new regal body!

[Thestinkyween]

so i just got this regal body i custom ordered in the beginning of may. to be honest im pretty disappointed tho and trying to see if anyone can shed some light on this for me. Ive never seen a quilt maple top where the veneer was put on with the grain going vertically. i didn't pick unique choice but on literally every quilt maple top ive seen the grain is all horizontal. maybe im just not looking at it correctly or i dont know what im talking about so any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

 

[stratamania]

It looks like a good piece of maple to me with the grain going in the correct direction.

So I really don't know what you are getting at, unless you are confusing the pattern of the wood with the grain direction. But there is nothing wrong with it.

 

[Rick]

I've been looking at guitar tops  for over 40 years.  You got a good normal piece.  Grain is correctly oriented, in fact interesting, and the quilting is dispersed.  No need to look back.

 

[ChronoTrigger77]

I think I get what the OP is seeing.  The quilting pattern just happens to be more "vertical" than many.  Of course, if you look through quilt maple examples, you'll see lots of variation in that regard including some that are kind of diagonal or even curved.  There's no question that the grain on this one is correct though.  Personally, I think it looks fantastic and would be very happy with it myself.  Good luck!

 

[SeattleScotty]

I don't think I have ever seen a guitar with the actual grain horizontal. It's not the way you would use the wood if you were building an actual hollow guitar, which is what the electrics are all imitating.

 

[elstoof]

The grain always goes vertical, wood figuring goes perpendicular to the grain. You need to pop the figure as it’s difficult to see when unfinished, wipe some denatured alcohol over the wood to see what it’ll look like when finished.

Fwiw I think that top cap looks great, the grain lines are really interesting and I hope you post up pictures of the finished top so we can see the figuring. I kind of wish my Gibson R9 had a grain pattern more like that, it’s really uniform up and down on mine

 

[ChronoTrigger77]

Here's a gallery item with a finished quilted top not too different from the one on this regal.  It's satin, so the pop is less obvious than it might be with gloss, but you can clearly see the horizontal rolling (quilting) emerge in contrast to the vertical grain (including the pronounced darker grain lines).  I suspect it's the darker vertical grain lines that are distracting the OP, but as elstoof suggests, a little preview with denatured alcohol should reveal the quilt itself.

 

[deirdresm]

To elaborate on elstoof's answer:

Grain runs vertically on guitars because that's the strongest direction.

Figure tends to run horizontally because it's (often) related to compression of wood over time. That can vary due to growing conditions of the tree, obviously. Trees grown on a slope will tend to have diagonal figure.

Also, a lot of figure details only start showing during finishing.

 

[Jecht]

It looks good to me. Just need to put a finish on it to make the pattern pop.