Well i stand corrected!!

What about the ever mythic swamp ash? I know it's not a separate species, but rather the result of growing conditions. I have no idea what it's price structure is.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

About the same 12b. I used about 400 board feet of Alder today by the way.. Mike

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The blues ain't nothin but a good man feelin bad.

It makes sense that ash is cheaper. Fender's first guitars were designed and made in a world busy healing from the after effects of ww2. What were the first guitars built from? Ash.

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No no and no

The first tele's at least prototypes were pine.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

Well that reinforces my theory about cheap wood if we take Cherokee's price list as a rough guide. I know prices aren't anywhere near the same now as then.

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No no and no

I didn't say it had NO bearing, but it would be equally naive to think price and availability aren't a big part of the equation. I would think though that Alder and Ash are more aesthetically suited to how Fender finished their early guitars, and that looks were big factor in selecting which timber to run with.

I would say there are probably a handful of woods that fall into the tone range that fender wanted, but they probably went with Alder and/or Ash for a number of different reasons. remember guitars were never finished opaquely until fender did it. it was always shellac, or stains some uniform, some sunburst, but always grain showing.

A lot of varieties of pine are softer too, or knotty, so they would be less likely a choice. Poplar has the afore mentioned foibles with staining. so I think ease of finishing/production were also concerns.

I would be surprised if tone is even close to being a lone factor in picking the wood. it would be tone + availability+ price + ease of manufacture + durability, and probably a whole host of other factors.

not discounting tone, but i think there are several woods that would fit the bill if you were only considering tone. Now with the mythos that has arisen about the early guitars it would be nigh impossible to make a switch.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

Don't know what kind of wood they are made of, but I can tell the difference between my Strat and Stagemaster unplugged. 10 times out of 10, blindfolded.

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Stagemaster
Roadhouse Strat
Epi Traditional Pro Les Paul
Ovation Celeb
Esteban Celestial Night(nicely tweeked)
Blackheart tube amp

Warmoth refers to Ash as "poor man's Alder". Though both are tonally neutral and sit right in the middle of the spectrum in terms of not too bright and not too dark, the advantage of alder for players is it weighs considerably less for the average guitar body, and retains it's sound properties when constructed of multiple pieces. Ash on the other hand, has a much prettier grain, which lends itself to clear finishes, but must also be made of one or two pieces at most to avoid the pieced togther look that detracts from the bodies value. Alder, being a quite plain wood, mostly devoid of visually pleasing grain patterns, typically is painted in opaque colors and therefore, multiple piece bodies aren't evident. Basswood is another good, neutral wood, however it's so soft, it shows wear quite easily, making it somewhat less desirable than Ash or Alder (Ibanez guys: no offense!)

Basically, both woods are great for allowing a wide range of pickup choices to flavor, rather than correct radical traits like Maple's brightness, or Mahogany's darkness. It all boils down to how much weight you want hanging over your shoulder on gig night, and are you willing to shoulder a heavy guitar to show off a finish that the second row probably can't appreciate.

Cheers.

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60th Anniversary AD Strat, Deluxe Nashville Tele, Player's P Bass. Mesa/Boogie Mk IV combo, Marshall JCM800, 1960A cab, Genz Benz El Diablo 60, Genz 2x12" cab, too many neat little practice amps and kit projects!

Hi Jay: this is going to be repetitive for you, because you and I have discussed this so much elsewhere.

Too tiresome for everyone else if I go through your post point by point. But the crux of what I'm getting at is that guitars are played in real-life situations and listened to with our faulty ears. What we can detect in laboratories with oscilloscopes and such is very rarefied - and just doesn't help, if we can't detect these things in the real-world situations in which we play musical instruments.

My "logic" that you find so flawed is based on my consistently repeated experience that nobody can pick up a guitar with a solid finish (so they can't tell what the wood is) and by playing it identify that wood. And if we can't tell - then it doesn't matter.

If we couldn't tell whether we were drinking tea or coffee it just wouldn't matter which was in the cup, would it? We can tell, so it does matter. With guitar bodies, we can't. So it doesn't.

I guess the motivation for what I say on this sort of stuff is my empathy with less experienced folk who may read these sorts of thread and start worrying that they need to be terribly concerned with finicky little details such as which wood their guitar is made from. People can get very insecure about that sort of thing - I'd love to reassure them that they don't need to be.

Regarding Fender's use of timbers. As Mr Twelvebar has indicated many times on this thread, those decisions were made in the early days in very great part on commercial lines. What timber was available in what quantities and at what price. What looked nice and what people might want to buy. The whole point of Fender guitars - their triumph - is that they are affordable production line instruments. They are excellent pieces of industrial design. That's why the neck looks the way it does, why they have the bolt-on neck joint, and why they don't mostly use tropical timbers.

Leo Fender was not a musician, he was a technologist and de facto a fine industrial designer. That's neither a good thing nor a bad thing: it's just a fascinating fact about him and his product.

For anyone who is scratching their head in bewilderment over this whole thread, the thing to remember is that all so-called "tonewoods" are pretty similar, within the wider world of timber. They are all of fairly comparable density, fibre length and rigidity. Compared to pine, say, or lignum vitae at the other end of the spectrum.

Within the spectrum of timber, "tonewoods" all occupy a fairly small part of it. There are of course differences between each one. But they are SMALL differences, and in the real-life situations in which electric guitars are used they matter not a jot.

Choose the one you think looks nice at a price you like - that's my message.

Cheers - C

this discussion is getting more and more interesting...

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Jingle Maker / Music Composer http://www.adryans.multiply.com

Jay

Actually lets agree that all guitar manufacturers use materials to construct their products with "tonal" qualities intended to enhance the sound of their guitars. Fair enough?

Many manufacturers use a wide array of materials, not only many different woods, but composites, metals, and plastics to produce the bodies for their guitars. An endless amount of body top materials as well.

Unfortunately Jay, most students, novice players, and even most intermediate players cant hear the difference between a "G" and an "A", and in no way, no how, could ever tell the difference in tone effected by which wood the guitar is made out of.

The very last thing to do when suggesting a guitar model to a student or novice would be to attempt to explain, no less validate the differences in tone woods and their effect on the sound of the guitar, which exists only in the world of forum discussion and not in the "real world" of playing and buying guitars.

"Pick a pretty color" is way more important to the novice than almost anything else. Trust me on this one Jay, this has been my life's experience. No one taking up the guitar could care less about tone woods. You will only confuse them to the point where they won't be able to decide on anything.

If you have an interest in woods, we can discuss this at length at any time. If you are using this info to decide on a specific guitar model, and the woods effect on tone, then you are making a mistake.

Sometimes reality is not what we want to hear. Although we have no choice but to accept it. New players have big lists of what they are looking for in a guitar, and never ever have I seen "which wood" on any list ever.

Price is always number 1...always
Color is always next
Shape, size, & weight comes next
Neck "color" (one of my favorites)
Followed by a bunch of other silly stuff

Even "players" want to play the model that Clapton plays, or the one that Hendrix played or SRV and so on...hence the very lucrative "Signature Series" game played by almost every builder. No one cares about wood, and you really shouldn't either. Buy a guitar (or better yet several guitars) because you love the way they look, feel, & play. Only good players make the guitar sound good and bad players make the guitar sound bad no matter what it's made of.

Thanks

Jay

Sorry for the PS post...I just wanted to say that healthy discussion like this is good for the mind. If you would like to discuss the endless variety of "real life" things that you can do which will actually effect the tone of your guitar. This would be both fun and easy to do. You can dramatically change your guitars tone or you can change it with modesty. By far...the biggest instant change that you can make for about $5 bucks would be string gauge, and I would love to discuss the variety of other things that you can do. Although tone woods never make the list.

Thanks again

Yeah,i have to agree with Ceri.For electric guitars tonewood had no factor in my decisions.I doubt playing live anyone could tell the difference in the type of wood a strat is (or whether or not it has a Callahan trem block).Personally ,I have 1 guitar with a rosewood neck and one with a maple and i cant hear an audible difference between the two.Acoustic guitars you can hear differences in the woods,electrics ,not unless you are recording at the studio,maybe.

when i first saw the original post before any replies had surfaced, i knew this thread would cause trouble...