wood differences

thinkin about building a tele...never done it before but i know i can do a pretty good job with my dads help (he is a spectacular craftsman). but im not sure about what wood for the body. i play an ash tele and like the sound of it but what am i going to hear differently if i use alder or pine? tonally how are the woods different? adler ash pine etc
thanks

You may want to do a search here on "tonewood" or "tone wood". Use the google custom search function in the search tools at the top of the page.

Little yellow guy with the popcorn gif goes here.

http://www.suhrguitars.com/wood.aspx

Also any input on pine? I know knight and Kirn are using pine on some

Apparently its like Alder, not as bright as ash but not as warm as basswood - some early Broadcasters were made from it but they switched to ash cause it was too soft. It's a bit of a fad that caught on here about 5 years ago after Arlo built a few. Now everybody is making them. Even Fender got caught up in it with classic vibe tele.

Actually Fender came out with a pretty expensive custom shop pine bodied tele and that caused people to desire affordable pine bodies here.

That went on for at least 5 years before Arlo's build threads started the snowball rolling....:-). Do a search for pine body here and you'll see what I mean.

There was a mystical plank from Mojo Mountain in PA. that was helicoptered off a mountainside that provided many of those bodies.
This thread from 2003 is an example:

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/telecaster-discussion-forum/5900-then-there-were-two.html

I'd say Arlo and the TDowns drawings were the catalyst of the pine " fad " that many of us subscribe to.

I'm of the opinion that wood matters, but that it's really impossible to say what a certain type of wood sounds like, except in generalities. No two pieces of wood will sound alike, and no two guitars made out of the same wood typw will sound alike. They may have a general tone, but that's about as far as it goes. IMHO, you're better off to pick a piece of wood for it's grain, color, weight, etc, that appeals to you, then build your guitar. If you build it well, and put good electronics and hardware on it, it'll sound good.

Actually, pine has a lot to recommend it. It's cheap, probably the easiest to find solid wood, and it sounds good too. I always found it weird that the many of the same people who would say that pine is too fragile a wood to make solid guitar bodies out of probably own acoustic guitars with spruce tops. I made a few pine Tele bodies myself, and the only issue I really had with pine is finishing it.

Best of all, it makes a great 'practice' wood for your first bodies. If you make a mistake, it's always better to mess up a pine blank that costs $10 than a nice alder or swamp ash blank worth $100 or more.

ken

Poplar might be another good choice. Hard to find in a one-piece, but cheap. I have about $8 in the body I'm working on. And it's very workable for someone who might not have done much with shop tools in recent memory :)

I would start with poplar or basswood also, if on my first body making project.

In most instances there's as much difference sound wise between different pine bodies as there seems to be between this pine body and that alder one. Don't get too focused on the "tone" of the wood. Look at weight, the uniformity of the weight in the blank used, in getting seams right, in avoiding errors and tearouts, in a species of wood known for being friendly to work with. I would use whichever, between poplar and basswood, I found first that was "right" save the more quirky to work with woods for next time.

im probably going to cheat and buy a body already made and routed...just for the first one...

Also - Alder and Yellow Poplar have a good weight proportion with a maple neck for a Tele. Tele's tend to get neck heavy if you get below a 4lb body. That's what makes Poplar a great wood to start with if one were making their own.

Guys do any of you know the best place to buy neck and body wood blanks? Never built a guitar before and trying to get some plans together.