Relative hardness of various neck woods ...

[Kiwi]

Playing my rosewood-necked MEQ and then my mahogany-necked McCarty, I noted, for about the 3,000th time, how different they feel.

I looked up the relative hardness of various neck woods used for making guitars, and came across this reference site:

https://www.precisebits.com/reference/relative_hardness_table.htm

Figures below are the foot-pounds of force it takes to drive a half-inch steel ball halfway into a plank of the tested wood.

mahogany, African Khaya spp. 830
mahogany, true Swietenia macrophylla 800
maple, bigleaf Acer macrophyllum 850
maple, sugar (hard) Acer saccharum 1,450
rosewood, Brazilian Dalbergia nigra 2,720
rosewood, Indian Dalbergia latifolia 3,170

I once met Paul at a PRS demo event, and he mentioned that carving and shaping rosewood necks put extra wear on the metal bits. Now I can see why.

Also fuel for discussion about how notes attack, sustain, and bloom according to their neck wood.

=K

 

[Alnus Rubra]

Interesting figures, thanks for sharing.

 

[jak3af3r]

The real fun is the people who don't understand this and refuse to believe you can use soft maple (the curly stuff) for necks because it has "soft" in the name. In reality, it's harder than mahogany.

Another interesting figure to look at is shrinkage rates and dimensional stability which matters a lot on acoustic guitars and guitar necks.

Hardness of wood isn't necessarily the culprit of dulled tools. Silica content of the wood dulls the tools quickly and a wood with lots of sap will heat a cutting tool and cause its integrity to degrade more quickly.

 

[Tonart]

It was the same Janka hardness chart that led to specify for African Blackwood on one of my PRS. I originally just wanted the toughness and stability, but coincidence or otherwise, boy is the tone special!

 

[Tonart]

Seeing the guitar neck as a very long suspended olympic diving plank from the viewpoint of the guitar bridge, there is potential for the neck to induce relative movement (albeit on a micro scale) between the two fixed ends of the strings. The two fixed ends here would mean the bridge and the fret/nut.

For this reason I have always thought the neck to be an important factor in tone. It transfers it’s vibration to the fixed end of the string, vibrating the string ‘from the outside’.

I believe it’s the reason why some guitars sound ‘woody’, plugged and unplugged.

 

[Tone-y]

Interesting to note that something like a vintage Les Paul (for example) using Honduran mahogany body (Swietenia macrophylla), big leaf maple cap and Brazilian rosewood fretboard would on the whole be using softer wood than a modern version using African mahogany and Indian rosewood.

 

[Kiwi]

I'll add that the MEQ was my first-ever guitar with a rosewood neck, and it made me realize how different it is from mahogany and maple-necked PRS guitars. The hardness figures (above) helped me understand how the neck can influence the attack (note envelope) and bloom of the instrument.

Mahogany - the one we all know - soft and warm bloom
Maple - noticeably snappier attack
Rosewood - lightning attack~!

So, a bit of thread drift here. I'd been thought-experimenting a Hollowbody II but built with a rosewood neck, not mahogany or maple.

Now I'm thinking: That would be one neck-heavy beast. Can anyone confirm? - have any been built?

=K

 

[jak3af3r]

I built semi hollow Tele with an all rosewood neck and it's borderline neck heavy.