My nephew is a cabinetmaker and and told me alder is refered to as the "poor man's cherry". That got me to wondering if Fender has ever made a cherrywood stratocaster?

Possibly as a CS special order. But cherry has never been used by Fender as a standard tone wood.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Thanks for the info Arjay. Do you think it would be heavy? I have a cherry dresser and I struck a tuning fork and put the end on the dresser top and it rang forever.

Difficult to say as there are many sub-species (just as with alder, ash, maple, and so many others). I'd think it's resonant properties would be quite good though. Not sure about the cost......could be a skosh on the prohibitive side.

HTH

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Yeah, cost and weight were what I wondered about.

Hi Minnesotastrats: interesting story about that. A few months ago I spent an evening with Trevor Wilkinson, and in the 1970s he worked closely with Leo Fender for a few years and heard first hand all sorts of things about how the instruments came to be the way they are. Trevor is a giant admirer of Leo Fender and loves passing on stories about him, especially the myth-busting ones.

Regarding timber, when Leo started making guitars he wanted wood that was easily available, affordable and attractive to customers. Then as now the American furniture industry was especially fond of ash so it was easy to source at the right price and Leo adopted it for guitar bodies. Cherry was another popular timber for furniture but it cost quite a bit more. However, furniture makers would often put a dark transparent stain on alder which would then look reasonably similar to cherry and so pass muster: stained alder became known as the poor man's cherry - just as your nephew says. Alder was, and still is, much cheaper and more readily available than cherry and therefore that's what Leo used for another of his body woods.

None of that has anything to do with tone. The word "tonewood" has no technical meaning: it simply describes wood that gets used in instruments. Over the centuries many, many timbers have been used for stringed instruments, including fruit woods such as pear and cherry. In fact, if you look at older stringed instruments such as viols, lutes and the rest you will find nearly every timber you can think of used in their construction. The defining factor is what was readily available to makers in a given geographical location.

For instance, violins are usually made from eastern European maple and Alpine spruce, because that is what the Cremonese luthiers had reliable access to at the time violin making was being perfected. There's nothing definitive about those timbers and there have always been makers who use other woods instead: you can find violins made from cherry, mahogany, pear, and many other timbers. As it happens I've just been working with a very fine Spanish maker who sometimes uses poplar for the backs and necks of violins - which in terms of hardness and grain is as far from maple as you could imagine, yet it works fine.

In other words, we don't want to get too hung up on ideas about "tonewood". A tonewood is anything you use to make an instrument. If cherry had been cheap and easily available when Fender started making guitars that's what he'd have used.

So if you have some cherry and you like the look and weight of it then by all means use it to make a guitar. Why not?

Cheers - C

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Ceri, thank you very much for the informative and interesting reply, I learned something here.

+1!

Much appreciated, Ceri

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Cherry would make one beautiful strat body, but you would need a really high gloss finish to make it look right IMHO. The finish makes a difference in the tone too...oh wait that is for another thread.

As for Ceri's reply, that makes perfect sense, and is much more logical than any explanation I have ever heard. In fact Gibson using maple and spruce on thier guitars (very plentiful in Michigan) although not sure where they came up with the mahogany, unless that was something Orville got from the family.

T2

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What time is it? It's Fender Time.

A doctor friend of mine is an amateur woodworker but is quite good at it, in fact he is gifted .During an intense windstorm that had hurricane strength gusts at times, the huge cherry tree that was the centerpiece of his garden was blown down in a particularly hard gust.

He cut the tree up into manageable sized logs keeping in mind that he would be using it for several projects.After the wood had dried out sufficently he began his projects.His first project was a night table done in an 18th century style and by using the cherry wood, he had made what was in the end a spectacular piece of furniture that looked like it had come from the workshop of Duncan Phyfe.The cherry wood was just stunning as is, even without a stain,he just used something to accentuate the grain.

Anyway after this rambling tale I'm just going to say that cherry wood would most likely give you a guitar that would be the envy of hundreds of guitarists and you never know,you may get flooded with requests to make more and end up being a popular full-time luthier. Stranger things have happened.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

Ive seen a regular in here a Jamguy who posted an audio of a yamaha guitalele that he was having fun with..I went and looked at specs because I had never seen one..one of the woods its made from is Meranti...never EVER heard of it..has anyone else?

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Mona
"Music is What Feelings Sound like"

...and then I fell out of bed and woke up.

Needless to say,my tongue was firmly planted in my cheek.I hope you didn't hurt yourself...lol.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

Cherry is very dense and very hard. I doubt that it would make a good solid body wood. Maybe a top over something much softer, like mahogany would work good.

Hi Mona: meranti is yet another of the tropical hardwoods that turns up as an alternative to mahogany. I think it's from South East Asia, if memory serves. It has an even, stable, but quite boring looking grain.

As mahogany becomes harder to source we will be seeing ever more of these other timbers. Sapele (African mahogany) is one that is appearing more and more often in instrument making (often when a manufacturer lists mahogany in their specs it is really sapele), along with fancier things like wenge, cocobolo, bubinga, padauk, pernambuco and zebrano. You find these things appearing increasingly in the guitars of the adventurous smaller makers. And usually they arrive into guitarmaking long after they've become familiar in basses - for some reason bass players tend to be more receptive to interesting alternative timbers than guitarists.



Hi xenophobe: yes, on average I think it would be rather heavy. For bodies we'd probably want to chamber it, in a thinline Tele or similar. It might also be good for necks - dense and hard is what you want in neck wood.

Cheers - C

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