Our Tone Woods

When building musical instruments much care must be given not only to the choice of the hardware and electronics, but also to the materials from which it is made. The most commonly used material to build electric basses and guitars is wood. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of wood species from which to choose. Each wood in this array from all over the world has its own personal characteristics. They all have different colors, weights, strengths, and sounds.

We all want an instrument that is beautiful. However, the sound an instrument produces is even more important. We have the honor of working with some of the finest natural, exotic materials here at Ansir Music and they have astonishing tonal qualities; therefore, we can build instruments that sound as incredible as they look (contact us today and we'll start building one custom for you!). To help make better sense of the wood species and their properties we have the following list of our favorites.

Padouk

Vivid red color with a very bright but all-around sound. This is truly one of our favorites, especially when used for necks and our tone cube.

Bubinga

An extremely hard and dense wood. Finish and polished almost like stone. Beautiful coloring from reddish orange to almost purple with some cream and produces midrange tones. Bubinga is one of the finer tone woods.

Curly Maple

Beautiful white background with heavy curl figure. Common for bodies, produces mid to bright tones and one of our favorite body woods.

Purple Heart

Bright purple color that will soften and brown out in time. Again, a very hard fine grained wood. Dense and strong. An excellent accent wood.

Pau Ferro

A dense chocolaty brown wood with a tight grain and a bright tone, making it a great choice for fret boards.

Wenge

A very dark brown, almost black, wood with an open coarse grain. Great sounding mids and low tones. Great with our parquetry or in necks. An all around incredible looking and playing wood.

Bloodwood

Dense hard wood with a tight grain and a beautiful red color. This produces a brighter tone with incredible sustain and an extremely fast playing surface.

Bocote