Wood
Alder is a standard body wood for solid body guitars and and basses, light in weight ,balanced tonal response and good resonance. Has soft, tight pores similar to basswood, but with a bold harder grain pattern, similar to ash, but less pronounced. Alder has a balanced tone, without much accentuation in any area, aside from a slightly pronounced upper midrange - which helps with clarity. It is fairly resonant and complex, with a good dynamic range.
Tonally, it is warm with solid, snappy low end, the midrange is a lot more complex than mahogany and the top end is quite bright, but very smooth.
Canadian Hard Maple (hard rock maple) and European Soft Maple (Sycamore). It is a brighter sounding wood, with very strong highs and upper midrange. While the bass frequencies are quieter, they are very articulate .Overall, maple has a very long sustain. It is a particular sound which is well suited to certain styles of hard rock and heavy metal or for a very articulate bass.
European Ash is similar to swamp ash, but is relatively hard, heavy and dense. The density makes it brighter sounding, and gives it a longer sustain
Mahogany has low frequencies are good, the midrange is compressed with prominent low mids and less upper midrange and smooth sounding highs. Overall, the tone is warm, full and thick with a slight nasal quality. Dynamically, it is punchy and has excellent sustain. In a solid body, it is well suited for punchy rock music, in a hollow body it has all the warmth needed for jazz.
Red Cedar is a soft wood known for producing a warm, mellow tone, one whose overtones are evenly distributed, rather than concentrated on the highs and lows
Swamp Ash is a very musical wood offering a very nice balance of brightness and warmth with a lot of dynamic range. It has clear, bell-like highs, slightly scooped but very complex mids, and strong tight lows. The mid frequencies vary quite a lot from piece to piece, which will vary the sound per guitar more than most woods. It has a very quick attack when striking the strings and is very dynamic. It is very resonant across the whole frequency spectrum, so it very detailed and complex when played clean to slightly driven.
