Solid wood vs. Laminated back and sides

scot · August 2009

Generally speaking, guitars respond to the pick one of three ways. A flat top has a fast attack and a slow decay, an archtop has a slow attack and a fast decay, and a Selmer style guitar has a fast attack AND a fast decay, and maybe a bit more amplitude, if the attack is roughly the same. These characteristics are developed in the top, which is very different in each of these three types of guitar. Torres proved the ultimate importance of the top in 1862 when he built an excellent-sounding guitar with back and sides of papier mache (this guitar still exists). Types of wood, solid v laminate, type of finish, even scale length - these things mostly serve to shade the tone. How much probably depends on the quality of the build more than anything else. A guitar made on the Selmer model will always have the characteristic sound of this kind of guitar, but the quality of the top and the skill of the luthier will determine the ultimate sound of the guitar.

My 2 cents...

Bones · August 2009

Scot,

I have always wondered how much the back and sides (type of wood or laminate vs. solid) impacts the 'wetness' of a guitar if at all.

Thanks

Bob Holo · August 2009

As has been said, the soundboard is paramount (well, neck is too - and bridge - the whole string path is fairly critical as you might imagine)
The sides make little to no difference IMHO unless you make them so inappropriately that they fail to do their job or port them or such - but there is a little juice to be squeezed from the back.

The thing about it I've found is that solid woods have characteristics and you can work with those characteristics by varying the strength / mass of the back though varying the back itself and/or the bracing strength & shape... that's a given, right? So, if you want to contribute to the big open chunkiness of the guitar you choose a nice example of a resonant light wood like Mahog or Walnut and you give it a thickness and bracing that allows it vibrate and unless the back is resting on your belly... you get a nice chunky warmth that you can work with by adjusting the several variables. Again, it's a compliment to the top... it is not the dominant influence. Rosewoods are tighter - they reflect more energy... they have more mass and so in general have a lower resonance for a given size plate... less chunk & more midrange 'ping' and a more even decay. The nature of the wood imparts the characteristic; the way you implement it tunes the result.

What I've found about laminates is that there's a big assumption... we assume laminates are properly laminated... it turns out to not be a very good assumption much of the time. Laminating wood is cheap & easy. Properly laminating Selmac style backs & sides is not. Proper lamination combines the properties of the constituent woods with very little damping to form a substrate of a strength & mass that is not obtainable otherwise... weight of mahog with the strength of rosewood - but isotropic & not anistropic as with quartersawn woods... so you get strength with / diagonally & cross grain... it's thin & resonant with very low damping... wonderful stuff - but difficult to make right & few do.