Baritone Guitar Project - Which Tone Wood?

[Bill-Murray]

Well, definately go for an ebony or maple fretboard, that's all I know.....

[Argali]

Well, definately go for an ebony or maple fretboard, that's all I know.....

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I like ebony.

[Meegs666]

if it helps you out i have a baritone strat. it didnt start out that way though. it started life as an alder strat with a regular maple neck. i wanted to play baritone so i made a baritone maple and rosewood neck. the alder wasnt the most responsive for what i wanted so i made a maple body for it. the maple is tight and responsive. so i hope that helps.

ps. after the whole transfer i now have two strats and i play like a bass player on the baritone. its tuned g-g. its very responsive(not muddy) and crisp even when popping and with loose strings. the only problem is its halfway across the united states right now so i havent played it in a few months.

[Argali]

if it helps you out i have a baritone strat. it didnt start out that way though. it started life as an alder strat with a regular maple neck. i wanted to play baritone so i made a baritone maple and rosewood neck. the alder wasnt the most responsive for what i wanted so i made a maple body for it. the maple is tight and responsive. so i hope that helps.

ps. after the whole transfer i now have two strats and i play like a bass player on the baritone. its tuned g-g. its very responsive(not muddy) and crisp even when popping and with loose strings. the only problem is its halfway across the united states right now so i havent played it in a few months.

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Very interesting. With that tuning, and how you use it, I think your Strat is more in the territory of a Fender Type VI or the new Jaguar Baritone Custom, which has a 30-inch scale length and is tuned like a six-string bass.

So what didn't you like about the original alder body? And what kind of pickups did you ultimately put in there?

[westhemann]

i have an alder,maple,and mahogany seven string with emg 81/7s and a set neck.tuned B to E.body is solid alder,neck is 3 piece maple/honduran mahogany/maple with a pau ferro fretboard

here is a very poorly played and poorly recorded sound clip,forgive my sloppy playing,i never have gotten used to that extra string...hope it helps.

http://fullservesite.com/westhemann/music/seven%20string.mp3

and a slightly newer one...only one track

http://fullservesite.com/westhemann/seven...mp3

and a pic

http://fullservesite.com/westhemann/new%20...ictures0022.jpg

by the way the scale is only 24 3/4"...so i think a 27" scale alder and maple guitar would be quite clear

[darren wilson]

How many of us can actually sit down and listen to a recorded (or live) amplified guitar sound and identify what wood the guitar is made of?

Show of hands?

[fryovanni]

I love to read these threads. Everyone seems to have their opinions. The logic sounds pretty good, backed by plenty of research. I think every piece of wood even the same species will sound a bit different. The best logic I have ever read was in a post by Hyunsu. You have to listen to the wood by knocking on it.

Side Note- Has anyone checked out the Parkers with the laminated spruce bodys, reviews seem to be very good. I haven't had a chance to try one out yet.

[CoryKer]

How many of us can actually sit down and listen to a recorded (or live) amplified guitar sound and identify what wood the guitar is made of?

Show of hands?

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I probably couldn't. But given neutral amp settings, I could certainly tell you what kinda tonal properties the guitar had. And that makes it reasonable that if you know what kind of sound you want, you'll pick the right wood for the application. So whether or not we can identify what wood was used is kinda irrelevant.

My preference would be for alder, but that's just me. But it's not like a mahogany baritone would sound bad or anything... depending on what he's going for.

[RGGR]

This tonewood discussion is always great to follow. It's like opening a can of worms, with ever so many opinions and preferences.

And sometimes on a simple questions of what tonewood would be best for baritone guitar.......there are more than one answer.

Cause with Baritone guitar.....I asume you mean a extended scale (and/or range) guitar. And with Baritone most of us assume you're looking for a more warmer, darker sound profile.

And this can be achieved in many different ways. Choice of body wood, choice of neck wood, choice of fretboard wood, choice of pickups, choice of scale length....etc.

So for simplicity assume you mean a longer scale and extended range baritone guitar. The next question would be. What type of guitar........bold on, set-neck, set-through, neck through. Cause with the latter the tonal profile of the neck wood will have more of a effect on overal tone of guitar.

You know the big name manufactures use mainly...Alder, Basswood, and Mahogany for their body woods......all great tone wood........but if you wanted something like that.....you easily could pick up this type of guitar...with the specific type of wood, and adjust the look and/or pick-ups for desired tone....

As you stated you rather would do something different......why not look at some other woods.......The great thing about building you're own guitar is that you can explore territory that few have ventured in........

And what about neck wood. What about laminating the neck, for cool looks and blend tonal properties......and what about topping that Alder, Mahogany guitar with a great looking top.

And what about pick-ups.........decisions, decisions......

The possibilities are endless........

And then I haven't even touched the different bridge possibilities, and or fanned frets or so.......;-)

My advice.....go for some bright wood like Alder (with or without top) with some darker, warmer sounding pups. Or some warmer sounding wood like Mahogany (Limba) (and again with or without top) and this time with some brigther sounding pups.

And if you decide on some EMG;s......make body out of plywood.......;-)

[daveq]

I think Darren gave some very good advice when he mentioned that you might want to go with a wood that will produce clarity. I've built guitars with black limba (supposedly close to mahagony), alder, maple, and cherry. The absolute worst guitar when it comes to the lower strings and clarity of them is the black limba.

Maybe it's just a fluke but I do know that each of my maple guitars sound crystal clear in comparison. The alder guitars sound good also but they have a different "growl" compared to the maple guitars. It's very difficult to explain without using these non-scientific terms.

I don't know if people are just reiterating what they have read when it comes to maple guitars or if they have played them (not people here - just in general)? I have two of them and there certainly is a difference but I wouldn't go as far as saying that it's harsh or unusable. In fact, my personal opinion is that maple is an excellent choice for a guitar that is intended to be used with metal/distortion. Having the extra mid freq's going into the preamp really helps - at least to my ears. I think the biggest misconception is that a "bright" maple guitar will always sound bright and can't be used for metal/hard rock. If you like a scooped sound, you can still get that - just scoop in the effects loop (or anywhere after the preamp).

I can't beleive I just did another maple rant. Sorry about that. I guess I feel like I need to defend it since it has treated me so well. I just think it gets a bad rap for no good reason. Bright seems to be a word that scares off a lot of people and I think it's misused and exaggerated (at least in my limited experience). Whenever clarity is a concern, I think maple should be considered.

[Argali]

This tonewood discussion is always great to follow. It's like opening a can of worms, with ever so many opinions and preferences.

And sometimes on a simple questions of what tonewood would be best for baritone guitar.......there are more than one answer.

Cause with Baritone guitar.....I asume you mean a extended scale (and/or range) guitar. And with Baritone most of us assume you're looking for a more warmer, darker sound profile.

And this can be achieved in many different ways. Choice of body wood, choice of neck wood, choice of fretboard wood, choice of pickups, choice of scale length....etc.

So for simplicity assume you mean a longer scale and extended range baritone guitar. The next question would be. What type of guitar........bold on, set-neck, set-through, neck through. Cause with the latter the tonal profile of the neck wood will have more of a effect on overal tone of guitar.

You know the big name manufactures use mainly...Alder, Basswood, and Mahogany for their body woods......all great tone wood........but if you wanted something like that.....you easily could pick up this type of guitar...with the specific type of wood, and adjust the look and/or pick-ups for desired tone....

As you stated you rather would do something different......why not look at some other woods.......The great thing about building you're own guitar is that you can explore territory that few have ventured in........

And what about neck wood. What about laminating the neck, for cool looks and blend tonal properties......and what about topping that Alder, Mahogany guitar with a great looking top.

And what about pick-ups.........decisions, decisions......

The possibilities are endless........

And then I haven't even touched the different bridge possibilities, and or fanned frets or so.......;-)

My advice.....go for some bright wood like Alder (with or without top) with some darker, warmer sounding pups. Or some warmer sounding wood like Mahogany (Limba) (and again with or without top) and this time with some brigther sounding pups.

And if you decide on some EMG;s......make body out of plywood.......;-)

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I should explain a bit more. Essentially my friend and I want to build baritones because we're interested in exploring new sounds. We find ourselves wanting to tune our standard-scale guitars down further than they already are (tuned to dropped-C), but then we began to think, Why not just build baritones?

While you can tune a conventional guitar down very low, this can cause complications. Intonation becomes a bitch. Staying in tune can sometimes be a challenge. If you want to go down as low as B or A, you have to use very thick strings, and for some that isn't an easy progression. And even with thick strings, sometimes the tension is very loose and "wobbly," even when set up by a good luthier.

I've recently gotten into guitar mods and repair as a new hobby. After 14 years of playing, I want to get more involved with actually making guitars. The baritone project is going to be one of the first guitars I try to put together from pre-made parts - mostly Warmoth stuff. So right off the bat we're looking at a bolt-on neck. It will most likely also be one body wood that we're talking about, because I like the idea of making a baritone Tele Deluxe (two humbucker design).

Pickups are another thread entirely, really. I am leaning toward a set of good passives, though my friend wants to use EMGs.

It's a bit tough to articulate exactly what kind of sound I'm going for. I'm not what many people call a "flogger" - someone who tunes down in a dropped-tuning just to bang away on big, one-finger monkey chords. I like heavy rhythms and complex chords, and I need a guitar that can deliver them with both clarity AND a sense of warmth. Sometimes clarity translates to sterility or an almost digital lack of presence; I hear this on a lot of thinner "shredder" guitars, like my RG550. The antithesis of that is my Les Paul, but the sound coming out of that walks a very fine line between being muddy and being articulate. So I'm looking for something that can deliver a kind of sonic density, with a very warm and organic low end, as well as non-harsh, almost piano-like highs. This is very important to me. Many guitars that are designed for "metal" players over-emphasive low-end chunk withou paying attention to the rest of the guitar's register. So you'll be playing chords on the high strings and suddenly everything sounds ghastly.

I have never been a "scooped" kind of guy when it comes to tone, and neither is my friend. In fact I have my Rivera Knucklehead 100 set up so that all my tone controls are over 6.

I'm also not one to adhere to wive's-tale philosophies on guitar design. I'm not automatically dismissing maple as the body choice. Hell, the more I think about it, it could work out well. But as you point out, why do what others have done? How often have you seen a koa baritone? Remember that half the point of building our own guitars is to satisfy ourselves and our own innate curiousity. The other half is to sound damn good.

[westhemann]

And if you decide on some EMG;s......make body out of plywood.......;-)

bad advice....VERY

i wish it was as simple as you guys perpetuate it to be.funny how all of you that claim emgs make every guitar sound the same don't actually seem to know anything about them.

i have seven guitars with the 81/85 combo on different body woods...they all sound completely different.the body wood accounts for the difference.

oh...and i do have one plywood guitar...my very first guitar i ever bought.doesn't sound bad...just a little mushy and indistinct

[darren wilson]

Any pickup, including EMGs, just "hears" the vibration of the string, which is made up of the fundamental and the overtones. Body and neck woods do have a distinct effect on the vibrating string. Certain overtones are absorbed or cancelled out by the various resonant peaks and valleys in different wood densities, which is why different woods (and even different planks of the same species) impart a different sonic "character" on the sound of the vibrating string.

To suggest that EMGs completely negate the effect of the wood on the vibrating string is just nonsense.

[Argali]

I'd rather not have this thread derailed into the silly "EMGs negate the qualities of all tonewoods" debate. I have EMGs in one guitar and they're fine pickups. But I think I will want passives in my pending baritone, just as a personal preference thing.

Back to talking about woods! I e-mailed Warmoth today to get a price quote on a redwood Tele body. Stay tuned.

[daveq]

That's one school of thought that I disagree most with. I don't blame anyone in particular - so please don't take this as a slam against anyone here.

EMG's definitely sound different in different guitars - I have zero doubt of this. I'd like to record a couple of them some day and post it as evidence. I have read that EMG's basically ignore all that is good about a guitar's acoustics/dynamics many times and it bugs me that it seems to keep floating around. Darren nailed it exactly - the pickups do not generate the sound - they react to the guitar and pass it along (after some filtering/preamp).

One more thought on tone woods:

It is easier to filter/attenuate certain frequencies than it is to try to add/boost them using EQ. If the guitar naturally produces a fuller spectrum then you'll find it much easier to find the sound you want by cutting certain bands. It's very difficult to boost something that isn't there naturally. What I mean by difficult is that it doesn't sound as good boosting a weak band as it does attenuating a strong band.

This probably isn't of much help but this thread reminded me of this and I was wondering if anyone else has more info on the subject? Are there any studies on spectrum analysis of tone woods? When it comes down to it, you're probably not going to be able to pick a tone wood by looking at it's spectral analysis but I'd still be very interested to see how they compare.

Anyway - good luck picking something that will sound good. Maybe you could ask Perry (Rhoads56) what he used on his baritone that recently won GOTM? I think he said he was very happy with the sound of it.

[Meegs666]

i like the brightness of maple. when i built that body it wasnt just the brightness of maple as a whole that i was after. my friend had a stack of maple laying around and he said it was unusually bright for his tastes so he gave it to me in return for a piece of walnut. it was a lot more crisp than any other guitar i had owned so i switched the baritone neck onto it and i loved it. its a bit harder to explain what exactly i heard in the maple that i hadnt heard in any of the other bodies that ive built. it couldve been partly caused by my unusual choice in pickups for that body. i used two hot rails and an invader. i guess it just evened out. the maple i used was pretty light too. maple is just one of those woods that gets an extrremely bad rep, but i would choose maple over mahogany for low tuned stuff.

[RGGR]

I don't know if people are just reiterating what they have read when it comes to maple guitars or if they have played them (not people here - just in general)?

Hmmmmm!.....that might very well be true. Cause the people whom actually built and played Maple bodied guitars are very pleased with their choice....

And this tone wood discussion will always continue.......same as pick-up discussions.

Even with scientific type set-ups and testing.....it's still highly subjective.

I think the minute you start playing guitar (or building) and you're a little curious about what's beyond the next hedge......you always will look for the option of changing (read: improving) the tone. (how pleasing the current one may be.)

It's this holy quest for the ultimate sounding guitar, and in that sense the journey is more important then the destination.

5 years ago I would have picked up a guitar and merely make some noise......now I pick one up, ask about the type of wood used in construction....type of pick-ups used......strings.......evaluate fretdress and general quality of guitar.......

Still make the same noise though. ;-)