Choosing high-quality wooden electric guitar body blanks is the first and most important step to get precise and perfect electric guitar bodies.
How do you know if the blanks created by your manufacturer respect all the standards demanded by the market and satisfy your needs? We discuss this topic in the following article.
Wooden electric guitar body blanks: some important considerations
Electric guitar body blanks are those wooden pieces from which, after an extended manufacturing process, the final electric guitar body is created. They can be made of different types of wood, and their quality determines the excellence of the final product. You must pay great attention to the structure of the wooden blank and the absence of imperfections and defects that might affect the accuracy of your guitar. The experience and ability of the manufacturer are the most important things to evaluate.
How do you know if the wooden guitar blank is top-quality? Let’s consider the following points.
Is your supplier specialized in wood manufacturing?
You must be sure that the manufacturer knows the raw material very well and is able to manage it in the right way. Wood, in fact, is a tricky raw material to handle if the wood maker does not have the right expertise. It is alive, moves constantly, and the supplier must know and respect its strict tolerances. If he cannot do that, the final product won’t be accurate and won’t guarantee a satisfying playing experience.
Are quality controls correctly developed?
You must ensure that your supplier carries out strict quality controls over the raw material. There are very different types of wood in nature, each with its own properties and characteristics. Some are very good for electric guitar bodies and necks (Read "What is the best wood for electric guitar body?" to discover more), while others are best suited to produce other objects (e.g., cosmetic and perfume caps, oral care products, brushes, and furniture). It depends on the client’s objective and the type of product desired, but the supplier must always be able to give advice.
However, even the best types of wood can hide some defects that are invisible at first sight. It is crucial, therefore, for your manufacturer to check each piece manually and individually: even if the external layers may appear perfect, going deeper the quality could be different.
The presence of nodes, for example, is not good to produce guitar blanks. Nodes represent a weak point in the log because they can’t be cut, and they could break easily. If nodes give character and uniqueness to certain products and do not represent a problem, they cannot exist in guitar blanks to preserve resistance, strength, and density.
Therefore, your supplier must verify that each piece of wood is flawless; those pieces that conceal imperfections and defects must be discarded. This doesn’t mean, though, that they must be thrown away. A sustainable company may reuse and recycle wasted wood to create other products or produce energy to fuel heating systems.
As sustainability is a major concern today, these details should also make the difference when selecting your ideal supplier.
Are wood manufacturing processes automated and digitalized?
You must also consider the techniques and tools used to produce wooden blanks. The production process is crucial to guarantee perfect and precise pieces that will be used for manufacturing electric guitars.
Digital systems, innovation and automation are key elements. Some manufacturers, for example, use laser technology to establish which part of the blank must be used to produce the final object. How does it work?
We can identify three phases:
- the shape of the final guitar body is cast with laser light on the blank
- the laser machine recognizes nodes and other defects of the wood and positions the shape, avoiding these unusable parts
- the shape is then cut and managed to be transformed into an electric guitar body
Thanks to this advanced technology, you can be sure that wooden blanks do not have any imperfections. If blanks have no defects, you will have perfect final guitars.
In this way, the raw material can be optimized. Laser technology, in fact, positions the shape in order to occupy as much space as possible, reducing waste.
The raw material is particularly important in the final cost of the product, and optimizing this feature is critical for profitability and being more sustainable.
A supplier that uses these technologies and innovative tools can guarantee top-quality wooden blanks. At Minelli, manual and automatic quality control systems are present along each production line to guarantee maximum precision and ensure that products respect our clients’ requests and standards.
Our experts carefully examine the raw material to create perfect and reliable electric guitar body blanks.
If you are looking for an expert manufacturer, that can create top-quality wooden electric guitars, do not hesitate to contact us!
