What is the best wood for a guitar neck?

Mahogany is the most common wood used for building necks for acoustic guitars. It is strong, dense but light and easy to carve. Voila!

What is the best guitar neck material?

Maple is an extremely popular wood for necks and fretboards. Recognizable because of its bright tone, grain patterns and moderate weight. It's tonal characteristics include good sustain with plenty of bite. It is about as dense as hard ash, but is much easier to finish.

Which wood is best for fretboard?

Is a maple or rosewood neck better?

Compared to maple the difference is notable, as rosewood will soften the sound, even for guitars with maple necks. This is one of the reasons some guitar players prefer Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters with the option of a rosewood fretboard. The rosewood takes a bright guitar and mellows it out a bit.

Is mahogany a good wood for guitar neck?

Mahogany is a great tonewood for electric guitar neck construction, thanks to its medium-density and stable nature. Just as it's used in electric guitar bodies, mahogany is one of the most popular tonewoods for necks (perhaps only bested by maple).

How To | Types of Wood for Guitar Necks

Is maple better than mahogany?

The stiffness of this tonewood makes it an ideal choice for guitar necks as well, as it is very stable and will resist warping. Maple will also often produce richer overtones than mahogany, which tends to favor the fundamental pitch.

Is Cedar good for guitar neck?

Guitar neck wood for a classical guitar must be stable and strong without being overly heavy. The traditional choices have been mahogany and Spanish cedar. Both are very stable and have a good strength to weight ratio. The main difference is that you will find that mahogany is a bit more dense then Spanish cedar.

Is rosewood better than mahogany?

Rosewood is much denser/harder and stronger than mahogany. This is why it is also used a lot for bridges and fingerboards.

Does Fender still use rosewood?

With restrictions now lifted, Fender have re-implemented rosewood into their guitar manufacture - but they've kept pau ferro and ebony as additional options across the range. You can read more about the CITES laws affecting guitarists, bassists and drummers by clicking here.

Does neck wood affect tone?

The neck wood affects the tone of a guitar by impacting the way that the vibrations produced by the strings behave. Denser neck woods, like maple sound brighter and have less sustain. Mahogany on the other hand, produces a warmer and darker tone with better resonance and sustain.

What is the best fingerboard material?

Likely the most widespread fingerboard tone wood in circulation, Rosewood is the preferred option for the majority of guitar players. Historically, there were two types; the relatively common Indian Rosewood, and the rarer Brazilian Rosewood. * Indian Rosewood has an even grain and is a rich dark brown color.

Is maple smoother than rosewood?

Maple with a satin/oil/raw finish feels more or less like bare wood, which is still quite smooth but has some texture to it. Maple gets finished a million different ways but they'll almost all fall in the range of smooth or very fine texture. Rosewood varies a bit but that's from the wood itself.

Is rosewood better than ebony?

In short, Ebony is a much harder wood compared to Rosewood and feels slicker to touch. It produces brighter and snappier tones, while Rosewood produces a more balanced overall tone.

Is Walnut a good guitar neck wood?

Walnut is a dense and heavy tonewood. It offers a bright tone with tight low-end, and good sustain. Walnut is typically used as laminate tonewood in electric guitar/bass bodies or the sides/back of acoustic guitars, as well as in guitar necks and fretboards. It's too heavy for practical solid bodies.

Can you make a guitar neck out of oak?

Oak is a great wood...for furniture and cabinets, not guitars. The reason for this is, as stated previously, its very strong but not flexible. This is a concern because strings put several hundred pounds force on the neck and body, most neck woods flex a little with that much force, dissipating it.

Is Oak a good tone wood?

White Oak is another wood with a low velocity of sound and a high degree of internal damping. It's stiffer than almost all the other tonewoods, and also very dense. This gives it a “bright” sound across the tonal spectrum, with strong fundamentals, and a rapid note decay.

Did Gibson stop using rosewood?

Since 1991, Brazilian Rosewood has been listed as an endangered species and has therefore been used sparingly by guitar makers. However, there have been some small runs here and there of Gibson guitars that do have Brazilian fingerboards, particularly during 2001-2003.

Which is better pau ferro or rosewood?

Pau Ferro has a tighter density than rosewood, meaning slightly less frequencies are absorbed into the fretboard. This results in a brighter, snappier tone, while still retaining the depth of rosewood designs. The feel of pau ferro is comparable to that of ebony, meaning an effortless, smooth playing experience.

When did rosewood become illegal?

The restrictions under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — commonly referred to as CITES — went into effect in 2017, after strong demand for high-end rosewood furniture in China led to conservation worries and violence in areas that produce the wood.

Is rosewood The best tonewood?

Common on electric, bass, and acoustic guitars, Rosewood is by far the most widespread fretboard tone wood in circulation, and is the preferred option for the majority of players.

What wood are Martin guitars made of?

The most common top tonewood is Spruce. Martin uses a variety of different types of Spruce including Sitka, Engelmann, Adirondack, Red and Italian Alpine, each with their own distinct tonal characteristics.

What are mahogany guitars good for?

Players most often find that the tone also remains more balanced than most other guitar tonewoods. Sounds produced from a mahogany guitar tend to be on the warmer side of tone, and more controlled. Most acoustic guitars feature mahogany in the guitar neck, because it provides a more stable feel.

What kind of wood is NATO?

Nato wood is a collective name for wood from Mora trees (the best-known species are Mora excelsa (Mora) and Mora gonggrijpii (Morabukea). This should not be confused with Nyatoh (an Asian hardwood from the family Sapotaceae with a very similar look and characteristic to Honduras Mahogany, though totally unrelated).

Is okoume wood good for guitar neck?

Oddly enough, okoume is used in acoustic guitar necks as well as electric guitar necks. Its softness must be accounted for will filler, coating and additional structural support. With proper working and finishing, okoume (plug whatever is incorporated into it) can make a stable and nice-sounding neck.

Is cedar a good tonewood?

Cedar is the most popular top tonewood for classical guitars and is an excellent choice for steel-string acoustics as well. A variety of cedars can be seen in acoustic guitar tops and necks, though it's uncommon to see it used as a back and sides material and certainly as a fretboard material.