reynliam350 Posted December 1, 2018 Report Share Posted December 1, 2018 For my 16th birthday, my dad bought me a Squire strat bullet and from that point on I've always wanted to build a guitar. Quite recently, we got an abundance of wood and we think we have 6 planks of white ash (+12 ft). The idea is to buy the same neck and hardware from the strat and make a body out of the white ash. Is white ash suitable for the body? Or would it be better to get hot pickups for it? The Squire: https://shop.fender.com/en/intl/squier-electric-guitars/stratocaster/bullet-strat-with-tremolo/0310001532.html BONUS: Since I can't get a portable amp and not many laptops can handle Guitar Rig without latency, another idea is to have a switch between the final stage of guitar tone editing and the 1/4" jack, place a switch to lead to an small amplifying circuit outputting to an onboard speaker. Maybe even more 1/4" jacks for use with effects. Will the guitar's resonance be to great and ruin it or could this actually work? I'd post the related pictures and diagrams I had but they are not on me at this time. Thanks for any help and feedback! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted December 2, 2018 Report Share Posted December 2, 2018 Hi, and welcome! White Ash is a good wood to use for a guitar body - it can be a bit heavy but it usually has nice grain patterns. Ash, and the lighter-weight Swamp Ash, is often used on the upper-end strats and teles. Is the wood you have fully seasoned? It needs to be for use in a guitar body otherwise it will tend to warp, shrink and crack as it seasons - which is not good for a guitar! A strat body, however, is quite challenging as a first off build - it really depends how much experience you have in terms of accurate routing, etc.. It's the tremolo chambers that can be particularly challenging. Of course, you can build any body style to fit a neck to so it doesn't need to be a tremolo design... Wood for new body or hot pickups are two different questions and don't really impact on each other - I think that's your own choice, to be honest. Folks do install onboard amps and speakers but they are usually more a gimmick than actually useful. There are a decent number of low-latency amplifier apps for use on PC or tablet /phone - most of them have a free version with at least the basics and these will give you much better results TBH. Guitar Rig can be a bit heavyweight. Have you tried Ampkit+? I think Amplitude still does a free version too. Hope this helps Andy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reynliam350 Posted December 4, 2018 Author Report Share Posted December 4, 2018 Thanks for the response, I'm aware that he grain is great and I don't care about weight of the guitar as it is basically a concept at this point. I think that the wood is fully seasoned... or at least dried. All I know is that we pulled them from an old barn that a family friend had to tear down and said that we could have what we wanted from it. We took like all the wood from there. The actual body was going to be somewhat of a mix of a Gibson with the flat side walls and the basic shape of the strat. I never planned on having a whammy bar and make just a straight guitar. The point of the on board amp was for practiceing without having to set up a rig. Although I'm sure plugins exist for this point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mistermikev Posted December 5, 2018 Report Share Posted December 5, 2018 can't wait to see yer geetar as I'll immediately tell you "noice piece of ash". (sorry, I have a 5th grade sense of humor). I've always loved ash... and would like to build something in the near future... but weight is a real concern. Most ash I've come across is so heavy it could turn a thinline into a 9lb guitar. @Andyjr1515 any tips on finding lighter pieces? As I understand "swamp ash" is not a species but a marketing term like "true bypass", but are there species I should ask about stock on to (hopefully) find some lighter stuff? afa hot pickups... it's a personal pref thing. best advice: go play some, then play some cold pickups. personally I love a very hot pickup in the bridge and a very cold pickup in the neck. I think they mix well, but I'd be surprised if fifty people didn't totally disagree with me. also, I've loved and hated the same pickup depending on the wood it's in so... there's that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted December 5, 2018 Report Share Posted December 5, 2018 1 hour ago, mistermikev said: can't wait to see yer geetar as I'll immediately tell you "noice piece of ash". (sorry, I have a 5th grade sense of humor). I've always loved ash... and would like to build something in the near future... but weight is a real concern. Most ash I've come across is so heavy it could turn a thinline into a 9lb guitar. @Andyjr1515 any tips on finding lighter pieces? As I understand "swamp ash" is not a species but a marketing term like "true bypass", but are there species I should ask about stock on to (hopefully) find some lighter stuff? afa hot pickups... it's a personal pref thing. best advice: go play some, then play some cold pickups. personally I love a very hot pickup in the bridge and a very cold pickup in the neck. I think they mix well, but I'd be surprised if fifty people didn't totally disagree with me. also, I've loved and hated the same pickup depending on the wood it's in so... there's that! Swamp ash, as far as I understand it, is not a species as much as the conditions that the Ash it has been in before being taken out of its natural environment for use as timber. I presume it's a bit like 'bog oak' that we have in the UK. My understanding (probably wrong) is that the long period of basically being saturated opens up and clears much of the sap channels and that once it has been properly dried and seasoned, it is left much more open pored and softer than an Ash that had been seasoned after being conventionally felled. Certainly, when buying swamp ash recently at my local supplier I was staggered at how much lighter it was compared to the standard ash in the pile next to it. But, then again, some of the pieces of the swamp ash were noticeably lighter than others. ALL were lighter than the conventional Ash, though. So, it's not a marketing ploy but it is still highly variable and so you really need to be able to pick the pieces yourself or at least get the supplier to give you the weight of each of the pieces you are potentially interested in. As always with my comments, @mistermikev, don't assume that I know what I'm talking about but I do know that the last two sets of Swamp Ash I have bought were super-light but, in all other respects, looked and finished like conventional Ash. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mistermikev Posted December 5, 2018 Report Share Posted December 5, 2018 thanks for the reply. I often go to a couple commercial/residential lumber yards in my area... unfortunately it's impossible(for me) to judge the weight of an 11' 8/4 piece of ash as it is heavy no matter what! These places are very reasonable on price... but aren't going to weigh or even cut things down for me, and to "look through a pile" is a monumental endeavor for me by myself so... I was hoping you where going to tell me there was some discernible quality to the grain that I could look for but it seems you've answered that "no". Perhaps I'll just order something when I get to that point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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