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Cherry wood for guitar body


BeerBaron

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My brother recently bought a house and there is a huge cherry tree I will be helping taking out. I was just curious to know if cherry wood would be good use for a guitar body? I'm looking to either do a V or an ML shaped guitar. It is big enough so that I would be able to get 1 solid piece and more if I wanted to do another guitar.

 

What's your take on cherry wood for a guitar? My Norman acoustic is made from all wild cherry. Sounds nice to me.

:thu:

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"wild cherry" and youre typical american "cherry" are quite different i think. youre usual american cherry is not used much for guitar making, can't figure out why.

 

ed roman in his infinite intelligence made a double cut out of cherry, he said that it sounded very good, but no one bought it, so he had to clearance it out.

 

ive been wanting some figured cherry for some guitar tops for awile now.,

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Based on the stuff I read here, it should be perfect for a solidbody.

 

I also wonder, if you have a whole tree at your disposal, is it possible to get a wood piece that big to do both neck and body out of it? I mean with no glue or bolts for connection.

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There are a lot of perfectly good hardwoods that aren't customarily used for guitars (e.g. walnut, myrtlewood, redwood, olive, etc.) because they aren't what Fender and Gibson used in 1950. Again, it goes to show how amazingly conservative (as a group) guitarists are. If everybody were like this, we'd all still be driving Model Ts and watching television on our 7" Motorolas...

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redwood is really really soft, i used it for a laminate top before, it dents easier than pine, myrtle wood is used for acoustics all over the place, and walnut is pretty widely used, but severely expensive for good material.

 

 

Yeah - but I mean on mass-produced instruments. The market still pretty much demands ash-alder-mahogany. Even Poplar (which sounds fantastic in teles, in my experience) was pretty much rejected by the market.

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Based on the stuff I read here, it should be perfect for a solidbody.


I also wonder, if you have a whole tree at your disposal, is it possible to get a wood piece that big to do both neck and body out of it? I mean with no glue or bolts for connection.

 

 

 

Bright, long sustain and heavy all sound good to me. I'm 6'6'' and a big guy myself. So a heavy guitar would counter balance maybe lol. Just need a thick strap.

 

I do have the whole tree at my disposal.. if the {censored}er isnt rotten inside. I have heard of people doing that. But honestly.. this is my first guitar/luthier project ever. So I am not that skilled I dont think to make a guitar out of one solid piece lol.

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Tim and terrys has been in business in gainesville for longer than I can rember, several decades. I was talking with tim and he said cherry is about the workability of maple, the weight of poplar, and the sound of mahogany with extra high end. Said that cherry and poplar are the two most under utilized tonewoods.

Came from a discussion about the T-45 they had in there that was made of oak(beast, but sounded great).

There's a few folks who have made "barncasters" out of cherry on the TDPRI, so i'd ask there.

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Also, Let this wood dry for a god 2+ years if you're getting 2 inches thick anywhere on it.

Meanwhile, get pallets folks are throwing away and practice on all the pine and oak you can get for free making bodies and necks. You'll be way happy gearing up to use this undoubtedly gorgeous wood for a 1 piece body/neck type build than basically wrecking it in an early build.

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Bright, long sustain and heavy all sound good to me. I'm 6'6'' and a big guy myself. So a heavy guitar would counter balance maybe lol. Just need a thick strap.


I do have the whole tree at my disposal.. if the {censored}er isnt rotten inside. I have heard of people doing that. But honestly.. this is my first guitar/luthier project ever. So I am not that skilled I dont think to make a guitar out of one solid piece lol.

 

 

Well, then make it neck-through: bolting-on or setting-in the neck with proper angle should be a bit of extra work and provide room for more errors, AFAIK... Never went with a project myself, so don't quote me on this; but I really think that using a whole tree for a short neck (and destroying the fret access on a V with a heel) would be a waste.

 

Although you can use the spare planks to create some bodies to place completed bolt-on necks on... I see cheap Strats with good necks all the time, but rarely with decent, one or two piece bodies. Especially from heavier woods.

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