More New Back and Side Sets in the Workshop

Last week I had an opportunity to spend a day with a couple of wood suppliers, looking through hundreds of back and side sets. Over the course of the day, six sets really jumped out at me, and I've added them to my Gallery of Back/Side Sets in the Workshop. It's a great benefit to go shopping in person. Generally there's a drastic under-appreciation among guitar enthusiasts for how different sets of wood within a species can be of different quality. When I can go shopping in person, it gives me a chance to pick wood not just for its beautiful appearance, but also for its structural integrity. I found a nice, hard, solid set of Brazilian Rosewood (back, sides). This set of Jarra (back, sides) has a beautiful pinkish hue and very nice curl in the grain. The texture is somewhere between mahogany and maple. I found set of Malaysian Blackwood (back, sides) that has so much beautiful detail that pulled my eyes in. Malaysian blackwood is a kind of ebony, and is very much like Macassar with respect to texture and density. Check out this set of Monkeypod (back, sides). Yeah, really...it's called Monkeypod! Texturally it's a lot like dense mahogany. It was a tough choice, but I made myself pick out just one favorite set of Ziricote (back, sides). That'll be a nice guitar, eh? Here's my personal favorite...a set of super-straight grained, perfectly quartersawn Wenge (back, sides). It's hard to see in the photos, but the wood has these tiny perfectly parallel jet black pin stripes running straight along the grain, and it just shows of what a perfectly classy piece of wood this is. The tap tone is fantastic. This is some really resonant wood. I just love this wood. I haven't built with wenge yet, but I can't wait. Please, somebody choose this set! :)