Wood Options For Back And Sides

I have a very large range of tonewoods for guitar and other stringed instrument bodies. Here is a list of them, with links to pictures of the woods in instrument bodies where possible.

Brazillian Rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) The time-honoured “holy grail“of back and side woods. Almost metallic bell-like tap resonance gives a rich, reverberent but clear tone to both steel and nylon string guitars. Usually a rich chocolate brown colour. It is now impossible to import this wood into Australia due to a CITES listing. I have some sets I purchased in 1990. Very expensive!

Honduras Rosewood (Dalbergia stevensonii) Paler in colour than Brazillian Rosewood, Honduras Rosewood has the same wonderful clear ringing sound. It lives up to its name by having a very pleasant rose scent, especially when milling. It is becoming very rare and expensive, but is still currently unrestricted in trade.

Indian Rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia) This charming wood has largely replaced the other rosewoods as a favourite back and sides wood due to its wonderful appearance, tone and ready availability. Colour can vary from pale pink to deep purple, almost black, with a whole variety of greys, reds and browns. On guitars it usually oxidises to various shades of brown and always looks good. It closely resembles Brazillian Rosewood in tone, having slightly richer mid-high harmonics but less clarity

Cocobolo (Dalbergia retusa) Heavier and more oily than the other rosewoods, this Mexican rosewood is a very attractive back and sides wood. It has a deep orange to reddish brown colour which oxidises in gutar bodies to a rich brown with black grain lines. Its tone improves with age.

South East Asian Rosewood (Dalbergia oliveri) Also called Vietnamese rosewood, oliveri has the same clear ringing tones as Brazillian or Honduras rosewood. It can have a similar grain and figuring as well but is generally plainer in appearance and has a rich brick-red colour. I have limited quantities. It is hard to get and very expensive.

African Blackwood (Dalbergia Melanoxylon)  This is a very rare wood used in classical woodwind instruments for its sonority and wonderful stability.  It has proven as classical guitar wood for backs and sides and is available at great expense and very limited supply. My sets come from a sustainable use supplier in South Africa. 

Bolivian Rosewood (Macaerium sp.) Although not a Dalbergia, this Central American wood has a mildly sweet smell and shows many characters similar to the South American rosewoods with its high resonance and great reflective properties. If you want a guitar with more punch than Indian Rosewood offers this will give it to you at only slightly higher cost.

Madagascar Rosewood (Dalbergia Baronii)  Now an established replacement in lutherie circles for Brazillian Rosewood, this is fantastic, expensive wonderful looking and sounding wood. It substitutes perfectly for Brazillian Rosewood.

Panama Rosewood (Dalbergia sp)  I don’t know the exact species name of this one. It is a dense, pale yellow-brown wood with similar tap tone to Brazillian Rosewood and with a similar but plainer grain figure. Excellent for use when you want the Brazillian sound

In general, all the rosewoods are highly sought-after as guitar woods due to their high ringing tap tones and the rich, loud sound they add to instruments. There are other Dalbergias, as well as other woods called rosewood. The ones I have listed are the ones I have ready to use.

European Maple (Acer campestris) I use this mainly in carved instruments - mandolins, violins and arch-top guitars, where it is a traditional choice. It can also be used in flat-top and classical guitars. It is creamy white to golden coloured and instrument makers usually select curly grained pieces. It looks fantastic. In steel string flat-tops it gives a bright hard sound which tends towards a nasal quality.

Big Leaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum) A fast growing maple from Western North America, it is commonly softer and darker in colour than European Maple. It tends to impart a darker, mellower sound to stringed instruments. It can have spectacular “quilt” figuring, which only shows on back-sawn pieces.

Tasmanian Blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) Closely related to the famous Hawaiian Koa (Acacia Koa) this Eastern Australian wood is proving to be one of the rising stars in the lutherie world. It produces a bright, clear tone in guitars with less harmonic richness than the rosewoods. It can have a striking “fiddleback” curl in the grain and a very high natural sheen, which makes it look quite striking. I have both curly and plainer boards. Used well it always sounds good. I think the plainer varieties sound better Being a fast growing tree, increasing amounts are being grown and milled outside Australia. It is generally recognised that the best quality grows in South East Australia and Tasmania. U.S. demand for the wood is making it harder to procure in Australia.

Queensland Maple (Flindersia brayleyana) Not a true maple at all, this tropical Eastern Australian hardwood gained its common name from its pale colour and frequent curly grain and was considered Australias premier cabinet wood for many years. The bulk of what was a large reserve has gone to veneer and other furniture uses. Maton Guitars pioneered the use of it in instruments in the 1950s. It is a strong, light weight wood, pale pink or greyish-pink in colour with similar uses to African or South American mahogany. I prefer it to the mahoganies as a tonewood. It is lighter, stronger, harder to work but produces bright sounding, lightweight instruments of great charm. I use it in steel-string guitar necks more than any other wood.

Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) Jarrah’s red mahogany colour has made it very popular in cabinet and furniture uses. I first noticed its tonal properties when breaking up apple boxes for kindling when I was very young. The 5 mm thick boards gave out a very loud, musical sound as I destroyed them. Here is Western Australia, Jarrah is regarded as a framing, engineering or more lately furniture wood. Its acoustic properties have been ignored until recently. I have made many Jarrah guitars and ukuleles. It always makes a loud instrument, with strong midrange voices. It often has curly grain and makes fine looking and sounding guitars.

Wandoo (Eucalyptus wandoo) This very heavy, strong wood grows in an open woodland environment in South Western Australia. It has a striking creamy, white bark and produces a pale yellowish or pinkish brown wood. It is extremely high in tannins, and always changes colour to a rich chocolate brown in fingerboards and a dark brown under finish in guitar bodies. Its great strength and weight give it very high resonant freqencies, so high in fact that the wood appears to have no tap tone. In guitars it produces a very loud, projecting instrument which seems to reflect all the frequencies of the top out through the soundhole. The volume of these guitars is something to be dealt with! They can cause microphones to overload and drown out singing voices. I have also used other desert woodland timbers such as Gimlet.

Marri (Eucalyptus calophylla) A pale coloured eucalypt which grows in South Western Australia in the same areas as Jarrah. Due to its tendency to produce sap veins after forest fires, it has not had the popularity of Jarrah as a cabinet or structural wood. In clear boards it has a pale creamy colour, with pink and brown streaks often with strongly curly grain. It produces an even, fairly soft sound and is great for accompaniment.