I was wondering if someone could elaborate about the different necks available for Strats.

I read about A or AAA flamed necks (I assume AAA are for masterbuilts). This to me is clear. Then they talk about flametops, flamed necks, quartersawn/plainsawn etc.

Anyone kind enough to break it down for me in terms of definitions and/or tones?

Regards,

A-AAAAA are nothing more than ratings of the density of grain figuring. A entirely visual thing though there is a school of thought that goes with the more highly figured the neck the less stable it is. Grade A being less figured, grade AAAAA being heavily figured.
I've never had chance to test it though.

As for saw cuts. Forum legend Ceri has a great, A1, super explanaition of that. So lets wait for the good stuff eh?

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My ears are burning!

Hi abzoluut: regarding cuts of wood, the following comes from hands-on experience having my own felled tree trunks cut at my local saw mill, which conveniently is a mile down the road and run by a friend. I've also done this stuff by hand: I don't recommend that!

Here is my diagram of where in a tree trunk the different cuts come from in relation to the growth rings. The black shapes are cross-sections of guitar necks:



Some people (Eric Johnson for example) think that quartersawn blanks of wood are best for making necks because the growth rings will run perpendicular to the face of the fingerboard and also to the direction the neck will want to bend under string tension. They think the internal structure of the wood oriented this way will therefore be stiffer and transmit vibration around the structure of the guitar more efficiently. There is also a superstition that necks made from quartersawn wood will be more stable - resist warping better.

Other people think that is fooey, or at least of such microscopic significance as to make no meaningful difference in real life. It is certainly the case that the vast majority of Fender necks are made from wood with the growth rings running diagonally through it (in other words, somewhere between flatsawn and quartersawn - sometimes called riftsawn) and very, very seldom show any instability as a result. In three years on this Forum I can remember about two people with genuine neck warping issues - a tiny number in relation to the millions of guitars out there.

The reason for this is how saw mills work in the real world. If you do a Google image search you will find diagrams of exotic ways of sawing a tree trunk to get all quartersawn blanks from it. This is nice in theory - and not what saw mills actually do, because it would be far too time consuming and expensive. What really happens is that the mill planks a trunk by slab sawing it like this:



You can immediately see that a percentage of the wood so cut will be quartersawn and the mill will hope to sell that for a premium for furniture making or whatever. The rest will have different patterns of growth rings running through it - and if it is nice hard maple will still make very good guitar necks.

For pictures of me sawing tree trunks by hand, see this thread:

viewtopic.php?t=15656

And as proof that this quartersawn thing is really just a piece of baloney for guitarists to spend more money on, here is a flatsawn plank of maple (this is English sycamore):



From that I made these necks:



And I can promise you those are completely stable and toneful. No problems or issues.

Regarding the A-AA-AAA "system" (which is barely a system at all), here is a useful page. Be aware that every supplier has a different way of grading figured timber, so someone's A will be someone else's AA. It is not a very reliable guide, but it's the only thing we've got:

http://www.exotichardwoods.co.uk/Tonewo ... rading.asp

Long post and we haven't even covered timber figuration - curly, flame, quilt, birdseye, spalt, burr and the rest. ...I need some coffee!

Cheers - C

PS: "Forum legend Ceri"? Legend? Leg-end? Let's put that one to bed quickly - here are my leg ends:

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Told you the leg-end's (with the footwear of the discerning classes) answer was worth waiting for!

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You were correct Niki!! Ceri is the man when it comes to wood cuts and Leg-Ends!!

- C

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Thanks a lot Ceri! Not only did you answer my question, you got me reading it with joy. Really nicely described.

Do you happen to know something about flame tops and flamed necks?


Regards,

Hi again abzoluut: well, how polite - thank you! That's definitely how to get what you want out of me. So, pausing only to make a big cup of coffee, shall we do a detailed post about timber figuration?

In addition to the normal appearance of any given species of timber, wood can also show unusual patterns in its cut surfaces. This is called figure. There is no exact science to this and as we shall see definitions can be vague, as one sort of figure blends into another. Still, in the guitar world we are especially familiar with flame and quilt maple effects. Collectively, these are both sometimes known as curly maple.

Here is a billet of flamed maple:



If we sawed that down the middle and opened it out the two sawn faces would match and we would get an effect rather like the open pages of a book, where the facing pages were mirror images of each other. That is called bookmatching, and it looks like this:



We all know that look very well from expensive guitar fronts, such as Les Pauls. Flaming can happen in other timbers too. When it occurs in ash it is for some reason often known as ripple ash.

Another type of figure is quilting. Here is some bookmatched quilt maple:



And another figure we sometimes see in maple is birdseye. Like this:



In real life however trees are not always so considerate as to fall into neat categories. Wood often displays characteristics of different types of figure simultaneously. This piece is a bit quilty and also has some birdseye patterns. So the seller (Glimer Wood in Oregon) simply described this as "figured maple" and left it to the user to make up their own mind. Sexy, whatever you call it:



As well as caps on guitar bodies you can make guitar necks from any of the above timbers. Here are some flamed maple neck billets:



Nobody really knows what causes those types of figure. It is impossible to tell whether timber will look flamey or quilty or completely plain till the tree is felled and sawn, so it is down to saw mills to be on the lookout for it and put it aside when they come across it. This is part of why these pretty timbers cost more.

We do know the cause of some other types of figure, though not well enough to control their formation. A pattern that is becoming more common in the guitar world is spalt or spalted timber. This happens when wood becomes wet during seasoning and fungus gets in and starts growing. Then the wood is dried out again before it goes too far and becomes rotten, so the fungus pattern is fixed in the timber. Here are a couple of spalt maple billets:



Frankly, spalted timber used to simply be considered spoilt and fit only for firewood. However, woodturners got a taste for it, and from there it spread into the custom made bass guitar world (bass players are always more open-minded in these matters than conservatively inclined guitarists...). Now even mainstream Fender offer a moderately priced spalt maple Telecaster:

http://www.fender.com/products/search.p ... 0262600521

And you can have spalting in any timber - spalt ash is becoming more familiar. I have some in my log pile; sadly, not big enough pieces to make guitars from.

Since spalting is the early stages of the rotting process it probably weakens the wood a little. Not enough to matter when spalt timber is used on the front of a guitar body, but you probably wouldn't want to risk making a neck from it. ...Though I stand to be corrected - perhaps someone somewhere has done it.

Another figure of which I am especially fond is burr, also known in North America as burl. This happens when large burrs form on the sides of trees, usually at the site of damage or infection. We've all seen trees that look like this:



Variations on burr wood are found around the base of the trunk on species where whippy basal shoots spring up in clumps and are trimmed back, especially on trees in towns. And the center of the root ball itself also can give similar contorted figure patterns. Here is some English burr walnut (we all know this pattern from the dashboards of Jaguar cars):



And here is a very interesting piece of bookmatched burr yew in a sale on Ebay. I don't intend to buy this one - though if someone wants to talk me into getting it and building them a guitar body out of it I'm open to persuasion!:



That would be a tricky piece to work with because of those holes in it, which is quite common with burr timber. However, the holes can be filled: if you look at guitars or furniture made from burr timber you will often find tell-tale signs of that filling having occured.

Talking of burr wood: I have posted this picture several times before on the Forum. This is possibly my favorite guitar ever made: a burr maple capped Standard Hollow Body by superb English luthier Roger Giffin. This one makes my heart skip a beat:



Finally, to emphasise how wood often doesn't easily fit the categories listed above, here is a nice piece of timber which I did give in and buy on Ebay. I wouldn't know how to describe this other than to just call it figured redwood. Whatever, it's pretty, don't you think? One day I'll stop just gazing at it and finally build a guitar from it:



Tasty, huh?

So there ya go. Any help?

Cheers - C

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Ceri, thank you so much for taking the time to post that, very informative! The last couple pics of that guitar and "figured redwood" are simply gorgeous!

Wow, I would not be surprised if you were some kind of teacher. Your answers are dead on. I like the way you give the examples, really helpful sir.

So basically it all comes down to taste regarding what type of neck and top you want on your guitar.

The one with the burred top indeed is a masterpiece. What kind of finish has it? I assume it's not a (thin skin) nitrocellulose lacquer finish as you can not see through such a finish (except when you relic it heavily).

How about fretboards? I understand the difference between maple and rosewood fretboards. Then I read this new one "round-lam rosewood". Some even say the darker the wood of the fretboard, the darker the sound gets (sometimes even rounder). I am not quite sure about that statement. I have not tested it myself enough to give a good quote on that one.


Regards,

Fretboard material makes no difference to the sound of a guitar.

Same hardware, same pickups, same selection. The only mistake I made was to not set the pickup heights identicaly or find how to accurately govern how hard the strings are hit. Which you can credit the miniscule difference in sound to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emNlebBMdUw

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Hi again abzoluut: just doing a catch up and saw your last post. I wouldn't want you to think I was ignoring you - but I believe I'll let others answer that one. Things get strangely heated round here when we get onto the subject of fingerboards...!

Nick makes some criticism of his test in the previous post, but frankly I haven't seen it done better. It answers the issue to my satisfaction - but I leave others to draw their own conclusions...

Cheers - C

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Spoken like a true artist Mr C. !!! One has to love wood grain and I am a sucker for it on a guitar body. Living in North Idaho and being around a lot of home spun saw mills (I even built a house with an Alaska Chainsaw Mill back in the early 80s), you learn about half-sawn, quarter-sawn, and rift-sawn lumber pretty quick, especially when choosing a cut for structural timber. And the smells.....oh man, each type of fresh cut wood has own unique smell. Anyhow I am rambling, but really appreciated your expertise, once again!

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Xhefri's Guitars
www.xhefriguitars.com

Question for some of you who seem to be knowledgeable about wood in guitar-related matters.

I got a chunk of Ash today that I'm intending to cut down to size to make a block to go in the trem-cavity of a Strat (a la Clapton Strat type setup).

The wood is from a freshly cut tree, so how do I go about ensuring that it is nicely dried out etc before using it? At the moment I have it sat on top of the radiator in my flat - it I leave it there for a few weeks, will that suffice or is there something else I should do?

Remember that I'm using it solely to prevent the bridge moving - not for any structural or tonal purposes (I just thought as it's Ash it's at least in the right family for guitar use!!) so I just want to make sure that once I cut it to size it's not going to shrink or anything...

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How did it sound to you?

Thanks Ceri and niki,

I guess I should try them out.

Maybe it's my imagination going wild, but I do hear a difference between Rosewood and Maple. I hope I didn't start a guitar war just now.