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 Cocobolo:
Is my favorite wood to make back and side
Rosewood
Two types of rosewood are commonly
used in classical guitars and so-called flamenco negras: Brazilian (dalberia
nigra) and Indian (dalbergia latifolia) rosewood. Both woods are dense,
resinous, and very handsome. Brazilian rosewood. It has highly figured grain,
and many consider it the more beautiful of the two, but it is more brittle and
difficult to work than Indian rosewood. By contrast, Indian rosewood tends to be
straighter-grained, and often contains purplish streaks. Brazilian rosewood has
become increasingly expensive and rare. In the mid-1960s the Brazilian
government, with the aim of diverting more work to their sawmills, banned
the export of logs. In 1992 dalberia nigra was declared an endangered rain
forest tree, and so is no longer being exported period. Indian rosewood, on the
other hand, grows on plantation, and so remains plentiful. Indian rosewood also
has the advantage of being dimensionally more stable, and of being less affected
by changes in humidity and temperature than Brazilian rosewood.
Tonally the woods have slightly
different characteristics. Brazilian rosewood is less fibrous, and a somewhat
harder, denser wood, and so tends to reflect sound more, and thus produces a bit
brighter sound than does Indian. This difference, however, can only be perceived
by playing identically made instruments by the same maker. Or, to put it
slightly different way, there are much greater differences in sound between
makers using the same woods than between different woods by the same maker. A
well made Indian rosewood guitar may be infinitely better than a fancy-expensive
Brazilian guitar by a luthier of lesser talent.
Unlike the top, some fine makers
have chosen to build guitars using laminated materials with excellent results.
Jose Ramirez, for example, lines his traditional 1a model rosewood guitars with
cypress. He believes that this lamination lend greater stability to the
back and sides, preventing warping and twisting, and providing them with their
distinctive dark sound. Henner Hagenlocher, similarly lines the sides of his
guitars with cypress.
 For centuries maple has been used in instrument
making because its cross-grained structure allows it to be planed down to make
light, but strong instruments. In the nineteenth century, it was widely used to
make both fine classical and flamenco guitars. In fact, up to the 1930s,
fine flamenco guitars continued to be made of maple which like cypress can be
planned very thin, yet produces a somewhat fuller sound than cypress without
being as mellow as rosewood. Some modern luthiers, such as Paulino Bernabé,
Pedro de Miguel, and J. A. Pantoja Martin among others are again using maple to
produce instruments with a sweet vivacious tone.
The flamenco guitars are usually
made with Spanish cypress, an attractive blond wood that is extremely light, and
can be worked much thinner than rosewood. It is the use of thin, light cypress
for the back and sides that helps give flamenco guitars their vibrant and
distinctive sound. The choice of cypress over other woods, nonetheless, appears
to have been a question of building affordable guitars. Few flamenco players
could afford anything else, and cypress was abundant and cheap in Spain. In
recent years, however, high quality cypress has become increasingly difficult to
obtain.
Coral is another wood that is
occasionally used to make flamenco guitars. A handsome reddish wood like cypress
coral can be worked thin, to make light vibrant instruments. Harder than
cypress, it produces very bright guitars. Both Pedro de Miguel and José Ruiz
Pedregosa have used it to make outstanding flamenco guitars.
Mahogany
Mahogany is one of the woods widely used to make
affordable guitars. While it is much cheaper than rosewood, its tone is thinner
and less resonant than rosewood.
Other woods
Makers have experimented with a
number of other woods as alternatives to rosewood. Paulino Bernabé, for
instance, has used pear wood in the bodies of high quality classical and
flamenco guitars. Paul Fisher has experimented with a Brazilian wood, Santos
Palisander, with good results In their quest to find more affordable
woods guitar builders have also used sapele, an African wood in the mahogany
family, sycamore from central Europe, American walnut, Koa wood from Hawaii, and
Bubinga a reddish brown wood from Cameroon and Gabon.
Next : Wood for Neck
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