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Sycamore As A Solidbody Guitar/bass Neck?


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I take it you mean English Sycamore? Sometimes there's confusion as apparently there's a completely different wood in America that Americans call sycamore. I'm using it to build the necks for my doubleneck Strat, as there's nothing to worry about. Planing and finishing wise it's exactly like hard canadian maple, weight wise it might be a little lighter but I can't feel the difference personally. Therefore tone is pretty much like hard maple. Stability wise, I've got quite a lot of pieces and none have them have been unstable, I'd think it's as stable as any other hard maple piece with the same type of grain - if it's fairly straight grained it'll be fine.

While I've not got round to finishing a guitar with it, I asked Jonathan at Feline Guitars if he'd used it before, he said they'd used it on many guitars successfully and there should be no problems with it and have used it quite a few times instead of maple.

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Quite. American: no. Euro: yes.

Euro maple (what UK-ians call sycamore) is a little softer than rock/hard maple, harder than soft maples, and a traditional neck/back/side wood for all manner of stringed instruments (all bowed instruments included).

Edited by Setch
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I believe that's what it is, as I bought it in the UK - I was wondering as to whether or not I should add any neck laminations for strength really (it's a solid finish project) and i've never worked with sycamore before, at least not knowingly :-D

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Some further clarification:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_maple

This is what is called "sycamore" in the UK. As stated earlier, it is indeed a maple.

American sycamore ( Platanus occidentalis ) is more like what you would call a planetree ( Platanus orientalis ) in the UK. Though it is not native to the isles, it was introduced centuries ago, and has become quite naturalised there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_sycamore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platanus_orientalis

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Ah cool - thanks! It works like maple for sure, and it has a mild flame to it too which is a bonus. I actually asked the question before I received the wood, and that was more than enough to tell me it was maple especially when I smelt it cutting! :-D

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  • 1 year later...

If it's english sycamore yes because it's almost the same as maple. This is why there is all this confusion between maple and sycamore because they are pretty much the same thing. Sycamore is used as a maple alternitive often and i'm using it for the center laminate for my current build. So yes, you should be fine

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If it's english sycamore yes because it's almost the same as maple. This is why there is all this confusion between maple and sycamore because they are pretty much the same thing.

Yep old thread indeed but, to put you right, the confusion is because what American's call Sycamore is a completely different species of tree to what we call Sycamore.

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