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The old standard rosewood, mahogany, spruce, and ebony are increasingly scarce and costly. Can you produce a guitar with excellent tonality WITHOUT using the aforementioned woods? If you've done it post some pics. I am thinking of stuff like walnut, sycamore, maple, cherry etc...

Lots of guitars are made with non exotic woods. I don't have any pics but others will surely post some.

Matt,
As far as non-exotic North American woods go, the possibilities are almost endless. Although I've only made 7 guitars, two have been with "non-exotic" woods, sycamore and maple. I've got walnut, cherry, persimmon, birch and oak sets stashed for future builds. Others I've seen on this site include mesquite, myrtle and osage orange - which are kind of exotic in their own right. As far as exotic, that in part depends on your location. The Australian guys, for example, routinely build with native woods we consider exotic. A major upside to being in North America is that top woods are plentiful as well. I've heard more than once, that what is fire wood in one place is tone wood in another. If we get desperate, I'll post pics of my sycamore and ambrosia maple builds, but I'll wait because I know there are better examples.
Regards and welcome.

Check out some of the builds in the various Challenge threads (go to the board Index here)

This particular thread uses wood from a building renovation.

Here's a sound clip. Of course, what it sounds like mostly depends on who's playing!

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Walnut, ash, catalpa, right off the top of my head.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Got two black walnut gitboxes in progress now.


Sent from my walkie talkie using Tapatalk

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"After forty-nine years of violin building, I have decided that the search for a varnish is similar to the fox hunt. The fun is in the hunt."
Jack Batts Maker and Repairer of Fine Violins

Yes. I made my OLF build off #2 guitar out of all local woods. It turned out to be one of my favorites too. I used curly Ash B/S. Cedar top with curly Maple neck and bindings. I used Hickory for the fretboard and bridge. I also used birch bark for the rosette and end graft.

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

I just finished a Torres FE19 classical guitar using only local woods. It is part of a bigger project in the school I'm attending. In total 8 of these guitars are being built, using several different species of local woods.
There is a build report here:
http://classicalguitarproject.blogspot. ... guyse.html

the reports of the others should be on there as well.

I used alder for the box and neck, and Robinia for the bridge and the fingerboard.
Previously I already built 1 Torres FE 19 using EIR, and personally I think the one in alder sounds better than the one in EIR.

I tend to use a lot of Maple, Cherry, Walnut Back/Sides. I've used stained Oak and bog Oak for fretboards on a number of occasions. Cherry and Maple for Necks. Commercially speaking and dependent on the type of Guitar, they can be a little more difficult to sell. The vast majority of players don't seem to notice a good Black bog Oak fretboard over an Ebony one - until you tell them of it's nature. That's when the doubts sometimes creep in. Not often but sometimes.

And then there is HPL...

Thanks guys. I have a piece of curly cherry and a piece of tiger maple that I can pull two or three guitars out of for sides and backs. Being new to this I didn't want to use that lumber if I could make it sound good. Now what to use for the soundboard?

If you want to buy something fairly cheap and "local" for a soundboard then you might check out the western red cedar dimensional lumber you can find at many lumber yards. You have to pick through the stack to find nicely quartersawn stuff, but usually there is a board or two that is. it requires some resawing.
The lower grade tops from tonewood dealers are pretty inexpensive and would require less work.
Even the HPL guitar I posted has a decent Engelmann spruce top. The soundboard is the most important piece of wood in the guitar.

Thanks for the tip. I will check that out at my local millworks.

Robert Benedetto made an arch top jazz guitar out of common material to demonstrate that guitars don't need to be made with exotic or expensive woods. The top of his instrument was made from a common lumber yard 2 x 8--knots and all.
He plays it on his construction DVD series. If you look through the stacks at your local lumber yard or home center, you can probably find a suitable piece of spruce dimension lumber for your top. Back and sides can be made from virtually any domestic hardwood. I've made two guitars and two mandolins from walnut, because I can scrounge it up pretty easily in my area. It makes a beautiful, warm, mellow instrument.

As has been pointed out, there are lots and lots of possibilities! There are plenty of good, local, woods that will make a very fine guitar. Its your building that will really matter.

As for tops, nice White Pine is an excellent option.

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Expectation is the source of all misery; comparison the thief of joy.
http://redrivercanoe.ca/

So many good options. Delivered one to a customer over a year ago that he wanted made from all Michigan woods. We used walnut, maple, white pine, and black locust on that one, all harvested in Michigan. Rosette, fingerboard, and headstock inlays were even made from local Petoskey stone. Great sounding guitar and truly one of a kind. You can see and hear it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oluPf7I1jc

Agree with other comments made. Many woods will make a great guitar. Much depends on how you build it.

Ken

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http://www.casperguitar.com

I took part in the 'Cherry Seven' project at the Montreal show a few years ago. We all built guitars out of wood that had been harvested in Quebec by luthier Marc Saumier. We used cherry for B&S wood and Red spruce tops. He supplied hornbeam for fingerboards and bridges. Most of the participants made steel string guitars, and used cherry for the necks as well, but I elected to make a Classical, and used butternut.

The New England Luthiers group has just started a 'Local Woods' group build. I'm planning on making an OM out of some apple wood for that one.

As has been said, we're blessed in the USA with some of the best top wood around, and also a good selection of B&S woods. Basically, from what I can tell, almost any softwood can be used for a top, although it's probably a good idea to stick with the less dense ones. For B&S wood I've used walnut, maple, cherry, oak, persimmon, black locust, laurel/bay, and osage orange, and one of my students made a Flamenco out of butternut. Walnut, cherry, and maple make good necks for steel strings: butternut is a tad on the light side, although I've used it and it's worked OK for steel, and, of course, it's wonderful for Classicals. Willow is a fine wood for liners, and some folks have also used poplar. I tend to use walnut for bridges on 'domestic' builds, although the 'Cherry Seven' guitar had a hornbeam bridge, and I've used maple a couple of times.

There are lots of woods that are hard enough for fingerboards, but none of them is consistently black. Persimmon is the North American member of the ebony family, and works about like Macassar. Once in a while you'll find a piece of persimmon with some black in it, but it's usually white or gray. Hornbeam is one of the hardest local woods here in New England, but it's white. I've used soft shell almond wood, which is about as hard as any wood I've run into: it looks a lot like cherry, but brown rather than red. Many of these woods can be stained or dyed to show the dirt less. Tom Thiel, at Northwind Tonewoods, has been working on a process for dying persimmon all the way through. It's a metallic dye, so it won't fade, but it does seem to react with some folk's perspiration, so he's trying to work out the last bugs on that. Look for 'Ozark Ebony' when he gets that one settled.

I'm moving more and more away from exotics. The main problem I've had with 'local' woods is selling them: I've never had a problem getting them to sound good.

If you haven't already, you should check out forum member jfmckenna's "Broke Oak Parlor" build. IIRC, he used oak and pine and the result is one of the best sounding small guitars I've heard. Here's a link to the build thread with videos...

http://luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopi ... 33&t=37566

I am building my take on the Oscar Schmidt Grand Concert ladder braced guitar out some figured White Oak.


Glenn

Ken C, now that is what I am talking about. Great video and beautiful sounds from locally sourced raw materials.

Alan, how was the hornbeam to work? Years ago, a friend would collect pieces of interesting wood on the curb during his morning walks. One was the absolute hardest stuff I've ever run across, period. I tried turning a base on my lathe, that was an adventure. Kept dulling my tools and jumping off the chuck. Last year I took a piece of it to someone who should know, and he said he thought it was hornbeam.

Now it was nice looking wood, and polished very nicely. But it was almost unusable on a lathe. How was it for guitar use?

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Phil

http://www.oleninstruments.com

"Those who tilt at windmills are only considered insane by those who can't see the dragon."

Glad you liked it, Matt! My customer put that video together and didn't tell me about it until he shared the link. But as Alan noted, very rare to find someone that wants a guitar like that. I have had several walnut commissions, but most guys want the exotic stuff.

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http://www.casperguitar.com

Ken, That was a fun video to watch, looks and sounds like a great guitar.

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http://www.Harvestmoonguitars.com

Ken C hats off to you for a superb job.Impressive for sure. I love the idea of using local woods., and educating the consumer about how their buying tastes have been manipulated by advertising.Thanks for posting. I/m also headed in that direction using mostly n. american woods. But am still fond of exotics as well.

My tree book lists two 'hornbeams': American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana Walt.), popularly called 'Blue Beech' or 'Water Beech', and Eastern Hophornbeam (Ostrya virginiana [Mill] K.Koch), AKA 'American hophornbeam' and 'iron wood'. I've also heard of the Eastern hophornbeam being called 'lever wood' and 'muscle wood'.

What we got was probably the Ostrya species, since it grows further north, and also had the strong 3-D curly figure that shows up on the trunk and gives it the 'muscle wood' name. It had no silica that I remember, but it's very hard and tough.One of my wood gurus notes that silica is hard to predict, and may occur in any wood, so... It is dense, and has a close grain, so I imagine it would look great in a turning.

I do have a sample of local hornbeam that was given me by a student, and it's straight grained, so it may be the Carpinus species. I have yet to work it. I believe I have both varieties growing on the hill out back. The trees are small, and you'd be hard pressed to get anything much bigger than a fingerboard out of them.