The Right Wood For Your Guitar Neck
One of the easiest ways to get a jump start on a great sounding guitar is by choosing the right type of wood for the guitar neck. Different woods will make different sounds, and reflect the tone differently when played. Although this is particularly relevant to acoustic guitars, the same holds true for electric as well. How the wood reacts to the strings, resonates with the vibrations, and handles the chords will have a lot to do with how the guitar ultimately sounds.
The most common wood used for electric guitar necks is maple. Maple is a unique kind of wood suited to withstand the rigors of guitar use. Not only is it sufficiently hard to hold the strings in tune, but it provides a nice, sharp, focused tone. The maple guitar neck also has a nice uniform grain that works well for the requirements of the guitar.
An obvious requirement for any guitar neck material is the straightness of the wood. If the wood cannot maintain a straight line, you will have a bowed neck and inconsistent spacing between the string and frets. Any guitarist knows the difficulty this can cause, both from a playing and sound perspective.
Other common woods used in guitars are mahogany and rosewood. Both are sufficiently strong and make for stable necks, but offer different tonal preferences to the musician. Where mahogany tends to emphasize and highlight the highs, rosewood mutes the higher frequencies. If you have a sensitive and discerning ear, you will want to carefully test and select your instrument.
Finding the right sound for your band is as important as finding the right songs to play. The perfect song won’t be quite perfect if the instruments are wrong. Testing the sounds of the different woods is not particularly an amateur’s game however. You must have an ear for the complexities of the tones, and be able to distinguish the frequencies that are played. The most important thing is that the guitar is comfortable to play and sounds how you want it to.
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