Tonewood
Tonewood refers to specific wood varieties used for woodwind or acoustic stringed instruments. The word implies that certain species exhibit qualities that enhance acoustic properties of the instruments, but other properties of the wood such as aesthetics and availability have always been considered in the selection of wood for musical instruments. According to Mottola’s Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms, tonewood is:
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Wood that is used to make stringed musical instruments. The term is often used to indicate wood species that are suitable for stringed musical instruments and, by exclusion, those that are not. But the list of species generally considered to be tonewoods changes constantly and has changed constantly throughout history.
Varieties of tonewood
As a rough generalization it can be said that stiff-but-light softwoods (i.e. from coniferous trees) are favored for the soundboards or soundboard-like surface that transmits the vibrations of the strings to the ambient air. Hardwoods (i.e. from deciduous trees) are favored for the body or framing element of an instrument. Woods used for woodwind instruments include African blackwood, (Dalbergia melanoxylon), also known as grenadilla, used in modern clarinets and oboes. Bassoons are usually made of Maple, especially Norway maple (Acer platanoides). Wooden flutes, recorders, and baroque and classical period instruments may be made of various hardwoods, such as pear (Pyrus species), boxwood (Buxus species), or ebony (Diospyros species).
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Softwoods
Spruces are often used in the soundboards of instruments from the lute, violin, oud, mandolin, guitar, and harpsichord families; as well as the piano. Spruce is particularly suited for this use because of its high stiffness-to-weight ratio. Commonly used varieties are Sitka (or Alaskan) spruce (Picea sitchensis), Adirondack (or red) spruce (Picea rubens), Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii), and Picea abies (variously known as Norwegian, German, Alpine, Italian or European spruce).
Cedars, particularly western red cedar (Thuja plicata, not a true cedar), have since the 1950s been used in the tops of flamenco guitars, classical guitars and to a less degree in steel string acoustic guitars.
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Yew was once widely used for lute bowls.
Other softwoods, such as redwood and Douglas-fir have been used to a limited degree. Redwood is not used commonly for guitars with steel strings, but has been used for classical guitars.[2]
Hardwoods
Maple, especially Norway Maple, is traditionally used for the backs and sides of violin family instruments. Bosnian Maple is probably the maple used by the Italian violin makers Stradivari and Guarneri. Maple is also frequently seen in acoustic guitars and mandolins. Most Fender electric guitars feature maple necks (it is one of the hardest and most stable tonewoods, so it is often used in the neck because of its ability to withstand high string tension). Hard maple is commonly used for wooden tripods for its vibration damping properties. Variations of maple (commonly maple wood with flamed or quilted grains) are used on the tops of electric guitars for aesthetic purposes. The very sturdy frame of the modern piano is usually made of maple or of beech.
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Mahogany may be used in the tops of some guitars as well as the back, sides, and necks of instruments of the mandolin and guitar families. Mahogany may also be used for the solid bodies of electric guitars, such as the Gibson Les Paul. Due to lack of availability, other similar woods are used as mahogany replacements, such as Australian red cedar, Toona sureni, African mahogany (Khaya), meranti (Lauan), Kauri (Agathis), mora (Nato), sapele, nyatoh and okoume. Some of these alternatives are mahogany family timbers.
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Rosewoods are often used in the back and/or sides of guitars and mandolins and fretboards on guitars. The most sought-after variety, Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) has become scarce and expensive due to severe trade restrictions (embargo and CITES), scarcity and demand. However, in August 2019, CITES announced[3] an exception for rosewood used in musical instruments. The most widely used rosewood used now is East Indian Rosewood, often paired with a spruce top for steel string guitars and with spruce or cedar for classical guitars. Another rosewood, cocobolo, is used in upper-end clarinets and guitars.
Koa is traditionally used for ukuleles. Koa is also used for steel string guitars mostly due to its beauty and compressed dynamic range.
Ebony is also often used in many types of instruments for fingerboards, tailpieces, tuning pegs, and so forth due to its attractive appearance, smoothness to the touch, hardness and wear resistance. Several varieties of ebony are used. Ebony is often dyed to make it appear more uniformly black than the natural wood, which sometimes shows brown streaks.
Paubrasilia, commonly called Pernambuco or Brazilwood, is the most sought-after material for the bows of classical stringed instruments, because of its effects on the tones they produce.[4]
Blackwood (Tasmanian/Australian).[5]
Walnut is often used for the backs and sides of guitars and mandolin family instruments.[6]
Ash, Alder and Basswood are commonly used for the bodies of electric guitars, ash for its light-colored, natural wood finishes, and alder and basswood for their uniform density, their ease of machining, and amenability to rapid finishing techniques.
When it comes to tonewoods used in the construction of guitars, there are many points that need to be considered.
For instance, the body and neck both contribute to the sound, and luthiers achieve certain tonal goals by carefully matching body and neck woods. Furthermore, these components can be of single- or multi-wood construction.
Bear in mind that woods of the same species cut from different trees (or grown in different regions) will sound slightly different, and have different weights, different densities, and so on. So the sonic variables exist not only between woods, but, in subtler degrees, between different guitars made from the “same” wood—which is part of the magic in searching for your dream guitar amid ten of the same model hanging on the guitar store wall.
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Alder
As with ash, it’s impossible to discuss alder without making reference to Fender, which first used alder prominently in the late ’50s and early ’60s. It’s a medium-weight wood, although quality cuts of alder used for guitar bodies will often weigh less than denser cuts of ash.
Alder has a strong, clear, full-bodied sound, with beefy mids and excellent lows. Its highs sizzle slightly, but are rarely harsh, and it offers a decent amount of sustain. Slightly brownish in its natural, dried state, alder’s grain isn’t necessarily unattractive, but it usually isn’t particularly interesting, either. It is typically used under opaque finishes, but some examples can look good under darker translucent finishes. Like ash, alder is most often used on its own as a body wood.
Ash
Best known as the wood of classic ’50s Fender guitars, ash is most desirable in the form of swamp ash—wood taken from the lower portions of southern-grown wetland trees that have root systems growing below water level. Good swamp ash is both light and resonant, and generally carries a broad grain that looks great under a translucent finish.
The swamp-ash sound is twangy, airy, and sweet. It offers firm lows, pleasant highs, a slightly scooped midrange, and good sustain.
Ash from the upper portions of the tree has also been used, as has harder northern ash. Both tend to be denser and heavier, and have a brighter, harder sound that might be more useful when cutting, distorted tones are desired.
Ash is traditionally used for single-wood, slab-bodied guitars, but has sometimes been employed by more contemporary designers in multi-wood (or laminated) bodies—most commonly with a carved-maple top, or as the top of a semi-hollow or chambered guitar with a back made from a different wood.
Basswood
Affordable and abundant, basswood is particularly associated with mid-level or budget guitars. But basswood is a good tonewood by any standards, and it has been used by many high-end makers with excellent results. It is a very light and fairly soft wood, and it’s light in color, too, with minimal grain.
Solid basswood bodies have a fat, but well-balanced tonality. There’s a muscular midrange, but also a certain softness and breathiness. On a well-made guitar, basswood can yield good dynamics and definition with enough grind to give the sound some oomph.
Korina
Best known as the tonewood of Gibson’s radical Modernistic Series of the late 1950s—the flashy Flying V and Explorer—as well as more recent guitars that follow these templates, Korina is a warm, resonant, and balanced performer. It also yields great clarity, definition, and sustain.
The species is known generically as limba—an African wood related to mahogany, but imported under the trade name Korina. It’s a fairly light hardwood with a fine grain that’s usually enhanced in the finishing process to appear as an attractive array of long, thin streaks. White limba—as used by Gibson and Hamer—has a light appearance in its natural state, and black limba has a more pronounced grain.
Mahogany
Alongside maple, mahogany is a classic ingredient in both slab and multi-wood (or laminated) bodies, and is a common neck wood, too. It’s also used in single-wood bodies. As for the classics, the Gibson Les Paul Jr., Les Paul Special, and SG were made of solid mahogany (with mahogany necks), and countless makers have used the wood in both solid and semi-solid designs over the years.
Harvested in Africa and Central America, mahogany is a fairly dense, medium-to-heavy wood that yields a wide range of guitar-body weights, depending upon stock sources. Used on its own, mahogany’s characteristic tone is warm and somewhat soft, but well balanced with good grind and bite. There is usually good depth to the sound, with full but not especially tight lows, and appealing if unpronounced highs.
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Maple
Used for both bodies and necks, maple is a dense, hard, and heavy wood, sourced mostly in the Northeast and Northwest United States and Canada. Maple is often used as an ingredient in a multi-wood body, where it is generally partnered with a second, lighter wood.
All-maple bodies aren’t unheard of—although the weight is usually off-putting—and, on its own, a maple body produces an extremely bright, precise tone with tight lows. This light-colored wood with a tightly packed grain doesn’t always carry dramatic figuring, but some examples can be spectacular, as most famously seen beneath the sunburst finish on the carved-maple tops of some Gibson Les Pauls from the late 1950s.
Maple is also one of the most common ingredients of laminates used for semi-hollow electric-guitar bodies, where it contributes tightness and clarity.
Maple/Mahogany
This is the most popular laminated body type of all time. Adding a solid maple top to a solid mahogany back yields a guitar body that exhibits many of the best tonal properties of both woods. The solid maple/mahogany body is characteristically rich, warm, and resonant. You get mahogany’s smooth, appealing lows with good sustain, as well as the extra clarity, definition, and bite added by the dense maple cap.
Poplar
A “hardwood” by definition, poplar is actually relatively soft when compared with a range of hardwoods. It is now surfacing more and more as a body wood used in affordable, Asian-made electrics, and it displays a rather bland, characterless quality. Although well-balanced sonically, poplar bodies aren’t particularly resonant or sustaining, and they generally don’t seem to enhance any particular frequency range or overtones.
Rosewood
This highly prized tonewood is seen frequently in fretboards, and in the backs and sides of many quality flat-top acoustics, but rarely in solidbody electrics.
One notable exception was the Rosewood Telecaster that Fender produced sporadically between 1969 and 1972 and was played by George Harrison. Rosewood makes for a very heavy and overly bright-sounding guitar—and an expensive one, too—that is typically more of interest for looks and novelty factor than for tone.
Walnut
Dense and fairly heavy, with sonic characteristics similar to those of mahogany, walnut is occasionally used in electric-guitar bodies. It tends to be warm and full, but usually with a firmer low end, and more overall tightness. Walnut’s rich brown color and often pleasing grain patterns means it looks good under a simple coat of translucent lacquer.
Exotic
Woods such as purple heart, wenge, koa, bubinga, and muira piranga are used by custom guitar-makers, but don’t feature highly in mass-production guitars. These are mostly hard, dense woods with distinctive grain patterns. The colors can be appealing in their natural states, and they are usually used as one ingredient of many in a multi-wood body.
Spruce and cedar—the two most common woods for the tops of acoustic guitars—will very rarely come into the picture regarding electric-guitar construction, although makers have occasionally offered semi-hollow electrics with thin spruce tops.
Mahogany/Ebony
A popular upmarket pairing, the ebony fretboard contributes to a little more tightness, clarity, and definition, as compared to the mahogany/rosewood neck. A very dense, hard wood, ebony makes for a fast attack from the instrument—all else being equal—and it offers a muscular, controlled bass, and snappy, sizzling highs.
With a mahogany back contributing some warmth and openness to the brew, this can be a very appealing pairing. Ebony also wears very well, and it doesn’t divot under years of finger-and-string pressure nearly as easily as rosewood does.
Mahogany/Rosewood
The second most common guitar-neck wood after maple, mahogany is most often coupled with a solid mahogany or mahogany/maple-topped body. This more porous, open wood doesn’t quite have maple’s hardness, strength, or stability, however, and it isn’t suitable as a fretboard material.
Mahogany has a warm, mellow tone with good presence in the lower mids. The mahogany/rosewood pairing contributes to complex highs, thick and creamy lows, and an appealing midrange that isn’t honky or excessively punchy.
Maple
Whether in the form of a solid, one-piece neck with integral fretboard, or a neck with an added fretboard of a second type of wood (usually rosewood), maple is easily the most common type of neck wood used in solidbody guitars.
A one-piece, solid maple neck contributes tightness and cut to a guitar, with an edge of sizzle in the highs, and firm lows. Its high end is usually not as over-pronounced as people might think, although it is a characteristically bright neck-wood choice. Mids tend to have a snappy attack, with a punchy, slightly gnarly edge when the strings are hit hard, but excellent clarity with light to medium picking.
Maple/Pau Ferro
Something of a cross between ebony and rosewood tone-wise, pau ferro is a fairly hard, dense, tight-grained wood. It offers excellent clarity and definition, but has more complex highs than maple, with chunky lows, muscular lower-mids, and an airy, open midrange.
Maple/Rosewood
Add a rosewood fretboard, and a maple neck’s tonal character becomes a little warmer and sweeter, with more sparkle in the highs and thicker lows (tending towards looser). Also, the mids tend to have a little more openness.
In simple terms, rosewood’s contribution to a maple neck smooths and “furs up” the solid-maple sound. Note also that a player’s choice of an all-maple or maple/rosewood neck might come down to feel (or even appearance) as much as sound.
In our urban forestry world, we’re often dialed into a few of the many benefits trees provide: shade to cool homes and sidewalks and their ability to mitigate climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide and reducing stormwater runoff. We often forget about one of the original uses for trees: wood! While lumber milled from trees has been an integral part of civilization (houses! bridges!) it also has another oft-forgotten feature in our urban forestry world – wood is also really pretty.
Slabs of wood have been highlighted in everything from flooring to frames to something that provides no function except beauty – musical instruments!
Tonewood, or wood with particular tonal properties that make them especially suited for woodwind or acoustic instruments, are as varied and beautiful as our urban forest. Plus, the wood used to build an instrument has enormous effects on its sound and price. Various woods have distinct sound qualities, especially when used for the top of an acoustic guitar, which is the most important wooden tonal element of the instrument.
Rosewood (Dalbergia)
One of the most popular and traditional guitar woods of all time, rosewood is prized, and often illegally trafficked. The most common kinds, Brazilian and Indian rosewood, have a unique coloring, polish well, and have attractive coloring and ring patterns. Therefore, these parts of the wood are usually reserved for making the neck or tuning pegs of instruments. The name rosewood comes from the wood’s strong, sweet smell, which persists for many years.
Maple (Acer)
Red Maple is one of the most common varieties in guitar building – and unlike the rare rosewood red maples are one of the most common trees found in the U.S. Maple is considered sonically “transparent” as it lets the tonal character of the top ring through without significant tone coloration from the back and sides. Traditionally used for the backs and sides of violin family instruments, it is also frequently seen in acoustic guitars and mandolins. Electric guitars frequently feature maple necks, as it is one of the hardest and most stable tonewoods, so it can withstand high tension. Modern piano’s frames are also usually made of maple or beech. While you may not grow it to harvest and turn into a musical instrument, you too can enjoy the beauty of a maple tree when you work with us to plant one on your property for free!
Spruce (Picea)
If you think that spruces are only good for Christmas trees, think again. Spruces are often used in the soundboards of instruments from the violin, mandolin, guitar, and harpsichord families; as well as the piano. Spruce is particularly suited for this use because of its high stiffness-to-weight ratio. Commonly used varieties are Sitka spruce (one of the most popular woods for acoustic guitar tops), Adirondack spruce (with a rich, full, clear and loud tonal quality), Engelmann spruce (lighter in color, weight, and tone than most other spruces), and European spruce (which was the leading topwood pre-World War II before it was over-harvested). And the great thing about spruces is that you can find them in almost all the four corners of the globe – maybe even in your yard? Certain spruces would make a great addition to your yard. Let us help you plant one for free!
Mahogany (Swietenia)
Mahogany lumber prized for its aesthetic qualities, its durability, and its distinctive color. As such, it’s a common feature in the manufacture of bespoke furniture and paneling, as well as boats. Oh, and of course, there’s the connection with musical instruments. True mahogany, the sought-after wood for guitar building, comes only from the three species of the genus Swietenia, tropical trees that, when converted to timber, are collectively referred to as “genuine mahogany.” Honduran mahogany is the species most often seen in the guitar-building world, with the rare Cuban mahogany and smaller Pacific Coast mahogany rounding out the genus. Thanks to intense harvesting, most “genuine mahogany“ trees are listed as endangered and are illegally trafficked for furniture and instruments. These days, most marketed mahogany is African mahogany – cheap, abundant, and of comparable quality to its Central American counterparts.
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