Walnut Is Very Similar To Hard Maple?

[Cherryburst]

Just asking... aside from the obvious "dark vs blond" difference in visual appearance, could it be said that Walnut is very, very similar to hard maple in terms of hardness, weight, and tone? (bright)

In other words, an all-walnut Strat neck would probably feel and sound very close to a typical all hard-maple neck?

[Drak]

IMO, No, Walnut is not really comparable to Maple in terms of tone.

[mattharris75]

I've seen people compare walnut to mahogany more than any other wood.

[Cherryburst]

Drak - do you think Walnut is at least *close* to hard maple in brightness, or not? I would think hard/heavy wood = bright.

Although its been years, I remember walnut feeling about virtually the same weight as the hard-maple (mahogany seemed much lighter)

[tubab0y]

While they are similar weight-wise, maple is about a million times brighter than walnut.

[jnewman]

I build a through-neck stratocaster with mostly walnut and some maple stripes through the center and a rosewood fretboard. It was a pretty dark sounding guitar. I would not say that walnut behaves at all like maple in a guitarbuilding context. Walnut is also much easier to work than maple as it's a lot softer.

Hard maple can be significantly heavier than walnut, also. Soft maple can be pretty close to the same density as walnut.

Edited July 6, 2007 by jnewman

[gibsonsg26]

i know carvin mainly recomends it for there basses and 7 strings becuase of its generally dark tone. im not to sure about the feel though.

[ihocky2]

The consensus usually seems to be that walnut has a dark sound. Which is why you see it in basses a lot more often. You can definitely get some different tones though by using walnut it designs that are usually bright sounding.

[Cherryburst]

To confuse things more... here's a wood description page on the Warmoth site:

http://www.warmoth.com/guitar/options/options_bodywoods.cfm

It has a little "tone-o-meter" rating scale for several woods.

Maple is obviously is the most on the "bright" side, followed by...

Walnut and Bubinga are tied (still on the bright side of the scale)

Swamp Ash just slightly on the bright side

Lacewood, Paduak, Wenge, & Poplar in the center

Basswood & Koa just slightly on the "warm" (dark) side

Korina next (mid warm)

Mahogany & Rosewood as the most warm/dark

I dunno, but this chart seems to be telling me that Walnut is the second brightest (closest) to Maple.

Also under the Walnut description: Walnut is in the heavy weight category but it's not quite as heavy as hard maple. It has a similar sound to hard maple but it tends not to be as bright.

Any other opinions?

Edited July 7, 2007 by Cherryburst

[Bertbart]

I built a solid black walnut 7/8 size Telly style with a 1/4" maple top...it weighs a ton. I didn't weigh it but it feels as heavy as the heaviest L.P. I've ever picked up. It doesn't sound dark but metalic bright. Maple with E.I. board neck. Also it wanted to splinter at the slightest provocation. Very britle, stringy wood. It came from a friend who's grand-dad cut and resawed the tree 55 years ago and stored it in the rafters of a barn. I've made a few fretboards from what was left over.

[Mattia]

Mass is only one variable; you've also got stiffness and damping to play with. ie, rosewood is often 'brighter'/glassier than ebony (which has high damping).

A 'birghtometer' seems, well, daft. Too many other factors, including construction and pickups.

[WezV]

I have built a couple of walnut guitars and also recently set up a 1979 gibson 'the paul' that was made from solid walnut. I think its a great guitar wood, tonally i find it quite 'middly'.

The gibson sounded more like an SG than a les paul.

[fryovanni]

To add to the mixed opinions. I find Walnut to vary a great deal from piece to piece. If you find a really hard heavy piece of walnut it will still not likely be as stiff, heavy, or hard as a piece of hard rock maple(I would point out that a LOT of people are probably confusing Red Maple with Rock quite often, giving mixed signals, I would think it would be much harder to mix up Silver or bigleaf with Rock maple). Given you are compairing a bit of really hard and heavy black walnut, and a piece of hard rock maple. To me harder pieces of Walnut have a very strong focussed attack(powerful fundemental), but decays quickly and lacks complexity. Hard Maple has a very strong attack(powerful fundementals), decays slower with a maintained focus(strong fundementals, lacks the complexity you get with woods that have higher damping rates). Softer bits of Walnut seem to have similar decay charictoristic, but tend to be less punchy and maybe a little more complex(Walnut just does not seem to ring out long enough to allow much complexity at least to me, Redwood would be just the opposite as it rings for a very very very long time and becomes quite complex as it rings out* I mention Redwood only to illustrate the woods are not similar in just about any respect).

Peace,Rich

P.S. I would second Draks comparison, and say Mattia's comments are dead on as usual.

[Cherryburst]

Thanks guys - very informative. Here I thought heavier/denser = brighter, and thats it. (Even though I've read that Oak is very heavy & dense, yet makes a bad tonewood)

Can anyone suggest a good webpage regarding weights & densities as they apply to tonewoods? (or a book on Amazon?)

Also.. can I bring Northern (hard) Ash into this discussion? Would it be about half-way between Walnut and Hard Maple for weight & density? (and maybe ot maybe not brighter tone?)

[gibsonsg26]

thread on tonewood

heres a site that was posted on a thread from the tutorial section on all the different tonewoods. hope it helps.

Edited July 8, 2007 by gibsonsg26

[SwedishLuthier]

Even though I've read that Oak is very heavy & dense, yet makes a bad tonewood

Out of context and slightly off topic, I know, but here I go:

Oak is OK as a “Tonewood” (whatever that is). I have built two solid oak necks and a bass neck laminated from maple and oak. They all sound very good. Ask Brian May if you can be successful with a guitar made entirely out of oak. His Red Special have to be the ultimately Project Guitar. Period. So please DO NOT discard different woods for use as “Tonewoods” before you have tried it.

We had a thread like half a year ago were Melvyn Hiscock reported about a neck (laminated) through he build with a Douglas Fir neck. It worked out good enough to make him plan a second, solid one.

So can we please stop say that different wood are not tonewood. Concentrate on the basic properties (weight, strength, flexibility, stability etc) and realise that most wood can be used in guitar buildings if used with care, but some will be easier and some will be really hard to work with. And to end things guitars will sound DIFFERENT, not bad and good, depending on the wood used.

In the future we will have to realise that we will be forced to use un-traditional wood as we are running out of the traditional wood for building.

[black_labb]

for a quick response, ive heard its like a brighter mahogany, but ill see soon as my current build is walnut

[Xanthus]

I've got a 3-piece maple/walnut/maple lam neck going on, so I suppose I've got the best of both worlds!

Peter, you raise a good, but rather unfortunate, point. With the way the world's fantastic forest preservation movements are going, luthiers are going to have to start branching out into the "uncommon" areas and try out new things. I love experimentation, and it'd be great to see some new favorite woods come about, but the sad fact of the matter is that we'll soon run out of "traditional" materials to fuel our selfish, guitar-building desires I hope I never see the day.

Wow, that was a bit earthy-crunchy. Sorry guys, hahaha, just got inspired to get my thoughts out there.

[westhemann]

Walnut's biggest tonal charachteristic in my opinion is a "smoothness" of tone.I don't find it bright at all...rather it is "creamy" to my ears...makes the notes very fluid and silky...

I like to use it in guitars with alot of bright woods,because it balances it out and takes away the harshness of maple.