Official Luthiers Forum!

I was thinking about building my next guitar with sapele, (my favorite wood so far next to paduk) but because they are both hard tight grained woods i was afraid of it being TOO bright. i love my guitars bright sounding but not screechy. Anybody have any input? Sapele is pretty much Mahogany.

Not an acoustic builder(yet), but cedar/mahogany has been done to death by the major manufacturers(and some of that 'hog was probably sapele), so I'd say you're pretty safe. From what I understand, the wood combo is only part of the equation when it comes to getting the tone you want. Some here could probably point you to a general direction of the sound that your guitar might have with that or another combination of woods, but they'd be generalities, not specifics. Build style, body type, shape, depth, thickness of plates, bracing scheme and a hundred other variables go into making the tone of any individual guitar. The wood combo is only one part of that recipe. I've resigned myself to the reality that I won't have a clue what my guitars will sound like, no matter what the wood combination is, until I've built 50 or 100 of them. By that time I might be able to start getting an understanding about how to begin getting consistent tone from a guitar, until then......... Build on!

_________________
Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I built a dred from Mahogany and WRC a couple of years ago and it was one of the best sounding guitars I've made. It was bright, but not in a harsh way. It had great sustain and was almost harp-like, very sweet and clear. I'd say go for it.

Chuck

_________________
"To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong"
- Joseph Chilton Pearce

I just finished up a sapele/euro spruce guitar, and ended up really liking the look of the sapele--very warm looking to me, especially under finish. I'd probably not worry about making an overly bright guitar with that combination--though there is a lot of variation within cedar.

_________________
Evan McCartney

Are you making a steel or nylon string guitar?
What body width ;depth;and length ?

a bit more info will help us -help you .

Mike

_________________
Mike Collins

hi patches,
yeah Cedar / Sapele is a fav over here with fingerpickers in the "British Folk" style particularly a make you may ot have heard of, Fylde here's a link,
http://www.fyldeguitars.com/players.html
regards
Geordie