Takamine

News flash: guitars in the modern era are made of many different kinds of wood, and the choice of wood — especially in and acoustic or acoustic-electric guitars — has a huge impact on the tone and responsiveness of the instrument. While most musicians tend to think of just a few wood types for use in acoustic guitar bodies, there are many other terrific wood varieties that each present their own advantages. Today, we’ll be getting into the details of guitars built with maple bodies.

Just the Facts
Like many wood names, “maple” can refer to many different plant varieties. In fact, there are approximately 132 total species in the Sapindaceae family, but most high-quality acoustic guitars make use of Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) or Sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus). Takamine sources this wood from North America. Maple is one of the oldest and most revered tonewoods; in the 1600s, Stradivari made his renowned string instruments using maple for the back, ribs, and neck. Maple is also the wood of choice for orchestral instruments such as bassoons, and for high-end drums. Maple’s high density makes it extremely useful for many other products beyond instruments, of course, from furnishings to sports gear.

Takamine Thermal Top Series EF450C TT

Takamine G Series GD74CE-12U

Takamine G Series GJ72CE BSB

How Does It Sound?
The tone quality of maple — when properly selected and implemented in an acoustic guitar — can be described as articulate, clean, and resonant. Maple offers a quick response, but with plenty of sustain. A well-made Takamine guitar with maple back and sides is designed to have a tone that’s focused yet complex, offering a clarity that allows it to easily find its place in a mix along with other instruments — it cuts through a dense mix perhaps better than any other acoustic guitar material. Maple also provides an extended bass range while still offering excellent sonic representation on the high frequencies.

If you want some proof of this, just listen to nearly any of the hundreds of songs performed on the Legacy Series EF341SC, the maple-bodied, gloss black-finished Takamine acoustic-electric that you’ve seen and heard so often in the hands of musicians like Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, and many more.

There are around 30 models in Takamine’s current offerings that employ maple back and sides. Many of them — like the aforementioned EF341SC — use cedar for the top wood, providing a terrific tonal balance. Other guitars, such as the outstanding Thermal Top Series EF450C TT, use thermal-treated spruce tops paired with sumptuous flame maple back and sides, resulting in a clarity-packed tone that melts through a dense mix like butter.

One thing about maple-backed acoustic guitars: no matter what your playing style or genre, these guitars are going to deliver more of you. From strumming to fingerstyle, traditional country to hard rock, your playing technique will seem more front-and-center, and these guitars will react very dynamically to how hard — or how soft — you play.

How Does It Look?
Maple is typically light-colored with a fine, uniform texture and smooth finish. The natural color of the wood ranges from a creamy white to very light brown, with a subtle, straight grain.

But there are many maple types that offer a naturally highly figured wood grain created by common deformities in the wood that end up being highly decorative. Referred to as quilted maple, flame/curly maple, spalted maple and other terms, these varieties add a little more excitement to the visual impact of the instruments that make use of them.

What Takamine Guitars Use Maple?
As mentioned above, we currently offer about 30 different guitars with maple back and sides. These range from value-packed G Series models like the GJ72CE, GN73CE, and GD37CE to our handcrafted Legacy Series and Pro Series guitars like the EF381DX, P6N, and the gorgeous all-maple Thinline Series TSP100. No matter what kind of music you make, you owe it to yourself to see what it sounds like with the full-range, articulate sound of a Takamine maple-backed beauty.