Does poplar wood in electric guitars break easily?

[Wayne27]

Also does basswood break easily too?

[Mincer]

Basswood is very light and can dent easily if it doesn't have a hard finish on it. Poplar is hard and dense, and usually has a hard, opaque finish on it as it isn't very pretty to look at, either. My Music Man is made of poplar, and it is a solid piece of wood.
Any piece of wood breaks if you throw it hard enough, but both are generally pretty durable as guitar bodies.

[dave74]

I've seen the grubs that the posts screw into start to loosen over time on Edge/Floyd bridges when they are seated in basswood.
My two Ibanez are like this but have not started to loosen. I've only had them setup with fairly lax string-tension. I would not setup guitars like this with heavy tight strings. (IMO)

[nexion218]

I think its pretty hard to generalize basswood... Its is used in sub 500 usd budget guitars but for exame the Steve Vai sig Ibanez model that are sold for several thousand dollars are also basswood. There is an obvious quality gap there. I remeber hearing something from my luthier that the basswood is not uniform and the end result depends on which part of the tree is used. Which makes sense, but don't quote me on that.

[devastone]

Poplar does not break easily, it's probably harder than alder.

I've never had a problem with Floyd inserts in basswood, I've never had any in a $200 guitar either, but an old basswood JEM was my main player for a decade or so and I never had a problem, used to use a bunch of MIJ RGs too, again, no problem.

[ICTGoober]

In my experience, the Floyd inserts were breaking of out of alder bodies much more frequently than any other wood. Of course - in the old days, Floyds used those stupid diecast threaded screws for the fulcrum points on a Floyd, and they would tear out the grain of almost ANY species - even maple. The threads weren't cut or rolled like normal screws. The diecast threads crushed the wood fibers, instead of cutting smoothly into the wood fibers which allowed the wood to retain its strength in that critical area right next to the routing.

Heaven help you if the screw or insert broke out the thin portion of the wood close to the routing hole. That was a cast iron biotch to repair, usually requiring routing out for a new wood patch to be glued in and redrilled, not to mention any refinishing.

Fricking Floyd Rose.... I'd spit on his grave if he was dead.

[Ascension]

My Pink Carvin X 220C has a Poplar body and have owned several other guitars with Poplar. It's a ugly wood for a transparent finish but otherwise is stable and I like the way Poplar sounds. Owned several early 90's Carvins with Poplar bodies all with Floyds and never had an issue with any of them and posts pulling even with me being in a hair band and really getting crazy at times with the bar.
Most of the Carvins had Kahler Steelers BTW IMO the absolute finest Floyd variant ever built and every one was rock solid stable in tuning.
Pinky with the Carvin X50 B Hot Rod Mod head from the same year 1991.

[Adieu]

Chip/dent? Kind of

Full-on break? Nah, not unless you're asking for it. Mahogany Gibsons with their fragile neck designs are far likely to have catastrophic non-cosmetic failures than your basswood or poplar superstrat

[idsnowdog]

I have three poplar bodies and I have found they resist dents and stripping better than basswood and alder.