Birdseye, or Flame maple necks?

guitargeek62

The roasting process stabilises figured maple perfectly so I've got no concerns at all there.

guitargeek62

Here's the master-grade piece I'm mulling over;

http://i.imgur.com/zW6UH4q.jpg

jd0272

guitargeek62;631856" said:

Here's the master-grade piece I'm mulling over;

http://i.imgur.com/zW6UH4q.jpg

That's nice fella. Too flash for me. I like the linear differential in 'flame' better.

guitargeek62

I hate conundrums.

http://i.imgur.com/Iir3rfB.jpg

#FirstWorldProblems

WezV

Maynehead said:

Sassafras said:

I seem to remember reading somewhere that birds eye maple wasn't as stable as standard hard maple. I think the same went for highly flamed maple.

Not necessarily.

I had a Californian Schecter PT with birdseye maple neck and rosewood fretboard. It was the most stable neck I have ever used. You can take it out of its case after a year and it would not need tuning. Also had the best sustain of all my guitars.

lets put it in real terms

Wood stability has a hell of a lot to do with wood grain.   The straighter and more perfectly sawn, the more stable the neck.

Figuring of any kind affects the grain on the neck and takes it away from the perfectly straight, perfectly sawn ideal.    It becomes less stable.   This does not mean it becomes unusable.  remember that maple is already a very stable wood, so loosing a bit of stability is far from fatal.

Lets assume that perfectly plain bit of wood has 100 grain lines going from one end up the plank to the other.  A sublte flame would mean 90 grain lines still make it all the way.  Similar with a spattering of birdseye. the more figure you have, generally means less grainlines make it.  Quilt has a much bigger affect and thats why you don't see it used often in necks.  A subtle quilt would probably leave as little as 50% that makes it the whole distance, in a burl none would make it at all.

 

Maple is very stuiff, it can probably loose 20% of its stiffness before you notice, and it will still be stiffer than other woods like mahogany

 

But all that is before you even consider density, number of grain lines per inch,  whether its quartersawn or flatsawn and whether its roasted or not... etc...

If you can match all those factors and match the quality of the wood in every other possible way then the plain maple will always be more stable than the comparable piece of figured maple.   problem is you can't ever match all those factors, and that is just with one species of wood.

 

 

so my advise would be understand, but don't worry about it if you trust the builder/factory to produce quality guitars 

 

 ... but also be careful about using the example of a stiff figured neck as proof figure does not affect stiffness

 

 

Rox

guitargeek62 said:

I hate conundrums.

It's the trickiest part of Countdown.