AFRICAN PADOUK

[thunderbyrd]

Hello: i was looking at warmoth's site earlier and there is a wood called african Padouk being used for both necks and bodies. it doesn't rquire a finish. i'm real intrigued by it and wondering how nice a neck made from this would be, and a body too.

anybody here with any experience with this wood?

[bobthecanadian]

I haven't heard much, but what I have heard is good.

[Strat-Talk]

I've seen a Warmoth body in Padouck and it was really beautiful! I don't know how it sounds. But I'm guessing Warmoth wouldn't use it if it didn't sound good.

[rjhalsey]

Here is a tone chart: http://www.warmoth.com/guitar/option..._bodywoods.cfm

I have used padouk and is a nice sounding wood, I would consider it a neutral wood because it is in the middle of the tone chart. It is heavy though.

[ldelo]

I am in the process of building out a Warmoth padouk-bodied strat.

It has a quarter-sawn maple neck with a kingwood fb (!?), padouk body, Gotoh vintage-style locking tuners, Gotoh/Wilkinson trem, Rio Grande Dual Calibrated pups, custom copper-foil shielding, etc.

I mixed up a custom anyline dye for the neck, applied that, and then applied ten hand-applied, handrubbed coats of Rockler satin polyurethane gel finish.

The results are rather nice, if I do say so myself.

Mike Lull of Bellevue WA will be doing the final assembly, tweaking, and then Plekking it here soon.

This has been a long term project and completion is not my highest priority because of work/commuting/schedule/budget issues, but the project is nearing the point (financially and in terms of being ready) where the whole mess will be dropped of Mike's to have him work his magic on it...

I'll report back once it is done and I have formed some solid opinions.

BTW, I have three other sets of pups laying around that may make it into the padouk strat or one of my other strats:

GFS 10k alnico set

The Fender CS pups out of my '62 MIA RI (the strat is now very customized with Van Zandt Vintage Pluses, which for me are the gold standard of hottish vintage strat tone)

A set of Fender CS 50's pups I tried in - and pulled back out of - the '62. Very sweet pure vintage tone, nice vintage spank and twang and bellish tones, but did not take well at all to effects or gain or even trying to drive the signal anywhere's near warm, much less hot

Of course pups are like all other opinions (notably politics and religion), most have their own thoughts/opinions and making statements like I just did often lead to... ummm... "enthusiastic" (!?) debate. That's why I clearly noted those as my opinions and tastes...