Tonewoods

How we select and pair the woods that make a guitar a voice. Tap tone first. Visual character second.

Tonewood plates curing on the drying rack.

Selection Philosophy

Every tonewood gets tap-tuned and flex-tested before visual evaluation. Consistent grain and density beat dramatic figure. Highly figured wood introduces acoustic unpredictability and ages less consistently than ribbon-grain or straight-grain stock. Plates that fail the tap test are rejected regardless of how they photograph.

Sapwood is avoided — density difference, stability difference, finishing inconsistency. Quartersawn stock is preferred for neck and brace material. The criterion is always: what does this piece of wood actually sound like and how predictably will it age?

Top Woods

Ranked, top to bottom, by stiffness-to-weight.

  1. 1
    Adirondack spruce
    Primary top and bracing wood

    Stiffest of the spruces, highest strength-to-weight. Maximum headroom; rewards thinning.

  2. 2
    Sitka spruce
    Top wood option

    Stiffness somewhat below Adirondack but consistent and predictable. Reliable for dread and 000 voicings.

  3. 3
    Bear claw Sitka
    Top wood — figured

    Stiffness varies with the figure. Tap tuning every stage matters more here than on plain-grain stock.

  4. 4
    Redwood
    Soundboards and tone bars

    More flexible, lower density. Beautiful at moderate volume; pairs especially well with bocote. Not used for necks (learned the hard way).

  5. 5
    Mahogany
    Reference top and back/sides

    Flexible relative to stiffness, on the heavier side. Shows up in honest, midrange-forward voices.

Back & Sides

The character the top is paired against. We keep an inventory wide enough to match a build to a player’s sound, not the other way around.

Bocote

Dark, complex, authoritative. Strong fundamental, complex overtones, beautiful sustain bloom, medium decay. Best paired with Adirondack for articulation and clarity. Excellent with Sitka. Redwood pairing produces extraordinary warmth at moderate volumes. Avoid mahogany top — it wastes bocote's complexity.

Hawaiian koa

Sweet, complex, warm, immediately musical. Distinctive midrange in the best sense. Slightly soft attack — notes develop after pick contact. Bass round and warm rather than extended; treble chimes rather than glares. The 000 body is ideal — large enough to let the full voice develop, small enough to keep the midrange sweetness in focus. Ribbon-grain heartwood performs closer to theoretical best than heavily figured pieces.

Bolivian rosewood (Morado)

Warm, complex, the closest legal alternative to Brazilian. Five-year reference dreadnought built with this wood and a Sitka top remains stable, loud, clear.

Katalox

Balanced, punchy, underrated. Worth specifying when a builder wants rosewood-adjacent character without sourcing concerns.

Crelicam ebony

Bright and glassy. Demanding to work — narrow tolerance for moisture and movement. Reserved for builds where its character earns the difficulty.

Mahogany

Honest, midrange-forward, harmonically generous. The reference back-and-sides wood for measuring everything else against.

Walnut

Available. Warm and balanced when well-quartered.

Cherry

Available. Light, bright, ages handsomely with UV exposure.

Tonal Pairing

Four interactions you can predict before the first cut.

Stiff top
+ stiff back & sides

Maximum projection, brightness, and note separation.

Stiff top
+ warm back & sides

Focused fundamental, warmer coloration, direct.

Flexible top
+ stiff back & sides

Warm and sensitive with good projection.

Flexible top
+ warm back & sides

Maximum warmth. Limited headroom.

Body shape compounds these choices. A parlor body concentrates and focuses tonal character — bracing decisions have outsized effect on a small body. A 12-fret body join drives the bridge closer to the lower-bout center, where the top is most compliant: fuller bass, more complex bloom, vibrating area more evenly distributed both sides of the bridge.

Forward shifted X bracing and a 12-fret join are acoustically aligned. Both point toward maximum lower-bout vibration. When we choose them together, we’re stacking the deck on purpose.

What We Don’t Use

Honest assessments of woods we keep around but won’t generally build with. Tradition is a starting point, not an answer.

Maple

Limited use

Bright, reflective, sterile for our philosophy. It works in archtop, bluegrass flatpicking, and recording contexts — but it's incompatible with the touch-sensitive fingerpicking voice we're after. Better used for necks, bindings, or sold and traded.

Padauk

Avoid

Splintery and unpredictable to work with. The vivid orange-red color fades to a generic brown within months to years. Acoustic properties adequate but not exceptional. Better options exist in inventory.

The wood was never the constraint. The willingness to listen to it was.