Why are mahogany tops so rare?

[DB's Jazz Guitar Blog]

The ES 125 thread in the for sale section made me wonder why mahogany tops are so rare on archtops. I know they exist but why are they not more common? Mahogany is a great tone wood for warmer and darker sounds and we all know this is exactly what so many of us seek in archtops. I once played a 1946 ES 300 with a mahogany top and it sounded fantastic. I always regretted not buying that one. I dug in my vintage vault and even found the old clip that was recorded in the store. It sounded huge with lots of sustain. The playing is mindless and the amp so so but still ...

Years later I got a blonde ES 300, as you may know. Maple top.

I have a 175 with mahogany back and sides (in addition to the neck of course) and it sounds great. Still, the top is maple too. I would love to hear an all mahogany 175.

DB

[deacon Mark]

Well it is open grained wood and hard to finish in that it needs filler. Maple or spruce you just sand and spray. I personally do not like mahagony in a guitar although I do understand the produce nice sounding guitars. i much perfer the sound of maple either the top or the back. Mahagony works well many use it but it does require a bit more preperation.

[John A.]

The ES 125 thread in the for sale section made me wonder why mahogany tops are so rare on archtops. I know they exist but why are they not more common? Mahogany is a great tone wood for warmer and darker sounds and we all know this is exactly what so many of us seek in archtops. I once played a 1946 ES 300 with a mahogany top and it sounded fantastic. I always regretted not buying that one. I dug in my vintage vault and even found the old clip that was recorded in the store. It sounded huge with lots of sustain. The playing is mindless and the amp so so but still ...

Years later I got a blonde ES 300, as you may know. Maple top.

I have a 175 with mahogany back and sides (in addition to the neck of course) and it sounds great. Still, the top is maple too. I would love to hear an all mahogany 175.

DB

I can't speak to archtops, but I've been playing a lot of different flattops lately, including a bunch of mahogany topped ones. My observation is that they are not necessarily darker sounding than spruce; many are actually very bright (almost clanking/metallic sounding). If one mahogany top happens to be darker than another spruce top, I think that's more a function of other construction differences than the wood itself (e.g., bracing, top thickness). In as close to ceteris paribus examples as I've been able to try, spruce just plain sounds better -- more detail, more responsiveness and variation in tone due to playing dynamics and technique. To the extent that that sort of complexity is a disadvantage in an electric archtop, and a builder can achieve better results with pressed laminates or mahogany than carved spruce, the laminates are probably a lot cheaper to build with, and give more consistent results. I think every once in a while, somebody manages to build a really good mahogany topped guitar, and people go "hmmm, I wonder why there aren't more of these?", but I think those are the exception, and on balance other woods work better for tops, especially nowadays, with spruce or maple being pretty abundant and cheap, and mahogany being endangered and scarce.

John

[deacon Mark]

I can't speak to archtops, but I've been playing a lot of different flattops lately, including a bunch of mahogany topped ones. My observation is that they are not necessarily darker sounding than spruce; many are actually very bright (almost clanking/metallic sounding). If one mahogany top happens to be darker than another spruce top, I think that's more a function of other construction differences than the wood itself (e.g., bracing, top thickness). In as close to ceteris paribus examples as I've been able to try, spruce just plain sounds better -- more detail, more responsiveness and variation in tone due to playing dynamics and technique. To the extent that that sort of complexity is a disadvantage in an electric archtop, and a builder can achieve better results with pressed laminates or mahogany than carved spruce, the laminates are probably a lot cheaper to build with, and give more consistent results. I think every once in a while, somebody manages to build a really good mahogany topped guitar, and people go "hmmm, I wonder why there aren't more of these?", but I think those are the exception, and on balance other woods work better for tops, especially nowadays, with spruce or maple being pretty abundant and cheap, and mahogany being endangered and scarce.

John

You cannot really compare and archtop to a flattop they do different things in relationship to setting the soundboard in motion. A laminate guitar I would assume you could make cheaper if you have automation and dies that can press the wood into shape. For the independant builder it is far easier to buy a spruce top and carve it to where you need, even if you don't spend a lot of time in the voicing and graduations of the top. Simply getting a spruce top and getting it into the arched form with a pantograph or similar can sometime get nice results. It is far more sound producing than any laminated guitar and spruce would produce much more sound than mahogany.

I am one who basically held that Jimmy D'aquisto the master of them all said, for an archtop it needs maple, spruce and ebony. He did not like rosewood even but it can used for fingerboards and bridges but I still prefer the traditional. If it is not broke...…..don't fix it.

[sgosnell]

Mahogany is fine for necks and backs, but not so great for tops. There are good reasons for using spruce for tops and mahogany for other guitar parts. Centuries of trial and error have made choices pretty clear.

[Greentone]

The mahogany-topped Heritages sound pretty good, to me.

[skykomishone]

The mahogany-topped Heritages sound pretty good, to me.

All of this talk about Hog archtops is stimulating my desire for my two Hogs. Later, when the shadows grow long, I'll go routing around the stye and bring out my all hog Heritage Eagle and '40s
125 for some good old fashioned fun, and give a listen to that rich, fat sound, while trying to keep the squealing to a bare minimum! They are beautiful, and play and sound great.

[jads57]

Well stated about finishing issues of mahogany vs maple. Another factor back in the old days was cost of the wood itself. It probably would be the other way around nowadays,with Honduran Mahogany being quite prized.

[omphalopsychos]

I shared some thoughts in my For Sale post. But I'll chime in here too. (I won't bring flat tops into the question because the differences in construction make comparisons challenging.) I tend to agree with Mark's thoughts insofar as they relate to acoustic archtops. However, on an electric archtop things are different. In fact, while maple would be a strange choice for a top material on an acoustic archtop, we all know that it's a great one for an electric. Maple tends to have a snappy quality with short sustain. There are exceptions to this. Somehow Roger Borys, Jimmy D'Aquisto, and Bryant Trenier have accomplished build designs that achieve warmth and sustain with laminated maple tops. However, traditionally (think of a Gibson 175), the maple top is a contributor the the sharp attack and quick decay (the envelop component of "thunk"). If you compare older 175s to newer ones (expecially with 2 pickups), the observations tend to be that the newer ones are made to be less resonant through a heavier build and acoustically restrained by the two mounted pickups. Because Mahogany is less resonant and perhaps less rich harmonically than something like spruce or maple, I think this contributes to a more 'electric' sound out of the guitar, to use a phrase I've heard around here. For an electric archtop, I think mahogany is a very viable and attractive material that produces a different tonal quality with more sustain that reminds me of some of the later maple designers I mentioned above. Not to mention, mahogany with a dark stain is (in my opinion) a beautiful and refreshing alternative to the all-too-common maple sunburst.

[fws6]

My all mahog Guild x175. Sounds a bit different than the normal maple topped ones indeed, but hard to describe in words

[Socalbill]

Back when I was learning to build guitars I learned some of the history of spruce’s use in aviation. It was used because it is very light but still stiff along the grain while flexible across the grain. During World wars, spruce was very scarce as it was in demand for the war, and guitar builders turned to mahogany as a substitute. It’s harder, heavier and with its open grain it is not as resonate, but that’s what they could get.
To the OP’s question, I think mahogany has the reputation of being a second choice top wood. Builders like Martin still make them, but it’s that dirty 30’s blues vibe they are selling there IMO. If you take the time (big manufactures generally can’t) to pick the right top, mahogany can sound great, but if you make 100 guitars out of 100 tops, spruce is a better bet. All just my opinion of course, based on a bit of study and some years of experience.
Bill

[Spook410]

(wanders a bit off topic...) None of the carved guitars that I know of coming out of Asia in the last decade have Honduran Mahogany (e.g. Eastman, Yunzhi, Wu). Harder to get and expensive. Whatever they are using instead makes a good sounding carved guitar when used on back/sides with a spruce top.

[entresz]

I had a really cheap Washburn archtop, I believe it was an HB-15 - it was a laminated guitar, kind of like an ES-125, all mahogany. It was as if someone described what an ES-125 looks like over the phone and they built it from that description.

Anyway, it sounded really good. Even the acoustic sound from memory was quite respectable. It had some dreadful floating generic mini-humbucker on it, but it actually didn't sound bad.

The neck unfortunately had a nasty back bow - the truss rod couldn't help it. I guess you get what you pay for, but it was a good sounding guitar. The fact it was all mahogany would've had something to do with that.

[gitman]

I was looking for a new and "different" flattop guitar some 5 years and found an all-mahogany Santa Cruz 000-1928 , a 12-fret model. That guitar was "IT" and I bought it.
No regrets so far, for me it is the perfect fingerpicker and soft strummer and just a delight to hear and play just about ANYTHING. I've owned another 12-fret 000 model before made by Collings ,
the usual spruce/rosewood combo but it was bland in comparison. The Santa Cruz is warm, has great sustain, a wonderful balance and note separation BUT it's still a
small-body guitar so it doesn't compare to a J-200 or a Dreadnaught, Sóuthern Jumbo etc. It has a robust and solid tone, not too many silvery overtones so it's not a surprise that
ragtime and blues lovers really like this type of guitar. That much to an all-solid-mahogany fltattop.

On the other hand : The guitars referred to in this thread IINM are all archtops with laminated plates, correct ? Except that one Trenier with a mahogany back.
I wonder if the specific type of wood used for the top veneer really has any significant impact on the acoustic let alone electric sound of the guitar. Does it make for a
significantly different tone , more so than the usual slight differences between two guitars of the same model ?

I can understand the reasoning from the manufacturer's point of view that the porous wood requires a couple of extra coats of filler and therefor making it more labor-intensive
but that can't be the main reason why we see so few of these - I guess people are just so used to seeing acoustic guitars with light-colored tops so the big companies
stick to the old formula...

Please check out this wonderful musician playing that same model I have :

[Greentone]

Actually, the Heritage Eagle is a solid mahogany archtop.

[citizenk74]

I have a friend who had a beautiful all-mahogany Harmony in a 00018 size. Absolutely lovely tone. Still keeping my eyes peeled for one like it.

[Stringswinger]

Having owned/and still own guitars with tops made from Spruce, Cedar, Mahogany and Maple, I can say that all 4 woods have a different tone and given the right guitar design/luthier can sound great for any style of music.

That said, I had a mahogany topped Les Paul that I was never able to get a jazz guitar sound out of that pleased me and I wound up selling that guitar. And I love using a Les Paul for jazz, my current maple topped Lester does the job quite well.

[citizenk74]

Having owned/and still own guitars with tops made from Spruce, Cedar, Mahogany and Maple, I can say that all 4 woods have a different tone and given the right guitar design/luthier can sound great for any style of music.

That said, I had a mahogany topped Les Paul that I was never able to get a jazz guitar sound out of that pleased me and I wound up selling that guitar. And I love using a Les Paul for jazz, my current maple topped Lester does the job quite well.

I understand the Les Paul Customs originally had mahogany tops. My '68 had a maple top and of course ebony FB over the Mahogany neck and quartersawn mahogany body.

[Doctor Jeff]

I have a 1956 Kay that’s all-mahogany—pressed top. It has a bit of a neck bow but plays OK with a really low saddle. I added an Epi Classic 57 pickup I happened to have lying around, and set it up for playing slide. Not that I ever play slide LOL.



Mahogany is a neat wood. Great to work with for cabinetry. Here is a clock I made from wood salvaged from my BIL’s old boat.

[RJVB]

Mahogany is fine for necks and backs, but not so great for tops. There are good reasons for using spruce for tops and mahogany for other guitar parts. Centuries of trial and error have made choices pretty clear.

Centuries?

[Jimmy blue note]

I've built archtops with mahogany tops. The arching patterns by necessity had to be different from maple or spruce. Spruce being a conifer has a different cross grain stiffness than long grain orientation. If someone were building mahogany with 'traditional' arching patterns, it would not be optimum.
I think there are at least four reasons why you don't see more of them.
1) There isn't a high end codified tradition of construction that has a strong history and niche of exceptional instruments that were built, perfected and built to excellence (we judge spruce tops by those instruments that have risen to the top of the cream in a large pool of similiar instruments, guitar and violin family).
2) There isn't a caché associated with mahogany. Frankly, if Wes had been given a mahogany topped L-5 and that became synonymous with his warm woody and extraordinary lines, they would be highly prized.
3) Guitar buyers are extremely fickle, and speak of lutherie with great authority. There are myths of certain genres of guitars and builders that are greater than the guitars themselves. They drive the market and collectability of which all mid range copies are fantastic versions of. Guitarists don't fantasize about mahogany guitars.
4) Mahogany is not a prestige wood. In fact it's got a stigma of being a cheap bargain model wood. This is not due to the fact that it doesn't make a better vibrational medium, but the fact that since it's not as unobtainable as rosewood, quartered european spruce or as pretty as figured maple, lets it be built and marketed on less prestigious guitars (mid and low price point). It's about business, availability and not actual musicality.

In truth, I like the grain uniformity of mahogany. I like that it's easier to carve than maple. I like that it doesn't tend to split along the grain like spruce when spruce is thinned to the point of being very tunable. I like that it's got the solidity and resistance to splitting normally associated with laminates but it can be tuned more akin to a spruce top. I like the colour. (OK I don't like grain filling, but does anyone complain that they won't work with rosewood because it's an open pore wood?) I like that the nature of the wood makes it more robust when fitted with a humbucker pickup because it's free of sap and growth bands. I like it that making a solid 'hog guitar lets you use arching patterns that work really nicely together.
Yeah, I wish it were more commonly used. But I also happen to like walnut and cedar as guitar woods.

If you ever see a well built mahogany archtop, try it out. You might discover something that you can find yourself in. My opinion anyway

[mr. beaumont]

Not an archtop, but I am a big fan of mahogany on a guitar.


I'd love to try an all mahogany archtop.

[RJVB]

But I also happen to like walnut and cedar as guitar woods.

I've heard a couple of really nice guitars recently where I was surprised to realise they were all-hog. I always associated that with a dry, woody sound (hog-back classicals tend to have that aspect) but these were different. Or was, it's not so recent that I remember exactly what/where I heard.

BTW, in the few useable (i.e. acoustic/unplugged) comparison videos pitting the Eastman AR605 against the 805 I also tend to prefer the hog-backed 605.

Wouldn't an open-pore finish "work" for a top?

Maegan Wells builds archtops with walnut B&S, and both Fred Pons (KOPO guitars) and Daniel Slaman have build cedar-topped ones. (I even know a violin maker not far from me who's been working on a cedar-topped violin, despite the fact those usually sound too different and aren't really suitable for the kind of power-playing that's become the norm.)

EDIT: I like oak too. More so than walnut, probably. I seem to recall having seen/heard guitars made completely from bog oak but can't find them anymore.

[Jimmy blue note]

EDIT: I like oak too. More so than walnut, probably. I seem to recall having seen/heard guitars made completely from bog oak but can't find them anymore.

Walnut is a gorgeous wood that has acoustical properties remarkably similar to maple. Cedar can be really fragile, but redwood/cedar actually has a greater strength to weigh ratio than spruce, but it takes a different arching pattern to work best; in my experience, thicker plates, higher arching pattern than the equivalent spruce.
Oak, when you find the right kind and cut, is remarkably similar to rosewood. I worked with Al Carruth and he's really big on alternative woods, locally grown and non destructive to rain forests. He's also got an uncanny knowledge of wood properties that he and the Catgut Acoustical community have at their resources. He made a classical of oak that has the punch and projection of a good rosewood. He's never made an oak archtop though, that's a lot of wood removal!
There are so many really good woods that are looked over because of the prejudice towards anything not in the tradition. There was a study done to find the most desirable and 'musical' of woods. It turns out to be apple, some trees from which can grow 10 feet across (fruit woods are exceptional tone woods) and finding cello size (and large archtop) billets is hard enough with the given supply of maple these days. It would make sense to explore some of the other woods. There is a great potential for wood diversity in lutherie. 'guess it takes the adventurous indie luthier to find and work with the adventurous player.

[RJVB]

He made a classical of oak that has the punch and projection of a good rosewood.

Dowina make or made a series of acoustics with oak, and they looked and sounded really good too (as far as that can be judged from recordings). IIRC they didn't have the metallic ring rosewoods tend to have, though.

There was a study done to find the most desirable and 'musical' of woods. It turns out to be apple, some trees from which can grow 10 feet across (fruit woods are exceptional tone woods)

Interesting. Recorders are often made of pear wood; I think those trees can (or are left to?) grow bigger than apple trees - I know a pretty sizeable individual in my area. I seem to recall this wood was also used for lute bowls.

and finding cello size (and large archtop) billets is hard enough with the given supply of maple

I just had a discussion elsewhere where the idea came up to combine lute-bowl building techniques and carving. Not really innovative either, one-piece backs are rare even in violins...

FWIW, my mom had a 50s-era cheapo German round-hole archtop, with a thin, laminate and undoubtedly ditto back of the same wood, probably birch. It was in pityful shape (literally) but actually sounded really nice: warm and with good sustain. It also had something of a marine trumpet sound, with its loose brace
I researched the wood a bit, apparently it can make really nice sounding instruments. And it's a perfect wood for sustainable building I think.

EDIT (again...): ash! No idea how suitable it is for carving but it works really nicely for flat backs (e.g. Taylor's "Urban Ash" series).