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Anyone Make A Whole Guitar Out Of The Same Species Of Wood?


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i have never seen a guitar made entirely out of one kind of wood. most would probably say it wouldnt sound very good. but for one of my builds i was planning on doing a kl explorer with all bubinga. i mean bubinga neck fretboard and body. the stuff i have dealed with isnt very heavy, so i dont think that would be a problem. what do you think?

EDIT: i guess my dealing with bubinga was off. according to one site, bubinga is also about twice as heavy as alder. o well

Edited by killemall8
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Yeah Bubinga is pretty heavy, I found some nice stock once that looked perfect for bodies, but once I felt the weight I decided to pass on it, much heavier than I had expected. Beautiful wood though, great for many different uses, but a solid bubinga guitar might be too heavy.

I just thought of a cool guitar. All the same general species but different sub species or however you say that, class phylum kingdom stuff. Been a while since I've been in a science class.

How about an all maple guitar, but use as many different varieties as you can find. For example, maybe use some flamed hard maple neck with birdseye fretboard, with a ambrosia body maybe chambered and a spalted top. It would all be maple, just different types. Not really suggesting this for your idea, but it came to mind as something that would be kinda cool to do for fun.

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Never ceases to amaze me.

Guitar players will pick up a light guitar and think "hey, nice".

Bass players will pick up a light bass and think "cheap crap".

I never thought of it this way, it's quite true. :D

Not that it matters to me, my main bass is all maple and weighs 12 pounds. :D

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You CAN get Ebony necks. I dunno about ebony body slabs! Would look pretty amazing tho, with an Ebony bridge block, ebony knobs, Ebony Fretboard, Ebony Bobbins on the pickups, Ebony tuning keys, an Ebony Nut...

Id imagine it *IS* possible to do it all in one species, but expensive and a hell of a lot of work! I guess you would have to choose the species of wood specifically. Ash springs to mind and a possible wood for Neck and Body. Maple is another....

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This would be cool: rosewood neck and fingerboard. Hollowed-out rosewood body with seperate rosewood top.

This is pretty much what the production rosewood Tele was. I used to own one.

The neck was constructed like a maple Fender neck, but in rosewood. One piece, truss rod mounted from the back and a walnut skunk stripe.

The body was made of two hollowed halves of rosewood with a thin maple leaf in between, like the Norlin style pankake Les Paul bodies.

I think that the original one played by George Harrison at the roof concert wasn't even hollowed....

Mine looked terrific, but weighted a ton and was pretty much dead sounding. But this only proves that it might not be a good platform for a Tele, other designs might work better...

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I built a beast-esque guitar once of entirely mahogany except for the fretboard,which was ebony....it sounds great.I used alot of different mahogany types throughout though.

I think basses need to be heavier than guitars to balance out the longer neck.

and bubinga is HEAVY....I thinned the body to 1 3/8" ,made the body smaller in every direction,and routed all of the cavities deeper than needed in an attempt to lighten it up...it still weighs about 8 pounds.sounds great though.

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I built a beast-esque guitar once of entirely mahogany except for the fretboard,which was ebony....it sounds great.I used alot of different mahogany types throughout though.

I think basses need to be heavier than guitars to balance out the longer neck.

and bubinga is HEAVY....I thinned the body to 1 3/8" ,made the body smaller in every direction,and routed all of the cavities deeper than needed in an attempt to lighten it up...it still weighs about 8 pounds.sounds great though.

http://zdguitars.com/Custom_build/DarkStar...urpleheart.html

I built this guitar from purple heart (almost completely)

PH body and fret board. The neck is lacewood with a black walnut center strip and headstock cap.

The body is a smaller than normal body and it’s still a bugger in the weight department. Here’s the only issue. PH has to be treated with a UV protecting product to keep it from going brown over time. So, I had to use a UV treatment in the hard coat which I did on the body and the fretboard.

I personally hate hard coated fretboards but what was I to do!

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How well has the color maintained on that purpleheart? I had started on a purpleheart semi hollow a while back before running into some issues with it, I'll finish it at some point, anyhow I did a lot of reading and researching and it seems as you said UV finish is the best bet, I would imagine this may help some other certain woods that have similar issues, though many aren't light sensitive I would still be curious on a comparison.

If you wanted to go with a more oiled type feel to the neck on the purpleheart, I would say go with something like a SPF 50 sunblock, lol just kidding. Anyhow, nice job on that purpleheart guitar. J

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How well has the color maintained on that purpleheart? I had started on a purpleheart semi hollow a while back before running into some issues with it, I'll finish it at some point, anyhow I did a lot of reading and researching and it seems as you said UV finish is the best bet, I would imagine this may help some other certain woods that have similar issues, though many aren't light sensitive I would still be curious on a comparison.

If you wanted to go with a more oiled type feel to the neck on the purpleheart, I would say go with something like a SPF 50 sunblock, lol just kidding. Anyhow, nice job on that purpleheart guitar. J

Well Purple Heart gets brown as the light gets to it. I build in a very low lit environment so light wasn’t an issue. If you get a piece of Purple Heart and it’s brown when you sand it and route it the color will get purple again. It’s pretty much the same color as it was when it was first hard coated. The finish is flat so it was never really vibrant in the first place but UV protected hard coating will keep that purple looking sharp for a long time.

You can get UV additives at Sherman Williams because it’s necessary for a lot of wood floors.

I can understand your “issues” with your semi-hollow. Purple Heart is a killer to say the least. It’s the hardest wood I’ve ever worked with and the end grain is just menacing.

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The piece I had gotten was heavy as hell. It was probably 14"-16" wide and at least 8/4. The problem started when I routed out the chambers which went all the way through because I had a thin bookmatched quilted purpleheart back I was putting on and a maple top. After routing through for the chambers, the next time I looked at it, it had warped and twisted fairly bad.

I asked a bunch of people, got good advice on trying to fix it and I ended up getting it close to flat again, but I would have needed to take some thickness off to get it perfect which meant it was no longer useable for the project idea I had. BTW-trying to flatten that thick of purpleheart isn't fun. It was kiln dried wood too and I had it for a while before using it. I didn't have any instruments to measure moisture content at the time, but I am almost certain the outside was dry.

The only thing that I could think of was a problem I heard of when wood is kiln dried too fast and creates basically a shell and moisture content remains high inside and dry on the outside. But honestly I have no idea, I don't even know if that problem can happen in purpleheart. I'll use it though, I still have the bookmatched quilted purpleheart back, but I'll need a thicker top for the project though. J

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