Hey Folks,
Alrighty, I got some pics of the Strat body from my earlier "Body ID" question after she was stripped and I was wondering if anyone could help me to confirm the wood used in this body...








To me it looks like alder...or at least several pieces of alder. Also I weighed it after I stripped the old finish and it came in at around 4 lbs 6 ounces which also seem to be consistent with alder. On the other hand I've also worked with poplar and it tends to look a bit similar. Thoughts?


BTW...I did get the new finish started this weekend. I went with a 2 tone sunburst after all and she's looking pretty good. I'm about half way thru the clear coats so once I get that finished and she's been polished and dried a bit I'll get some pics up.

Anyways, thanks for any thoughts you can provide on the wood used here.

Peace,
Jim

Hi Jim: if you didn't know it was a tonewood you could easily think that was pine, couldn't you, from the grain?

Doesn't look like alder to me.

I haven't used poplar for building, though when I've felled it for firewood I don't remember it drying that pinkish color. More white to yellow, I think.

If this body is of Far Eastern origin (as I believe seemed likely on your other thread) then I'm wondering about Japanese basswood. This page talks a little bit about eastern basswood near the top: it suggests that factories such as Ibanez obtained a pinker colored variety than some other Asian builders. That would help support a Japanese origin for this body...

http://www.guitaremporium.co.uk/index.p ... uitars&a=0

Many years ago I had to do a touch of routing to the trem cavity on my ancient Squier body when I switched the bridge. The little area of revealed wood sure looked similar to what you have there. That would also lend weight to the Far Eastern theory.

Perhaps Mr Gridlok will look in. He's one of the big experts on timber round here...

Cheers - C

it looks alot like my mij basswood body i just refined

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Hey Guys,
I had certainly considered basswood and it would be consistent with my belief that the body is certainly an import. On the other hand, basswood is typically much lighter (both in regards to weight and color) than alder and <i>much</i> softer. I'm trying to find some weight references to basswood bodies to confirm the weight issue but I also have to add that this was a "hard" wood...it didn't sand out like a softer wood such as basswood or pine and the stain didn't just "soak in" the way it would with a soft wood either...I have built quite a bit of pine furniture and such over the years so there at least I know how it sands and takes stain (in other words, it took quite a bit of effort to sand this puppy and I really had to work the stain for the new finish into the wood).

Ok...I just found this as I was typing... basswood tends to be very white and can have "light green streaks" which is clearly not the case with this body. Here's a website with some info and comparisons...


http://www.mojobodies.com/wood.htm


Here at least, the reddish tint to the body appears consistent with the alder. Also on this page the weight for basswood is stated at typically under 4 lbs. Unfortunately they don't have any info on the poplar and no info at all on something like agathis.

Whatever kind of wood this is, it is clear that it was never actually intended to be used for a sunburst...the grain pattern and the knot on the upper horn do indicate this and only someone as insane as myself would try and do something other than a block color with this body, LOL!


Anyways I am still researching this and it's possible that I could come up with something else in the next 5 minutes....

Haha - gotta say, on the basis of the samples on that page yours could be almost any of them!

I've never worked alder in the raw so I can only go on what I see through the finish on sunbursted Fenders. Doesn't look like what you have there, but that's hardly scientific!

I'd be deeply doubtful of naming a timber by its weight. At the risk of boring those who've read me on this several times before, I have felled two ash trees less than 50 yards apart. Those trees grew in the same soil, were almost exactly the same age (from the rings) and in all probability grew from self-sown seeds from the same parent. The timber each of those trees produced was noticeably different in grain and color and distinctively different in density. Turned into Strat bodies they'll weigh significantly differently - not a good guide to ID'ing the timber. (I've a thread on that felled wood somewhere round here...)

Obviously identifying your timber from photos on screen is iffy - but don't dismiss the idea of basswood out of hand. As described on that page I linked to it can come in a variety of shades. And nothing wrong with it as a tonewood, either. In the early medieval period it was the number one timber for constructing Anglo-Saxon and Viking shields - and those boys knew something about tone!

- C

Looks like alder to me. Basswood has very little grain, often none ! (at least that is noticable w/o looking close) Having owned a lots of basswood strats and almost always sunbursts, that doesn't look like basswood to me at all. Especially being there are 4 pieces there and none appear to look like basswood. On the other hand all 4 look like alder to me.

The one thing I would comment on there is that from my understanding Fender typically uses a better "grade" of wood that will go into a guitar that's going to be a sunburst. I know I've read (in a couple of places now) that in the "old days" (early 60's and before) Fender would typically do all of the bodies as sunbursts and the finishes that got messed up would move on to be solid colors. Moving into the later 60s and then into the 70's and such as "cost consciousness" became even more of an issue lower grade woods were used for the solid colors...after all, how pretty the grain is doesn't really matter if you're not going to see it! LOL! Also as the cost of the raw materials started going up and availability started going down, it became more and more common to see "glue ups" as with my body...a central core with "wings" as it were.

Now I do know that the cheaper guitar companies tended to do this a lot more than Fender...I have an old Kay P-bass clone for example where the body is actually 7 pieces of alder glued up in all sorts of ways to make one body (-great- sounding bass by the way). While I'm sure they didn't do it quite to that extend, on their lower end guitars I know Fender still uses bodies made from multiple pieces of wood...my basswood Squire bullet is at least 3 pieces of wood. In this way a company could produce a "real" alder body (or other wood) without all of the expense of using a single piece of wood or even bookmatched, let alone anything quarter-sawn.

Clearly for a higher end Strat that's going to be done as a sunburst of any kind...say like an American Standard, Fender would typically use a "nicer" looking wood with a straighter grain but on something perhaps like an MIM or a Squire that's going to be solid black (or Lake Placid Blue or Olympic white, etc) it just makes more sense from a manufacturing stand point to use "whatever" since you're not going to see the actual wood thru the finish.

On the weight issue....I do certainly agree that by itself the weight of the body isn't conclusive by any means. I've recently seen some alder bodies on Ebay that get as heavy as the 7 lb range. Obviously the density of the wood and even moisture content are going to play -very- big roles in regards to the body weight. That said, from my observations at least, there are typical weights for a Strat body from any given wood (assuming we're talking a standard sized body and not something smaller such as an Affinity or Bullet)...ash and mahogany typically being in the 6 to 8 lb range, alder usually being around 4 lbs or so and basswood being around the 3 lb range. Yea....certainly there can and are variations on this but the weight can be used as a broad generalization when other factors are taken into account such as grain, color, etc.. In other words, if you have a 7 lb body with a very open and darker rather figured grain, there's a fairly good chance it's going to be ash.

As I said, I'm certainly not ruling out basswood yet and there's certainly nothing wrong with basswood....not like I'm bias or anything here, it's just that to me so far this body doesn't really seem consistent with basswood...alder or poplar seem much more likely at this point...and I'm starting to rule out poplar too because it tends to have gray or blackish streaks and also tends to be a little soft.

Maple ? Maple is very hard to stain

Poplar bodies tend to weight in at about 4.5 pounds and are often heavier then Alder. But that photo does not show the greenish color of Poplar but that could be do to the previous finish and filler obsorbed into the wood. Basswood bodies are under 4 lbs most times and pull in a finish as well even more so they say the any other tone woods.
Mmmm. Alder.

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Actually it's been my experience that poplar has grayish/blackish streaks and not green (the green is supposed to be more typical of basswood). I have another project going...err...I should say my wife has a project going. We're building her a bass (including cutting our own neck on this one...which is why is hasn't been finished yet...the neck is scaring the hell outta me!)...that body is poplar, is whiter and does have grayish streaks. I compared the two earlier and I'm fairly sure this body isn't poplar...the grain and everything else are just too different.

As to the basswood, while I haven't worked with it personally, from everything I've read...yea it soaks up stain like a sponge. It's also certainly not maple...I've worked with enough maple to know that for sure. This thing is "hard" but not that hard, LOL!

I think I'm at the point where I'm just going to call it alder for now until I have her together and see what she actually sounds like. It really seems like alder from everything I've been reading about and looking at the last couple of days but the truth is like the origin of the body itself, I'll probably never really know for sure. If she sounds good when she's finished, it don't really matter that much anyways.

On a side note, I shot the final coat of clear lacquer tonight and she's looking pretty good. I made some mistakes on the back...had some "sand throughs" as I was doing the wet sanding between clear coats. -If- this was a nicer piece of wood I'd go ahead and fix it...do some spot repairs or just take it down and re-stain it, but since it "is what it is" I'm just going to leave it as is. If anything it looks like natural wear and I'm more concerned about the front anyways. I wasn't really going to do a relic...it's just turning out that way! LOL!!! I'm going to let her set for a while before I start the final polishing...I'll probably do that next weekend and then I'll let her sit for a month or so to let the lacquer harden up before I assemble her. Once I get her all together, I'll go ahead and get some pics up.

BTW Ceri....I decided on a Mexican Standard bridge with the full size steel trem block. I'll let ya know if it fits when it gets here (should be about 2 weeks) . Now I'm trying to decide on pickups...I was going to go with a set of alnicos that I yanked from a Squire Standard but I have a set out of an old Lotus that sound really fat and I'm leaning towards those...I probably won't decide until I'm actually doing the assembly. I don't really want to invest in any good pickups until I see how she sounds with the cheaper ones first.

Anyways, a big thank you to everyone for your input on this...I really am grateful!

ah, I haven't really got anything useful to add, but mention of bodies cobbled together from multiple pieces reminded me... I'm pretty sure my '91 ultra has a four-piece alder body, which at first I thought odd for an instrument that was supposedly the top of the line in its day. Over the years the finish has subsided ever so slightly into the seams, and I can make out an extra one quite close to the top horn (almost as if it were stuck on separately). I think they "got away" with it because ultras had a laminated maple top which could potentially disguise blemishes or other perceived shortcomings, as long as the flame maple looked pretty... which it does... heh.

Try burning it. If it smells funny when you burn it it's poplar.

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Haha - the best test! If it burns really nice and hot and leaves very little ash behind - then it's Ash!

Cheers - C

Hey Folks,
Well now that the last coat of lacquer has setup overnight, I decided to go ahead and piece her together to get an idea of how she's going to look...I'm pretty happy .

Just to review, here's how the body looked the day I brought it home...





And here's how she looks now...





I think there's a little bit of an improvement there! LOL!!!

I'm still going to wait until next weekend for the lacquer to harden up before I do the final polishing and then I'll probably give her about a month to set before I do the assembly but I think I did pretty good with this one.

Anyways, thanks again to everyone for the help and their thoughts as I've been working my way through this! I am grateful!

Peace,
Jim

Hi lomitus: nice job, congratulations! As someone else said, you got a lemon and made lemonade. Much better!

Just refresh our memory if you'd be so kind. Which type of lacquer are you using? And are you shooting with a spray gun or from aerosols? Also, did you use a raised mask for the black or spray free-hand?

To my mind there's no extra points for or against any of the possible answers to those questions: just interested (nosy!).

BTW: I am at this very moment engaged in ordering some sapplings of lime: that is tilia cordata, also known as linden, also known as (a variety of) basswood. So just wait around for about 80 years for me to fell it and I'll tell you for sure how the timber compares with your bod...

Cheers - C