For centuries, instrument makers have known which woods are best for tone and beauty. These makers had access to many important woods as these timbers traveled the world as ship ballast, as packing crates, and sometimes as the valuable commodities that they were and are. Though it is harder to obtain the materials than it once was, it can be done, and it is my job to find the best. We can honor tradition or we can forge our own with alternative woods, but you can count on it that wood that comes from me, is carefully chosen to be beautiful, toneful, and structurally very conservative. Please read | My Green Statement | to learn more about our concern for the hardwood forests and the regulations that protect them.
NOTE: The pictures shown below and in the gallery pages are amateur photos of my own stock. The pieces are unsanded, and in some cases distracting chalk notes and scribbles have been removed in Photoshop.
Most of the descriptions on these pages make comparisons to two very well-known sounds, rosewood vs mahogany. They make for a handy baseline comparison, but I acknowledge that indentifying the sound of a particular tonewood in a recording, in a blind test, or even from across the room is difficult if not impossible. Nevertheless, it is my belief that choosing the wood is a very important decision in the process. Though the differences cannot be heard well once the context is lost, still, the feedback loop set up between the player and the guitar can make all the difference. At least it does for me. Good wood alone does not make a good builder, but a good builder has a passion for good wood that cannot be ignored.
Indian Rosewood
Indian rosewood -- Dalbergia latifolia -- has been a dominant choice for guitar makers because of its beautiful tone, structural stablity, and its gorgeous dark, purplish hue. A byproduct of windbreaks grown to protect precious tea and coffee crops in India, it is a very sustainable wood.
In general, all rosewoods tend to have a long, smooth sustain in the bass with a wetter sort of sound (reverb wet). Indian rosewood is one of the lighter weight rosewoods, and tends to have a quick response, full tones, nice clear trebles, and that gorgeous rosewood bass. I confess to being completely prejudiced in favor of rosewood, any of them.
Mahogany
Mahogany -- Swietenia macrophylla -- shines in its round, sweet trebles and a bass that thumps beautifully with a rich, quick tone that doesn't sustain as long as rosewood. The slightly faster bass decay gives mahogany an advantage in front of microphones and in musical styles where that decay makes for a less cluttered sound. One prime example is the affinity Bluegrass players have for mahogany guitars. It excels at many hard-driving styles, like Delta blues and anything flatpicked. Fingerstylists love it too, especially if their style of play is enhanced by bell-like trebles and the separation between trebles and bass.
Sapele
Sapele -- Entandrophragma cylindricum -- is compared to mahogany so much that some call it mahogany, but it really is not. Let's stick that in the "who cares" file. Sapele is very workable and can be gorgeous. Plain sapele is a little bland in appearance compared to true Honduran mahogany, but Sapele is available in some outstanding figures, so if you want some beautiful figure to go with your mahogany-like tone, this is a great choice.
Walnut
Walnut -- Juglans hindsii, Juglans californica, or Juglans nigra -- is a gorgeous domestic wood known for building guitars with a warm, soft tone that I can only describe as bells being struck with a felt mallet. But not entirely. Walnut has clarity, for sure, and it has a nice balance. It has bass sustain, but it does it without growling. Make sense?
Pau Ferro
Pau Ferro -- Machaerium scleroxylum -- is an underutilized tonewood. The stuff works like a dream, finishes like a dream and it sounds great. Pau Ferro is often compared to rosewood, but it has a bass that is much drier than the typical rosewood. If you are looking for a guitar that somehow manages to do the "rosewood thing" and the "mahogany thing" this might be your ticket if want to avoid some of the reverb of a true rosewood bass.
Bubinga
Bubinga -- Guibourtia demeusei -- an African rosewood, is another one of the woods that seems to steal some characteristics from rosewood and some from what mahogany does. This one imparts some wet clarity to the bass and has a drier, sweeter treble after the fashion of mahogany. It gets compared to maple, koa and rosewood, and that sounds about right. It's all in there. Forgive my conservative wood picking ways, but I only like the look of nice straight-grained well-quartered Bubinga. I avoid flatsawn wood, no matter how popular a figure has become, and the popular beeswing or waterfall figures are not visually appealing to me personally, but everyone has their own favorite. The bubinga I have has beautiful color with lots of lively grain variations all running in straight, well-structured lines. The two harp guitars I've made from it were killer.
