Plywood electric guitars

[Phyl]

A friend of mine has a Samick strat copy with a bad 5 way switch and asked me to replace it for him.

Call me "ignert", but I when I removed the pick guard I was amazed to find that the body is made of plywood. Couldn't tell if it was topped with real wood.

I fixed the switch, re-strung it, and played it for awhile. It's actually a pretty nice guitar for what it is. Flat neck, good intonation, and plays nice.

Is using plywood for a body pretty common?

 

[acorec]

A friend of mine has a Samick strat copy with a bad 5 way switch and asked me to replace it for him.

Call me "ignert", but I when I removed the pick guard I was amazed to find that the body is made of plywood. Couldn't tell if it was topped with real wood.

I fixed the switch, re-strung it, and played it for awhile. It's actually a pretty nice guitar for what it is. Flat neck, good intonation, and plays nice.

Is using plywood for a body pretty common?

Yes. Most of the cheapies use "plywood" construction. The most common type is glued from smaller pieces of wood "not like traditional plywood". The wood is glued together to get the width. Plywood layers the wood in a stacked manner and is built up to get the thickness. Epiphone les pauls use the first method as do most fender strats (real or copies).

 

[Light]

Re: Re: Plywood electric guitars

No, even on cheap electric guitars, plywood is not a normal construction material. There is no real reason not to use it, other than tone issues. But of course, when you are building a cheap guitar, that is not the dominant issue. If I was to design a cheap guitar (I don't) that is something I would at least consider. My guess is it does not have very good sustain, but that is the only major issue I would imaging (never having done it, I can only hypothesize). Most solid body guitars are glued up out of multiple pieces, but that is not the same thing at all. The wood which is big enough to make bodies of a single piece is just not of a high enough quality to use for guitars, most of the time.


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