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260 Part V: Gearing Up: Outfitting Your Arsenal TEAM LinG
Type: Type indicates whether the wood is alder, ash, mahogany, maple,
rosewood, and so on. In acoustics, rosewood is the most expensive
wood used for the back and sides, followed by maple, and then
mahogany.
Style: Style shows where the wood came from or its grain style. Brazilian
rosewood is redder and wavier than East Indian rosewood and is also
more expensive. Figured maple, such as quilted and flame, is more
expensive than rock or bird’s-eye maple.
Grade: Guitar makers use a grading system, from A to AAA (the highest),
to evaluate woods based on grain, color, and consistency. The highestgrade
wood goes on the most expensive models in a line.
Exotic or rare woods — such as walnut or Brazilian rosewood — drive the
price of a guitar up significantly. If money is no object, you can get the rarest,
prettiest, most highly figured wood available. If you’re on a budget, don’t
worry so much about the type of wood, because guitar makers use some
unusual varieties, and you may not even recognize the wood’s name. But you
can be assured that all established and reputable guitar makers choose their
woods carefully for structural integrity.
Hardware
Hardware, or the metal parts of the guitar, is a common area where makers
upgrade the quality for higher-priced instruments. Cheaper guitars use
chrome-plated or chrome-dipped hardware, so expect to see gold-plated and
black-matte-finished knobs, switches, and tuning machines on more expensive
guitars, instead of chrome-colored ones. The better the hardware, the
longer it lasts and the more reliably it operates.
Hardware is often made by third-party companies (not the same people who
make the guitars), so on more expensive instruments you start to see namebrand
hardware components replacing generic or less prestigious brands of
hardware. For example, manufacturers may use higher-grade tuners — such
as locking Sperzels (a popular third-party tuner type and brand, shown in
Figure 14-1), which lock the string at the tuning post and are a popular choice
among professionals.
Figure 14-1:
Sperzel’s
high-quality
tuning
machines.