Maple dreadnoughts

thermionic

https://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/acoustic/ad27e-flametop

Epsilon

Not sure about maple as a top wood at all. To get anywhere near the stiffness of spruce it is going to have to be a pretty heavy piece of wood, which I can imagine resulting in a somewhat dead sounding guitar. Looks pretty though, if you're into that.

thermionic

A few demos have appeared on YouTube, it sounds pretty good imo.

BigPaulie

meltedbuzzbox said:

BigPaulie said:

I imagine they're all laminated maple though...

I dont get why people get pissy about laminate. 
If it sounds good it sounds good...

if its for the purpose of bringing a guitar in at a certain price then you have to consider that too.

Pissy?

Surely it's just a matter of how an individual decides to spend their own money and make their own choices?

The opening post clearly states that the subject of discussion here is "solid maple b&s dreads". There's a whole forum to discuss anything else.

Mellish

Bottom line: your money your freedom of choice between laminate or solid  

Tannin

Epsilon said:

I had a chance to try one of the new F-512 maples and I agree that it was exceptional, which as a long-time Guild fan I was really pleased to see. I have 1973 F-412, but fantastic as it is the modern one sounded just as good and played better. The New Hartford versions were, I think, the best of the lot. I passed on the chance to purchase a brand new F-512 for £1500 just after Fender sold Guild in 2014. Still kick myself for not going for it.

Yep. You certainly pay top dollar for them now - but worth every penny I reckon. I was able to play an F-512 (rosewood) and an F-512 Maple side-by-side. The rosewood one was excellent and I couldn't fault it, but the maple was in a completely different league. I noted that they sold the maple one just a couple of weeks later (not many people in a little town like Hobart buy $8000 guitars of any kind, let alone 12-strings!) but they had the rosewood one for some months before it went.

thermionic said: https://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/acoustic/ad27e-flametop

What a visual horrorshow! They start with a perfectly good, beautiful looking timber like Rock Maple and then cover the thing in ugly stain. That is just so stupid. I like a lot of things that Taylor does, but their idiotic habit of coating beautiful natural timbers in stain colours most people wouldn't use on a bloody floorboard, never mind an instrument, undoes a lot of their good work. I've even seen Taylor dye Blackwood - a timber people go out of their way to find and pay top dollar for because it is so good looking.

Epsilon said:

Not sure about maple as a top wood at all. To get anywhere near the stiffness of spruce it is going to have to be a pretty heavy piece of wood, which I can imagine resulting in a somewhat dead sounding guitar.

Taylor aside, Rock Maple is occasionally used as a topwood. I see no reason why it should not be. It has about the same strength as Honduran Mahogany and slightly less weight, slightly more strength and less weight than Huon Pine, less weight but quite a lot less strength than Blackwood, and slightly less of both strength and weight than Koa or Khaya ("African mahogany"). All of these are known and respected topwoods.

Looks pretty though, if you're into that.

   Not if you let the idiots at Taylor near it!

drofluf

Epsilon said:

Not sure about maple as a top wood at all. To get anywhere near the stiffness of spruce it is going to have to be a pretty heavy piece of wood, which I can imagine resulting in a somewhat dead sounding guitar. Looks pretty though, if you're into that.

Was about to post that it was widely used in mandolins as a top wood until I found that it wasn’t  . What I did find was:

” Maple is occasionally used for soundboards, but more often for backs and sides, due to its flatness of sound and for its relative shortness of decay—an attribute that happens to make the wood more resistant to feedback in amplified situations than rosewood or mahogany. Not all builders find maple to be a suitable top material, though. “I wouldn’t typically recommend maple as soundboard tonewood,” says Andy Powers, Taylor Guitars’ master luthier. “One of its singular characteristics is that it’s almost perfectly transparent—it doesn’t sound like anything, which isn’t usually how you want a top to respond.”

https://www.tfoa.eu/nl/blogs/blog/tonewoods-explained/

mikew

I tried a Mayson MS7/S a while back (not Maton!). Not many in the UK - Jimmy Egypt in Glasgow had one in and I bought. Sound was a cracker but the build quaility was poor so I sent back. In reality I've not heard anything else approaching that sound from maple and should have kept it.

Pigknows

The Guild D30 is a great guitar. Muscular, punchy, percussive, authoritative, clear and pure. The acoustic equivalent of playing an early Tele through a Twin Reverb. Weirdly, I once tried a G37 which is basically the same guitar, but it didn't sound as good as the D30. Would love to own an F50 but I wonder whether - for its considerable extra bulk - a Jumbo would be that much better (if at all) than a dread.