Best Tonewoods For Acoustic Guitars

We offer a great selection of tonewood for instrument builders including red adirondack spruce carpathian spruce figured maple and other domestic woods new offerings acoustic back side sets.

Best tonewoods for acoustic guitars.

Adirondack spruce picea rubens this was the choice wood used on pre war martins. It is a very light and fairly soft wood and it s light in color too with minimal grain. It has great mid range like mahogany but also expands well into the high end tones and low end tones producing deep bass notes and bright treble notes. But basswood is a good tonewood by any standards and it has been used by many high end makers with excellent results.

There s nothing else like it the first and only the tonewoodamp is a must have device for any acoustic guitar player. Woody deep rich lacking metallic sounding overtones. Punchy powerful but controlled. And yet all the same benefits.

Oregon wild wood is the luthiers source for fine tone wood from the pacific nw. As a result less dense timbers generally produce a more balanced sound but sacrifice some responsiveness as a result. The tonewoodamp is a revolutionary device that uses an acoustic guitar s own body and soundhole to create a range of enhancement effects. Special thanks to builder john mayes for the information and images below.

Smooth lacking harshness even response. Because it was logged so heavily the use of it was slowed drastically. Western red cedar for example is often used by guitarists who play with the fingers. The bass and or treble frequencies are not overly dominant.

Mahogany back and sides often emphasize bass and treble with more overtone coloration and a woody sound as opposed to the more metallic sound of say rosewood back and sides. Guitars intended for fingerpicking are best when the tone is well balanced e g. Also known as red spruce this wood offers a wonderful tone. Articulate clear.

Very different to maple rosewood has a high response rate. Airy spacious not overly compressed. Koa is native to hawaii and is used commonly on ukuleles but less so on guitars. The tonewoods we offer is sourced in ecologically friendly ways including forest and urban salvage commercial fruit and nut grove salvage recycling and re purposing.

As a guitar top dense mahogany has a solid punchy tone with low overtone content and good high end response. Affordable and abundant basswood is particularly associated with mid level or budget guitars. Falling between rosewood and mahogany is koa a tonewood martin first used on guitars in 1917 as a craze for all things hawaiian swept across america. Brittle loss of clarity on the verge of distorting.