Wood and Guitar Buying

[LLL]

We all have to realize that for some living in a twisted, alternate universe of tone deafness and/or too much earwax buildup:

Guitar woods being pretty much "tonally the same" in comparison works for them.

Just as getting "authentic" EVH tone with an old SS Crate amp and a delay works for them.

Or "authentic" Metallica tone with a Fender Twin and a Bad Monkey works for them.

They are allowed to have their aural fantasies - as long as they keep it to themselves, because the consensus states otherwise.

[solspirit]

I go by the correct taxonomic Latin nomenclature.... If it's not Swietenia mahogoni - it's not mahogany. PERIOD. You can have stuff that's close in workability, appearance, texture, and tone response - but it's not mahogany.

As ErikH points out, lauan is often sold as Phillippine Mahogany. It's cheap, weak grained - almost punky in some instances - makes good plywood or cheap furniture. It can be any one of the Shorea family of woods from Southeast Asia.

The real problem starts with the wood wholesalers. You know many ironwoods there are? Nearly every nation has a heavy, hard wood called ironwood by the locals, but only woods with the Latin Sideroxylon are true ironwoods.

Then there are tradenames.... Korina was trademarked by Gibson because they thought it sounded better than white limba (Terminalia Superba). Spanish Cedar is neither Spanish, nor cedar - it's Cedrela Oderata. It looks like mahogany and even works like mahogany, but the resin smells like cedar when cut or sanded.

You want the real skinny on woods? Use this: The Wood Database (wood-database.com)

Oh, yeah - Guild's Asian line of solidbody guitars - Madiera and DeArmond are sometimes made of laminated bamboo, but sold as mahogany. I would not have known had I not purchased a DeArmond Jetstar (copy of a Guild Thunderbird) that was severely abused. When I stripped the finish - I was surprised by the stripes of bamboo. It will probably make a decent guitar someday.

https://imgur.com/bXrBSOH

I challenge you to buy a guitar made of Swietania Americana or much of anything else made out of it. Maybe you are forgetting about Honduran mahogany,Marcrophyla. The big mahogany scare of 2003 pushed by guitar producers and pretty much everyone else, is because because macrophilia went on the CITES 2 Classification from CITES 3

[solspirit]

I go by the correct taxonomic Latin nomenclature.... If it's not Swietenia mahogoni - it's not mahogany. PERIOD. You can have stuff that's close in workability, appearance, texture, and tone response - but it's not mahogany.

As ErikH points out, lauan is often sold as Phillippine Mahogany. It's cheap, weak grained - almost punky in some instances - makes good plywood or cheap furniture. It can be any one of the Shorea family of woods from Southeast Asia.

The real problem starts with the wood wholesalers. You know many ironwoods there are? Nearly every nation has a heavy, hard wood called ironwood by the locals, but only woods with the Latin Sideroxylon are true ironwoods.

Then there are tradenames.... Korina was trademarked by Gibson because they thought it sounded better than white limba (Terminalia Superba). Spanish Cedar is neither Spanish, nor cedar - it's Cedrela Oderata. It looks like mahogany and even works like mahogany, but the resin smells like cedar when cut or sanded.

You want the real skinny on woods? Use this: The Wood Database (wood-database.com)

Oh, yeah - Guild's Asian line of solidbody guitars - Madiera and DeArmond are sometimes made of laminated bamboo, but sold as mahogany. I would not have known had I not purchased a DeArmond Jetstar (copy of a Guild Thunderbird) that was severely abused. When I stripped the finish - I was surprised by the stripes of bamboo. It will probably make a decent guitar someday.

https://imgur.com/bXrBSOH

Americana hasn't been used for much of anything and definitely not commercial made guitars. Gibson ued Honduran mahogany which is macrophilia and not Americana. The big guitar makers mahogany scare, was because macrophilia was reclassified from CITES 3 to CITES 2.

[AlexR]

I go by the correct taxonomic Latin nomenclature.... If it's not Swietenia mahogoni - it's not mahogany. PERIOD. You can have stuff that's close in workability, appearance, texture, and tone response - but it's not mahogany.

https://imgur.com/bXrBSOH

Interesting. You do know that the term Mahogany is referring to a genus, not a species. But then you try and apply it to the species only. It would have been much more credible if you'd actually applied the taxonomic detail more correctly.
And especially so since Cuban mahogany was only ever used on boats, and was even then was being replaced with Honduran about a century before solidbody guitars were made.