Neck Wood Color

[daveq]

I have a few choices for a neck blank. I hope to take some pics later today to make this easier.

The guitar is going to be a blue quilt - top with an alder body (I'm pretty set on blue for this one). The neck blanks are all curly hard maple. Here's my choices:

1. Ultra-3D flame figured but has a brownish/copper'ish color

Nearly perfectly quartersawn

2. Good flame figuring and nice light color

Flatsawn

3. --I have several others similar to #2 that I can pick from.

The thing is, with blue, I think the lighter color looks best but that darker neck blank has such nice figuring - I hate to pass on it. In addition, the fact that it's quartersawn makes it difficult to say no.

I guess I could try bleaching it but I don't know what that would end up looking like.

What do you think? (I hope to have pics in a few hours).

[MzI]

id definetly try bleachin it, if you have enough scrap left over try it on that, on my next guitar neck im goin with quarter sawn curly maple, i personally think it looks really cool

MzI

[Devon Headen]

You could use the lighter slabsawn piece on this guitar and buy the other one for later. I'm assuming you haven't bought any of it yet.

[frank falbo]

Sometimes maple darkens on the surface. Try to take a razor blade with, or some sandpaper. There's a good chance that dark one lightens up after you carve through the surface. Otherwise, depending on the color blue, I usually like a light maple neck. Now, if you're going to do the top with faux binding and then leave the back natural alder, it will already be darker than any maple. That might look great. Heck that might even look good with an amber neck finish to really bring out the figure.

[daveq]

Thanks for the opinions.

The darker maple may actually be heartwood (I don't know how to tell for sure). I cut a piece off last night and the entire piece is dark.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do. The quartersawn factor has me leaning towards using the darker wood.

BTW - this is all wood that I have on my shelf - not wood that I'm considering buying.

Edited October 15, 2004 by daveq

[skibum5545]

I'd try bleaching the dark one, and even possibly staining it blue to match the body.

[GuitarMaestro]

If your curly maple is no hard maple don't use it at all if you like bright sounding guitars. For my 7-string I used curly soft maple for the neck with two 8mm Bubinga stripes and I still think it is what makes the guitar darker & softer sounding than I would like best....