Piano recycling GREEN DEATH GUITAR

[EdwardMarlowe]

16 hours ago, Dom in Somerset said:

Once the "plank" (the bit that the tuning pins go into) wares out in most cases that's it.  Most of what I'm using are "straight strung" pianos, just not worth repairing and sound like a bag of spanners even when they work. They stopped making them in the 1920's.

That's the joy of giving them a new voice/ form. 

Does its former musical life imbue it with a certain mojo that makes 'pianowood' the new tonewood?   These look and sound great. I've really taken to slightly offbeat ideas these days - it's much more interesting to me than yet another luxury re-imagining of a Les Paul. 

The Strat cum Tele is well cool. 

[Dom in Somerset]

Pianos are mostly made from poplar , much of which is a bit soft. It's quite variable so I only use the more dense stuff. For necks I use oak or beech that comes up occasionally. 
I read somewhere that Danelectro used poplar  a lot. 

[EdwardMarlowe]

On 05/02/2021 at 17:28, Dom in Somerset said:

Pianos are mostly made from poplar , much of which is a bit soft. It's quite variable so I only use the more dense stuff. For necks I use oak or beech that comes up occasionally. 
I read somewhere that Danelectro used poplar  a lot. 

Fender used it a lot on the Mexican line, at least until the "upgrades" that took the Standard to the Player Series. I think they're alder now, but the Standard models were poplar for years on end. I have a feeling some of the Squier range were poplar at a time when they switched from plywood to solid, though last I looked many of them were now Agathis (something in the mahogany family, I believe).  Leo of course didn't much care what wood he used as long as it was available and hit the build budget; the first Teles were pine, then ash then alder... Course, the wood in a sense matters much less with a Fender style, given many of their pickups are mounted either in steel (Tele Bridge) or in plastic (Strat guard)...

Basswood is another, softer wood that gets used a lot in the Far East. As I recall, a lot of Japanese guitars, including many Fenders, are basswood. It used to be particularly popular for a lot of Japanese and Korean superstrat types. I think it was prized for being light as well. Nuno Bettencourt had guitars in his sig line made from it - if memory serves, he was quite a tiny guy, so a hefty Les Paul would not have been histhing so much..  

[ezbass]

You could make a guitar out of concrete…