I'd like to talk about Stick Wood [snicker], which is not a dirty thing, but the wooden materials that our various flavors of Chapman Stick are made of.

Here is what Stick Enterprises has on the website for Stick Woods:
http://stick.com/instruments/hardwoods/

Instruments Hardwood Laminates
for the Stick, Grand Stick, Stick Bass, Ten String Grand, Stick Guitar and Alto Stick models



And then bamboo as a "soft" wood.

And then there are the polycarbonate Sticks, and the graphite sticks, which are not wood at all. But unless you buy a used Stick, those last two are no longer current options for getting a Stick.

The Railboards are, of course, anodized aluminum. And there's even choices now of which "metal," or coating, one would like vapor-deposited and then buffed, onto the base aluminum.

But I just wanted to talk about wood, and see what people had to say about the different types, and then staining versus non-staining, and high gloss versus natural finish, and then other options, like custom graphics (I forgot who recently had Emmett use a fretboard to build a new Stick that they had painted on).

I ordered an NS/Stick with a wenge fretboard, and then ordered a wenge body as well, but stained ebony black. Some people say you should never stain wenge black, but then I see it all the time in furniture, and I'm hoping that "Lord Vader" comes out looking awesome. It's too late now to change my order, but in picking my wood type, I had a lot of questions. The Stick website says it doesn't really matter for tone what type of wood you choose; that it's pretty much an aesthetic choice.

I know Per Boysen, for one, thinks that the material does matter, and that the timbre of the wood can change over time as it's played more and more. I remain agnostic and need more data, but I was curious what the opinions of the Stick community were about Stick Woods.

So, tell me what you like and what's to like about the different types of wood, please! Stick Wood pics encouraged! (my inner Beavis is snickering.)

Cheers!
--Stickist Steve #6 and soon to be NS/Stickist Steve #3 or 4.

I have bamboo. It's all I've ever had. It gets a little temperamental over the seasons changing, but nothing a quick set up won't fix. I can't recall if the tone has changed but I do know that I consistently get tones I like from just about whatever I plug into. That may be equal parts the wood and the Villex Passive 4 pickup block.

Interesting topic. It's been listed as a "non-discussion" by many having to do with low tension etc.. However, I can't help but think about Paul Reed Smiths evaluation of electric Guitar (yes I know Stick is not guitar!) but he mentioned in his Ted talk how building an electric guitar.. all the components tend to "subtract" from the original sound. Pretty interesting if you've never had a chance to hear it.

I currently own six wooden Sticks. Have owned many more over three decades of playing and played many of my students' Sticks. To my ear the various woods do not affect tone. Different feel, yes, different visual when playing, certainly. It's still the electronics, the pickup, the effects and the amp that give personality differences.

SA

Steve encouraged me to get a 12 string; I love it. Truly an amazing instrument that I am starting to bond with... the 12 str feels like 'my' instrument a bit more than the 10 str Rail-board, I don't know why although I love my Rail-board too. I do think that I play and articulate differently on each of the instruments. And of course, I am dying to see/hear your NS/Stick umm Stick... lol (Wenge, eh? Niiiice!)

Sorry, we were talking about wood. Wenge, baby! It's dark like my soul...

Pete, I loved that TED talk. Very enjoyable. I think I learned more than a couple of things.

So by Paul's logic here, Sticks must be extremely non-subtractive--and thus a very good instrument. But they are also not acoustic, and Paul's "6 in and 5.9 out" doesn't really apply to miked and amped instruments. They impart very little of their own sound onto the strings. Like--I think Emmett's said here before, sorry if I'm misquoting--it's mainly the strings (and pickups) that you're hearing.

But that's no different than saying your car finish doesn't effect the performance of the engine. Get that sparkly red! Or in my case, that wenge on wenge dyed ebony black. It's the feel of the wood and the look, more than the sound, is what I'm hearing so far.

So Josh is a bamboo fan, Steve A didn't actually say what his favorite wood was, and Scott's another Wenge fan. Pete, I saw that build you just had made--wasn't that a blend of some exotic woods all sandwiched so beautifully together?

Thanks! Yea the double neck I had built, affectionally called the "BG Tapper". Is made of 5 piece neck: Walnut, Maple, Purpleheart sandwich with Paduak body and Paduak headstock veneer. It looks beautiful and actually weighs less than my Megatar! The red sperzels are a big kick in the pants too! LOL

[Drools.] Exotic wood word porn. Any spare pics laying around, Pete? And everyone, show them beautiful wood pics, if you got 'em! I know a couple of you Stickists are heavily into carpentry and woods (Brian!).

By the way, not very Sticky, but I saw this pic of a doubleneck 7 string and 7 string fretless (!) maple fretboard on wenge & purpleheart mix and thought of your new build, Pete!



More here: http://www.conklinguitars.com/time_capsule.html

Yea here you go!

I once had an opportunity to spend a few days with two 10 strings Sticks that were identical except for the wood. One was oak, the other padauk. I could hear a slight but obvious tone difference in the 5th string. When I reported this to the owner he told me that he had broke that string, didn't have an SE replacement and so he got a string from a local music store. Doh! Bottom line, I heard no difference due to the wood.

Different woods react differently to different frequencies so wood should make a difference. Here is my (non-scientific) guess as to why the wood in a Stick makes no difference. When we tap, we put so little energy into the string that only a very very small percentage of that actually is acted on by the wood. The reflection and absorption of frequencies is such a small percentage of the overall frequency response of the string that we can't hear the difference. Add on top of this the sound of different gauge strings and pickups (let alone tunings) and the effect of the wood is basically zero. My 2 cents.