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I've heard this term quite a bit regarding wood selection...but I have yet to find any real specifics about it. Do you just tap the wood with your finger? What are you listening for? Can you give me some advice/tips about this?? Thanks!

Thanks!

I'm working on my first guitar build and I'm making a strat-style body. The specs I found for the neck pocket are 5/8" deep, 2 3/16" wide, and 3" long. But is the pocket 2 3/16" wide from front to back or is there a slight taper to match that of the neck??? Thanks!!! Any extra neck pocket advice you could give would also be greatly appreciated!

I guess I was not as clear as I intended in my first post. I know that hard maple the the preferable wood for 1 and 2 piece necks (by this, I was thinking of fender style necks). I don't want to take any chances with soft maple for a traditional strat neck. What I'm thinking of doing is a 5 ply neck of soft maple/ash/soft maple/ash/soft maple. I want to keep the maple parts natural and somehow (this may be the hard part ) dye the ash the same green as the ash in the guitar body. Hope this helps! Do you think this is feasible??

I'm making a strat-style guitar out of hard ash, and I plan to stain/dye it a translucent colors (probably green). I got a nice piece of flamed soft maple today dirt cheap (1" x 6" x 5' for $3!!!!!!!!!) and I was thinking of using it for a laminated neck for the guitar. I was thinking of using 1 or 2 ash pieces in the laminated neck, and I want to color them to match the body. I know hard maple is preferable for i or 2 piece necks, but soft maple should work with some laminations, right? Do you think this will work? Hard ash is the same stuff as in baseball bats . . . so it should be pretty strong right? Help!

Thanks guys . . . you've me some good info! I'm just saving my pennies now . . . building up a decent workshop gets pricey!

Hello! I was perusing ebay and they seem to have quite a bit of good looking woods for considerably cheaper than I expected to pay (cheaper/smaller quantities than the local hardwood distributor and definitely cheaper than some place like stewmac.com). I was also looking at some boards for non-guitar type projects (e.g. I want to build some bedroom furniture and I found some beautiful figured cherry on ebay). Do you think it's a good idea to buy wood this way? Have you had any experience with this? What sort of things should I really look out for? Thanks!

Well, I wanted to try it because it was cheap . . . I got a 12' x 8' x 2" board for about the price of a standard alder body blank. If it doesn't work out for a guitar, or I make one and it sounds like crap, I'll just use the rest for a bookshelf or something. I don't mind the weight so much . . . I'm a big guy (6'5" and 250 lbs) so 10-11 lbs is no big deal if it sounds OK. We'll see I guess

Hello all! I'm new here because I finally decided to make the leap into guitar building. I'm going to try to male a traditional 'strat' style guitar so I can use my present guitar as a template and I can easily buy a neck in case my first neck comes out horribly. For the body, I got some hard ash from a local supplier (it was pretty cheap <$3/bd ft for 8/4 stuff) so I thought I'd give that a try. I don't have a bandsaw though, so I figured I'd try to cut the rough outline with a jig saw . . . which didn't work at all. Granted, the jig saw is an older (>10 years) model and only ~2.5 amps. That wood is way harder to cut then I anticipated!! I searched for threads about hard ash and I didn't seem to run across any that involved cutting it. How else do you think I can cut the outline?? Would a more powerful saw be able to cut the ash?? Can you use a jig saw on other traditional guitar woods like mahogany or alder?? Thanks for your help!