General

Woody AxmanThe woodspecies shown in the list are available at the moment. They are in "Shop Dry" conditon and ready to use!

When picking a species from the list, you will find a picture with some summary information on its specs, sound and the main application for which I use them in my instruments.

If you like to know more detailed information on these wood species and numerous others, I recommend you to order the Woods of the Worlds CD-Rom from:

Tree Talk Inc.
PO Box 426,
431 Pine Street
Burlington, VT 05401 USA
e-mail: wow@together.net

Most of the wood pictures are copied and converted from the WOW CDRom,
and used with permission of Tree Talk inc.


A small part of my stock

Stocked woods 1

Wood for fretboards.


Bodies for basses

Stocked woods 2

General guidelines for choice of wood towards soundcharacteristics

Apart from the visual aspects, the physical properties are important for the final soundresult of the instrument, especially for solidbodies. Woods are very different indeed, even within the same species! The following table shows only a general indication of these physics towards sound.

Weight
of the body
Sustain
long heavy
---- medium
shortlight
Soundwarm, full
overtones
bright,
emphasis
low end
Propagationspeed
of sound in wood
Attack
directfast
---- medium
delayed slow
Soundclear,
brilliant
high end

dry

Samples of different woods used for bass guitar bodies.

The following pictures show the "Tap tone" respons of two of my bass guitars with different woods used for the bodies. Except for the bodies, both basses - with a neck through body design - are made with woods cut from the same planks.
The instruments have not been lacquered and no hardware is fixed yet.

The "Tap tones" have been created with a small felt padded beater, hitting the bodies on the same spot. The sound has been recorded with a microphone and sampled onto my PC's hard disk.

Cherry respons Makoré/alder respons
* Cherry body tap tone * Makoré/alder body tap tone

By clicking the buttons, the WAV-player will be opened to play the sounds!

Note: These recordings are only representative for these specific instruments and made to visualize the difference between these two!




Ellio Martina Guitars
Almenseweg 29
7211 MD Eefde - the Netherlands
Phone/Fax: +31 (0)575-511006
E-mail: ellio@elliomartina.com