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I am building my first steel string guitar. I ordered a maple bridge plate for backing under the ebony bridge,but I have a piece of ebony large enough to make a backing plate. Should I use maple or ebony?

maple

Ditto:Maple

Maple,Honduran Rosewood,Padauk. Not Ebony.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

As an educational exercise bounce several types of wood samples off of a concrete floor and listen. The answer will become obvious, different types of wood have their different uses/places. The bridge plate is an important piece, bounce, listen, and choose how you want your instrument to sound.

I use Honduran rosewood or maple depending on where I'm headed.

Have fun!
Mikey

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The Biggest Little City, Nevada
www.hammondguitars.com
I love building guitars!

Maple it is,Thanks

I find it a bit ironic that the OP states that he intends to use an ebony bridge, and everybody advices him that an ebony bridge plate, which probably weighs about 1/3 of the bridge, is a bad idea…

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

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Hi Tony. Lately I’ve been using African blackwood, which rings as a bell, and is very tough. So I’m not saying an ebony bridge plate is necessarily such a great idea, but the bridge is probably a more important thing to consider. FWIW, and in my experience, ebony bridges can take some of the “edges” off the sound of some otherwise overly harsh, or bright sounding steel string guitars, and lead to a “smoother” sound. I’m sure the bridge plate can have some of the same effect, but to a lesser degree, so why not, if that is your thing?

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Interesting - there's African ebony, Indian ebony, Macassar Ebony, Malaysian Blackwood sp., Mun ebony etc. all of which are ebonies and all of which will be different in their properties (let alone pieces of each type from different logs). Some if not all of those I'd quite happily use for bridges and some for bridgeplates depending on what I was looking for - as Arnt points out.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

A maple bridge plate is relatively tough, light weight, glues well, easy to work, and is commonly used. I think it is a perfect choice for a first guitar (as well as an 100th guitar). Ebony is relatively heavy and can be brittle and splintery. It can work, but I would not say it is an ideal wood for the job. I've also used blackwood and rosewood for bridge plates with some success, but most often use maple.