Best known as the tonewood of Gibson’s radical Modernistic Series of the late 1950s—the flashy Flying V and Explorer—as well as more recent guitars that follow these templates, Korina is a warm, resonant, and balanced performer. Both tend to be denser and heavier, and have a brighter, harder sound that might be more useful when cutting, distorted tones are desired. The species is known generically as limba—an African wood related to mahogany, but imported under the trade name Korina. and on a 3 or more piece body each piece of wood is less then 5" wide and wood that narrow(@ 1.75 thick the most common thickness for a solid body electric guitar) is unlikely to warp. These are mostly hard, dense woods with distinctive grain patterns. (function(){var k='2264601223',d=document,l=d.location,c=d.cookie;function f(n){if(c){var i=c.indexOf(n+'=');if(i>-1){var j=c.indexOf(';',i);return escape(c.substring(i+n.length+1,j<0?c.length:j))}}}var x=f('__utmx'),xx=f('__utmxx'),h=l.hash; Visit our corporate site. Mids tend to have a snappy attack, with a punchy, slightly gnarly edge when the strings are hit hard, but excellent clarity with light to medium picking. function utmx_section(){}function utmx(){} Pine is quite strong, glues well and holds screws well , the only real problem with pine is it dose not take stain or dye well and it can look blotchy if the wood is not prepared properly. Reply. GuitarPlayer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. The swamp-ash sound is twangy, airy, and sweet. pine is also a little more prone to warping then most hard woods however I solve this problem with my 4 piece construction method. I already know what your thinking that I've lost my mind, half of the guitars that where made in the 80's where made from Bass Wood and about 75% of all guitars ever made are made from alder. If you compare the weight of cheaper guitars made of basswood to boutique instruments with basswood, you’ll find that the boutique guitars weigh less and usually sound a lot better. There was a problem. fact about guitars built from pine . Even among my alder strats, there is a clear and audible tonal difference that effect where the frequencies lie. Maple is also one of the most common ingredients of laminates used for semi-hollow electric-guitar bodies, where it contributes tightness and clarity. Used for both bodies and necks, maple is a dense, hard, and heavy wood, sourced mostly in the Northeast and Northwest United States and Canada. Hart Pine: 1225(my personal favorite rare hard to find), Southern Yellow Pine (Longleaf): 870(I use this one the most), Southern Yellow Pine (Loblolly & Shortleaf): 670. Messages 2,516. Basswood: the principal wood used on many Japanese made instruments. One notable exception was the Rosewood Telecaster that Fender produced sporadically between 1969 and 1972 and was played by George Harrison. Fender Launches the Triple Pickup-Equipped Troublemaker Tele Deluxe Bigsby, Gibson Lukas Nelson Signature Les Paul Junior Review, Epiphone Announces Reimagined Versions of Classic '60s Hollowbodies, the Casino And Riviera, Essential Plucking Patterns for Fingerstyle Acoustic Guitar, All-Star Peter Green Tribute Concert Film to Be Released in 2021. Alongside maple, mahogany is a classic ingredient in both slab and multi-wood (or laminated) bodies, and is a common neck wood, too. So how can I say the most common woods are "unacceptably soft"? It is now surfacing more and more as a body wood used in affordable, Asian-made electrics, and it displays a rather bland, characterless quality. The last time I checked the unfinished pine bodies were $350 and the finished ones were $600. 's://ssl':'://www')+'.google-analytics.com'+'/siteopt.js?v=1&utmxkey='+k+'&utmx='+(x?x:'')+'&utmxx='+(xx?xx:'')+'&utmxtime='+new Date().valueOf()+(h? '.webs.com' : 'none'; --> All-maple bodies aren’t unheard of—although the weight is usually off-putting—and, on its own, a maple body produces an extremely bright, precise tone with tight lows. Don Mare recommends, and i totally agree with him, alnico V pickups wound in the 6.5-7k range (if using traditional AWG). Receive mail from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors? When it comes to tonewoods used in the construction of guitars, there are many points that need to be considered. The properties of woods used in acoustic guitars will be tackled in another issue. As with ash, it’s impossible to discuss alder without making reference to Fender, which first used alder prominently in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Would a pine tele sound similar to a basswood MIJ from Ishibashi? '&utmxhash='+escape(h.substr(1)):'')+'" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">')})(); The mahogany/rosewood pairing contributes to complex highs, thick and creamy lows, and an appealing midrange that isn’t honky or excessively punchy. It is a very light and fairly soft wood, and it’s light in color, too, with minimal grain. OK maybe those numbers are a little high but you get the point. In simple terms, rosewood’s contribution to a maple neck smooths and “furs up” the solid-maple sound. With our last wood hardness chart, several noted that there were certain woods missing that should be in the list, so we've expanded the list to 224 different species. Its high end is usually not as over-pronounced as people might think, although it is a characteristically bright neck-wood choice. I built a pine tele and it is a great guitar! Good swamp ash is both light and resonant, and generally carries a broad grain that looks great under a translucent finish. For instance, the body and neck both contribute to the sound, and luthiers achieve certain tonal goals by carefully matching body and neck woods. It’s a medium-weight wood, although quality cuts of alder used for guitar bodies will often weigh less than denser cuts of ash. It is typically used under opaque finishes, but some examples can look good under darker translucent finishes. There’s a muscular midrange, but also a certain softness and breathiness. Dense and fairly heavy, with sonic characteristics similar to those of mahogany, walnut is occasionally used in electric-guitar bodies. Get the latest news, reviews and product advice straight to your inbox. Well as we can see by the chart that "Hard Wood" is just a relative term as the numbers very quite a bit, and according to the numbers when compared to Mahogany both Poplar and Bass wood are way to soft to build a guitar body from and forget about Paulownia that stuff is a Bad joke some one played on guitar players.