Oak Classical

[Chuck Morrison]

I decided to take up the challenge and make an oak classical guitar. In this case I found a lovely looking 2" slab of red oak online and bought it based on photos. It turned out to have huge splits in the center of the board from drying which rendered much of the board unusable, but I was able to get a couple sets of sides and a few more backs out of it.
A few photos:

Macassar Ebony fretboard, Sapele/Rosewood bridge, Alaskan Yellow Cedar doubletop

There's nothing like quartersawn oak. I really like the circle pattern in the lower bout.

I used tru-oil for the finish, including the fretboard, with a wash coat or two of shellac on the soundboard first. My approach was to go with a "non-live" back and sides with a doubletop, which is my go to combination these days. I purposely did NOT fill the oak because it just felt wrong to fill. I didn't want to take too much time on this in case it had a lousy sound so I didn't rub anything out. The true-oil is much more an oil varnish than I'd expected.

After a fair amount of internal conflict I went ahead and put oak on the peghead too. Oak was the whole point here, so I might as well advertise it !

So how does it sound ? It sounds like my other doubletops with some variation that can probably be attributed to the Yellow cedar portion of the soundboard. Very loud and responsive, especially in the nylon/carbon strings. I've had some instruments that were too edgy with carbon strings but work nicely with nylon. I like the trebles on this one with carbon. I'm undecided on the bases.

I put up a video that compares it to a recent Brazilian rosewood, western red cedar doubletop playing the same piece of music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kruh_keDQOU
I don't know what they do to the audio when you upload something like this, but I know there is compression happening as some volume jumps don't show up. Still, it might be worth using for a comparison. I think for a "what the heck, let's try it" guitar it worked out pretty well. I love the look of the oak and I don't think I have any reason to complain about the sound. Maybe I'll try fumed white oak next ...

[Bob Francis]

I could hear a certain brightness in the oak and by the way it is a stunning guitar.

[Chuck Morrison]

I could hear a certain brightness in the oak and by the way it is a stunning guitar.

Thanks Bob. I think it's pretty stunning too, acoustically as well as visually.

Just a couple additional notes that could impact the sound qualities of the two guitars. The rosewood guitar has western red cedar for both faces of the doubletop. The Oak guitar has yellow cedar for the outside and western red cedar for the inside. The thicknesses and materials of the top sections are otherwise as close as I could make them. The bracing is identical dimensionally, but Sitka for the rosewood and Norway/German spruce for the oak.

The sides of the rosewood guitar are pretty standard thickness (a bit less than 2mm) with normal 1/4" x 3/4" mahogany reverse kerfing. The sides of the oak guitar are also around 2mm thick but are fully lined with reverse kerfed 3/16" x 4" yellow cedar lining.

The red oak back is thicknessed so as to match the (lengthwise, along the grain) stiffness of the rosewood back, 3.2mm for the oak, 2.8mm for the rosewood. Both backs have 3, 3/4" high braces of aromatic red cedar. The back weights and tap tones do not match.

[Karl Wicklund]

Man, that guitar looks like a living thing. Awesome. I've got a ton of red oak milled up from some storm damage here. The most of it will be flooring for my shop, and a tiny house, but I'm holding back the clear QS stuff, and you've given me some inspiration. How does the unfilled oak feel? Any different?

[Alan Carruth]

My first 'pair' experiment was two classical guitars; one in oak and the other in BRW, back in the 90s. They were not all that much different in sound, nor could I find a lot with the limited test facilities I had at the time. From what I know now I'd say that they probably would not have been much more alike if they'd both been made from the same wood.

[Chuck Morrison]

Man, that guitar looks like a living thing. Awesome. I've got a ton of red oak milled up from some storm damage here. The most of it will be flooring for my shop, and a tiny house, but I'm holding back the clear QS stuff, and you've given me some inspiration. How does the unfilled oak feel? Any different?

The wood does look like it's alive. The old blackened oak furniture shows the medullary rays but doesn't show the shimmer like this. The rays move from dark brown to transparent to white depending on the light. The oil varnish brings this out nicely. As far as feel ? It feels like the oil varnish. I don't notice the grain so much by feel but it does give a speckled appearance if you are looking for shine and reflection. I did not rub the finish out at all. The pores do fill in with the varnish and I think with some sanding and more coats could have been flat.

[Chuck Morrison]

Alan, I referred to your previous posts as support for building this one. I debate building others due to your warnings about trying to sell oak guitars. I intend on showing this next week to some professional classical guitarists who might actually be honest about what they hear. We'll see.

[Steven Smith]

Chuck, that's really nice and I think it sounds really good too. John Arnold has a white oak steel string that I've played and it's an awesome guitar. Reminds me that I have a nicely quartered piece of white oak that has been seasoning in my shop for about 10 years just waiting to be sliced into a couple of sets.