Guitar Wood

My initial attraction to woodworking was the wood. Its many colors, grain patterns, and texture make it a wonderfully interesting medium. Having worked as a cabinetmaker, and later a designer and builder of studio furniture, I had a wide experience working with different woods, but it wasn't until I studied woodworking with James Krenov that I really began to understand the material. Jim taught us all that wood not only has an assortment of physical properties but it also has a personal effect on both the maker and the client. He would always encourage us to pay attention to texture, color, and the feel of the wood because we relate to things in this way. Relating those thoughts to guitar wood, we can expand on the personal sensory effect with the addition of sound. The wood is the reason the instrument sounds the way it does.

Types of Guitar Making Wood

Classical guitars tend to be fairly traditional instruments in their design and construction. After all, most of the music played on them is fairly traditional. One thing I have learned about tradition is that some things are traditional because they work. Occasionally, I will try building an instrument using different combinations of guitar wood and materials and experiment with new things and occasionally there are surprises, but there are always many more instruments built using the traditional wood combination of rosewood with spruce or cedar. These wood combinations work and you can't argue with success.

My first guitar was built using the following wood combination: western red cedar for the top and grenadillo for the back and sides. Grenadillo is not a wood typically used in guitar making, but it was what I had available at the time, being low on funds, and since the guitar was for myself, grenadillo was just fine. Besides, it looked a bit like rosewood. In reality the only thing it had in common with rosewood was density - it was very heavy. The guitar turned out all right but the grenadillo was difficult to work, and very hard to bend. Unless using an atypical wood is the only way you can get an instrument built, I recommend using rosewood, even for your first instrument.

Guitar Wood for Specific Parts of the Guitar

A guitar uses an assortment of different wood types in its construction. The different types of wood are chosen for particular applications mostly because of their physical properties, but visual considerations cannot be discounted. For instance, the soundboard for a classical guitar is usually a spruce or cedar. These are both soft wood types which are nonporous, and are not sound dampening. Both woods, spruce in particular, have a high strength-to-weight ratio enabling them to be made quite thin and maintain adequate strength while being very light, hence easily moved. Both these attributes make these very good wood choices for sound production.

Guitar Wood for Backs and Sides

The backs and sides of a guitar are usually some type of rosewood. Today, mostly Indian rosewood is used because Brazilian rosewood is scarce, prohibitively expensive and difficult to export due to government regulations. These rosewoods are excellent choices for backs and sides because they are dense, bend easily and are attractive in both color and grain. In a set of sides the ideal wood quality is stiffness. The stiffer and denser the wood, the less dampening it is to sound production. The back acts as a sort of reflector of sound, so again stiffness and density of wood are important.

Both Indian and Brazilian rosewood have natural oil which is noticeable while you are working it, as it will come off onto your skin and tools. Does this oil in the wood have an effect on acoustics? My guess is that it contributes something. Whenever I have used another atypical wood for back and sides, say maple, which is not porous and has no oil, or Macassar ebony which is somewhat porous and has very little oil, I notice a difference in the sound when all else is the same. It can best be described as a drier, more brittle sound, not better or worse, just different. Some wood types such as cocobolo and lignum vitae have so much oil they can be difficult to glue which can create problems unless handled properly.

The sides on all Bogdanovich guitars are laminated as demonstrated in the book and dvd. The sides are laminated for strength, weight reduction, stability, and consistency from guitar to guitar. J.S. Bogdanovich Guitars carries side laminations in three different species of wood in the store.

Guitar Wood for Neck

Guitar necks are usually made of mahogany. Mahogany is dimensionally stable, medium density, and very strong. Spanish cedar is another wood used for necks; the difference being it is lighter and a bit easier to carve. Mahogany is typically darker in color as pictured on left. Both these woods will made a great classical guitar neck. There is however a slight difference acoustically in that mahogany will generally boost the bass response a bit which most likely can be attributed to the difference in wood density.

Guitar Wood for Fingerboards

Guitar fingerboards are usually made of ebony or rosewood. Higher end guitars tend to use ebony more often than not. Ebony is very dense wood and has excellent wear resistance. Since the fingers are constantly hammering and sliding around on the fingerboard, ebony seems to be an excellent wood choice.

Guitar Wood for Linings, Purflings and Bindings

The remainder of the components such as the linings, purflings, and bindings are not as critical as far as wood selection goes. For the linings I use mahogany but I have seen basswood, tan oak, and Spanish cedar used with success. The bindings and purflings are an aesthetic choice; the only necessary characteristics are that the wood can be easily bent and not porous as a porous wood cut very thinly as in purflings may appear to have visual defects in the end product. J.S. Bogdanovich Guitars carries the finest grade mahogany lining laminations in our store