Tap Tone - Which Board Is Good Or Ordinary?

[ray]

going through the boards at a yard i sometimes give them a tap with a small hammer to see how they ring. i find pretty much any board in any species including crapiata [pinus radiata] will give a musical type tone when rested on edge at a single point midway through the board and given a solid tap. some give a tight high ringing tone others seem to resonate deeper through the whole board. I havent built enough yet to know exactly what i am looking for. i bought by species and look early on and bought quite a few boards.

be interested to hear any thoughts observations on this subject

[Mattia]

I tend to 'just' tap with my fingers (possibly an additional holdover from my medical training), and I'm looking for a 'musical' bonk tone. That is, I prefer an even ring, frequency isn't so important (Depends on dimensions, density and internal damping properties), but I the more sustained resonance (as in, the sound doesn't die out immediately) I get, the better I like it.

In part, this can help locate internal cracks/stresses; damaged wood can (but doesn't always) give you a dull thud rather than a clean ring. It doesn't necessarily mean everything, or possibly even anything, but I have found that more resonant pieces of wood tend to make more resonant guitars at the end of the line.

[jmrentis]

I was going to mention part of what you said Mattia, about it might not necessarily mean anything(tap tone). I really don't have the art down, but I read an interesting thread in another board about monkey pod and how many people have said it has very poor tap top, even as far as being called wet cardboard. Yet once fully assembled the stuff wins the blind listening test and as offered by Yong, it was not a fluke set, all following sets have followed suit. Anyhow, I just found that tid bit very interesting and wonder what other wet cardboards out there might actually work alright. J

[ray]

I was going to mention part of what you said Mattia, about it might not necessarily mean anything(tap tone). I really don't have the art down, but I read an interesting thread in another board about monkey pod and how many people have said it has very poor tap top, even as far as being called wet cardboard. Yet once fully assembled the stuff wins the blind listening test and as offered by Yong, it was not a fluke set, all following sets have followed suit. Anyhow, I just found that tid bit very interesting and wonder what other wet cardboards out there might actually work alright. J

well heres a thread i found over at TDPRI expanding on the wet cardboard idea.....

[jmrentis]

Hehehe, yeah I've seen that done a few times now, though I must admit that one was pretty clean looking. Too bad someone couldn't figure a way to do an acoustic out of mdf, that build would actually be worth doing to bust some myths and so on. I think at some point someone is going to have to step it up a notch and do a semi hollow out of mdf, I would but I could care less to be honest, lol. Funny thread though, thats probably the future of guitars when we run out of nice hardwoods, it will be mdf bodies with graphical engineered figured veneers, lol. J