Guitar Wood?

[Mick]

Is it possible to get a great sound from a guitar made from cheap materials, such as pine, plywood, chipboard etc.  ?

[Connor Baxter]

Tough question, my friend has a "Super-strat" guitar from the brand Chord. and its a beautifully comfortable guitar to play, the neck is absolutely perfect, nice and smooth and very playable, and the body is a great shape, it has two rather hot humbuckers. the only problem i had with this guitar was that it didn't "feel" right. it didn't resonate like a proper guitar, the body was made from Agathis i think and i wouldn't want to know what the neck was! but it was such a shame as this guitar was so comfy and cool, but it just didn't feel right, and when plugged in, the sound that came out the amp, it just felt like it was all in the pickups there was no clarity from the wood, no natural brightness which sucked!! haha but i guess if i was starting out again i would have loved it more as i wouldn't have known a good guitar sound before that

[RufusGuitars]

We did some analysis on this and actually found that Pine (i.e. soft white-wood) had quite a decent ring to it. However, as you'd probably expect, it dents quite easily.

Have a look at: http://rufusguitars.co.uk/info_woodtypes.php

Almost everyone we are making guitars for at the moment (worldwide) has chosen Cherry for their guitar. Our tests show cherry, like pearwood,  to be very sonorous and resonant; I often wonder if this is because it comes from a small tree with plenty of grain variation. Also cherry and pear, being top-fruit, are closely related (i.e. Amygdaloideae, in the Rose family)

I really can't comment on plywood except to say that this website says that all the major brands make their semi's from it: http://www.edroman.com/guitars/rvc/bluesdeluxe.htm However, in the major brands defence, I would expect that these companies would prefer to use the word "laminate"!

Most hifi speaker cabinets are constructed from chipboard and I was always told that this was to absorb the sound - if that's true then it wouldn't be a great material for a guitar.

hth

[paulnoise]

Don't bc rich use plywood for a lot of their bronze series?  I made a body from it once as I wanted a weird shape and it sounded good. Ply will never sound as good as solid wood, but with the right pups it's not bad. Mdf is dreadful and bad to work with.

Sent from my C6903 using Xparent Purple Tapatalk 2

[Mick]

Been reading up on this subject, seems there's some debate as to whether the wood actually makes a difference to the sound (tone) of a solid bodied electric guitar.  It does certainly make a difference to an acoustic without any doubt.

I would have thought it would make a difference to the sustain though.

What are your thoughts on this?