do woods change the sound of an electric?

[The Nordic Gawd]

apparently the langcasters use very, very, old swamp wood. might have a different tone. go to langcaster.com and listen to the demo. it sounds like a tele kinda.

[Page_Master]

hi wes

you are probably right about the agathis not being the same as a Kauri Pine. i am not sure, but they might grow a different species of agathis in plantations in asia. for really cheap guitars that are made in indonesia, they usually harvest the trees really early, so then they just glue enough pieces together to get a 4-7 piece body blank and so on. they do this with many other woods too like alder, basswood and mahogany ect. i suppose it goes hand in hand - there is good agathis, and shitty agathis. just like there is good alder and shitty alder.

as for swamp kauri, i have never heard of it before, but i am sure it is a very beautiful tone wood. but you must remember, kauri is a common name for a species of wood, just like alder, mahogany, basswood and poplar ect. [some people even call African Limba African Mahogany, when infact it is not mahogany at all.] Agathis is the genus name of a plant. [like calling Mahogany - Swientenia > not many people call it this.] so in actual fact, the people who decided to call Agathis Agathis could be just using it as a trade name and it could be a completely different tree [or generally a really shitty tone wood] compared to real Agathis. [common name: Kauri Pine] anyways, did you know that Gibson made a limited quantity of guitars out of African Limba. [trade name: Korina. < name invented by Gibson.] if you go up to a wood dealer that has no knowledge of axe building and say: 'i want Korina!' they are going to say: 'hahahahaha, did you make that name up yourself?' [ this actually happened to me. ]

a lot of people might already know this stuff, but for those who don't, i thank you for reading.

Page.

[westhemann]

yeah...pushead has a korina explorer

[Drak]

Yeah, Page is right on!

Although 'Black Limba' is recognized as a usable guit wood these days, Gibson used regular Limba for the original Flying V's, (not black) which has a similar look to Mahogony. That is the 'Korina', the regular Limba.

I had a very similar thing happen to me years ago in a wood store.

"Korina? ...What you been smokin' boy?"

Gibson has some retardedly exotic name for balsa wood these days too.

Oh yeah...Chromyte!

[jaycee]

O man what a great debate...........the best thing is no one is right or wrong, marvelous

[86barettaguy]

I he was playing all this through his kramer striker. Basswood body i will add.

note that kramer didn't use basswood for the striker series. they used plywood in the 80´s/90´s. now they use alder.

either way, I'm not sure they're using basswood because it's cheaper. Ibanez used it for the JEMs for a long period of time before introducing alder (and it's still only a couple of JEM versions that use alder instead of basswood). kramer used basswood for the focus series. I think wayne guitars use basswood. isn't the wolfgang made from basswood as well? and the EBMM axis?

Basswood isn't a bad wood. It's different from alder, yes, but it has its pros and its cons.

[MikeB]

i must agree with G because there is a hype around certain woods, and a predjudice against others. there are really exotic rare woods that sound bad, and some cheap, plentiful cheap woods that sound great. Parker has the right idea, experimenting with other materials. his guitars rock, and they are carbon fibre! i think construction, ie poorly or well built comes into play more often. i am going to experiment with different woods on my guitars, using relatively similar densities, and shrinkage factors etc... my super - super strat is being made out of pitch pine, which is very comparable to maple if im not mistaken.

mike

[Speedy McFeely]

most of the guitars i have made, and owned are basswood, and alder. i have one mahogony jackson, and i don't like it because it's heavier than rikki lake. to me, for what i play, wood is a moot point. i have a wolfgang, and an axis, both basswood with maple tops, both sound sooo different. it's the pick ups. i have a jem 77fp with evos. and i have a jem7vwh with evos. they sound very similar. the only difference is fp is basswood, vwh is alder. not too much different, but the alder one is a little bit less muddy in high gain situations. i like alder because it is cheap, and sounds good, not too heavy, and very easy to cut with my jig saw. i would like to try a line 6 variax out, apparently it can model all of the popular guits of the past. plus the guy on the telemodders sight took the guts out of the variax and put them in a tele, and the sound stayed the same. cool. i like versitility, over wood. my fave guitar is a alder s-type with a birdseye maple neck and tung oil finish. oh yeah it has a airnorton in the bridge and a steves special in the bridge. sounds phenominal... uh to me.

[MikeB]

speedy, you have 2 jem 7's!!!!!!! i so want a jem 7 of some type in the future! anyhow i saw a variac in my music store, being played by a prett who thought he was Kerry King, trying to tapp, and failing miserably, tho i wont pass remark any more. i think it would be interesting, but i dont think the variac is for me, it would be a good studio guitar probably.

mike