Bodies
Swamp Ash
Swamp Ash is a prized wood for many reasons. It is fairly light weight wood which makes it easily distinguishable from Hard Ash. The grain is open and the color is creamy. It takes a finish beautifully and is light enough to resonate well but strong enough to be stable. It is a very musical wood offering a nice balance of brightness and warmth with a lot of "pop".
Alder
Alder is used extensively for bodies because of its lighter weight and its full sound. Its closed grain makes this wood easy to finish. Alder's natural color is a light tan with little or no distinct grain lines. It looks good with a sunburst or solid color finish. The tone is reputed to be the most balanced with equal doses of lows, mids and highs.
Necks
Maple
Maple is a traditional neck wood. Dense, hard and strong, offering a great sustain and stability. The tone is bright. Maple has a uniform grain, it's strong and stable, and it has less reaction from environmental changes than other hardwoods. Its' tone is highly reflective, and focuses more energy onto the body wood.
Fretboards
Maple
Maple is an extremely popular wood for necks and fretboards. recognizable because of its bright tone, grain patterns, and oderate weight. It's tonal characteristics include good sustain with plenty of bite. It is about as dense as hard ash, but it is much easier to finish. Very durable. When used on a fretboard, Maple, produces tremendous amounts of higher overtones and its tight, almost filtered away bass favors harmonics and variations in pick attack.
Pau Ferro
Pau Ferro is well known as a fretboard wood on electric guitars and basses. It is much like Indian Rosewood with dark, straight, vertical lines except that gold, beige, and brown substitute for the dark browns, greys, and purples found in Indian Rosewood. While the wood is light and strong, it is rather soft and easily worked. It is a tight grained, closed pore hard wood with excellent clarity on the "chunk" tones when gained, especially when teamed with an Alder body. In overdrive mode it has a fatter low end and more pronounced sparkle when compared to Maple. It adds excellent definition to the notes, especially when using overdriven tones. Strong in lower mids and bass, scooped mids.
Rosewood
The most common fretboard. The sound is richer than Maple because of the stray overtones absorbed into oily pores (Rosewood is a naturally oily wood). Rosewood is one of the heaviest woods currently employed in guitar making. The sound is very warm, however, the high end sounds are dampened. Indian Rosewood is a very hard and dense wood with great clarity and articulation in tone. Very smooth feeling. Color varies a great deal from piece to piece, all being attractive.