tone wood combination question - custom baritone 7

[trickae]

First post here,

I'm currently puttind down the specs for a custom guitar. I was wondering if the following neck wood combination would work for a baritone 7 string. I'm after low register tightness and articulation.

Neck: Flamed maple / wenge / bubinga / wenge / Flamed Maple
Fretboard: pau ferro or coco bolo or ebony.

Would the neck be best suited for lead guitar playing and metal rhythm work? I want to emphasize more mids and have a compressed upper register.

Would pau ferro go best with this combinaton or shold I look at cocobolo or ebony? I'm leaning more towards pay ferro as I've only heard nothing but praise for it being a great neck wood.

Could I get some input on the wood combinations. Thanks

 

[OzziePete]

Is this a Warmoth guitar you are looking to have assembled or are you going totally custom with a luthier?  :icon_scratch:

 

[trickae]

custom luthier here in Australia - but these forums have avid tone wood guru's.

 

[iamdavidmorris]

Don't forget to make sure the luthier is using a glue that has good tone!  :laughing11:

Quite honestly, my humble opinion is that the outcome would be unpredictable.  It's going to come down to too many factors, and my guess is that because it's a laminate neck, it will mostly sound like a laminate neck.  Will it be good for your purposes?  Yes, if it's well built and if you play well.  If for whatever reason you end up not liking the tone, it can probably be altered with a decent EQ pedal.

That being said, it's likely to be incredibly stable and gorgeous.  It will also make you stand out from the crowd.  I'm a fan of laminate necks, for sure.  As for the fretboard, you can't go wrong with any of those choices.  If you're drawn to one more than the other, you should go with it.  If tone is your concern, cocobolo is going to sound more like rosewood, ebony is going to sound more like maple, and (from what I've heard) pau ferro will be somewhere in between, but more like maple than cocobolo.  One thing to note is that many woodworkers have developed an allergy to cocobolo from working with it a lot.  That's unlikely to affect a guitar player, but I put it out there anyway.  It is pretty.

 

[kboman]

Last I read, cocobolo is a very threatened species so I'd try to avoid that.