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Oak as body wood for Electric Guitars


DazedDan

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Ive played a couple of oak bodied homemade Teles. Not sure which species. Tonally not bad. Heavy as hell. According to the builders, hard as hell to work.

Had a acoustic builder tell me one time that oak would be good for back and sides if it didn't have a tendency to check and crack.

Evidently it doesn't take stress too well. Come to think of it, you never see oak used as a structural component in a building.

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Red Oak isn't so good. Heavy, dull sounding. White Oak, though reportedly works well. I've never built with White Oak, either acoustic or electric, so I have no first hand experience to share. I just got that info from some of the GAL publications. Personally, I don't like the way it looks or works, so I'm not inclined to use it.

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You can use anything for an electric really but oak is very hard and heavy.

Cutting and routing it would tend to burn up your routing tools. They do make allot of furniture out of it.

I have some excelent antique parts cabes made from it. They are a ball buster to move though.

Tone wise oak isnt that much different from other hard woods for an electric. I'm getting too old

to be wearing a cynder block around my neck. My Les Paul is 11Lbs and I suffer after wearing it for more than a set or two.

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oak is incredibly porous (you can blow air through it like a straw!) it is thus harder to finish/seal. Its heavy, hard and irregularly grained (thus can look good with interesting "flake" and a proper finish)

 

Homogeneous grained harder and lighter wood is thus preferred, like maple, alder, ash

 

you can make a guitar from anything; Ibanex 76lb solid brass guitar was just on ebay! Jerry had a granite guitar!

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I had been thinking about sandwiching an oak back on a basswood middle to a flamed maple top. I think the 3 different colors would look nice and with only a 1/2" of oak the weight would be reasonable. Second idea is for a maple/mahogany neck through with oak wings. That may end up being too heavy. Guess I'll have to build both and see for myself :-)

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