Why did the maple guitars have to use pressed laminate Maple for the backs?

[beecee]

Guild also made the F50 (maple, unbraced arched back) and the F50R (rosewood, arched flatback).

Arched flatback?

 

[Prince of Darkness]

Arched flatback?

Pretty sure that was a misprint F50R would be a braced flatback. I think that the F50 and F50R are discontinued, but I'm pretty sure that, with the current Oxnard production, maple is always pressed laminate archback and all other woods are solid flatback. With the Asia produced Westerly Collection guitars a wider selection of woods is used for the archbacks, with mahogany being most common, though maple only ever seems to be used for archbacks.

 

[wileypickett]

Pretty sure that was a misprint F50R would be a braced flatback. I think that the F50 and F50R are discontinued, but I'm pretty sure that, with the current Oxnard production, maple is always pressed laminate archback and all other woods are solid flatback. With the Asia produced Westerly Collection guitars a wider selection of woods is used for the archbacks, with mahogany being most common, though maple only ever seems to be used for archbacks.

Just seein' if y'all were paying attention. (Corrected!)

 

[davidbeinct]

Plenty of nitpickers.

Arching the back produces more volume, and no production instrument is going to get a carved back.

Arching. Great Curves!

Musings on violins, violas, cellos, and bows from luthier Andy Fein and the musicians at Fein Violins.

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Eastman did a production carved archback for a while.

Eastman AJ815 All Solid woods-RARE Small Jumbo-Solid Hand Carved Flamed Maple Arched Back! Hard find | Reverb

ON SALE MEMORIAL DAY ONLY!! DON'T MISS IT! THESE ARE INCREDIBLE GUITARS!! EASTMAN AJ815 SMALL BODY JUMBO- OHSC (Thick wood and tolex case)This seems to be the only one of these for sale! This one has become my guitar to play lately!THE PERFECT GUITAR!(The name small jumbo is from Eastman-Many peo...

reverb.com

Of course they don’t anymore so I guess you could call it a failed experiment and say your point still stands.
I’d love to play one. It’s pretty close to a GF30. I owned an Eastman 00 for a while and would still have it if the neck wasn’t so wide. They really do know how to build a good sounding guitar though.

 

[AcornHouse]

The sides are curved. So what’s the difference? And what dictates the need for the backs to be arched?

The sides are curved only in one direction. From top to bottom they are flat. And the kerfing that attaches the top and bottom also keep the side curves solid. Those tight curves give the sides a lot of strength.
With an arched back, there are 3 ways to achieve this: carving it out a solid piece of wood, as in high end arch backs. Time consuming and expensive; a D4 (for example) would end up costing thousands more. It would also need to be thicker than a typical acoustic back, adding weight.
Some spruce tops were pressed using heat and a lot of mechanical pressure, as on some Guild archtops from (at least) the 50s. Easy to do with a soft wood like spruce, considerably harder to do with maple, which is considerably harder.
Or laminate the backs in a form. Easy to do and you get a rigid, arched, structure that is also able to be thin enough to not outweigh an acoustic.

Some high end boutique builders are laminating their sides these days for rigidity. It’s nothing to be ashamed of or apologize for.

 

[Guildedagain]

Some high end boutique builders are laminating their sides these days for rigidity.

Lam also a lot more impact and crack resistant in sides, which are not huge tone generators.

All "lower end" guitars have had lam back and sides for decades, and lams made of tone woods sound pretty darn good.


My 1st acoustic was a 70's FG-75 I gave a buddy leaving to work in Alaska's oil fields, and it wasn't until years later someone pointed out to me that it was a lam top, it was so well done at the edge of the soundhole that you couldn't tell.

My Guildalike Sango WD-50 has a lam top that fooled the seller, even better than any Yamaha, and the woods inside the top look like top grade spruce.

It's one way to get guitars to go through a warranty repair without issues, and to deal with constantly changing climactic issues.

Here's an arched Maple backed F30-CE Guild that sounds just killer, with now gone '95 F4-CE which had a Mahogany pressed back, another version, and that was an ultra fine guitar built to rival any boutique instrument. The 90's really were the "good wood" years.

The flip side of all this is vintage Harmony and Kay guitars, all solid woods, solid pressed tops and backs and nobody really raves about the tone all that much, granted they used a lot of poplar, but still, single ply woods do not necessarily equal better tone.



These all single ply wood construction, yet tone isn't overwhelmingly better because of it.

 

[plaidseason]

If you can find the opportunity do a back-to-back comparison with a Martin d18 and an Arched back spruce top Guild d25. Very similar guitars, about $1,000 difference in price, and the laminated Arched back on the d25 versus flat solid mahogany back on the Martin. Then you'll know the difference

I think the best head to head would be a D25/D4/DCE1 vs a DV25/D35/DV4
I've owned both a Westerly DV4 (solid mahogany sides and back ) and two different DCE1s (mahogany sides and arched back). Both are straight braced. And the sound is notably different. In this particular matchup I happen to much prefer the sound of the arched back. The DV4 was great - even, nice mids, decent bass. But both DCE1s were/are louder, with more sustain.

I have an F44, small jumbo with solid maple back and sides. a few years back I was offered a great deal on a GF30 (solid maple sides, arched maple back), but turned it down thinking I didn't need another maple mini-jumbo. In hindsight, especially after picking up another DCE1, I probably should've taken the deal, the two guitars are probably different enough.

 

[richt54]

The sides are curved only in one direction. From top to bottom they are flat. And the kerfing that attaches the top and bottom also keep the side curves solid. Those tight curves give the sides a lot of strength.
With an arched back, there are 3 ways to achieve this: carving it out a solid piece of wood, as in high end arch backs. Time consuming and expensive; a D4 (for example) would end up costing thousands more. It would also need to be thicker than a typical acoustic back, adding weight.
Some spruce tops were pressed using heat and a lot of mechanical pressure, as on some Guild archtops from (at least) the 50s. Easy to do with a soft wood like spruce, considerably harder to do with maple, which is considerably harder.
Or laminate the backs in a form. Easy to do and you get a rigid, arched, structure that is also able to be thin enough to not outweigh an acoustic.

Some high end boutique builders are laminating their sides these days for rigidity. It’s nothing to be ashamed of or apologize for.

Thank you. Very kind, thoughtful and informative. Some of the responses I received went from sublime to absolutely ridiculous. Thanks for being the former.

 

[wileypickett]

The flip side of all this is vintage Harmony and Kay guitars, all solid woods, solid pressed tops and backs and nobody really raves about the tone all that much, granted they used a lot of poplar, but still, single ply woods do not necessarily equal better tone.

My first guitar, a Harmony H167, had a back made of birch. It sounded great to me at the time!

 

[Russell Letson]

FWIW: Laminated sides and backs go back to the 19th century, and more recently (the 1930s-40s) the Selmers that Django played had laminated B/S and solid heat-bent tops (called pliage). Some Selmer-style builders still follow that formula.

Classic high-end archtops have always featured carved tops and backs, but from the 1930s onward, less expensive models used laminates for the B/S, while tops might be carved or solid-pressed. I recall there is a supplier (I think in Germany) who offers solid-pressed top blanks--and some Dale Unger's archtops (the Dream American and Bucky Pizzarelli American) are all-laminate. A builder friend now uses laminates of his own making for all his sides, for both sonic and stability reasons.

I recall that early Guild's flat-tops had pressed-laminate arched backs--certainly my '59 F-40 did--first maple and later some mahogany.

​

 

[Br1ck]

Solid=good Laminate=bad we have this "common knowledge" ingrained into guitar lore. Yet, if you want a Linda Manzer arch top to plug in, the only thing that works is laminate, unless you want howling feedback. Virtually every archtop hollow body is laminate, including the uber expensive Collings 335 clone. Manzer solid arch top jazz boxes are lovely, but get them near electronics and they howl. Just too lively. Either way you will be pushing $25,000. I have a friend with both.

There are luthiers using ply for sides, but it's not Home Depot ply.

 

[Uke]

The final answer: An archback increases the ability of the guitar to wobble when placed on its back on top of a formica kitchen counter.

 

[davidbeinct]

The final answer: An archback increases the ability of the guitar to wobble when placed on its back on top of a formica kitchen counter.

I thought it was to fit in the hollow of my cut abs.

 

[adorshki]

I'm seeing a JF65-12 for sale from 1996 and the back is pressed laminate maple for the back. The sides are solid maple. I'm completely ignorant about the characteristics of woods for building guitars, I do love the sound of maple. I had a Northwood 000-80 flame maple which sounded so good. But why wasn't the maple made of solid wood for the back like the sides?

Couple of factors: It's much easier to steam-press a laminate of 3 or more layers than it is to steam press a solid sheet of the same thickness. Over time, the stability of the arch itself could suffer from humidity and solid sheets are also much more prone to cracking from dryness.

If one carved the back (as one does for solid arched tops), you've added an ungodly amount of additional labor cost and are still stuck with the warping/cracking issue.

So overall, a laminates's the most durable construction for an arched back.

As for sound, a back's job is entirely different than a top's: It's a reflector and as such whether it's solid or not is barely relevant.
A top should resonate as freely as possible and that's where solid wood has its place.

 

[adorshki]

30 seconds of search says the JF65-12 is supposed to have an arched back. It is a lot easier to have an arched back by bending a laminate. Indeed the right kind of nitpicker might claim that a solid arched back is properly called carved.

It most likely will be.

 

[adorshki]

The sides are curved. So what’s the difference? And what dictates the need for the backs to be arched?

A: They're only being bent in one plane, not a complex curve.
B: The sides will be held in shape by glue after gluing up.
C: Some sides were laminated as well, such as the F30ce/F65ce/DCE1 and 2 and 5. I suspect it's because of the tightness of the curve of the cutaway horn:

What dictates need for back to be arched? The designers decision about the intended voice character of the instrument.

Archbacks tend to have full lush sound with lots of overtones. Flatbacks "cut" more. It's not a hard and fast rule but in general if one had flatback and archback dreads of otherwise identical wood specs, one would use the archback for rhythm and the flatback for leads, for best sonic differentiation and audibility of the leads.

Ask the guy who owns a set. (D25 and D40, )

 

[SFIV1967]

Why not make a RW version with an arched back?

Oh there are such models!

How many different models of archback rosewood acoustics did Guild produce?

I have the DC5E and my buddy has the lefty F5CE 'burst; were there others? DC5E: F5CE:

letstalkguild.com

Ralf

 

[Heath]

I have a Yamaha FG-180 that has a laminated back that sounds as good as any Martin I’ve played. Granted I’ve only played a few, but it still sounds spectacular and better than some guilds I’ve owned…

 

[adorshki]

So, Guild built the RW JF55-12 to be quieter?

Patience, see my other answers. It's not all about volume, I think the "volume" issue is overrated. It's more about the overtones and projection, "presence".

The cost due to carving I understand. But it doesn't answer the question as to why the JF65-12 couldn't have a flat solid wood back? Ok more volume. Why not make a RW version with an arched back?

Maple tends to sound thin and over-trebly in flatbacks. As a tone wood it benefits from tha archback design, and most Guild maple bodies have ben arch backed from day one with the F40.

 

[adorshki]

So, Guild built the RW JF55-12 to be quieter? The cost due to carving I understand. But it doesn't answer the question as to why the JF65-12 couldn't have a flat solid wood back? Ok more volume. Why not make a RW version with an arched back?

Answering twice to address the rosewood issue:
In the same way maple doesn't benefit much from a flatback, rosewood doesn't benefit much from an arched back. Since it's already so overtone-rich, an arched back can be overkill. Probably explains why there were only ever 2 ( or 3, I forget) archback rosewood models and maybe 5 flatback maple models in Guild's entire history. (And 2 of those were limited production special editions, like the Doyle Dykes DD series from New Hartford)

Sure they've got niche applications but if they really sounded that much better they'd have offered a lot more options, right?

laminate back and sides

I wonder why Guild chose to use laminate back and sides on so many of their acoustic flat tops. Was it a cost factor? Easier to produce? I think it would make a stronger guitar and not as prone to cracking but how does it affect the tone? Does anyone know the answer or have some thoughts.

letstalkguild.com

Mr. P has lots of interesting takes on this. So I will leave it here from 2006

NO disrespect to Mr P> but since '06 we've learned lot of stuff we didn't know then.