spruce, rosewood, mahogany - surely there are more: what & why?

[toddles]

Spruce, Rosewood and Mahogany etc - the usual suspects. What are the essential qualities that make each of these so widely used for different elements of guitar construction and what local (read Australian) timbers offer similar/better characteristics. Surely there is a body of informed opinions about real high performance alternatives out there.
Does any one out there have any suggestions and explanations.

Cheers, Toddles.

[kiwigeo]

There are a lot of Aussie alternatives for woods for backs, sides and necks of acoustic guitars but Aussie tonewoods suitable for tops are more limited in number. The main reason is our climate which isnt ideal for slow growing species such as spruces which produce light and stiff tone wood with a high number of growth rings per inch.

[dayvo]

I have a list of aussie timbers that can be used for instrument making:D
My .pdf file making program is on the blink so as soon as I can convert it Ill let you know
dayvo

[toddles]

I have a list of aussie timbers that can be used for instrument making:D
My .pdf file making program is on the blink so as soon as I can convert it Ill let you know
dayvo

Cheers Dayvo.
What was that principle about the tonal wood - light, slow growing woods are generally better?
And what are the characteristics of rosewood that make it so desirable for accoustic guitar sides?

[kiwigeo]

Cheers Dayvo.
What was that principle about the tonal wood - light, slow growing woods are generally better?
And what are the characteristics of rosewood that make it so desirable for accoustic guitar sides?


Rosewood bends well. Top woods should generally be light AND stiff...not light and floppy. One of the basic rules I build to is "light and stiff", this applies to the top and also bracing underneath same.

[toddles]

Rosewood bends well. Top woods should generally be light AND stiff...not light and floppy. One of the basic rules I build to is "light and stiff", this applies to the top and also bracing underneath same.

Cheers KG

Is there an tonal advantage to using rosewood over other easily bendable woods or laminated construction?

Why is light and stiff important?

Do I sound like a three year old "why? why? why? why?"?

[kiwigeo]

Body and side woods do IMO contribute to the tonal character of the instrument but not as much as the top. Laminates can be used for body and sides..even some of the old Spanish classical builders actually experimented with laminates on the bodies of their instruments. Laminate for a top.....generally not a good idea. Very strong but the stuff will never vibrate as freely as spruce or other standard tonewoods.

Why light and stiff? You can have the long winded answer involving lots of maths or the short answer.....because it just gives the best sound. For the long winded explanation see Franz Jahnel's "Manual of Guitar Technology". he discusses things like Young's Modulus of Elasticity...a measure of how elastic a wood is..ie its tendancy to bounce back to original shape when deformed.

Cheers Martin

[journeyman Mick]

I've heard that Bunya pine (Aurakaria Bidwilli) is being used succesfully for luthiery, although exactly for what components I don't know.

Mick

[dayvo]

Heres that list of aussie timbers in the attatchment
You'll need the adobe acrobat reader to view it
dayvo

[Strungout]

I've heard that Bunya pine (Aurakaria Bidwilli) is being used succesfully for luthiery, although exactly for what components I don't know.

Mick


I have a Maton with a Bunya top .It has its own tone,little bit like spruce.I love it.The spruce probably looks "clearer" .

Maton have /had a good decription of their tonewoods on there site.

[myguitar]

I know that most of you are interstate and probably have your own suppliers of quality timber.

Just wanted to let you know that Thomas Lloyd Guitars (Chris Wynne) sells acoustic and classical full rough sawn timber packs ready to go, all timber included redy to make a guitar.

Aussie timbers are $450 and and European $520.

For your info. 03 9431 2490

Enjoy :)

[kiwigeo]

Heres that list of aussie timbers in the attachment
You'll need the adobe acrobat reader to view it
dayvo

Huon pine not on the list....Makes beautiful looking and nice smelling soundboards but like alot of Aussie top woods the jury is still out on log term sound qualities.

I see Honduran Mahogany and Brazilian Rosewood on the list. H Mahogany is now CITES listed so may be hard to come by here in Australia in years to come, especially back and side sets. Most US suppliers wont export the stuff outside US. Brazillian Rosewood...forget it unless youre a millionaire or have connections with an illegal logger in Brazil. I managed to get my hands on a classical back side set recently but it cost me big time. The set wont be used until I get alot more experience...destroying a BRW set would be grounds for ending my life!

Indian Rosewood is still in good supply at reasonable cost but wont be for ever. Allied Luthiery often have opportunity grade IRW available at a good price....ideal for first builds and practising on. Im currently using an opp grade IRW back set for french polishing practise. Guitar Number 2, a classical has back and sides made from same wood and although a bit on the light side it looks ok.

[Slash_Sadokun]

Hello There! i'm new here and i saw this interesting thread.

Well, first of all, I started to look for alternative tonewood because where I live (México) the classic tonewoods are really expensive.

So I build (after a lot of research) a list of "prospects" that seem to be interesting. All of them are natives from México (& Centroamérica) and specially from the Penìnsula de Yucatán, a southestern region.

*Tzalam (Lysiloma bahamensis)
Hardness: 1400 Janka
Density: 31 pcf

Sometimes called "Mayan or Aztec Walnut", I think this could be an asskicking replacement for mahogany (or even maple), since Martin (yes, C. F. Martin & Co) DID produced a set of 30 dreadnoughts in 1999 that were made from this wood. its diplays a reddish colour that sometimes has a purple feel.

*Katalox (Swartzia cubensis)
Hardness: 3690 Janka
Density: 73 pcf

As you can see, this one is hard and heavy as a rock. Martin (yes, again) suposely uses it for fretboards in replacement of rosewood BUT apparently they start testing it for sides and backs, following a desing by Sting (come sort of eco-friendly guitar).

*Siricote (Cordia dodecandra)
Hardness: 2200 Janka
Density: 56 pcf

Suppsely this wood gives exactly THE SAME tone and feel of the finest rosewoods. I cant tell if that it's true but it's a strong and heavy wood with an AMAZING looking (btw, I certainly dislike, but its look is juts shocking).

*Chenchen (Metopium browne)
Hardness: 2200 Janka
Density: 69 pcf

Sometimes called "caribbean rosewood" because of the color and grain. I read that it has exceptionally good tone qualities, but that's it, I'm not sure exactly what qualities.

*Granadillo (Platymiscium yucatanum)

Specific Gravity: 0.79
Hardness: 2450 Janka
This one is a tonewood in all right. It's used for building the Marimba (a wooden xilophone). Sometimes it`s called "La madera que canta" (The wood that sings) because it's tone properties.

*Palo morado (Peltogyne mexicana)
Hardness 1800 Janka
A beautifull purple wood (this thing just kick the #### outta my brain!!!). I'm not sure what kind of tone would deliver but I've seen that some uses it for laminating necks (and i have no idea, but i think it can make an flamedmapple-asskicking top)

Well, if anybody knwos about the prices of this woods, I'd like to know (there are three lumbermills here in Veracruz City, but I've visited just one... they got tzalam but I totally forgot to ask for the price).

PS. Sorry for my poor fragmented english... I haven't practiced since highschool (8 years ago)... and I never was a good english speaker, however.

[Robson Valley]

I am a retired dendrologist, I lectured in wood science for more than 30 years.
PhD (Botany) LaTrobe, '72. Picking guitar for 50 years. Bluegrass banjo for 30 yrs.

The elastic/mechanical properties of the top transfer the vibrations to the rest of the instrument. As such, the uniformity of the top anatomy is of paramount importance.
While the secondary xylem fiber length of a hardwood, any hardwood will never come close to the fiber length of white spruce (Picea glauca) from my part of the world, there are some key features that you have to evaluate to decide if one sheet of wood is top or crap.
1. Tight Usually you see 12-15 growth rings per inch. Yes, I measure guitar tops in the music stores and I count. The store people worry about me but I could care less.
2. The rings are evenly spaced. This is so important for uniformity.
3. The summer wood does not end abruptly but instead, it's a soft brown finish to the year's growth.
4. Elasticity. Good water, growing in cool cold shady conditions. Interstitial growth makes all the fibers exceptionally long. Adirondack spruce from the North-East of the United States or P. glauca from the north sides of mountains growing with good water up here at 53N. The longest hardwood fiber will come from warm conditions, (low altitude) and once again, good water BUT not so variable as to cause sudden growth ring maturation.

Yes, "tone wood" is harvested here. Yes, we even have people who are "tone-wood prospectors". Martin, National and Yamahahahaha are here every year to buy tops (a #1 rough spruce top is about $50.) A truely exceptional tree may be logged by helicopter, one piece being flown off at a time, so that there is absolutely no possibility of internal shake when it hits the ground.
The last tone wood quota that I know in my area, the Robson Valley, was some 2,000 m^3, more than half of which is crap. That was 2009. As you cut the log, a lot of it can't be cut radially so isn't of much use.

5. So, with good wood in short supply, another way to even things up is to use a very carefully book-matched pair of pieces. Two really good but smaller pieces. Personally, this takes far more care and far more thought, so I'd rather buy an instrument like this than 1/5000 with a somewhat poorer, solid, 1-piece top.

I don't know if this helps at all. You see the wood. What do you see?

[SawDustSniffer]

i thought the best tone wood grows on the north west side of a 11 month a year snow covered mountain

then slowly dried ( while frozen )
perfectly quarter sawn , where the log was split in 4 then every thing turned to shaving apart from the bit you want ( to appease the tone gods )


, tap them when you shape them , dense timber is stronger and heavier so can be thinner , than light northern hemisphere tone timber


tap tone them ?????? unless its electric , then just get a better bridge/ pick-up and strings :2tsup: winding your own pickups would be better than expensive tone timber

what glue do you use to layer your ply ? some of the epoxies i play with have MPA's of 120 , the harder the better , west system is 55mpa , and tone dead

ROTFL as for radiata pine ROTFL

some of the local timbers ive tried ( rulers , tap toned for matching tone , and vibrated on the edge of the bench ) are crap , the tropics in australia has 6 months of full rain ( 3meters last wet ) and 6 months with out a drop , produces a huge " wet " ring and a real hard and narrow "dry" ring , lol local mahogany can have a 3/4 inch wide "wet" ring with a 1 mm wide "dry ring " not good , all though a promising one is "burdekin plum " a dense and as hard as crap , on the wood lath it will purple your chisel and the wood chips will burn your hand way worse than " iron wood " or "iron bark " , but it just keeps vibrating as a ruler on the table, real nice figuring at the root trunk level ( cyclones ) and great ???" coherency " ( clear grain that lets you see into the grain the with mudarully rays riding on top )

[Robson Valley]

'Sniffer! How right you are!
Spruce growing in ravines & gullies (regular water) on the north/northwest slopes of mountains have the longest fiber and the most regularly spaced growth rings.
After the wood cells divide, the tips of the cell extend in between eachother much like folding your hands with your fingers interlocked a little or a lot. That's "interstitial" growth.
How prolonged that process can be is useful in tone wood..

Snow covered? Yes
Cold? Yes. -27C outside my front door this morning.
McBride is a little village of maybe 600, with 2000-3000m mountains within 3 km of my house. With Google Earth, I can see my garden shed!

[Sebastiaan56]

i thought the best tone wood grows on the north west side of a 11 month a year snow covered mountain

then slowly dried ( while frozen )
perfectly quarter sawn , where the log was split in 4 then every thing turned to shaving apart from the bit you want ( to appease the tone gods )

But only on the quarter moon in February. Except of course if Jupiter is in conjunction to Mercury. A little known Stradivarius secret....


ROTFL as for radiata pine ROTFL

Except for Mandos by Peter Coombe.

Unfortunately a lot of the instruments we commonly play and make were designed to take maximum advantage of northern hemisphere timbers. I think a whole new set of design criteria will be needed to use the Aussie timbers. That the timbers are inferior per se is quite contestable.

[SawDustSniffer]

But only on the quarter moon in February. Except of course if Jupiter is in conjunction to Mercury. A little known Stradivarius secret....

. I think a whole new set of design criteria will be needed to use the Aussie timbers. That the timbers are inferior per se is quite contestable.

yes the north side of a 11 month snow covered mountain was a quote from something i saw on a violin website , but dont forget when stradivarius was around it was the " little ice age "

last week end i milled veneer of "cape york iron wood" and laminated it to a high pore "boab tree " veneer , the epoxy takes at least 3 weeks to get to full strength ( i dont want to kin it ) , ???:2tsup: just stuffin round :2tsup: 1mm cape york iron wood , 2 mm boab , 1mm cape york iron wood

[truckjohn]

Nearly any wood will work... Light and stiff is important for the top wood if you want it to be loud without amplification... But.. If you are interested in amplification or don't care so much about how loud it is - at that point, you can make the top out of more or less anything you want...

There was a fellow on another board who made a Uke 100% out of Ebony - including the top and all the bracing... He loved it's sound and said it was plenty loud... Yet another Pro-builder made an acoustic out of OSB - including the top... If that doesn't tell you that you can use anything you want - then nothing will convince you...

My primary concerns for wood used in building guitars are:
*They will take glue joints reliably
*You can work them reliably
*They don't warp and shift crazy once fully dried and seasoned... although careful cutting can help with this... Curly, flat sawn woods are the now quite popular.. and they are the worst for shifting like crazy... Ebony is quite popular, and violates this rule as well....
*Not too prone to cracks (Although, the most famous and expensive guitar wood - Brazilian Rosewood violates this rule.. as do a number of popular back and side woods)

Be careful with some of the literature out there on Wood properties... They commonly list shrinkage and stability ... but they are from Green... I think you have to take that information with a grain of salt when you consider the list and some of the most stable woods ever are on the "High shrinkage from green" list.... That information is more important to Sawyers to help them evaluate how much loss to expect and how to properly prepare the stack when milling the green log....

Since you aren't a Factory - you neither have to worry about commercial availability, nor market acceptance... That allows you to try out all sorts of fun things...

So... With this in mind - have at it! There really aren't many woods that are truly "Bad" for making musical instruments... especially if you are willing to make multi-piece tops and backs....

Thanks

[Jeff Mills]

John is spot on and I might add - do a little tap testing take a couple of blocks of wood your thinking about using and bang them together to they sing? or do they produce a thud? You'll be amazed how different wood from the same species of tree will sound based on how the tree grew and how it was sawn off the log. For example I've sawn a lot of yellow poplar out of all the logs I've sawn I've ran across only a few that I would consider tonewood. You know when your peeling boards off fresh fallen logs, if the boards ting when you stack them there is a good chance they will turn out some tone wood once the lumber is dry.

BTW - I'm really envious of you guys, you got such a section to choose from.Since I harvest and saw my own timber, I'm pretty much limited to American wood over here in the states.

[Robson Valley]

Maximum fiber length is a key feature for the elastic/acoustic features of an instrument top. That's for the interstitial growth that I spoke of. Despite climatic variations, consistent water is something to look for. You can never match the fiber length of our northern white spruce, but still, there is not one cubic meter in a thousand which is tone wood.

Be really picky. Don't just grab the first board that "looks nice". Really good instrument tops are more or less featureless for a reason.

Australian conditions: south sides of hills & mountains, in ravines or gullies. Slow, even, regular growth. South side of the log should have fewer branches and less tension wood. This will do you no harm, no matter which part of the instrument is constructed.
Question: are there no tonewood prospectors in Australia? I'd guess that they all live in southern Victoria or Tasmania. If I went to Launceston and asked around, might I find anybody?

Local case in point: Western Red Cedar = Thuja plicata. Potential tone wood obviously needs to be knot free and straight grained. The north-facing side of the log is best. Any knot even the size of a pencil and the wood is garbage. Useless. They spent $3,000/hr to heli log the tree and the whole thing is crud= debris pile for burning in a few years.

So, there's forest rats like me who drag that stuff out for free stock for wood carving.

[DarwinStrings]

Any knot even the size of a pencil and the wood is garbage. Useless.

I get what you are saying Robson but I wonder if Mr Benedetto or whoever bought the guitar in this link off him would agree with those sentiments.......http://benedettoguitars.com/boutique/il-teredo/

Jim

Someone please turn up the Tele!

[Robson Valley]

Thanks for the link! Bizarre but another good idea to try. At $52,500.00, if it sold, who bought it? I didn't read the whole thing. Wouldn't a book-matched top be elegant?

Those floating camps still exist by the dozens. One guy lives on his motorized barge, also his floating/mobile chainsaw repair shop. Any power saw with less than a 90cm bar isn't too useful on the coast. 60cm is common in the interior but feller-bunchers and forwarders/skidders have replaced the fallers where it isn't too steep.

I saw some table lamps turned out of Teredo wood. Maker said hitting the voids and bits of clam shell really wore his tools down.

I know from watching that building an instrument is a very long, drawn-out business.
Still, that's the only way to decide on the wood.

[truckjohn]

Thanks for the link! Bizarre but another good idea to try. At $52,500.00, if it sold, who bought it? I didn't read the whole thing. Wouldn't a book-matched top be elegant?

Not sure who bought it - but it's listed as "Sold"....

Bob Bendetto has a pretty good sense of humor and seems to like bucking conventional "Luthierie" norms.. He's not building pure "Art" pieces - they are made to be played. I have no doubt that it is a fine guitar. It certainly is striking to look at!

For example - he built the famous "Knotty pine" guitar out of knotty pine shelf boards... I hear he also built one (or is building one) out of a Cedar fence post....

If Knotty shelf boards, clam eaten stumps, and fence posts make good guitars... then we haven't even scratched the surface of potential "Tone Wood".....


For example I've sawn a lot of yellow poplar out of all the logs I've sawn I've ran across only a few that I would consider tonewood. You know when your peeling boards off fresh fallen logs, if the boards ting when you stack them there is a good chance they will turn out some tone wood once the lumber is dry.

No doubt they will be good.. I would love to get ahold of some of that.... I am always amazed, though how some really nice pieces of wood tap like wet cardboard when they are green - and ring like a bell when they finally dry out... I have several guitars sets like this... Open up the box and tap them and they go "thwap".. but they are still soggy... Stick them in the pile... Check a couple months later and "TINNNNNNGGGGGG!!"

Thanks