Hi, a new member here!

Greetings everyone,

I have been reading posts on this forum on-and-off for a couple of years and finally registered today to answer someone's question. I have been playing the guitar (classical, blues, rock) for 20+ years, and am a proud owner of a U.S.A. Legacy, which I had custom-made in late 2009. Among the less common options, it has a modern V-neck, vintage frets. It also has a plain white pickguard, so it's almost like a Fullerton model. I think it has a beautiful sound and is just lovely to play and look at, so my wife has been jealous for 4+ years now.

I am using this opportunity to thank you all for providing such a great place to visit. Since I generally do my own setups and like to experiment a lot, I found tech tips and discussion on this forum very valuable. Other times, I just like to look at other beautiful G&L guitars to relax.

For those of you who have experience with wood grains, I think my guitar presents an interesting case to ask a perennial favorite small-talk question: - Is this an alder or ash body? I know it's a weird question in the case of a guitar custom-ordered by me; I ordered alder back then (didn't have a strong preference), and since I ordered a standard finish (3t sb), based on all this, it's very unlikely that it is ash. However, the wood grains are more pronounced than in a typical alder body, so I edited the registry entry multiple times going back and forth between alder and swamp ash. I personally don't really care much which one it is, but it might be useful to give it the accurate description in the registry.

Cheers!







An here are the pics of the modern V-neck and the fretboard I posted on another topic. I like this neck very much.

Last edited by predator on Thu Dec 19, 2013 11:36 am, edited 4 times in total.

Hello,

Pretty pretty sure that is ash. Alder often has a mixture of softness and lines with occasional circular patterns. At the least Alder tends to have areas of soft grainlessness. The left side looks like ash but the right looks a little like Alder. Is it dark on the backside? Would any grain show up in a picture? If so could you post one of the back? Sometimes Alder looks grainy and sometimes it looks completely soft.

Thanks for the hints, Salmon! I added two more photos of the back of the body to my original post. Obviously, the grains show on the back very well and they are even thicker on the side to which you referred to as the left by looking at the top pic. Maybe it's just ash then, at least in one of the body pieces.

The sound of the bass strings is very well-defined, i.e. it has more clarity than any alder Strat-style guitar I have played, and I read that this should be an indication of ash. I remember the first time I played a couple of chords on it unplugged/plugged, its sound was resonant and clear, quite reminiscent of a good acoustic guitar. (Being almost exclusively a clean-setting player, I immediately fell in love with it). Who knows, maybe they just thought that that relatively thick V-neck should be paired with this particular body for optimal resonance and decided on ash or a hybrid body (if the latter ever happens). I certainly wasn't very particular about the body wood and didn't pay the extra money for ash, so I am just happy with the way the things are, since the guitar sounds great both unplugged and through the amp when set up properly. And these grains certainly made it look good, too.

Last edited by predator on Thu Dec 19, 2013 11:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not a wood expert, but I would've guessed ash. I rarely see alder with so much grain.

Whatever it its it is effing gorgeous.

Thanks for your input and the kind words, bloodied fingers!