What is the best guitar tonewood? Well, that’s a little like asking about the best flavor of ice cream. Even guitars which are mass-produced can still be unique in each individual instrument, and often the type of wood, even the particular piece of tonewood used in its creation can make a difference and add various flavors to the sound. Let’s look at some of the types of tonewood used to make guitars and examine their benefits and attributes. Each one may be the “best” depending on the sound you are looking for.
Alder
Alder wood is very light and has small pores, which makes it tend towards greater resonance in the tone, and excellent high-end characteristics. When used in solid body guitars, Alder tonewood produces solid midrange and good low end. If you are looking for a highly resonant tonewood that will also make for a very light guitar, Alder is a good choice.
Maple
Maple is much more dense than Alder and other tonewoods, and this density can flatten out the sound of a note. Maple is often used for the tops on electric guitars, because it can keep the tone even when the sound is greatly amplified. From a cosmetic perspective, Maple often has gorgeous grain and a wavy quality that can make for a great-looking instrument. These wavy grains also allow the wood to vibrate a bit more than wood with less grain, and that can increase sustain. Maple has some great combinations of traits for a hard tonewood, and will generally give you strong upper midrange sound, depending on whether you have hard or soft maple.
Mahogany
This type of tonewood is known for its consistency of density, meaning that there are less soft spots between the grains than you might find in other woods. This offers a more rigid tonewood, which means a thicker sound, and the wood also has large pores, which will offer a sound often considered a “nasal” sound because of the suppression of high frequencies. If you want to play high notes that still sound thick and rich, Mahogany is a good selection of tonewood.
Walnut
Walnut as a tonewood has some similarities to Mahogany, as it’s also very uniform in density, but it’s even heavier, and runs the risk of having a dampened sound, perhaps too “nasal”. Walnut is great, but if you are making a custom guitar with this wood, be careful on the selection of the actual piece that is used for the body or the neck, as you want one that has as much open grain as possible, to give the guitar some more resonance.
Custom Guitar Building: Select Carefully!
Those are some of the popular tonewoods, and there are many more that offer their own unique characteristics. If you are building a guitar, learn about tonewood, and ask your luthier to explain how each type of wood, in combination with the size of the instrument, will impact factors such as volume, sustain, tone, and frequency response. The more you know going in, the happier you’ll be with the final product.
Looking for a Custom Acoustic Guitar Builder?
Lichty Guitars makes some of the most stunning and sonically incredible acoustic guitars you’ll see anywhere. They know everything about tonewood and you can read more about wood selection on their site. Check out Lichty Guitars here: Acoustic Guitar Wood
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