument wth the lightest 'soundboard'....a banjo. Plenty of volume, but very little sustain. Also, tone quality suffers when the soundboard is too light. There is a happy medium where the tone quality is optimized and volume is satisfactory.
When choosing alternate woods, I tend to pay the most attention to the density. Denser woods for back and sides (for a rosewood type sound), medium density woods for the necks (and back and sides for a mahogany type sound), and low density woods for the soundboards. In general, the lower the density of the soundboard, the lighter the top....even when it is made thicker to achieve the optimum stiffness.
The woods I have had the most trouble bending are butternut and Eastern red cedar. Neither one is a traditional back and side wood, but both of them made good guitars. What they both had in common is the type of soundboard wood....either spruce or cedar.

[printer2]

I have made 0 sized and smaller spruce guitars, they ended up sounding like a guitar. I have a balsa one that I need to put the bridge on and do the frets, just by tapping it has me quite curious. Now if I can just get the other projects out of the way first. I did do an all walnut body once, sounded terrific. One day I will make one with maple, walnut and cherry, my sundae surprise. I couldn't decide on which for the top wood but it just occurred to me, the cherry has to be on top.

[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by ClaptonWannabe2

I'm thinking a Sitka back and sides with rosewood top.

I played one of Sergie de Jonge's guitars that was "all" spruce: spruce top, back, sides and neck. I don't think it was the best sounding classical guitar I've ever played, but it certainly sounded good.

[Alan Carruth]

A student of mine made a butternut Flamenco: it sure was hard to bend. The sound was just 'OK'; the B&S were too soft with too much damping, IMO.

Hardwoods work fine when you want some extra mass in the top, as in an acoustic/electric for example. I made an acoustic bass guitar with a walnut top a while back that was designed to be played plugged in: the extra weight in the top helps cut down feedback.

[LouieAtienza]

Bruce Sexauer had made an all-walnut guitar which I though sounded very good, though I never played it personally. There's a builder in Asia that uses monkeypod for tops (Jeffrey Yong I believe) that has caught favor with his fans.

Which brings me to a point - Bruce, Charles, John, Alan, have been building for a long time, and can work around to an extent, the properties of a particular wood to achieve the results they want.

I think most of the rest of us could take whatever wood and make a guitar that sounds like a "guitar." Whether it's an exceptional, good, or average sounding guitar is up to ourselves. So if I was to blow a wad of cash for a rosewood set to make a top, having absolutely no clue if it would made an average sounding guitar let alone something I could be happy with acoustically, then maybe my money would be better spent getting a nice softwood top and finding a decent side set to match the rosewood. Experimenting for the sake of it is fine if your time and budget allow for it, though there may be better lessons to be learned by taking a bit more methodical approach to it.