Maple Guitars

Subject: Maple Guitars
From: Mooh
Date: 14 May 06 - 07:09 AM

Maple syrup is wonderful stuff, isn't it? Maple trees seem to have a personality too, but it's their wood that really amazes me.

Several times lately I've been very impressed with maple (back and sides) guitars, especially a Larrivee parlour style, a nylon string, and a recent Gibson (seemed a smaller body). There has been a certain un-rosewood tone to them which really tweeks my ear. Somehow now I'm "getting it" with maple where before I knew I liked it but couldn't fully open my heart to it or something.

Now, I have (and have had) maple instruments, and currently play a maple jumbo baritone guitar, maple mandolin, and fiddle (all solid with killer flames). For some reason they are now somehow speaking to me differently, or rather I'm hearing them differently. More complex, but more pure and vital. Is it the weather, has my hearing changed, has my mind changed, has my brain changed?

Why do I hear them so?

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Big Mick
Date: 14 May 06 - 09:47 AM

I can't say what it is, Mooh. My only experience with Maple has been my mid 60's vintage Guild 12 string. It has this wonderful, and precise voice. The tones are clear and distinct. I love its sound and wouldn't part with it.

Mick

Subject: RE: Maple
From: redsnapper
Date: 14 May 06 - 03:58 PM

I've four maple intsruments: archtop guitar, mandolin, mandola and tenor banjo and all are excellent with subtle and complex tones.

A wonderful wood, sustainable and nice to work with too.

RS

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Mooh
Date: 14 May 06 - 10:45 PM

I sometimes borrow (often for months at a time) a maple five string banjo but don't think I can use that as a reference given my lack of banjo experience. I hear frailing as a woodier tone than Scruggs, but my ear isn't too sure even about that.

A friend has a recent maple National resonator mandolin which is very droolworthy, and that mapleness is there in spades.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: GUEST,Don Meixner
Date: 15 May 06 - 12:15 AM

In Europe Maple is a very traditional tone wood. Combined with Spruce for soundboards and used almost exclusively in Violins, Violas, Violincellos, and Basses Maple not only resonates very nicely itself but it helps to shape the tone.

In the US Rock Maple or Sugar Maple is used for furniture as well as Viols and many Archtop guitars. Elder and soft Maple are closely related and do not make a very high quality tone wood. There seems to be a corrolation between quality of sugar sap to quality of tone wood regards to Maple. Even Box Elder has a sugarable sap but it is of very poor quality

My experience with Maple shows it to be a very consistant and resonant wood regards to density. The resonance seems to depend on the figuration of the wood chosen. Flame, Tiger, Birds Eye, and Quilted maple are all used as woods for backs and sides and the figuring seems to shape the tone from dark to bright.

The Maple lap dulcimers I have made have a brighter sound than the more earthy sounding walnut instruments I have made.

Maple of a plain configuration carves easily with sharp tools. It glues well and generally speaking it takes a finish well.

Don

Subject: RE: Maple
From: IanC
Date: 15 May 06 - 10:25 AM

Ay. Three-ha'pence a foot.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Mooh
Date: 15 May 06 - 10:50 PM

My thinking is that it has something to do with an increased interest in and playing of my old fiddle, though the way a fiddle sounds is so much different than guitars and mandolins that I can't be sure of it.

Don is right about the consistancy of maple, at least it seems like I can hear it. Likely a good reason why so many fiddle bridges are maple.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: GUEST,Wesley S
Date: 15 May 06 - 10:57 PM

Personal taste alert !! I've yet to find a maple guitar that really blew my socks off. And I can say the same thing about koa too. They can be some of the worlds most beautiful guitars but the sound leaves me cold. I'll take rosewood and mahogany every time.

Now a maple mandolin ? NOW we're talking - that's my idea of heaven. My sister has a beautiful maple rocking chair - it has a flame you would not believe. And everytime I look at it I think "What a waste".

Subject: RE: Maple
From: catspaw49
Date: 15 May 06 - 10:59 PM

Redsnapper made the best comments about maple in general and Don's in specific were good. Instrument maples are hard with excellent ring tone and great stability.

My guess is that you are going through another of those life changes Mooh. Like the day you all of a sudden liked spinach, this too is a good thing......Not at all like the time you had a huge crush on the Singing Nun.......Or those old days when you thought Sally Struthers was an actress.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Mooh
Date: 16 May 06 - 08:20 AM

Well, that explains the asparagus, Spaw! LOL!

For what it's worth, there are two Gibson maple jumbos listed on the www.12fret.com used list this morning.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Mooh
Date: 16 May 06 - 08:46 PM

Interesting conversation right now on the Acoustic Guitar Magazine luthier's forum about maple necks, if anyone's interested.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 May 06 - 11:13 AM

My upright grand piano, a Weber that has been in the family since it was new (in the 1880s) has a fabulously beautiful birdseye maple sounding board. That is out of site 99.999 percent of the time (inside a case covered with a thick rosewood veneer). Imagine my surprise first time I opened this thing. It sounds wonderful, but needs to be refurbished (new strings, new hammers, various working parts updated). Every time I hear ads on the local classical station for new pianos for a couple of thousand dollars, I wonder what they sound like. This piano, to be restored, will cost somewhere from $6000 to $7500. Good Steinway's go for 10s of thousands of dollars (to over $100,000). The care that goes into the instrument and the wood used has to be a big part of the price (tho with Steinway you are also paying a hefty premium for that name and reputation).

SRS

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Steve-o
Date: 17 May 06 - 01:38 PM

Yeah, my ears are developing a taste for it too. I recently played one that was not only very beautiful, but also had great "ringing" tone. It was one of the new "30th Anniversary" Taylor guitars- called XXX-MS. Mighty tasty, but a bit on the pricey side.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 17 May 06 - 01:50 PM

Maple works very well for recorders - I have a few Renaissance-type recorders made of it, and they're the most distinctive ones I own.

It's not as durable as harder woods, though. (Maybe not an issue for guitars, but recorders get repeatedly wetted and dried out).

Subject: RE: Maple
From: John Hardly
Date: 17 May 06 - 02:01 PM

I had a wonderful maple Larrivee. If I could have afforded to own two expensive guitars at the same time, I'd still have it. Not only was it stunning to look at -- the maple had gone to that honey/amber color and it had Jean Larrivee's old classical soundhole rosette -- but it had the ability to cut through the din of an ensemble much better than most big guitars I've played in those circumstances. I was listening to the wrong advice when I traded it. I've never felt this kind of remorse about another instrument lost.

I have a friend with a Martin custom D-60-something that's flamed maple back and sides. It has a richness and clarity that is simply wonderful. Beautiful to look at too with tortoise bindings.

My mando is maple as well, and a darn shame I can't figure out a way to play it backwards. That stunning back is hidden from view while being played.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Mooh
Date: 17 May 06 - 02:31 PM

The fiddle that turns my crank is one I've inherited (actually, it's my sister's but she doesn't play). It was my Mum's Dad's fiddle, a German made 1888 Wolff Bros. I never knew the man but I guess he played regularly after work at his Toronto garage, the songs of his home in Scotland. It has character for sure, and family history obviously, never mind the psychological and sentimental attachment. I'm told it's pretty good, though you'd never know it in my hands...in the right hands it's glorious. It's this instrument that I believe has adjusted my ears to maple, and along the way I appreciate my mandolin and guitar all the more.

It's all those other maple instruments I want now that haunt my dreams!

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: gnu
Date: 17 May 06 - 02:51 PM

Unfortunate about the tonal quality of Bird's Eye as I find it the most visually striking of all woods. A buddy of mine used to buy them standing and bury them for three years. The start of "rot" (just a colour change along the grain in spots) was amazing. He made some wicked guitars, mandolins, fiddles.

I haven't talked to him in twenty years. Must try to track him down.

Excellent thread.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: DonMeixner
Date: 17 May 06 - 06:10 PM

Take a look at these electrics.

Don



CLICKETY-CLACKETY-CLANG----***poit***

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Tootler
Date: 17 May 06 - 07:04 PM

I've just got a maple bass recorder. It's a beauty. Lovely warm tone.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 May 06 - 07:08 PM

And don't forget that maple is the only tonewood conventionally used in luthiery that is truly stainable. Yeah, you can make mahogany a bit more red or a shade darker brown, but you can't make it blue. If you ever get a hankering for a blue guitar, it'll be maple.

Subject: RE: Maple
From: Mooh
Date: 18 May 06 - 12:54 AM

Solid bodies capped in maple can be dramatically different in tone than the same design in other woods. I've a solid body bass guitar (5 string fretless Godin) that has a nicer tone than my other basses (Warwick and Ernie Ball). That won't be entirely the maple as pickups, strings, wiring, etc also figure into the equation, but I've very often preferred maple capped axes so there might be something to it.

Fwiw.

Peace, Mooh.