M IS FOR MAHOGANY

Family Meliaceae

Swietana macrophylla, in its more southerly incarnation, is Brazilian mahogany, and it tends to be heavier on average than the Central American growth, though weights can vary between 400 and 800 kilos per cubic metre. These are TRADA's figures; a Brazilian timber publication gives the weight as 640 kilos per cubic metre.

The colour is variable, from deep reddy browns to the pale brown of a Kinkade neck that just passed through my flat en route for Nottingham. The texture is even, and grain can be straight or interlocked, and it is usually quite easy to work but with occasional tearing or woolliness. It takes a stain well, and will darken with age and exposure to UV.

Cuban mahogany, Swietana mahogani.

This is darker as a rule, less widely available, and in smaller quantities. Although for centuries it was one of the most prized cabinet woods available, it was burnt as industrial fuel in the Carribean, and used for low grade lumber purposes like fence posts. Outraged log export bans finally clamped down in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1946.

Swietana macrophylla also grows in Central America, and from here we know it most often as Honduras mahogany. Heavy demand is altering quality by encouraging earlier felling, and fast growth plantation methods which produce a less dense timber. In guitars, we've seen this demand switch to substitutes like nato or lauan, and more rarely, andiroba.

Heretic that I am, I'm not very fond of Honduras mahogany in a solid guitar, probably because the stuff I've worked with is more recent fast growth timber and is suspiciously timid when attacked with a gouge.

I would repeat, and thoroughly disagree with, Les Paul's observation that a mahogany solid with a solid maple top is as good as a solid maple. It isn't, and you only have to A/B a Les Paul and an L5S to see that it isn't, and that the statement is most likely the honourably loyal one of a man whose design criteria were sacrificed to cost criteria.

It was once true that a mahogany-back-and-sides acoustic gave more edge than a similarly built rosewood guitar — witness the use of D18 Martins in the old one-mike bluegrass bands in preference to the warmer D28 guitars, and smoother still D35 models — the D18 held up better against banjos and mandolins. Nowadays, at least one maker will pose the opposite; that a mahogany guitar is warmer than a rosewood one. I think that may well derive from a shift in quality. Mahogany top guitars have usually been a minority interest, sounding stiff and cutting to me, blasters rather than seducers.

Andiroba is of the Meliaceae family, and is showing its qualities more convincingly these days as drying techniques have improved to overcome its drying difficulties. It resembles an unfigured mahogany, light pinkish when cut, but becoming darker than mahogany when dry. Weight is the same as the Brazilian average, but it is denser and harder than Central American stuff, with rare ripple marks, and superior mechanical properties that are similar to black walnut. It has a variable, usually medium texture, and if my black walnut necks are anything to go by, finer textured samples could well offer a better and more even treble sustain than mahogany.

If anyone comes across any African mahogany, any one of the khaya species, in a guitar, I'd be interested to hear about it.

Quality is very variable, from very coarse textured logs with spongy hearts and common cross fractures (wonderfully called 'thunder shakes' in the timber trade) to fine textured timbers, depending on locality. The heaviest is khaya senegalensis at 800 kilos per cubic metre, which is apparently popular for lorry bodies in East Africa. Next month: Maple.