"best" wood for minimal or natural-looking finish & big tone?

[rlscherer]

Hey,

I am a minimalist when it comes to finish. And, so I ask: What body wood do you recommend for a Thinline or T-style guitar that will get the minimal finish necessary? What does best with the least?

I would prefer not to use grain filler if I don't have to; I want the guitar to look and feel raw and unfinished. I simply want the finish to protect the wood from me, my sweat, the elements, the gig-life, and so on.

Also: this will be a two humbucker guitar, with no regard for traditional Tele tone. The T-style body is the most physically comfortable (and stylish), but I prefer Duane Allman or Derek Trucks for tone. Of course, I am always interested in unique woods, and anything unusual, as well.

What do you recommend? Advice is always appreciated!

thanks,
RLS

 

[m4rk0]

Alder is very easy to finish..  Ash would be better if you still want to feel the grain..

 

[pabloman]

Any porous wood is easy to finish with oil. The OP is concerned about tone as well. Mahogany would definitely be a strong contender. It looks fantastic with some tru-oil. If you want to go exotic there's always koa and korina that will at least keep you ballpark tonally.

 

[rlscherer]

Hey,

Thanks. Yeah, I am only going T-style or Thinline because I love playing that shape guitar, and I love semi-hollow bodies, as well.

I'm considering all rosewood, walnut, korina, mahogany, koa, and any combination of backs & tops that will get me there. Pretty much the only woods I'm not considering are ash, alder & basswood.

I have an ash T-style that is good, but tone-wise I want to go in another direction & warm it up. Think big, sweet humbucker sounds, a la Derek Trucks, Duane Allman, as well as the ability to go into the jazz world. Outside of guitar, I've always though Sonny Rollins had great tone, and would love to get there somehow! I primarily play blues, jazz, Americana and so on. The guitar should sound woody, rich, "piano-like" (whatever that means), and so on. As far as acoustics go, I prefer mine with rosewood back & sides, over my wife's all mahogany acoustic, if that helps at all.

Now, with the finish, I like the guitar to feel as natural as possible in my hands. I don't mind minor little bumps and nicks, but I hate finishes that crack or chip off. I used to play a PRS hollowbody 1, but after I chipped & cracked the finish completely off in a few spots, I felt like it crossed a line. Here was this beautiful guitar with this mirror-like, deep finish, but please ignore the spots where bare wood shows through. So, I love a wood & finish that wears and tears naturally, and absorbs the little bumps with grace—but still protects the guitar from sweat, spills, etc.

thanks for the help!

peace,
RLS

 

[Fidde]

My Wenge VIP sounds really "big" and has no finnish at all. Looks great that way!
Check it out in the VIP section  :icon_thumright:

 

[Tipperman]

Wenge is really nice in my opinion. No finish, great feel, great sound. Walnut is another great body wood, for sure. I don't know much at all about finishing, but a friend of mine has a Walnut guitar he built and he used Shellac to finish it. Dunno if that mean soil would work too, but it's worth looking into. Big, tight sound, very jazzy to my ears. Very articulate.

 

[crash]

Wenge thinline with humbuckers!!!

Or

Mahogany back with Walnut top - finish with tru oil.

That would be what I would build, but I already have 2 teles in the works.

 

[leo12.]

How about a mahogany La Cabronita (not available hollow or chambered) with wood mount  humbuckers  control is basic vol & 3 way
for versitility you could  fit dual concentric vol / tone pot. Goncarlo Alves neck, ebony f / board no finish required. Black pic / guard, to match
ebony f/ board inlays ? cream?
Oil finish (no experence there check finishing threads for body) or  rattle can matt poly (no experence there also). Why bother grain filling
with low sheen more natural wood look.
I would say Black Korina chambered or hollow  check thread builds, its on the brighter side of Mahogany with good mids,
also Pau Ferro for the neck (again no finish).
Decisions, Decisions, so many builds so little time.

 

[leo12.]

Forgot to add neck wood plays alot in tone (check neck woods).
Some builds to check:
lafromla1: Rosewood / Wenge Thinline thread  with P90s ( Roudhouse pickups Trouble Trebles forum member ).
vol knob : double f hole Bubinga Thinline.
The central Scrutinizer: Korina Rosewood thinline G/A neck.
And many more.

 

[greywolf]

I'm  partial to  Koa , it takes fininshes well and can be left with a very minimal finish , in Hawai'i  where it grows , it is unusual to see Koa with any significant finish

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

I'm looking for something similer as well.

  Want to build a solid esquire style with natural wood (oil finish) something grainy/ knotty.

When I go to the builder on warmoth, it does not give me many options that are recommended in this thread.

 

[apat]

This is my first scratch build.  Thinline style body is Walnut and top is Ash all finished in Tung Oil.

No grain filler, the open grain of the ash is great and the walnut back and sides finish hard and smooth.  Great natural contrast.

As far as tone it is quite bright but never shrill.  Since the pics were taken I swapped out the cheap gfs pickups for a set of used PRS VB/HFS opencoil humbuckers which really make it come alive.  Can get some very nice round jazzy tones on the rhythm side.  My fav is the middle position with both coil's split, beautiful round clean tones and kicks in heavy with the buckers on full.

 

[greywolf]

Koa if you have the coin

 

[Jusatele]

Whatever your taste is. Do you need someone to tell you what you like?

 

[Jet-Jaguar]

I recently got a pau ferro neck.  Right now, it and my rosewood necks are my favorites for feel.

It's very beautiful.

 

[stubhead]

Duane Allman and some of the older sax players are an absolute benchmark in tone for me. Though I love the early 60's Coltrane with McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones, I don't want a guitar to sound that way - more Ben Webster... But I do it with tone controls and pickups and amplification, if you're going to play in a band that covers everything you need to be able to access more strident tones too. Allman used a dimed-out no-master-volume 50w Marshall feeding Altec-Lansing speakers instead of the buzzy, distorted Celestions that are a more typical "rock" choice. Santana used JBL's instead of Celestions, Webers or others, so you may want to look at "PA & bass" speakers instead of "guitar" speakers. There are a lot of good choices nowadays, like the Eminence Beta12 "bass" speaker.

Once you have an amp feeding hard-working power tube output into clean speakers, you can actually use even a Strat with good tone controls to feed it and still get a full sound, as people like Eric Johnson & Jeff Beck have demonstrated. Any of my ash or alder guitars will do, but I am an avid user of TONE CONTROLS on the guitar - wire 'em right, they'll help you, not hinder you. So much of what people think of as "tube overdrive" used to be power tubes, and no preamp 12AX7 is going to do that, no matter what you do to it. Heck, listen to early 70's Jerry Garcia vs. the buzzy, hissy late 80's to endgame stuff. He used to know too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bwwo2Q9Cy8&list=PL1FE599A9AEDA6CE3&index=17&feature=plpp_video

 

[keeper006]

I've had combos of a lot of the woods mentioned and the simplest finish, fattest tone guitar I have is a mahogany body with oil finish.