Ash or swamp ash ...

I have an ash body tele and let me tell you it’s a club - as heavy as a LP Surprised me as I thought ash was light. Gotta be 9-10 lbs

 

Alder.

Wait...what was the question?

 

That appears to be ash.

 

Ain't he beautiful?... until you realise what a bad dude he really is!

 

The weight on ash bodies is all over the scale. I have an ash bodied Tele that weighs 6lbs, 13oz. I think it's the lightest solid body I've ever owned. It feels and sounds great.

 

Yeah, I don't know how widespread the program is, but in MA, USA they are releasing a wasp that's a natural predator of the EAB, which they had to import form Asia.

However, this sort of reminds me of an old Monty Python episode where killer cars are killing and eating people, so they bring in a giant cat to kill the killer cars. It sort of works out. The cat kills the killer cars. But then you hear the narrator say "they [cats] saved the city, but, at what cost?".

 

There is really no such thing as swamp ash. Its ash. We handpick ash stock to make the bodies we make and different parts of the same tree can be of different densities. If yo go to a wood supplier its just ash. ?You then pick the lighter and or best figures stock. "Swamp"is really just hype but based in the fact that ash from good rainfall areas/times is lighter than denser drought time wood. Obviously well watered trees make lighter wood. Layers of the tree from heavier rainfall times is less dense.

Ask a wood company (NOT a guitar blank company) for swamp ash and they will either tell you there is no such thing or jack up the price knowing that guitar people think swamp ash is a species lighter than regular ash

 

I've had a couple of ash guitars. Grain looked similar on both. Only one was sold as "swamp ash", the other one I have no idea. I think the concept on swamp ash vs ash is that it's a tree that grew partially grew underwater and that makes the grain tighter or something. Not sure I buy into that, but swamp ash does sound cooler.

 

Except for the hardtail, that looks exactly like my ‘77 which I stripped and finished with a satin poly.

I was told it was northern ash. What do I know? I know it was heavy. Very heavy. And I could never find a bridge pickup they I liked with it.

Ended up selling it and using the money for the ‘57 AVRI that’s my avatar. Much lighter guitar. Twangbanger in the bridge. Sweet.

 

We inject all of our ash trees against the emerald ash borer, but the neighborhood has plenty of dead ash.

Last night we had an outdoor celebration on our upper patio with 6 of our neighbors. It was 25 degrees, but we lasted 1 1/2 hours due to a hot fire in the fire bowl. I burned nothing but ash.

 

Shipping logs isn't free, so lumbermills hardly ever get trees from outside their local region (maybe a couple hours drive). If you pick a lumbermill that's within 100 miles of the coast between North Carolina and Texas, some (maybe even most) of the Ash they get in will be the stuff Leo called Swamp Ash. If your lumbermill is somewhere else, the Ash it gets won't be Fraxinus Caroliniana, even if it does happen to grow in a swamp.

If you buy Ash from Fender they'll tell you it's swamp ash, no matter where it came from.

 

Warmoth Swamp Ash body I bought in 1991 as I remember. One of their questions to determine what body to send you was, is weight or grain appearance more important to you. There was a choice between Northern Ash or Swamp Ash, with Swamp Ash being billed as lighter. This was before the internet so it was all on an order form and a catalog. I chose Swamp Ash and grain. It's fairly hefty but less than my LP and still in the stable.

 

I'll tell you this the northern ash trees are being slaughtered by that ash borer so maybe thats why they are getting slightly harder to get. I thought I read on here that Fender wasn't really using ash in their regular production lines anymore. Its sad, they used to be everywhere. Maybe the killer wasps will work.

 

The blanks from the bottom portion of ANY tree is gonna be lighter than the top part, after its dried. In other words, you can get lighter weight ash from a northern (say Ohio grown) grown ash tree, and heavier ash from a Georgian grown ash tree.
My '06 Warmoth strat was ordered to be hard ash, yet, it is actually as light or lighter than many bodies they sell as swamp ash in their 'In stock' section (body alone is 4.6lbs).
I find strat bodies ( of any species) lose a sort of tight, precision type tone, when heavily distorted, when they are real light ( say less than 3lbs 12ounce or so), though,, these light ones are great used with clean to semi dirty tone. The heavier the body wood gets, the more focus you get when distorted, though, the sound gets thinner and more brittle as they get real heavy (5lbs and over). Imo, 4 lbs to around 4.7 or so, is overall optimal.
Also, the woods 'ring orientation' is important for overall resonance. For a center seamed, two piece body, a " open book matched' body will sound better than the opposite seam.

 

I know the ash on early telecasters was the same ash used on Louisville Slugger baseball bats and was called northern ash and also light ash. The early stratocasters were ash as well but quite different to me than the telecaster ash. My deluxe is a deluxe ash but they never specified it was swamp ash and is actually not highly grained like a swamp ash body and it is heavy. I think like all wood there are different species. I mean how many oak trees are there?

 

I had one of those Peavey T-60's (in sunburst) back in the 90's and early 2000's. One electric I had for about ten years. Prior to that I hadn't had an electric in about 20 years. Played only acoustic during those years. By FAR the heaviest guitar I ever played. It made even the heaviest LP's seem like lightweight guitars. Had to be close to bowling ball weight. Sold it back about 10 years ago to a guy that had the smaller one (T-40? T-10?)and the matching bass. Guess he would have needed a truck to carry the weight of all three at once!

 

I had one of those many tears ago !