Types of wood used in guitars?

When you say "Solid Body" I assume you are not talking about a solid body electric, but rather an accoustic made from "real" wood and not laminate (Yeah, laminate is real wood too, but you know what I mean).

I would check out a few sites like these

http://www.acousticfingerstyle.com/gfaqs/gsound.htm (scroll down a few pages to the tonewood section)

or

http://www.wechterguitars.com/abe_column/archive14.htm

or

http://www.frets.com/FRETSPages/Musician/Guitar/ToneWoods/tonewoods1.html

There is a lot of information out there, some of it is just personal observation some of it is more scientific. I would reccomend trying them out and seeing which sounds best to you.

Try the project guitar forum. Lots of people there who build guitars and information as well. http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?s=65f637f37eaf8ddaeadec82e6a0be837&act=idx

Cedar sounds great but it's soft. Definately not a beater guitar you'll need a hard case for it.

Well for tops you have:

Spruce
Cedar
Redwood
Koa
Mahogany

for backs you can have just about anything

Maple
Rosewood
Ebony
Cherry

You name it. Generally the back is a denser wood.

the list goes on and on.

for backs you can have just about anything

Maple
Rosewood
Ebony
Cherry

Mahogany! :shock:

sure.

Ozark Wild Cherry
Lyrachord - not a wood, BUT NOT PLASTIC.

Fretboards are virtually always made out of either Rosewood or Ebony on acoustics. On a very rare occasion, you'll see a maple fretboard...

Rosewood and ebony fingerboards are very popular. Sometimes you see wenge too - that's an African hardwood. Or 'ebonite' on cheap models... that's really a kind of plastic.

Luthiers can get creative, though - I have a custom built hollow body with a ribbon mahogany fretboard. I've also seen walnut, and a few exotics, like peroba rosa.

If you get into the electric arena, there aren't many woods that DON'T get used - alder, poplar, swamp ash, basswood, walnut are all fairly common for bodies.

I saw an add for an all ash made guitar.

acoustic guitar - top, back and sides made from ash.

what do you think of it ?

Nothing, since IIRC 'ash' and 'swamp ash' aren't specific kinds of woods found in whatever tree-catalogus you may have. Pretty hard to predict how it will sound.

Arjen is right in that they're vague terms. I could take dozens of completely different woods and build 'genuine ash' guitars. In the US at least, 'ash' usually means fraxinus americana - also called white ash, biltmore ash, or canadian ash - but it could actually be any of the other species, each of which is pretty similar.

'Swamp ash' is actually a little more precise... it refers to ash with open pores. These woods grow at more southern latitudes, and the wood is a bit softer. Swamp ash is usually fraxinus caroliniana, fraxinus nigra, or fraxinus pennsylvanica.

If you're going to fault a term as not applying to a single species, though, you'd need to rule out a lot of other common terms for guitar woods: spruce, cedar, mahogany, rosewood, maple, and walnut, just to name a few. The only common terms that apply to a single species are going to be things like Koa (etelis coruscans) that grow in very isolated areas.