Lutherie Stuff

[jromano091]

I looked over the forum topics and I guessed this would be the most appropriate place to post a thread about lutherie. For those who don't know, lutherie is the fancy term for guitar maker.
Recently I've begun making my own guitars out of fun, and even though they aren't great (in fact they look terrible.. the product of low budget and bad tools) but ever since then I find buying a guitar just simply doesn't feel right.
In an effort to improve my skills I took apart an Epiphone Les Paul Special Edition II and discovered it was made of plywood. The guitar didn't seem to sound any better or worse than guitars made of maple, mahogany, etc; so I was curious if anyone knew why people use such expensive wood (I understand if you plan on using the grain in the finished product the wood matters but if you paint over it, not many people would notice the difference).

Any ideas?

[RickBlacker]

Different woods resonate differently. I would think that plywood would sound rather dead unless it's a very tight plywood.

But, I dunno. I've never played a plywood guitar. Would be interesting to take to identical guitars one with solid wood, one plywood and see how different they sound.

[Dirty Bill]

I'm guessing that would be the difference between an epiphone les paul and a gibson les paul. Different woods have different sounds. One reason the martin guitars are high dollar,the 100 year old spruce tops. Just my opinion though.

Check out grizzly tools catalog. They have guitar making tools,the owner of grizzly makes guitars,and so sell some guitar making tools. :cool:

[Razbo]

That's interesting because I have read the Special II's are Basswood, but then they do different things depending on when or where they are produced. Some Squires are made from Agathis, some from Alder.

If you have not found it yet, check this out: http://www.projectguitar.com/

Look on top for the forum link. Best guitar building site & forum I have found.

[shrekfingers]

when you say "took it apart" what do you mean, please? did you just take the neck off? if that the case could the plywood you see be a shim for neck adjustment?? Their website says this is a solid body or basswood with a bolt on neck. I am curious because I was looking at possibly buying one in the future.Is this a genuine Epiphone?. There are some real close fakes out there, especially Chinese on ebay.