boxwood top

[rwaghmare]

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"Originally Posted on:Mon Jun 28, 2010 4:51 pm"

please can anyone tell me that can boxwood can be used for guitar top
as it is easily available in india..

[Kim]

Hello Rwaghmare,

The only information I could find on Indian Boxwood suggest that it is very dense or heavy wood. Traditionally spruce is used because it is very light in weight yet strong. I would guess that boxwood may be too heavy for instrument tops. I do know that woodwind instruments such as the oboe and the recorder are made from Indian Boxwood with great success so I would assume that it has good tonal properties and this may make it a useful wood for back and side sets, however the lighter coloured woods do not seem to have the same visual appeal as the darker woods for many of us.

Cheers

Kim

[kiwigeo]

Boxwood is a generic name for around 70 different species. Are you talking about buxus sempervirens?

Buxus sempoervirens is sometimes used for making up the lighter ribs and also tuning pegs on lute bodies. Like Kim says I think it would probably be a suitable back and side wood but probably not as good as other alternatives for top wood.

[Lillian]

Martin, how does that species compare to say mahogany or koa? I have heard some nice sounding hardwood top guitars. They have a unique sound about them, but they still sounded good.

[blazemite]

what actaully is the issue with having a hardwood top?

[kiwigeo]

blazemite wrote:
what actaully is the issue with having a hardwood top?

Some hardwoods to make acceptable tops but they're not my cup of tea. I was taught to build "light and stiff" and that's the way I like my top woods. Lutz spruce would have to be one of my favourite top woods.... the ring like a Chinese gong type stuff supplied by Shane Neiffer.

[Kim]

blazemite wrote:
what actaully is the issue with having a hardwood top?

No issue with a hardwood top, lots of mahogany guitars around but all the hardwood topped guitars you see will be from the light weight end of the scale. As I mentioned in the post above, "INDIAN" boxwood is listed as heavy and dense and this is confirmed by it's preferred use for woodwind instruments. If this is the case, then such mass would absorb string energy rather than be driven by it and the instruments would most likely be very quite and unresponsive.

This is why spruce is so popular, the strength to weight ratio is among the best. The strength allows for light weight bracing, the overall light weight allows more efficient use of the strings energy.

Cheers

Kim


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