Acoustic Guitar Wood Suppliers

Recommended African hardwood for guitar

At ProSono, we recommend:

• pink or red ivory for guitar
  Pink or red ivory is popular with professional luthiers looking to create unique guitars with special appeal. The wood is known for its striking beauty, fine touch and sweet sound quality.
• black chacate for guitar
  Used by professional luthiers, black chacate is a high-density wood with a warm, rich sound. The darkest set are difficult to distinguish from African blackwood sets. It is finding increasing acceptance among professional instrument makers.
• kiaat for guitar
  This medium hardwood offers unique colouring and distinctive grain that makes each guitar an immediate success to the eye of many.
• mopane for guitar
  Mopane wood offers a rich, rounded tone – with exceptional balance between treble and bass – and warm, attractive colouring. This hardwood is popular with hobby guitar makers.
• leadwood for guitar
  African leadwood is a good choice of wood for hobby guitar makers. It is comparatively inexpensive and easy to work.
• wenge for guitar
  This medium hardwood is popular for its lighter sound quality and attractive aesthetic.

We also supply African blackwood (only for Ukulele, fretboards, headplates, bindings and bridge blanks). Also called grenadilla wood, African blackwood remains a favoured tonewood for many musical instruments. However, its availability is increasingly constrained.

Importance of slow expert drying of hardwood for acoustic guitar

African hardwood species like those we recommend must be properly rested and dried slowly. If this doesn’t occur, backs and sides shall slit and become worthless.

In our experience, leading guitar brands tend to avoid these wood species. This is partly because they favour wood that dries fast and can be mass-produced and sold quickly. It’s also because of negative experiences with wood that their suppliers have failed to process correctly, leading to substandard material.

For knowledgeable artisans willing to take the time, African hardwoods can yield outstanding results – provided they are properly processed!

Our process for drying tonewood

At ProSono, our strategy is to keep quality slabs drying on a permanent basis.

All hardwood species we supply are kept in slab form for a minimum of 18 months and up to 3 years, before slicing begins. Unless the proper slow drying of the slabs is respected, they cannot be sawn properly and the sliced parts shall warp.

As the leading South African tonewood supplier, this enables us to fulfil orders from luthiers based on well rested stock. For hardwood species in high demand, we keep a waiting list of up to two years and meet demand on a first come, first served basis.

How to choose wood for guitar back and sides

If you’re not close enough to visit our showroom in person, let us know your requirements. Our sawmill manager will personally select backs and sides to try to match your needs.

We offer to email prospective customers a wide range of photographs of full guitar sets to choose from, each including images of two matching backs and two matching sides.

Be careful if a supplier shows only one of the sides in a set! Guitar sides are by far the most difficult parts to get clean and without defect. Interestingly, we have had numerous inquiries for sides only.

Delivery of guitar tonewood

We deliver retail orders of up to four guitar sets by air, as insured parcels. We have had only positive experiences using the International Postal Service (EMS), which delivers parcels to our customers’ nearest post-offices.

For countries where the insured parcel service is not available, we use the UPS courier service.

We send wholesale orders by air freight. This is cheaper, although customers must then collect the orders at their nearest international airport.