Jeremiah said:
After some further reading, I'm not sure the poplar that Warmoth sell is necessarily the same wood used by some guitar manufacturers.
According to the Warmoth website, the "poplar" they sell is Liriodendron tulipifera, a wood which is only native to North America, and is generally known as tulip tree or tulipwood outside the USA. I would guess it is therefore unlikely to have been used to manufacture cheap guitars in Southeast Asia or Indonesia as it does not grow there. A related wood which could have been used is Liriodendron chinense (Chinese tulip tree.) However, I have not seen this described as poplar so I'm not sure.
The wood which is more generally known as poplar comes from trees of the Populus genus, which includes a large number of different species which grow in different parts of the world, including some which are known as Cottonwoods in the USA. I'm not sure which (if any) of these have been used to make guitars, though apparently some species have been used to make the backs of violas so they have potential as tonewoods. Maybe someone who knows more about the history of electric guitars and wood could clarify this. :icon_scratch:
Thank you for pointing this out. It intrigued me, so I did a small amount of research online. The Poplar that the Warmoth wood description refers to as Liriodendron Tulipifera is also commonly known as Yellow-Poplar. It is sometimes referred to as Tulip-Poplar and Tulip Tree (as Jeremiah stated above) and is a member of the Magnolia family. Anyway.... I'm not a horticulturist or botanist. I came across this page
http://www.americanforests.org/productsandpubs/magazine/archives/2002summer/feature1_1.php which mentions a special Tulip-Poplar Liberty Tree that was used by Taylor Guitars to make the back and sides of a special run of acoustic guitars. That in itself didn't surprise me so much, but the following description of one of the guitars by the article’s author did: “For those who know guitar sounds, it's the difference between a guitar made with tulip-poplar and one made with mahogany or walnut. For the rest of us, it's just a sweeter sound to the strings.” Of course we have to take that with a grain of salt. After building and selling 400 of these poplar & spruce acoustic guitars, Taylor eventually used the remainder of the wood from the Liberty Tree to create a different model, the T5, with a poplar top. http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/electric/models/t5/LibertyTree/
It seems that a lot of people already know about Gibson’s “Old Hickory” which is made of a Tulip-Poplar tree with a hickory fretboard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nug9U9W6giA
Then there’s this odd reference in an article by Courtney Pancost: “Often, the electric guitar is made of a 'good sounding' wood like ash or poplar, with a laminated top of a more attractive wood for appearance.”
http://e-library.net/articles/Music/The-Guitar-Its-History-and-Construction.htm
So… I guess there is no point to my post now. I hoped I was going to find a variety of types of poplar being used which would explain some having less than desirable tone characteristics while others sound great. In fact, the only specific poplar mentioned as a guitar body wood is Tulip-Poplar, the same stuff Warmoth uses. At this point, I think I’ll just rest on my signature quote; if it sounds good, it is good.
