Need help choosing body wood for Maple/Ebony Neck/Alnico 4 humbuckers

[lucky13]

  Hey guys bought a Warmoth Quartersawn Maple neck Ebony fretboard with Stainless Steel frets.

  Also bought a calibrated set of Bare Knuckle Abraxas humbuckers which use Alnico 4 magnets.

  Could someone please assist me in Body Wood choice for a Tele build, obviously not looking for vintage Tele here.

Could someone with knowledge of these parameters mentioned above please guide me toward a good wood choice for the body, I dont want to get into any brighter territory than I already have with a Quartersawn Maple /Ebony neck.

  So I need something that will warm this guitar up without causing a  muddy or Shrill tone.

Im thinking a light piece of Black Korina if I can get a light piece on a custom order....Im finishing it myself but need to buy custom as Im going rear route, 720 mod, custom hipshot bridge route.

      All info appreciated....Thank you

 

[Cagey]

I'm in with the crowd that doesn't think the body wood has much to do with your tone. It depends more on your neck and pickups. Not counting all the others I've worked with, in my collection I have Swamp Ash, Alder, Maple, Korina and Mahogany bodies, variously chambered, hollow, and solid, and there's no rhyme or reason to how they sound. If you go by the necks, though, they tend to deliver what you might expect. That is, a Mahogany neck on a Maple body sounds warmer, while an Aframosia neck on a Mahogany body is very bright. Chambered/hollow vs. solid doesn't seem to make an audible difference.

So, a nice light [anything] would be a good choice.

 

[Jim_H]

I haven't experienced enough samples to give an authoritative answer, so I'm inclined to defer to the people that have...

This is Warmoths breakdown of the tonal qualities of various hardwoods.
http://www.warmoth.com/guitar/bodies/options/bodywoodoptions.aspx

I've always considered Mahogany to be a warm sounding wood, and Warmoth has apparently has come to the same conclusion.

 

[Cagey]

Mahogany is a warm-sounding wood - for a neck.

You'll notice if you look through the list Warmoth provides ratings for on woods, almost all of them save Mahogany and Maple fall in the middle of the scale. Yet I have two very bright guitars that have Mahogany bodies, and two warm ones with Maple bodies. However, they have opposite woods for necks, and the response/character follows the necks.

Of course, there are other considerations. For instance, many Les Paul bodies/necks are made of Mahogany, and they're not necessarily "dead" or "warm" guitars. But, they have a different construction. The body is thick and the neck is short, stubby and buried in the body. Everything is held in place fairly firmly. That design doesn't absorb vibration well, so you get a lot of sustain out of the deal. Also, woods will change from one region to another, from one tree to the next, or even within the same tree. Makes it difficult to predict what's going to happen. Swamp Ash is a good example there - the wood from the bottom 6-8 feet of the tree is much lighter than the rest of the trunk.

 

[crash]

The wood you choose for the body will a very minimal difference in your sound.  Just choose the wood that looks the best.  BK is always a good choice!

 

[greywolf]

I've used that neck combo on Mahagany, Alder, Purpleheart and Swamp Ash  and I'd agree the body has a minimal effect , that being said , I'd vote for mahogany .

 

[lucky13]

Thank you guys, I kinda suspected as much, I started thinking differently as some of the luthier sights had stated pretty strongly that bolt on necks have considerably less influence on the over all tone and that the body itself would be a heavy factor when using a bolt on neck...


I did buy a slightly higher out put pickup combo with a slightly darker tone to hopefully keep things sweet without being too piercing, so I guess Im gonna go with Black Korina for the body.

Possibly White Korina (I e-mailed for a quote and the possibility of White Korina for the body wood.) however I have since read that Black Korina is a primarily medium weight wood, where as White Korina is a medium to Heavy weight wood....

I have also read that a Heavier denser wood tends to brighten a guitar, at least thats the popular consensus in theory at least, though I question that mainly because of many of the darker sounding Gibsons I have heard that have Mahogany anchors for bodies, so Im starting to think the whole tone argument is another apples/oranges debate, and that Cagey summed things up in a nutshell.

p.s. Cagey I read that you ended up doing your own 720 mod for the hipshot hardtail on your strat, I was thankfull for that bit of info as it will serve me well as i will get the 720 Mod straight away, as well as, the .175 base plate model as I have learned that mathematically it is the right plate for that application, also thanks to your experiences and thread.

                                                        Thank you guys, for your insight and opinions.

 

[Cagey]

You have to watch those "luthier" sites pretty close. If they really are luthiers, they probably deal more with acoustics than electrics and even though we're still talking about guitars, the wood species/finish/construction considerations for those instruments are much different than they are for electrics. On the more electric-centric sites, many guys try to carry those considerations forward as dogma since the source seems unimpeachable. Problem is, they don't apply so it makes for some lively arguments.

 

[bluespoet]

I am going to join the chorus that choice of wood doesn't effect tone that much. The biggest effect on tone is your technique. this is the first place I recommend if you want to upgrade. Warmoth is not the only company that makes good parts, but it most certainly makes good parts. So for good tone, good technique, then Leo Fender used to say that the Pickups were 70%of the tone. I disagree in that I feel technique is 70% and Pickup choice and assembly being the remainder. Set up, does affect tone, but also playability.  So in building your guitar, use what ever wood choices you want. I think that appearence is important on how you perceive the value and quality of your guitar. I do laugh at pu reviews in that someone will say a pu will sound a certain way, when technique and guitar amp and guitar amp speaker have far more influence. It is some what of a crap shoot with pu, but over time if you don't like something change it.
After buying parts, learn to do setup and assy.  Stu mac has some good videos on that end as does youtube.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

I can't find it now, but I read some actually really thorough scientific investigation into body woods on electrics. It had graphs and everything!

The findings were that the body wood will definitely affect the unplugged sound of the guitar, but that the pickup itself almost completely removes those differences, so what ends up on the wire is the same. This also probably explains why people think that the body wood has affected their electric guitar - because they've been playing it unplugged.

 

[Cagey]

Now, now. Don't blaspheme. We all know perfectly well and good that hard objective data means very little in the guitar world. Tone is all about faith and beliefs and how much money we've spent.

 

[bagman67]

To give the Devil his due, a lot of this tone debate cannot be anything but subjective, because it basically boils down to "What do I like?" Of course, it's hard to quantify the concomitant pleasure of the blasphemous honk you get when you cram the signal of a nice set of P90's down the throat of an AC30 that's running nice and hot.  I just know it gives me what Beavis and Butthead would call a "special feeling."  And most of us, in that portion of our brains that feel the pleasure of softly clipped harmonics and so forth, cannot detach from the feeling to analyze objectively and logically what's going on, and why.


It's a natural human thing to move on from that pleasure to "my favorite noise is awesome, and yours sucks if it's different," and everyone gets to run around talking about "good" tone as if such a thing could objectively be said to exist.  Sure, it's stupid, but it's how humans survived for millennia - by associating in groups with a common set of beliefs.  The fact that sometimes folks get oppressed doesn't mean we should give up on the underlying concept.  Frankly, Cagey, your snarky assertion that tone is "all about faith and beliefs and how much money we've spent" is not necessarily a bad thing all the time.  We all need to rationalize stuff just to make getting out of bed in the morning worthwhile, so the fact that it spills over into guitar land should neither surprise nor even annoy us (except for Ed Roman-type noise, and look what happened to him).


Okay, clearly I need more sleep and/or more coffee, because I'm not sure I've been coherent here at all.

 

[Cagey]

No, you make perfect sense.

I'd apologize about being snarky, but it's out of my control. It's my inner Anne Coulter coming out. But, you have to admit, the passive-aggressive nature of sarcasm often causes some embarrassing introspection, which can be a Good Thing. Nobody gets hurt unless they want to be, and forced realizations about reality can be learning experiences.

Plus, it's fun <grin>

 

[bagman67]

For what it's worth, the "snarky" adjective was merely an observation, and not intended to convey opprobrium.  Lord knows I've spewed a little internet snark here'n'there.

 

[leo12.]

If your looking for a light piece of Black Korina why not try chambered, there is this going on
at Warmoth;
http://www.warmoth.com/ordering/chamberedbody30dayguarantee.aspx