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TONE WOOD

how would you choose wood?

TONE WOOD

how would you choose wood?

Before we dive into it:
Does wood make a difference in an electric guitar?

Let’s put it this way, If you take a Lamborghini engine and put it inside (let’s say) a Ford Fiesta, it will not be a Lambo, right?!
The guitar body and neck are the chassis for the pickups, yes, each pickup has its own tonal characteristics,
but that chassis will make the pickups behave in a certain way.
It’s a “closed circuit”, each string has its own amplitude frequency and the guitar components must react to that amplitude,
for instance, if the neck is too strong and has no flexibility, you will end up with wrong overtones or none at all.
It has nothing to do with the pickups yet, that is just pure physics.
Each wood has its way of picking up the strings’ vibrations and transmitting them back to them and then back to the rest of the components.
The end result is what the pickups will pick from those vibrations, therefore,
if the vibrations are incorrect or intersect, you’ll get a shitty-sounding instrument.
A good instrument is one that once you strum it, you’ll feel the vibrations going from one side, all the way through to your hands and back.

What is Tonewood?

Tonewood is black magic…
Just kidding, It’s a name for wood that holds certain tonal qualities, which make it a proper choice for use in a string instrument.
Every wood has some tonal characteristics, some are rubbish, and some are pure gold for a musical instrument, but the most important and relevant thing for every piece of wood that is intended to be used for a musical instrument is the percentage of resin in it.

I won’t use wood, that is not dry at least to a point of 7 % resin, which if we translate into time, it’s about 2 or more years after it was cut,
the more, the better.
It is possible to dry wood in a kiln, and get it to 8-9% which is nice, but it’s not the best way, stressing the wood to dry in a period of a couple of days or even a month is not the natural way of doing it, which can cause the wood to warp and bend in the future.

The condition of the wood and the building methods are highly important to create a great instrument.
It’s not so hard to build a guitar, but a good musical instrument is a whole different story.

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