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Permalink Reply by JL on March 4, 2016 at 2:44am

Plywood made from wood-X is stronger than solid wood-X. 

that's why the subfloor in your home is 3/4 pine plywood instead of 3/4 pine boards.

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on March 4, 2016 at 3:05am

Oily has spoken often about his regard for plywood necks,just a little bit of thought would see that the laminations in different directions.are most likely to be very effective,as opposed to a single linear grain,i've not done it myself,but i'm pretty happy it would be the real deal

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on March 4, 2016 at 9:07am

My regard has primarily to do with strength. Now, I'd be the first to say solid maple for treble or mahogany for warmth in a neck tonewood would be my first choices. You'd think plywood would be a tone suck, and you'd mostly be right, especially if there are voids, as most cheap plywood is riddled with them. Despite this, plywood necks are stiff enough to resist bending (I agree, I would add a truss bar to a 6-string plywood neck, just in case), offering a stable platform on which to bend a string. Heck, the anonymous pick uses pine fence board for his SwampWitch bodies, poplar or pine for his necks, and overlays that with a soft pine mounding for a fretboard. Those gits have their own tone. The way I try to combat plywood neck tone suck is by making my boxes bigger than a standard cigar box, so as to push more air. Interestingly, my soundboards are...very thin 3-ply Lauan. They vibrate amazingly well, and sound a lot like mahogany. And I constantly remind myself that I'm dealing with a CBG, not a high end Brazilian rosewood, spruce top, mahogany neck, ebony fretboard acoustic git. I have one of those, and its tonal qualities blow ever other acoustic axe in my guitarsenal away.

But that isn't the point. The point is to build a playable musical instrument out of cheap crappy scrap I have to hand. The fact that they sound as good as they do is what keeps me coming back for more. I'm building two 4-stringers for a friend, and came into some decent marine plywood that has far fewer voids than the cheap Chinese or Indonesian ply I usually use. The only better ply I would use, if I could and it were locally available, would be voidless Baltic birch plywood, which is typically used for high end amp cabinets, speaker cabinets, and even acoustic guitars (Harmony / Kay / Stella acoustic guitar bodies and soundboards were famously made from Baltic birch plywood).

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on March 4, 2016 at 10:00am

Have you used marine ply before? Expensive stuff, but no voids. I'm guessing that you glue the necks in place or use neck thru construction? I wouldn't want to try bolting one in place with the lamination's running up and down.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on March 4, 2016 at 1:30pm

I'm getting ready to build two marine ply necks next week, as a matter of fact, so this is timely discussion. I just finished a curved theater ramp project using donated 3/4" marine ply, which resulted in lots of scrap for pilfering. ;-) What I do is take two 36" or longer, 1-1/2" wide pieces of 3/4" ply, and glue and clamp them together with Titebond II wood glue, with the laminate facing up. I let them cure for 24 hours before hand shaping.with a belt sander turned upside down in a bench vise, followed by a four-in-hand rasp, and various grits of sandpaper.

I mount the neck as a "neck to," with the neck tailpiece butting up against the inside of the box at the tail end, with the laminate facing up. I do also relieve the neck inside the box about 1/8" to let the soundboard vibrate, except at the ends inside the box. With my own boxes, because they are 3 to 3-3/4" deep, I also mounted the neck with two plywood posts, one at either end, with about a 2-3 degree neck back angle. I also let the neck sit about 1/4" above the box top, and cut a scarf jointed, glued and screwed headstock.

With a neck to arrangement like this, I also do my string through the body, drilling holes from the back, through the neck, just like a Strat. This seems to improve sustain, and gives me a great string break angle at the bridge / saddle.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on March 4, 2016 at 11:31pm

Thanks for the info. You should do a build thread. I would be interested in how it sounds with the marine ply.

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on March 4, 2016 at 11:57am

Brian May from Queen. His guitars are plywood.  Good plywood is supposed to be stronger than wood. Still not the best choice for a fret board. Be interested to see how long the frets stay in.

With science proving that todays well made pickups can sound as good in wood or toilet paper it no longer matters what the body is made out of. 

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on March 4, 2016 at 12:28pm

I have to disagree on the body not mattering issue. Pickups don't just pickup the string vibration, they also pickup the body and neck vibrations. Plug in your guitar, mute the strings and knock on the body and neck. You'll hear the vibrations going through to the amp. Every part of a guitar has a signature on it's sound.

Good pickups can make a crappy guitar sound good, but they will make a great guitar sound awesome.

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