Tuesday, 25 February 2014 Lunch Report

Lunch today – grilled chicken wrap with carrot sticks.

While I wish G&L would do more combinations with MFDs, one thing they are doing to keep things interesting is using alternative woods for their instruments (witness the Okoume ASAT in yesterday’s lunch report). Some of these less common woods, such as Limba (Korina) and Khaya (African Mahogany) have a strong and successful historic use in musical instruments. Others, such as Okoume and Monkeypod (Indian Walnut), are relatively new. And one in particular, Sugar Pine, was used by Leo Fender on the earliest Esquire/Telecaster guitars only to be abandoned and then re-discovered as a tonewood. Here’s a brief summary of the body tonewoods used by G&L. BTW, despite it being called “Equatorial Mahogany”, Okoume is not in the mahogany family (but Khaya is). In fact, it’s related to frankincense and myrrh!

Big Leaf Maple
Green Ash ("swamp" ash)
Honduran Mahogany
Khaya (African mahogany)
Korina
Lacewood
Monkeypod
Okoume
Red Alder
Sugar Pine
Tilia (Basswood)
Yellow Poplar

So, are you interested when G&L uses new tonewoods? Are there others you’d like to see them use? Are there any woods you dislike? For me, I think Okoume and Sugar Pine make nice sounding guitars, but the softness of the wood worries me (dings and dents). I’d like to see some of these woods topped with a maple cap, too. I don’t get the Savannah series with a limba top. Aesthetically it’s fine, but I’m not sure what it does tonally. Also, I think the use of Pau Ferro is great. Bassists have known about it for a long time and it’s a great alternative to ebony.

Tomorrow I’ll try to do something for the bass players.

GG

My usual fresh veggies, fruit, roasted chicken.

I was just asking about pine in reply to yesterday's LR. Curious to its advantages or disadvantages.

Generally, I like hearing about new wood combos being used and ultimately, to me, is how it sounds/plays. The look/feel of different woods is quite interesting but if something is visually striking and yet does not come together soundwise, it's not worth it. For example, I have a maple body home brew with a compound neck that just sits there. Looks good but just can't find the right PU's to make it fun for me.

And don't get Bloody Fingers started on tone woods!

Lunch was a quick chicken taco, now I am ready for dinner!

Tried a sugar pine alnico ASAT last year that I did like quite a bit, but found a Broadcaster same day, guess which one I have. May get a sugar pine one day, who knows. I love the look of the Lacewood ASAT Commemorative ASAT but no clue on what it sounds like. Heck, I would get it just for the look, any insight into tone and texture appreciated. I'm on the fence with spalted maple, mainly due to the look. Grain has to be just right for me. Maple has a sweet sound, so how different is "spalted"?

I have looked at koa and acacia ukeleles, maybe we could try that or a top on semi-hollow mahogany body......

So, are you interested when G&L uses new tonewoods?

I don't get interested in new models very often, but I love my old maple and mahogany G&Ls - and I don't care what anybody says about that! I've seen some gorgeous new G&Ls with flamed or spalted maple tops, but they didn't trip the GAS meter at all. I came across an eBay listing for a '90s-vintage ASAT Bass with a very heavily flamed ash body that almost had me clearing out space recently.

My wife dragged me to a craft show in Baltimore last weekend, where I saw a table made of walnut crotch and koa. That was some seriously beautiful wood. I would have liked to see that combination in a guitar or bass.

For me, I think Okoume and Sugar Pine make nice sounding guitars, but the softness of the wood worries me (dings and dents).

I may have mentioned this in another thread recently, but there was a very sad-looking Chinese Fender in my local Guitar Center. I don't know what the body wood was advertised as, but it was clearly a very soft Asian pine. It looked like somebody had dropped the guitar - not only was a big chunk of finish missing on one edge of the body, but the wood was compressed flat across the entire ding.

Grain has to be just right for me.

Same here, especially for ash and alder. A tight, quartersawn or rift-sawn grain can be pretty sweet under the right finish, but random face grain or wide growth rings just don't do it for me.

Maple has a sweet sound, so how different is "spalted"?

I don't think there should be any difference. Spalting is a cosmetic "defect" resulting from a parasite boring through the tree. The tunnel is very narrow and doesn't effect the wood's integrity, but a ring of mineral deposits surrounds it. The dark arches or "spalting" are just the appearance of the mineral rings where they cross out of the face grain. Otherwise, spalted maple is the same as any other from the same species.

Ken

Hey GG. Let me just say that it is an honor.....

Regarding tonewoods, my level of playing makes it so that so the woods involved don't make much of a difference. That said, I have come to believe that MFDs may well have been designed with maple in mind. Mahogany seems special for Leo's early basses, especially the L1K. I like ash for T-style guitars, and the best S-type guitar I've ever played (a modern Legacy) features alder with a maple fretboard. I'm not a big fan of rosewood fretboards, but I have a thing for Pao Ferro and Ebony. So sue me! - ed

I have similar reservations about soft woods for guitars. Even hard woods end up with buckle rash. I don't care about the tonal influence of poly vs. nitrocellulose lacquer and I'll take the harder shinier poly too.

Interests come and go. Sometimes I have an immediate attraction to a design. Sometimes I develop interest in a look after viewing several examples of a guitar. Sometimes my interests change when I grow tired of something.

It has not been a specific wood but an interest in a more exotic design in a guitar that has been a waxing and waning interest. I am also hesitant about investing in something I am too concerned about preserving. I take care of everything. But I do not have the luxury of guitars as art for display. I have them to play more than anything. Anything "collectible" is off the radar although something that is "collectible" might be on the radar for different reasons. There are things I like about the Blondie but I'd rather have a regular guitar with that look and wiring configuration so I could play it without so much concern. I like the LE 2 for the unique pickup configuration and Autumnburst finish. I definitely don't want a wood just because it is unique = unproven.

Maple has a sweet sound, so how different is "spalted"?

I don't think there should be any difference. Spalting is a cosmetic "defect" resulting from a parasite boring through the tree. The tunnel is very narrow and doesn't effect the wood's integrity, but a ring of mineral deposits surrounds it. The dark arches or "spalting" are just the appearance of the mineral rings where they cross out of the face grain. Otherwise, spalted maple is the same as any other from the same species.

Ken,

Regarding a difference between spalted and regular maple wood, there may be no detectible difference in its tone, however, there logically ought to be because the wood is broken up by the spalting. It is a physical and cosmetic condition that can effect the strength of wood. Spalting can lighten (weight), soften and create sponginess in wood. Seems to me that if there is any difference between woods due to the usual suspects (i.e. density, hardness, etc.) the spalted aspect would have to impact the way sound resonates through a wood. Now with a cap who knows? I am not sure the wood of a cap makes a difference. I wonder if the presence of a glue seam between two pieces of wood does not have more influence than the type of wood that the cap is comprised of.

Last edited by Salmon on Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not a big fan of rosewood fretboards, but I have a thing for Pao Ferro and Ebony. So sue me!

I used to be the same way. Not so much about Pao Ferro, but a nice vintage gloss maple board or a stained ebony board were the best in my book. The rosewood board on my Interceptor Bass was love at first sight, and I've rarely looked back...

I was going to put some Interceptor porn here, but Photobucket is failing me yet again. Has anybody else had problems getting PB to load recently?

Ken

Edit: Photobucket decided to start working again. One day I'll take my own photos of this incredible bass, including a good close-up of the fretboard:



Ken

Last edited by KenC on Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Not necessarily only recently but intermittently PB has often been slow and has not behaved like I expected it to.

Regarding a difference between spalted and regular maple wood, there may be no detectible difference in its tone, however, there logically ought to be because the wood is broken up by the spalting. It is a physical and cosmetic condition that can effect the strength of wood. Spalting can lighten (weight), soften and create sponginess in wood. Seems to me that if there is any difference between woods due to the usual suspects (i.e. density, hardness, etc.) the spalted aspect would have to impact the way sound resonates through a wood.

I was speaking (typing?) from my own limited experience woodworking with spalted maple. The things you describe could absolutely be true, but the couple of times I've worked with spalted maple I haven't noticed them. I just ran down to the basement to check on about 20 board feet of spalted/flamed hard maple that's been getting nice and seasoned for about five years. The boards are sanded on two sides. On the rough face, I can definitely feel a change in surface texture inside the spalting lines. On the sanded face, I can barely feel a hint of it in some places. I tried scratching the rough face with a sharp corner of a red oak off-cut; the mark is consistent (to my eye) both inside and outside the spalting lines. I couldn't get noticeable dents in either part by pressing the corner of the piece of oak straight into the wood. I haven't noticed an obvious difference in weight between regular and spalted hard maple that came from the same lot of lumber.

The board I checked has been destined to become a set of drawer fronts on an old (1800s?) pine dresser I rescued from a neighbor's garbage. I must admit that I was having visions of a thick maple cap on a bass body a couple of minutes ago...

I am not sure the wood of a cap makes a difference.

I was wondering about that during a recent thread about body woods. It would be interesting to measure how deeply the bridge's vibrations travel into the body. It could be that any dampening effect is in the first couple of millimeters.

I wonder if the presence of a glue seam between two pieces of wood does not have more influence than the type of wood that the cap is comprised of.

The old marketing claim about Titebond (a standard furniture maker's glue for many years) is that the joint will be stronger than the wood on either side. I remember a series of tests published in Fine Woodworking several years ago, where different table leg joints were compared by building tables under standardized conditions and then loading them until they collapsed. IIRC, in all cases it was the wood that failed rather than the joint. I've had the same thing happen when failed projects have been turned into kindling. The glue layer is an entirely different animal than the woods it's joining.

That layer of resin soaked into the pores has to be very different acoustically than the wood on either side. At least that's my unscientific conclusion...

Ken

I'm not a big fan of rosewood fretboards, but I have a thing for Pao Ferro and Ebony. So sue me!

I used to be the same way. Not so much about Pao Ferro, but a nice vintage gloss maple board or a stained ebony board were the best in my book. The rosewood board on my Interceptor Bass was love at first sight, and I've rarely looked back...

I was going to put some Interceptor porn here, but Photobucket is failing me yet again. Has anybody else had problems getting PB to load recently?

Ken

Edit: Photobucket decided to start working again. One day I'll take my own photos of this incredible bass, including a good close-up of the fretboard:



Ken

That's stunning! Enjoy!!! - ed

Lunch today – grilled chicken wrap with carrot sticks.

While I wish G&L would do more combinations with MFDs, one thing they are doing to keep things interesting is using alternative woods for their instruments (witness the Okoume ASAT in yesterday’s lunch report). Some of these less common woods, such as Limba (Korina) and Khaya (African Mahogany) have a strong and successful historic use in musical instruments. Others, such as Okoume and Monkeypod (Indian Walnut), are relatively new. And one in particular, Sugar Pine, was used by Leo Fender on the earliest Esquire/Telecaster guitars only to be abandoned and then re-discovered as a tonewood. Here’s a brief summary of the body tonewoods used by G&L. BTW, despite it being called “Equatorial Mahogany”, Okoume is not in the mahogany family (but Khaya is). In fact, it’s related to frankincense and myrrh!

Big Leaf Maple
Green Ash ("swamp" ash)
Honduran Mahogany
Khaya (African mahogany)
Korina
Lacewood
Monkeypod
Okoume
Red Alder
Sugar Pine
Tilia (Basswood)
Yellow Poplar

So, are you interested when G&L uses new tonewoods? Are there others you’d like to see them use? Are there any woods you dislike? For me, I think Okoume and Sugar Pine make nice sounding guitars, but the softness of the wood worries me (dings and dents). I’d like to see some of these woods topped with a maple cap, too. I don’t get the Savannah series with a limba top. Aesthetically it’s fine, but I’m not sure what it does tonally. Also, I think the use of Pau Ferro is great. Bassists have known about it for a long time and it’s a great alternative to ebony.

Tomorrow I’ll try to do something for the bass players.

GG

Here's a few more to add to your list:

Spalted Maple
Spalted Alder (see G&L prototypes: guitars and basses)
Koa (top on an ASAT Deluxe with Chambered Honduran Mahogany Body - one-off for Hawaii Music Supply)
Dark Korina (Black Limba) (see G&L prototypes: guitars and basses)
Zebrawood
The Grand Ole Opry stage floor top on an ASAT Bass. (Not sure what wood(s) it has)

These combined lists will make it's way to the G&L Knowledgebase soon.

I was really impressed with the Okoume in the savannah collection. Great sounds in every one I've played

Lunch was a baconator. The rest of the day was getting over the baconator

Thanks Craig,

I had forgotten how great the zebrawood looks, and the koa has a certain elegance to it as well.

I have early morning GAS!

Greg, the woods used by G&L have been an attraction for me. I have several different ones and that is what makes these G&Ls stand out for me. Their Swamp Ash has always been stunning but some of the new ones really do it. I love the Western Pine in my launch edition. The latest mahoganys and okoume are spectacular. -- Darwin