Old vs new wood
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gator payne
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Yes more so for hollow body and acoustics. As wood ages the resins harden. In thin plates Like acoustics or hollow body guitars this leads to a change in the taptone of the wood. Also old wood has had ages to stabilize. Therefore will change less dimensionally due to enviromental changes.
Marco78
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ihavenofish
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you need to define what you mean by old wood. a 100 year old tree thats cut down yesterday would be "old growth", wheras a 18 year old tree cut down 100 years ago is "old wood".
what gatorpayne described is the latter, wood thats been sitting around a long time.
what alot of builders seek out is old growth wood, which may have different density properties than younger trees.
a real 59 les paul would have been "newly cut" older growth wood. NOW, 50 years later that guitar is old, old growth wood, and possibly sounds a little different than it did new.
ultimately, it probaby doesnt matter much, but if you are going to spend alot of money trying to get it "right", you might want to go for some ages older growth wood.
what gatorpayne described is the latter, wood thats been sitting around a long time.
what alot of builders seek out is old growth wood, which may have different density properties than younger trees.
a real 59 les paul would have been "newly cut" older growth wood. NOW, 50 years later that guitar is old, old growth wood, and possibly sounds a little different than it did new.
ultimately, it probaby doesnt matter much, but if you are going to spend alot of money trying to get it "right", you might want to go for some ages older growth wood.
bfcg
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Chances are that if you buy wood that was harvested 60 years ago that it would likely be from a tree that was pretty old at the time of harvest.
Tree harvesting was just beginning to get mechanized 60 -70 years ago even in the rain forests and they would have been cutting the largest trees that thier equipment would allow.
Tree harvesting was just beginning to get mechanized 60 -70 years ago even in the rain forests and they would have been cutting the largest trees that thier equipment would allow.
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