Is it possible for a plywood guitar to sound good?

[neuftone]

I think a plywood bodied guitar can sound good.  Good is subjective...for the person who said a solid body would sound "better", the example of Danelectros is a good one to consider.  Would a solid alder body sound better than a plywood frame with masonite top and back?  In some senses, perhaps, but it would also lose a lot of its distinctive tone I think.  It would be different...better and worse in ways.

Sometimes the cheapest guitars can have an awesome sound.  God knows what my old 80s Yamaha superstrat is made of.  But I've played it before into a Dynacomp into a tube amp, and the tone was beautiful.  Nothing unique, but sometimes tone is more about playing and less about gear.

I say, go for it, if you like.  But I would temper it with some consideration of why you are doing it...if you are doing it to make an off-beat, perhaps unique sounding guitar made out of unusual materials, that's one thing, but if you want it to sound traditional and normal and just cut cost corners I'd probably say keep your eye out for Ebay deals. 

 

[PitchShifter]

Well in my spare time waiting for the Aussie dollar to get some traction back against the US, I got hold of a mates old discarded rusted out early 90s Peavey International Series. It has a chipboard type of body- so quite low-brow. I've got a few spare solid pickups lying round and a need to learn some guitar wiring skills.  I'm going to see what I can do with this little orphan!

 

[Mor Paul]

Well in my spare time waiting for the Aussie dollar to get some traction back against the US, I got hold of a mates old discarded rusted out early 90s Peavey International Series. It has a chipboard type of body- so quite low-brow. I've got a few spare solid pickups lying round and a need to learn some guitar wiring skills.  I'm going to see what I can do with this little orphan!

Just what you do with every orphan! Rip it open, and take the innards out. Maybe sell them...

 

[dbw]

Come one, come all, to Max's House of Discount Internal Organs, freshly harvested from orphan children every other Tuesday.

 

[jerryjg]

no. not only no, but hell no.

 

[jerryjg]

no. not only no, but hell no.

Of course, whats "good" to me might be different than your "good".
Having said that, I wouldn't turn down a Brazilian Rosewood Ply body harvested by Pygmies on their Pygmy Ponies deep in the Central Rainforests of Brazil.

 

[wynne004]

You get out of everything what you put into it.  Obviously if you spend $300 on a burnt ash piece of wood its going to sound better than the plywood body.  So are the $120 DiMarzzio pickups you better put in their as well, which is why Gibson's are so awesome and about $1,000 a piece.

My standard guitar I play is a Fender Standard Telecaster.  My back up is a squier strat, and my other back up is a 20 year old Hondo LP Special. A while ago it was acting up and I decided to replace everything.  I took it apart and saw it was made of plywood.  I immediately shipped back the DiMazzario Distortion pickups I purchased and bought some cheap pickups on Ebay.  Same thing with the rest of the electronics.  The only thing I spent a bit of money on were the tunners.

Anyway, the Hondo does not sound anywhere near as good as my Squier so I can't lie and say youre going to have an amazing guitar if you use plywood.  But, when I run it through my awesome Crate VXT Tube Hybrid Combo and put my Small Stone Chorus pedal on, it gets a good sound.

Point being - if its your first time, practice with plywood by all means, and buy some lesser end electronics to put into it.  I recently did this and, no lie, spent less than $45 dollars on EVERYTHING.  Is the guitar awesome - yes because I made and no because I'm not a proffessional guitar builder.  And it sounds like if you are even considering using plywood, you are not a professional guitar builder either (not trying to be mean, just stating facts). 

Go for the plywood if you want some cheap fun because I gurantee messing up on a $10 piece of plywood will be nothing to screwing up even a $50 peice of basswood.  When you can crank out a few of these and they start looking and sounding better than they should- take the next step.

Also, hitting on wood tone, they are right about certain woods being easier to work with carving and creating a better tone, but that doesn't mean you still can't use lesser woods.  I'm quite positive Rogue Guitars do not use the same wood as Gibson would, which is also why you can buy 10 Rogue guitars for the price of one Gibson.  Except don't use pine - it will warp super bad.   

 

[whyachi]

@wynne- I guess you've never seen a Pinecaster before?

http://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=12378.0

 

[Dan025]

i had a plywood flying vee and it sounded fine. it was made by KORT or something like that.

 

[AprioriMark]

In this necropost, I will say that I have owned one plywood guitar, and it sounded great.  Everyone who's played it has commented on how good it sounded.  I would upload a sound clip, but I have it in pieces again, waiting for a new bridge.

Honestly, people.  I'm sure there's good and bad plywood to use, just like there's good and bad maple, alder, mahogany, etc.

-Mark

 

[Elvarius]

This makes good reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_guitar

 

[Kadmium]

It's remarkable how much people over-emphasise the importance of the body material in a solid-body electric guitar. There's all sorts of odd assumptions, such as rare, endangered exotic wood species sounding better than more common woods, or indeed, that dead tree flesh is automatically the best material for a guitar body. If you play guitar with a moderate amount of distortion, you can build the body out of plywood, carbon fibre, acrylic, aluminium or granite and the actual sound difference will be very small. In a recording context, you'll get a bigger tonal change from moving the microphone on the cab half an inch sideways.

On the subject, Antonio Torres Jurado, sometimes called the Stradivari of luthiers, once showed, in a blind test, that people could not tell the difference between a classical guitar whose back and sides were made of spruce, and one whose back and sides were made of papier mache.

 

[Paul-less]

What color was the papier mache?

 

[Patrick]

im guessing it was painted

 

[AppleFreak]

Hi, i'm new here and saw this interesting discussion.

The short answer to the posted question is YES.

Back in the 70's and 80's alot of lower budged guitars used plywood for their bodies and there are alot of good ones. Plywood is different but that doesnt mean its bad. Nowadays most low budget guitars use undefined "basewood" for their bodies and people think that its better...it's NOT. I have seen bodies from basewood that are totally crap, even tho its stated as a solid wood. Cheap basewood is to light, and not nearly as dense as bodywood should be, but since its a solid wooden body people think its better then plywood. Its not at all. Plywood is also used in more expensive speaker cabinets due to its better tone quality. Even soundrooms use plywood for the same reason.
Now back to plywood guitar bodies. Back in the early '80's Vester made nice Strat copies that are now highly appriciated and soughtafter. Their bodyies were in fact made from plywood. Depending as always on the quality used, dont dismiss plywood as bad or undesirable. Good plywood has a good weight, good density and tone. Much more so then most ceap basewood bodies today.

A great example is this. I own several very nice guitars, including two Pensa-Suhr guitars, American Fenders and more. I recently bought a Japanese 1972 Stratocaster copy with a beautiful '69 maple neck. The guitar sounds amazing, pure tone with rich lows, well defined mids and sparkling highs. It sounds way better clean then my American Strat and even gives my Pensa-Suhr's a run for their money. When i opened her up i found it has a plywood body. Now, the Pensa-Suhr's have a mahogany body with a thick carved maple top. So they should sound way better, so why does the 40 year old Strat with plywood body sound so good? Who knows...

In short, depending on quality of parts used there are alot of plywood guitars that are really good and the same goes for other woods.
Remember, there are alot of guitars build from nice woods that sound like crap too. When you find a guitar that sounds really good, play and love it....no matter what kind of wood its made from.
And last but not least, 90% of tone comes from your fingers..... When Eddie van Halen played a wooodless headless Steinberger he still had every bit of his signature tone, give Mark Knopfler a cheap strat he will still have his signature sound.

 

[jay4321]

This is one of those things that can be debated endlessly, and I'm sure there are plywood guitars that work just fine. That hasn't been my experience but there are a lot of plywood guitars I haven't owned.

All things equal, there isn't much to argue in favor of plywood though. It's a mix of woods and a lot of adhesive, and would be very inconsistent in tone even compared to solid cuts of wood which can be pretty inconsistent itself. There's no reason to roll the dice investing in a guitar built around it, being that bodies in more tried-and-true woods are readily available (at least to me). I think your chances of having a good instrument in the end improve if you find a solid wood piece to work with.

Applefreak are you talking about BASSwood? Or by "basewood" do you mean something else?

 

[rossalex]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty8nHNdMwbg

PLYWOOD!

 

[Jusatele]

yes plywood, but there is so much processing going on how can you tell what is the true tone

 

[Death by Uberschall]

I've given up on plywood. I'm moving on to particle board. Not the big chunks of wood type used in home construction, too inconsistent. I'm going with the really dense fine grain made from saw dust particle board, you know the kind where if it gets slightly wet it bubbles up. Tone for days I tell ya.

 

[swarfrat]

The real question is, "what kind of finish was used on the paper mache body?" Thick unbreathable urethane/acrylic or nitrocellulose lacquer?