Hollow and Maple Top

dagdred

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:? The story is apparently that maple has some good uses -- backs on jumbo flat-tops, tops on double cutaways and jazz fusion sound --

What about the acoustic f-hole sound? Can a guitar serve two purposes -- carved maple top with a single floating pickup, also to play as acoustic? One USA maker has a really good price. :?:
 

john_kidder

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I've heard very little about maple tops, not much of it good. I recall a high-end Guild being built with maple for stage use, but being panned for acoustic performance (I guess not responding to acoustic vibrations is a good thing on a loud stage, but not so good for a straight acoustic guitar).

Others know much more than I do.
 

eleventeen

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It would be my guess that one could not count on a "carved" maple top.....as thin as it would have to be to be of decent acoustic value....of single ply maple....big enough to be a half or full guitar top......to not crack. Maple can be veneered nicely and it can be used in thicker slabs (like necks or butcherblocks) but I'd strongly imagine that, used as a guitar top in single ply, it would crack altogether too often given normal variations in temp & humidity. And, those cracks would really open up and given how strong maple is, could NOT be be glued back together. For this not to happen, a builder would have to choose the blanks he used for his tops with metaphysical selectivity...thus he'd have to reject the great majority = huge cost. I think both rosewood and ebony would be equally problematical. These woods get very very hard when they dry out; then, consider the tension and torque an acoustic pin bridge would impart....or, the down-pressure an archtop bridge would impart. I think you'd be asking for big trouble making a guitar top out of any of these.

Go look at a piece of older maple-veneer furniture. Yes, very attractive...but you'll all too often see plenty of cracks in the maple veneer, and if it was not veneered, it would crack itself to unusability or destruction. Yes, usually such maple is flamed or birdseye. Still think you'd have problems.
 
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