Laminated rosewood backs on '60s Guilds

Hello everybody,

Here's a bit of entertainment that's somewhat educational as well:

Some of you might remember the thread about laminated backs last October.
Here's the link:

http://www.letstalkguild.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9850

Part of it was about an F-50R that at that time was owned by Capquest, who claimed that it had a solid rosewood back. He also mentioned the grain on the inside being the same as on the outside and therefore it had to be solid wood.
Well, the grain on the outside and the inside looks very similar but they are veneers.
The veneers that are used on these guitars were made for the furniture industry. It is a veneer cutting process that does not produce any waste.
By slicing thin layers of wood from a quartersawn surface, they would get a lot of pieces with similar looking grain.

So for a back like on that F-50R they would need 4 pieces; 2 for the outside, which would be bookmatched and the next 2 for the inside, which would automatically be bookmatched as well.

To show you that they could really do a lot of veneers with almost identical looking grain I've put together this little photo demonstration.


Photo 1: This is the back of that particular F-50R, which is now owned by Chazmo.



Photo 2: Here's a cut-out from that same back.



Photo 3: Now I turn it around 180 degrees and you will get this:



Now, do you remember the Guild F-412 Special in my book?

Photo 4: Here it is.



Now watch what happens when we paste Photo 3 onto Photo 4.



Isn't that cool!

Hope you all enjoyed the show!

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl

Way cool, Hans. I appreciate both your explanation and your pics. Thanks!

Harry

Is this man amazing or what?!?! What an eye for detail, Hans! (glad I was able to help with the high-res pix)

So, ladies and gents, just because the inside grain matches the outside, we *cannot* assume that a guitar is solid wood. This is kind of annoying and disillusioning for those of us who thought that you could be certain without drilling holes and taking a core sample. If they were able to do this so well in 1967, imagine what they can do today, 40-odd years later!

I'll leave you with this final picture, which I mailed to Hans as well in high-def... This also proves that the sides, at least, are a lamination on "Cap." Truly amazing.

Great stuff Hans, keep this up and you could write a book about Guilds.......... oops ......guess its a little late for that huh! :lol: :lol: Steffan

Hi Hans and thank you. Not that it matters much but I couldn't see how that back could be one-piece and still have trim down the middle ... the edges would have had to have butted up to it. Really cool superimposing one pic on the other! 8) John

CJ, I'm not sure what you mean... Most bookmatched (solid) sets have a marquetry strip or some sort of trim down the centerline (on the outside). What exactly are you referring to (as a clue) that I'm not understanding?

Chazmo said:

CJ, I'm not sure what you mean... Most bookmatched (solid) sets have a marquetry strip or some sort of trim down the centerline (on the outside). What exactly are you referring to (as a clue) that I'm not understanding?

Click to expand...

Chaz,

He means that most guitars with a solid wood back will have a reinforcement strip over the center joint on the inside, when there's a decorative center strip trim on the outside.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl

hansmoust said:

Chazmo said:

CJ, I'm not sure what you mean... Most bookmatched (solid) sets have a marquetry strip or some sort of trim down the centerline (on the outside). What exactly are you referring to (as a clue) that I'm not understanding?

Click to expand...

Chaz,

He means that most guitars with a solid wood back will have a reinforcement strip over the center joint on the inside, when there's a decorative center strip trim on the outside.

Sincerely,

Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl

Click to expand...

That's true, Hans, but I know Taylor, for one, makes plenty without a center strip on the inside. I'm pretty sure it's not universal with solid guitars. Am I wrong?

Chazmo said:

This also proves that the sides, at least, are a lamination on "Cap." Truly amazing.

Click to expand...

Couldn't that just be part of a tongue and groove joint? Not to say that it is, but it's an alternate explanation.

danerectal said:

Chazmo said:

This also proves that the sides, at least, are a lamination on "Cap." Truly amazing.

Click to expand...

Couldn't that just be part of a tongue and groove joint? Not to say that it is, but it's an alternate explanation.

Click to expand...

Not sure, Dane... But, if you look at the top-right part of that picture, I'm pretty sure what you're looking at is a cross section (core sample) cut through the side. You see the inner and outer ring of the rosewood slices. And then of course that interior wood (beyond the second rosewood ring) is the tail block.

My wife has a Taylor with a mahogany back.
I thought for years, that the back was one solid piece.
A luthier showed me that it is indeed 2 pieces with a joint down the middle.
You can't even see it unless you are looking for it.
Some people can do wonders with wood.

Very cool, Hans! Thanks!

Whats in the middle? :? and does its grain run the same way as the rosewood for sound transfer, or does that matter? Steffan

There are laminated backs and sides on guitars that can sound very good, as good as solid woods. One recent example would be the Yamaha FG series of guitars that were made in the 1970s/1980s. Many of them are excellent sounding guitars. Another, far more exotic example would be the original Selmer/Maccaferi (SP?) gypsy jazz guitars made famous by Django Rienhardt. They were also made with laminated backs/sides. There is no reason that a laminated back and sides guitar won't sound good, if the laminate is properly designed/engineered. The laminate may not age, but I don't know that aging of the back and sides of a guitar makes much of a tonal difference; I would think that aging of the top would completely overpower that effect.

One of my luthier friends showed me some cut outs that he had made from some of the very crappy early 1970s Japanese gutars, and a more recent cutout from a Seagull guitar (both guitars were beyond repair). The Japanese laminate had the thin inner and outer layers made from mahogany (or mahogany looking) veneers, and a thicker innner layer that seemed to have been made of some grass like material that was not solid. The Seagull laminate was made of equal thickness inner and outer layers of wild cherry (only know that because the Seagull side says an S6 has wild cherry backs and sides) and the same thickness inner layer of what appeared to be either solid birch or possibly poplar (some sort of light colored wood without much grain to it). The outer layers had the grain running in the same direction, the pale colored inner wood had the grain running at roughly 90 degrees to the outer layers. The damping of the inner layers in the cheap Japanese probably contributed a lot to the reputation of those guitars as being very poor in sound quality, and by extension, the poor regard some people have for laminated guitars.

Kostas

Kostas, interesting observation.

I have no idea what the center wood in my F-50R is, Steffan. All we know is that this laminate was made by a furniture factory that had the resources to do very thin, low-waste slices of the log of rosewood and provide multiple sheets of the laminated product to the Hoboken craftsmen. This is not something the Guild guys did themselves in the shop.

I looked very closely at the pictures from Hans, and there is some movement in the position of the knot holes where small branches had radiated from. This proves the thin-slice theory that this came from a real tree (not that we doubted it) and wasn't just printed grain lines or anything like that. That much is actually quite obvious when you look at the unfinished wood on the inside.

Anyway, keep in mind that Guild had been using maple laminations for the F-50 series since the beginning. Anyone who's played an arched-back maple Guild jumbo will not argue about the efficacies of using a lamination in a guitar. E.g., I just got my JF-30-12 back from the luthier, and that guitar is a *spectacular* example of shimmer and precise, dry tone. Wowser! I love it.

The interesting and salient question that remains unanswered (for me anyway) is whether an arched rosewood would sound different than the flat-back rosewood that's been used ever since (1968+) on the F-50R / F-512. This question can't be answered with Guilds, since we now know for certain that these '67 arched rosewoods aren't solid. "Cap," in particular, is not useful for such a comparison because the soundboard and its bracing are not original.

Hey Chazmo,

If I understand what you are saying correctly, you want to compare a solid flat backed rosewood guitar to a solid arched back rosewood guitar?

I have never seen a solid arched back guitar -- indeed, I would be so bold as to say that a solid arched back would have to be carved, not pressed, making it quite a different animal from your average guitar.

While we are on the subject, and really opening myself up to tons of abuse, is there any correlation between the use of Brazillian rosewood and the laminated arched construction vs. indian rosewood and flat backed construction?

Alec

Yeah, that's what I meant, Alec, and I do suspect you're right. I guess it would have to be carved, and clearly that'd require a serious hunk of wood (and a lot of waste and expense). I don't know if Guild ever made any solid, arched maple or mahogany backs for that matter, but I have heard of hollow-body archtops where the soundboard was solid... In any case, it's not a comparison I ever expect to make. Cap sounds great, by the way. Surprisingly similar to my Westerly, flat-backed F-50R.

Oh, and by the way, Alec, no there's no correlation that I know of... Guild did make some solid Brazilian flat-backs after they finished with the lam. arched backs. One of our board member's '68 F-512 is flat, solid, Brazilian, I think. Likely, Guild's supply ran low and they phased in Indian. Even with flat backs, it must've been difficult to find sufficient and affordable supply of guitar-quality Brazilian board to make 17" bookmatched back sets. I don't think the rosewood-equipped F-50Rs sold at a very significant premium above the maple F-50; this clearly would've put constraints on them.

I was thinking that maybe Barb's guitar had an arched back and I had somehow missed that feature . . . but I think I see the light now, although there is a curious smell of diesel smoke in the air (think trains, tunnels -- there is a reason I have a day job).