Recommended choice of neck wood for chambered korina body

T

tamuag

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Hi all. I've been wanting a chambered korina Strat body (I'm thinking transparent red) from Warmoth for years, I've finally got the money for it, but I don't know what the neck ought to be made of. This will sound shallow, but I like the aesthetic qualities of a guitar with a neck and fretboard made out of the same kind of wood (e.g., maple neck and maple fretboard). Perhaps more importantly, I'm nervous that it will sound too warm. Preferably, the neck balanced out the body a bit (if that makes sense).

If it helps any of you narrow down options: I almost always play unplugged and enjoy playing Muse, RHCP, Pearl Jam, and Rage Against the Machine.
 
Wenge / Wenge or Padouk / Padouk would fit the bill. Depends on whether you like chocolate or black cherry.
 
Have you checked out the Warmoth page on neck woods? It describes the tonal characteristics of each wood they offer, which would give you a good idea of which wood (combinations) might give you the sound you're after.

FWIW I've just built a chambered Black Korina Jazzmaster. I was aiming for a warmer sound and so went with a Goncalo Alvez shaft and Macassar Ebony fretboard, which gave me what I was looking for. Had I wanted a brighter sound I would have initially chosen Maple, but only because I didn't know yet about raw necks and how wonderful they are when burnished. Now that I do know, I would choose a raw Canary neck (tho’ not sure what wood I'd choose for the fretboard).
 
I put a transparent red finish over a chambered Korina body that my VIP is made out of, and used a Bloodwood neck with that...

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Feels and sounds great. Bloodwood is a dense wood, almost like red Ebony, so it's not warm at all. It is heavy, though. Between the Korina and that Bloodwood, that guitar ends up weighing around 8lbs.

Here it is in some better light...

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I put together a DragonBurst BK body with an all Rosewood neck back in '08 when I worked at the turtle house.
http://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=4897.0
 
Thanks! That Bloodwood really burnishes up nicely. That's one that you have to be careful picking up, because it'll wanna slide out of your hand.
 
If you can, it'd be worth getting in contact with Warmoth and seeing if they can make the neck stock out of korina. Necks can be made from both white and black korina, and though it's not a common Warmoth option, I'm pretty sure they have done it in the past and only don't have it listed normally because it can be a little hard to get hold of korina suitable for necks. But you never know, they might have some suitable korina in stock. You could then have that finished in the same colour you have the body, so the back of the neck and the body will match perfectly.

For fretboard, ziricote can have colouration similar to the darkest of black korina, and it's got a bit of a red undertone to it, like some rosewood can have. It's pretty dense, so it should keep the sound a little brighter. Depending on the actual colour of the body, and going with the theme of matching the neck to the body, either bloodwood or padouk would match, depending on just how bright the body is. (Bloodwood would match white korina more, padouk for black korina).

I'll say this for tone: One of my builds, at one point, was a black korina Thinline telecaster with an all-rosewood neck. It was a thick neck, too, and 24.75" conversion scale. I've actually taken that guitar to pieces now and am using the neck elsewhere, because the semi-hollow korina and rosewood combination actually was still too bright, at least for my tastes. Not as bright as a normal Thinline Tele, but still much brighter than even bog-standard set neck solid body guitars.

I you're going to use single coil pickups, or lighter, lower-output humbuckers, I advise you don't worry about the tonal balance of the woods much, because the tone of korina, combined with bolt-on construction, isn't actually that much different than your typical alder-bodied bolt-on. If you're using thicker-toned humbuckers then you might want to stick to the denser neck woods, but I still doubt it'll make much of a difference. If anything, I'd pick the woods you like the look & feel of and then pick your pickups to get the tone to where you want.
 
FWIW here's a link to the currently available necks w/BK as a shaft wood:

http://www.warmoth.com/Pages/ClassicShowcase.aspx?Body=1&Path=Spotlight&nWood=13
 
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