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Permalink Reply by Dan Sleep on February 3, 2012 at 2:47am

OK, someone help me out here. I don't understand how the type of wood used for the neck impacts the tone of the instrument.

I know that the material used for the nut or bridge can affect the tone since the both touch the strings. And the type of material and thickness of the box lid will alter the resonance.

I guess I just don't get why using "tonewood" as opposed to any other wood would make a CBG sound better.

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Permalink Reply by Seaman Jay on February 3, 2012 at 3:17am

The fretboard is actually the "other end" of the sound loop (bridge->string->fret->fretboard->body->bridge). Hard woods transmit the vibrations better than anything soft. So - if you fret (not as important when sliding, I presume) the hardwood is your friend. If you "fret" fretless - it's no more just "important"...

But, OTOH, we're still talking good vs. better, not good vs. bad or correct vs. incorrect.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on February 3, 2012 at 8:20am

As my buddy the Seaman sez...hardwoods have a denser cell structure, due to their slower growth, and also tend to have straighter grain. Denser = better sound transmission. Straighter = less warping, and the easier transmission of certain frequencies down the neck. Using hard wood for the neck was originally, I suspect, the luthiers' way of just getting a straighter neck, prior to the development of internal truss rods. And you've seen or read about the use of extreme metal necks. It's trying to get to what Les Paul said in an interview about 20 years ago: he wanted only the string to vibrate, nothing else, and so the Log ( which IIRC was a thick piece of pine) was born - as was proper electric guitar sustain. I've done tone comparisons on Strats having the standard alder or basswood body, with maple necks and fretboards, maple necks with rosewood or ebony fretboards, mahogany necks with ditto, and I can tell you that, subjectively, to my ears, they do sound different. The maples sound brighter, the mahoganies and rosewoods sound warmer and fatter.

This is why I now cap my plywood necks with mahogany finger boards - to at least get a warm-sounding hard wood closest to where the strings are fretted, noded, and vibrating. Also, my frets stay in better. That said, several original relic CBGs I've read about had pine necks. I think that yes, you can maximize as best you can the opportunities for great tone by using every luthier's trick available. But in the end, these are still cigar boxes - which may be cedar (lovely tonewood), birch or mahogany plywood, or even pasteboard. And oddly enough, a fair number of these, even the pasteboard ones, sound good, both acoustically and amplified.

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Permalink Reply by Hobo 63 on February 3, 2012 at 9:03am

Thank You all.Lot of good information :)

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