Lesson me in Laminate! Does wood type matter?

[Spock89]

Yes, I know solid wood type matters to the extreme.. obviously. This thread is aimed towards laminated wood.

Ok, so I've been shopping for a Ukulele for my wifes Bday, just got done buying myself a mando a couple months ago. Been piddling around with guitars for years... but I've never really stopped to give laminated wood a whole lot of thought. To me a laminated instrument was pretty but otherwise a low end functional instrument at best.

But I never questioned why price changes with veneer type, and sometime pretty drastically. Why should I pay more for a ukulele laminated in Koa or walnut as opposed to one laminated in mahogany or one thats not laminated at all and painted instead? Is there really any difference in quality or sound? I mean how much difference in tone is a 1/16" thick (or less) veneer going to make?

What type of woods are used under the laminate? Isnt that what really matters? I always assumed it was just some cheap plywood of some sort.

To sum this up with a couple questions, with laminated wood you're buying the appearance and nothing else, correct? The veneer type in no way alters the sound/tone of the instrument, correct? (At least not enough to really notice).

Edit: I'm askingbecause since I have been shopping for a Ukulele, the pricing is really a lot different than guitars or mandolins. Cheaper for the most part.. but also a lot more varying with little reason. For instance a Ukulele I'm considering is the Cordoba 15cm.. pretty little Uke laminated in Mahogany, plays great, sounds great. $99 brand new.Then there are a couple others. Both laminated in Koa, the Luna High Tide and the Fender Nohea.. they are priced at $259(fender) and $269(Luna). All 3 instruments are very pretty, all 3 sound great(differing greatly from each other), and all feel like they'd feel excellent after a good setup. I personally like the fender as the neck shape feels identical to my 79 strat.. only smaller lol. Anyways... just trying to figure out what I'm buying here.

[Sothoth]

My opinion is that the veneer type might make a small difference but you also might not notice. But the difference between solid vs laminate perhaps makes a bigger difference. And if you go solid, the type makes a difference. E.g. Mahogany back/sides may sound warmer than maple.

I have a Taylor guitar with laminated back/sides, and I can MAYBE tell a difference between it and the next model up that has solid back/sides. But to me they both sound great and I didn't think it was worth the extra money for the "solid."

Probably if I fell into a wad of cash and got a new acoustic guitar, I'd get solid backs and sides because I could afford it, but on a budget I'd get what sounds best for what I can spend and not sweat it.

I've played some pretty high end guitars with exotic solid woods that cost a pretty penny but I don't like how they sound so I could care less what the woods are. Uke's are the same way. If it sounds good who cares.

[allenhopkins]

Koa's a bit rarer; until recently it was considered a "protected species" in Hawaii, I believe, and there was no harvesting going on. The ukulele (and related guitar) boom of the 1920's-'30's reduced koa forests significantly. Now you can get koa again, and guitar and uke manufacturers are offering koa models.

In terms of laminates, I think it's appearance and not sound. I have a couple koa instruments, and to me they sound about the way mahogany instruments would sound. Koa carries a bit of a premium because it's the "original ukulele wood," it's imported from Hawaii, and the most expensive American instruments, like the Martin "K"-suffix ukuleles, were made of koa.

Laminated instruments are said to be more uniform in sound quality than solid-wood instruments: never brilliant, never awful, but predictably acceptable. There is a distinction between "laminated koa" and a koa veneer, which just might be a thin outer layer over a couple plies of who-knows-what. I'd say that the extra $150+ you're going to pay for the koa instruments, is more for "show" than "dough." The distinction between laminated mahogany and laminated koa wouldn't make me pay the higher price, unless I was totally in love with the look, or there were other considerations such as neck shape etc.

Ukuleles are pleasantly affordable, unless you go for the really high-end stuff. You can get an eminently playable, decent-sounding instrument around $100. If you want to spend more -- well, if possible, I'd sit and strum all three of them, and pick the one I liked best.

[Bad Monkey]

solid vrs. lam matters most with the soundboard. That's not to say that the back doesn't matter, just that the soundboard matters a whole lot more. What the laminate is made up of matters much less than how it was laid up.

one thing to keep in mind is that a laminated instrument will never "sweeten" or mature with age. What you have is what you get. Personally I don't care for laminated woods in musical instruments. But that's just my ears; if it sounds good to someone else, more power to 'em.

[almeriastrings]

Koa has recently joined those materials requiring a CITES permit to import/export commercially.

Even small amounts, as in a veneer.

[ProfChris]

For low-mid range ukuleles the top layer of the laminate is purely cosmetic. At the high end, Kiwaya (Japanese) uses a very different kind of laminate which is probably more expensive to produce than solid wood, and sounds accordingly good.

For the ukes the original poster is looking at, factors such as the shaping of the braces and the amount of finish are likely to have the biggest effect on the sound. Have a look at the cheapest ukes in the shop - braced with roof beams and dipped in shiny stuff, they sound as dead as you would expect.

Even when using solid woods, the sound differences are as much down to the maker as the wood used. All the ukes I make seem to have a characteristic "me" sound, with the woods modifying that sound in the way you might expect (spruce "bright', mahogany "mellower", etc).

[Charlie Bernstein]

Don't know, but I'm guessing it matters.

Maple lam is big with electric guitars - Gibson's ES series, for instance - and I'll bet that's because it's brighter than others. With resonator guitars, too, the consensus seems to be that between their two most common woods, maple lam and birch lam, there's a distinct difference. Mine is maple, and it's bright.

I had a maple lam acoustic guitar once, a Gibson Gospel. It wasn't a great guitar, and it weighed a ton, but the sound was bright. Not loud or pretty, but bright.

[bbcee]

I bought a Blueridge BR40 the first year they came out. I was told at the time that laminate for musical instruments is quite different and much more deliberately laid down than regular stuff.

I was hesitant regarding the laminate back & sides until I heard it - astounding tone.

It's also stable in environments in which the humidity swings radically - for instance, in steam-heated New York apartments in the winter.

[Nevin]

I think the kind of laminate makes much more difference than the top wood. There are various grades of plywood. A voidless all birch plywood is probably going to sound better than something from the sale rack at the local home improvement store.

[Willie Poole]

I bought a laminate guitar quite a few years ago just to have a guitar because that is what I played for many years before switching to mandolin and then I bought a used Martin D-18 and after having people tell me the Laminated guitar sounded a s good as the D-18 I sold the Martin and still have the Japanese made Laminated guitar, I have had many guitar players come to my house to jam and a lot of them leave their guitars in the case and play my "El cheapo"....I know that this just one case but the answer to your question is: Yes some laminated instruments can and do sound as good or better than solid wood instruments, as stated above some of it depends on a persons taste, I also had an Aria laminated mandolin that could hold it`s own against many, many solid wood mandos...

Willie

[Escaped Cellist]

On the pricing, in addition to some of the reasons already noted (CITES, aesthetics, supposed "authenticity"), it helps to think like a production instrument manufacturer.

As a rule, the greater the volume in which you can buy your supplies, the lower the price per measurable unit of those supplies. So if I can move more instruments laminated with spruce than mahogany and more mahogany than koa, then even if we assume the base price of those veneers is identical, my price to buy them in the quantity I actually need will probably be highest for the koa and lowest for the spruce.

It also helps to think like an instrument seller.

If the mahogany units move through my shop much faster than the koa, I'm going to be pretty strongly inclined to just buy the mahogany all the time and not waste valuable inventory space on the koa. Unless, there's a higher retail price and a higher profit margin to incentivize me to keep a koa unit around. This is why an instrument that costs the manufacturer an extra $2 to make can end up being an extra $100 on the wall.

Your original question focuses - quite correctly - on the things that matter to an instrument player: Does it sound any better? Do the aesthetic differences make any difference to my experience of the instrument as a musical tool? From your perspective, these are exactly the questions to be asking.

The other participants in the musical instrument supply chain just have different questions and concerns.

Get the ukulele for which your answer to "Is this instrument a good value to me at this price?" is the most emphatic "YES!!" and you'll be golden.

[PJ Doland]

People pay $30,000 for those old Selmer and Maccaferri guitars. They have laminate backs and sides and they sound phenomenal.

Don't get hung up on weird construction details.

[Br1ck]

I know, I know, but trust me on this. Buy a solid wood Pono and never look back. I have a mahogany tenor. It's well built and lovely sounding. Compares to the $1000+ koa ukes. Money well spent compared to laminates.

[Jeff Mando]

From a repairman's point of view, when the bridge comes up it sometimes takes one or more of the laminations with it. On one Luna uke I repaired it had a laminated top, which was fairly thin, consisting of only three layers total. On top of this some of the layers were not well-glued together into one single unit, so all the tension was put on the top "pretty" layer, which was paper thin. Someone tried a home repair on it which didn't hold and there was no bridge plate either, so there was quite a bit of belly to it by the time I got it. I ended up making a bridge plate, then adding two screws hidden by pearl dots out of necessity. I'm still crossing my fingers on that one hoping it will hold! Most of which would have been avoided with a solid wood top, IMHO.

[catmandu2]

Not to dispute the convention that solid wood (tops) is typically desirable, fwiw Ramirez employ laminates in some guitars. As well, laminates are also used on some harp soundboards.

And of course plys also have their efficacy in double basses.