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walnut for a Telecaster shape guitar


scorpionscar

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Hi folks, a customer wants a guitar, Telecaster shape with arm rest and belly contour (Exactly based on a Yamaha model which is quite smaller than a traditional Tele), a neck of maple and set through joint glued on. At first instance we talked about spanish cedar, but due to he wants an oil and wax finish, I've talked him about a solid walnut body.
The guitar is going to wear a bridge humbucker and to play rock. I usually use walnut but never for a solid body and really don't know much about its qualities as a tone wood and also about the weight. I'm open to suggestions and your experience.

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If you already haven't, I strongly recommend you to study the magnificent work of @curtisa:

Regarding weight, as there's several factors affecting how the tree has grown, the only way to know the weight of a certain piece of any wood is to weigh it. Walnut has been used for solid body guitars quite a lot so there's no major issues to be expected. Fumble through your storage and find a lightweight piece that makes a nice sound when tapped.

 

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As you may have noticed in the study there was not too much difference between the woods. A magnetic pickup simply doesn't pick up the acoustic sound, at least not significantly. But there was some difference in the sustain lengths which comes from the "springiness" of various woods. However even that doesn't matter much for the body as it's a bulky piece of wood with less than 20 cm being stringed (from the heel to the bridge). The neck affects much more as it's both longer and thinner so there's much more vibrations going on.

Regarding walnut for body, the Wood Database is your friend. Comparing https://www.wood-database.com/english-walnut/ with https://www.wood-database.com/african-mahogany/  tells that European walnut is quite similar to African mahogany regarding weight, density, elastic modulus, modulus of rupture and hardness. Putting the values of walnut (+- some to get a larger variety) to the Wood Filter tells that it's quite similar to softer maples and harder mahoganies. Would that be comparable with a mahogany body with a maple top?

 

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