Guitar wood types?

[foxtrot]

Hello, i'm a new member and recently started playing the guitar. i purchased a lower end Yamaha classical guitar to learn on but hope to buy a higher end guitar in the future One question i have is regarding how different types of woods influence the sound charateristics of the guitar. It seems most guitar tops are made of cedar or spruce (laminate or solid) while the sides seem to be usually made of mahagony or rosewood (solid or laminate). Obviously guitars makers use certain types of woods for particular reasons presumably to obtain various tonal qualities so i'd like to know what tonal qualities the particular wood types offer and their advantages or disadvantages.

Thank you, foxtrot

[keith]

for top of the line:
for tops: pure, unadultered, solid cedar or spruce (or redwood if going the jose oribe route).
for sides and backs: now the fun begins. :P there is a story that torres built a guitar with paper mache' sides and back and it actually sounded pretty good. the intent was to demonstrate that the sides and back have little influence on the sound--it is the top that is the significant contributor.

but, the general rule is solid rosewood for classicals and cypress for flamencos. HOWEVER, there are great classicals with cypress (ramirez 1a are lined with it) great flamencos with rosewood, and some builers prefer laminated sides and back. greg smallman, who makes guitars in the $20,000+ range uses laminated rosewood. other woods are coming into being. i have seen bubinga and purpleheart (which really looks cool) used. koa on on a conde--who would have thought!

[jens]

For backs and sides there is a tremendous variety of possible wood species.
There are four Dalbergias (Dalbergia being the scientific name for a certain variety of trees and their wood): Indian rosewood (dalbergia latifolia), Brazilian rosewood (dalbergia nigra), Honduras Rosewood(dalbergia stevensonii), Madagascar rosewood (dalbergia baroni) and Cocobolo (dalbergia retusa). In the quality of sound these woods are very similar to each other, but there are great differences in the optical appearances. All of them sound rather dark yet brilliant and full (the "rosewood sound" is from my point of view the most beautiful). But if you look at them you will notice, for example, that Indian rosewood is very straight grained, having colors in the range from brown to purple in most cases (while the Indian rosewood on my guitar even has red, orange and greenish brown stripes, which is very seldom). The grain of Brazilian in contrast is rather wild and irregular and it is not seldom that it comes in colors from black and brown to orange and red, and sometimes there are even some spots of green and blue. Cocobolo and Madagascar rosewood look very similar to Brazilian.
But apart from rosewoods maple, koa and macassar ebony are used for guitar building, each of them having its own advantages.
Maple is the most traditional of all tonewoods being very light in color and possessing a brighter tonal color than rosewoods and the mostly used flamed maple looks really stunning.
Another, even higher flamed wood is koa. It is light brown colored and the tonal characteristics are very similar to rosewood.
Macassar ebony is much harder than any of the preceding woods and black colored with light stripes in the grain. Due to its high density it sounds even darker than any rosewood. Like Brazilian rosewood it sometimes shows a figuring called spider webbing.

The other important question is the choice of wood used for the top.
Spruce tends to produce a clear, yet dark sound with great separation of voices, deep, rich basses and light trebles, while cedar in most cases sounds more "romantic" and more homogenous in all registers but lacks the clarity of spruce.

Having said so much it still depends on your taste, which combination of wood you would choose for a guitar.

[NGiorgio]

Great explanation of the different woods. I think we are seeing more experimenting by some well known Luthiers for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that many popular varieties are becoming harder and/or more expensive to obtain.

I was always a traditionalist when it came to wood for backs and sides. The Brazilian or Indian rosewoods for classicals and cypress for flamencos. However, a couple of years ago I purchased a flamenco with a spruce top and back /sides of flamed koa. Aside from being a beautiful instrument visually, it has wonderfully colorful tonal characteristics. In my humble opinion, I find the tone to be somewhere between a fine blanca (cypress) and a negra (rosewood), probably more towards the negra. This experience has opened my eyes up to possibilities of other various combinations of available woods. One of the instruments on my wish list is a spruce/maple flamenco.

But, as mentioned previously, these decisions become a matter of personal taste.