How Would Cedar Sound....

[Antihero]

Does anyone have any experience with using cedar in a electric?

Any idea?

[javacody]

Drak is using Spanish Cedar on an electric. I am too (actually have enough for two bodies and a neck). I've never used it before, but it does have a nice tap tone.

[unclej]

well, there's a lot of variables involved in your question..it depends a great deal on what you're going to use for the back and how thick your cedar is going to be. if you were to use maple or walnut or mahogany for your main wood the cedar might tend to soften the sound a bit. i've used spalted maple and spalted pecan as top wood. both are fairly soft in that condition and both sound great on cherry or mahogany or some other dense wood as a back..don't be afraid to experiment because you can always find the sound you're looking for by playing around with you pickup choices.

[Antihero]

well, there's a lot of variables involved in your question..it depends a great deal on what you're going to use for the back and how thick your cedar is going to be.  if you were to use maple or walnut or mahogany for your main wood the cedar might tend to soften the sound a bit.  i've used spalted maple and spalted pecan as top wood.  both are fairly soft in that condition and both sound great on cherry or mahogany or some other dense wood as a back..don't be afraid to experiment because you can always find the sound you're looking for by playing around with you pickup choices.

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Im not entirely sure what i would use for the back. I came across a Strat style body on ebay that used Marupa(which i have no idea what would sound like) for the back and cedar for the top, and that got me thinking" What would cedar sound like?" and "What the heck is Marupa?"

Thanks for responding.

[unclej]

marupa... tree of the Amazon valley yielding a light brittle timber locally regarded as resistant to insect attack

sounds kinda like basswood..sounds like that would give you two fairly soft woods..should result in a pretty mellow soundin' axe.

[orgmorg]

I stumbled across this a while back:

wendler guitars

Probably a bit different than the guitar you may be planning to build, but they are made of western red cedar.

I started building a body out of one piece of eastern red cedar, mostly out of curiosity. It's a lot different than western cedar, though. And spanish cedar is not a cedar at all. In fact, it is not even a conifer. It got the name because it is very aromatic.