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pine as guitarbody material??


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Anybody know if that pegboard stuff is masonite?

You mean the cardboard like stuff with a bunch of holes drilled in it? Yeah it is.

Why do you want a top riddled with holes? Why not just get a sheet of solid masonite?

sarcasm much? :D

soapbox is saying,in his own way,to use what works and has worked and not try to build a guitar out of crap you can buy at wal mart,so to speak

pine is for houses....hardwood is for guitars (IMO)

but by all means use whatever cheap crap you have...just don't expect it to sound good or last a lifetime

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nah, im going to show all of you.

Somday I will build a guitar compleatly from plastic, and its going to sound waaaay better than any of your 'expensive hardwood' guitars.

:D

Epiphone 'goth' flying v.

Plastic, except it sounds like a toy. Hardly worth the 500 bucks.

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Danelectros and Silvertones in the '60s were made from pine frames with Masonite tops and backs, with vinyl tape around the edges. They also had pickups made from lipstick tubes.

And lots of people seem to really like them. I wouldn't mind making a pine-and-Masonite hollowbody just for the heck of it. It could be a really fun project.

They were actually poplar framed with a poplar block in the center for the bridge. The new ones I dont know about.

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Here is my 2 cents:

The original Fender Broadcaster prototype was pine bodied. It resides in the Smithsonian Institute, without string tension. Ever wonder why ash was used forthe first production? Maybe because pine didn't work out well.

There are things called tonewoods (ie. ash, basswood, maple, mahogany, and on). They are called tonewoods for a reason. There are reasons you rarely to never see softwoods used for guitars. And really soft hardwoods like balsa. Ramparts has a whole page on this.

Research a little. Oak is considered an alternate tonewood. It is bright like maple, but requires so much pore filling it is rarely used. Cherry is also, and I really dont know why it isnt used more often.

I am getting tired of at least once a week seeing this question.

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I think the pine you get today at the home repair shop is like a totally different wood than pine they used 50 years ago and before. Real old growth pine is much more dense and closer to being like a hardwood. Dan Erlewine recently built a guitar out of 400 year old douglas fir wood. Even the neck. he said it's a neck through body (go to the Les Paul forum to see the thread about it).

I've been doing research about pine and masonite used on guitars. Found some interesting stuff.

http://www.specimenproducts.com/instru/schnellercaster.html

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I'd say douglas fir is quite a hard wood (don't no if it's a hardwood though :D )

I built a boat mast out of the stuff (we'll helped my old man build a mast when I was a kid) so it must be hard.

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I'm pretty sure douglas fir is classified as a "soft wood". Also depends on the particular piece. I have several scraps of 2x4's in my garage, etc. Some look to be pine, but when you pick them up, they are heavy as hell, other newer pieces feel like real wood mixed with styrofoam, although it's just "fast growth" pine. I have all kinds of oak that goes all over the place in how the pieces vary in weight and density.

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This was my inspiration, actually... i had always thought Danelectros were kinda cool, but when i read about that guitar, and thought, "That sounds like it would be a lot of fun to build!"

So i've got a really cool design sketched out that i might try and put together later in the summer. My plan is to use pine, plywood or masonite for the frame (and a supported block under the bridge) and a masonite top and back. If that experiment works out, i want to try using different materials for the top and back, such as aluminum or plexiglas.

I also think the idea of using pegboard for the top is a GREAT idea! Why bother cutting a single soundhole for a hollowbody, when you can have hundreds of little ones? :D

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Anybody know if that pegboard stuff is masonite?

You mean the cardboard like stuff with a bunch of holes drilled in it? Yeah it is.

Why do you want a top riddled with holes? Why not just get a sheet of solid masonite?

sarcasm much? :D

soapbox is saying,in his own way,to use what works and has worked and not try to build a guitar out of crap you can buy at wal mart,so to speak

pine is for houses....hardwood is for guitars (IMO)

but by all means use whatever cheap crap you have...just don't expect it to sound good or last a lifetime

It's sometimes hard to recognize sarcasm when it is typed.

Just curious, I thought hardwood and softwood didn't necessarily refer to hardness of the wood, but it referred to how or when it grew, or leaf type or something.

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And then there's Reverend guitars that have a back and front made of phenolic. Hard to believe.

http://www.reverenddirect.com/reverend/guitars_basses.html

Are these type of guitars just good for weird tunings maybe ? Cuz I heard Jimmy page just used his Danelectro for weird tunings.

Hey you never know with me if I'm joking or serious. Even gets on my own nerves :D

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Just curious, I thought hardwood and softwood didn't necessarily refer to hardness of the wood, but it referred to how or when it grew, or leaf type or something.

Softwoods are all from coniferous trees (needles, no leaves) like pine, fir, spruce, cedar, etc.

Hardwoods are from deciduous trees, the ones with leaves.

The terms have nothing to do with the hardness or density of the wood.

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i am a collector of everythng danelectro. even though i only hav one dao guita i hae a million god things to say bout them. the are very very very feather light and very resonant. the brass nut is great for an added effect for slide and barre chords. there are so many slght overtones too. i know a lot about danos. jimmy page tuned to an open slide tuning.

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Jimmy Pace has a DC model. It was used for open G (In My Time of Dying) and DADGAD (Kashmir, Black Mountain side). I am sure he used it for other things as well.

As far as specs, they ALL were 25" scale (even reissues) and had aluminum nuts. The pickups were called "lipstick tubes" because Nathan Daniels got the original housings from a lipstick manufacturer. The bridge saddles were rosewood, and deadened the tone a bit. The reissues had a 6 saddle brigde on some models and this bridge is available from brian. It will also fit an original.

As far as weight, I had a silvertone, and it weight about the same as a JEM. I have a doubleneck that is 13 LBS., not the lightest guits anywhere.

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Are these type of guitars just good for weird tunings maybe ? Cuz I heard Jimmy page just used his Danelectro for weird tunings.

I friend whom I occasionally jam with just got a brand new reverend. It is a tone MONSTER! The electronics give you huge versatility, and it plays like a dream! That's all in regular tuning, I haven't yet heard it in Drop D, but... damn, that'd be sweet.

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  • 1 month later...
Point being, you can build an electric guitar out of almost anything and make it work.

this is true - i made both a bass and a guitar our of 5mm marine grade aluminium plate glued to a hardwood frame (no idea what the wood is - it was actually an old shelf) and the both sound awesome.

also on the subject of danelectros - a friend of mine has a danelectro longhorn bass, and it's horrible to play i think. basses need to be solid in my opinion, or at least only have chambers in the wings. this thing is incredibly tinny and twangy sounding, no depth or "oomph" at all. and add to the fact that it has a WOODEN bridge saddle (that's right - one saddle that runs under all the strings so you can't adjust the intonation of each string individually at all) so there's no sustain to speak of at all. :DB)

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