Hey Scott,
Well I did avoid maple for the longest time for the most basic of reasons: what folks tended to say about them (and I refer to the pre-net days where it was magazines and sales-floor banter), and there were very few to even try, Gibs being the only real option on store walls, and even then a rarity. And now that everyone has got a net-pinion to share, I think those ol' urban myths get amplified.
So back in mid 2000s or so I stumbled upon a Taylor dred, a "custom" DN, which was a special order that was now on the floor as a new guitar. It looked niiiiice! Then picked it up and realized there was something to this guitar. Not perfect for me at first blush, but it was priced stupid low, was gorgeous, and sounded decent enough, so I bought it and figured if I hated it, it'd be an easy flip. I took it home and did a string change and a couple of truss rod tweaks and I was
floored.
This is a maple guitar?!! Ok, so I'll stop with the jabbering and simply say it sounded big, full, and
defined. Solid bass with a low end that was tight and
focused . Mids were forward. more forward than my cedar/rw GA at the time, and the guitar's voice overall was more "present" as if the fundamental tones all took a step toward the audience. It was not "bright" by any means, but superbly balanced: the lows were deep, the highs were crisp, and the mids reminded you "hey, I'm playing here," in a very pleasing way, mind you. Overtones took a backseat to the fundamentals, and single-notes and the plain B and E all sounded a bit thicker and more discernible.
Ok, so then a bit later and I stumbled onto an R.Taylor in Style 2, that's a GC body. No joke, just stumbled upon it, and it was this gorgeous quilted maple. Yeah, I know I know, it's pretty, but I can't hear an
aesthetic beauty, so I was skeptical and critical. So I played it and, yup, was floored. No small-bodied guit should sound
this deep and
this full. Similar timbral traits: defined mids, more forward voice, and tonally balanced from bass-mids-highs; and not "bright" as maple is all too often derided for being. The Englemann spruce top is a big vocal determinant, I am certain, but is a beautiful sonic pairing with maple.
This is going to sound contrived and ridiculous, but I also ended up with a GS-bodied 12er in, you guessed it, maple. Yada yada ...great guit, I'll leave it at that. But
no other 12er I've
ever played (including Taylor's own Jumbo body) sounded like this one.
Fwiw, I'm a strummer, hybrid picker, and seldom a fingerpicker. I don't care for the "Martin dred" tone, I can "get along ok" with the Martin OM tone, so that's my frame of reference. So long ago when I found the Taylor GA in cedar/rw, I found a guitar voice that was "mine." Perhaps it's as if the aforementioned guits took that general voicing and spoke more to me: the "present" and forward fundamentals as opposed to a wash of overtones and lush chords. That DN is still my go-to live guit and
nothing thus far throughout these many years has tempted me away from it. Perhaps think of maple as producing more defined tones, as if the individual notes were "outlined" more than a wave of notes coming at you. Or I'm imagining things ...there's always that!
Edward
