A Question from a young whipersnapper!

[glpg80]

what were the most popular woods in the 80's?

has much changed in comparison to today's standards?

you dont hear much about dark/light swamp ash and other woods so out of pure curiosity and part seriousness id love to know

 

[EXPcustom]

In the 80's poplar was popular and then it went to alder in the 90's.

I am not that old though but I know this was the case growing up in the 90's as most brands were transitioning from Poplar to Alder for their main production lines like Jackson and ESP

 

[OldSkoolNJ]

All of the Ibanez's people were starting to use were Basswood..
1989

 

[glpg80]

poplar and basswood?!

jeez, i knew i should have kept that damn wolfgang

ive ALWAYS LOVED that ibanez shape - it reminds me of the reb beach model that reb designed back in the days of winger.

ive also thought/toyed the idea many times over to build a clone of that guitar, but i had no idea ibanez already made model similar to it!

damn i might have to look into keeping an open eye on ebay for scoring one of those to cure my 80's binge. basswood with a maple/maple neck like on my wolfgang killed tone wise, i would believe basswood and a maple/rosewood guitar would be a fucking tone machine!!!

 

[OldSkoolNJ]

All of the commonly used Ibanez's like the RG series were Basswood
The Ibanez Reb Beach Voyager had one and I had that 540PSH

Why do you think I have that picture *coughs Musikraft
After switching from Ibanez to ESP I prefer Alder it has more bite..

This one is 1990, I think it was the last year for this Model, he later switched to the Sabers I think..

 

[crwnedblasphemy]

Kramer used pooplar in the 80's a lot.....Maple was popular too cuz of how heavy it was. I have never owned an alder guitar.

I swore off basswood a few years back, cuz all the Ibanez models that were basswood I thought sounded dead! But my peaveys are basswood and they fucking sing. I guess it's all in the company. haha

 

[droptrd]

I have one basswood guitar and it has the most unique tone of all my guitars. I love it

 

[Gainfreak]

It really depended on what Company you used!
If you were a charvel guy you would more then likely have an Alder body unless you ordered one custom.(My charvel was made from Maple) The Jackson soloist were poplar for a while.
If you used Ibanez you would get basswood and if you used the older Kramers you'd get mystery wood or poplar...... What I mean is every LATE Kramer that Ive owned from back in the day accept for one was made from multiple pieces of wood glued together. I have an old stripped Kramer body and you can clearly see about 5....yup...5 woods all glued together to make a body. I also have a solid swamp ash Kramer but that's rare and some earlier ones were made of alder.
So basically what Im saying is that even back in the 80's you had many options if you were hip to them.

 

[Digital Jams]

1987 was the first year I believe for basswood for Ibanez when the JEM was created, they had issues finding a supplier at first that had large enough blanks since basswood was milled for duck decoys mostly.....................not kidding.

I had a 87 Pacer custom that was at least 4 pieces of wood............I think it was wood