gwm

That looks like ash to me.

I can't speak about swamp ash, but northern, hard ash is very stable (more so than most maples I've encountered) and plenty strong. The only drawback using ash for a neck (that I can see) is the open grain.

this place has lots of good stuff http://www.certainlywood.com/

I vote for fake. Check out the capital 'D's. A lot are pretty similar.

no prob

here is one from Ron Thorn http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p...=doV3BL/599H32&

Devon is right on about using a very very sharp iron (blade) and light cut. You can plane just about anything like that. I have a low angle stanley block plane that works great. The only catch is you have to keep it sharp. This is an art in itself and is worth learning. I usually hone my iron after ~10 min of constant use. You can tell the iron is dull when set for a fine cut, it won't shave anything off. Then you expose some more blade and POW... tearout (or the blade will 'skip' across the wood). You want to plane the wood so you can see through the shavings when held up to light. Good luck, Hope this helps.

Just to clarify, there are hard and soft maples growing in the eastern U.S. "Eastern" is a pretty non-descript term. gwm

Yeah, I tried searching over there too. Didn't work, hence the link. Ron really seems to know his stuff. His guitars are amazing too.

ok, I feel bad about not giving the address for the Thorn forum, so here it is. http://p213.ezboard.com/fthornnewsanddiscu...opicID=69.topic

check out thornguitars.com. Go to the discussion forum, there was a thread a while back on the shopbot. Ron Thorn builds his own cnc machines, so he knows what he's talking about. His opinion of the shopbot is that it is pretty much crap. Cheap parts and large tolerances. Check the thread for more in depth info. Sorry, no link. gwm

thats great! thanks for the tip.

"Our thought was that different wood types don't actually enhance certain frequencies; rather, they damp the ones you don't hear." Yeah, that is exactly right. The wood cannot enhance frequencies, as it does not supply energy to the system. Wood is passive in this sense. Kinda like why you need batteries for active pickups, to put energy into the system and enhance certain frequencies. gwm

sounds like a cool project!! in one of my eng classes we determined the speed of sound in a steel bar. the details of the experiment escape me at the moment, but an accelerometer was attached to one end of the bar. the bar was then tapped very very very lightly. i think if you did something similar, but maybe tapped the wood harder to get a whole range of frequencies you'd get some neat results. i think the mount for the piece of wood would be key though. depending where you clamped it you'd get different responses. keep us posted. gwm

if this is going to be your first guitar project--USE CHEAP WOOD!!! basswood is a good choice. most people will mess up at some point building a first guitar, and its not cool to mess up expensive wood. trust me, i know about this.