Myanmar Guitar-ology, Episode-1: The Cheap Alternatives

I went for a guitar show today, organised by a well-known luthier (people call him Ko Cho) in Yangon (Rangoon). He gave us some insightful ideas about making guitars. Here's what he said:
"In other countries, due to the availability of materials, guitars can be made from proper tone-wood. Such is not the case in Myanmar. Tone-wood is hard to obtain and usually a bit too expensive for consumers like students to afford. As such, I make do with whatever we have here, whatever wood that I can get, to make guitars at affordable prices and years of researches allow me to imitate the tonality of popular tone-wood".

One would say the tone of an acoustic guitar is mostly the magic of its tone-wood. However, what many may not have realised is that, the processing of the wood, this whole process of guitar-making also play a great role in the tonality. This is what a Malaysian Luthier once said when he'd won the first prize in a certain guitar competition (I will fill in the details when I have looked up for them); he used a commonly-found rainforest wood to make his entry for the competition and the best tone was through all the drying and heating of the wood before putting them up together.

And Ko Cho has basically used this same idea in mind. He's used various types of wood that are readily available in Myanmar such as teak and other wood commonly used for furniture-making.
Here's a photo I took at there.

Here's the name of the wood (Italicised words are actually Burmese words): 

1. Jackfriut

2. Taraphi (description there said Kerpliner but google doesn't know it)

3. Local mahogany 

4. Teak

Wood No. 1, 2 and 4 are commonly found in Myanmar and mahogany is rarer than these 3. These are the types of wood used to make the sides of a guitar. Some of these woods have been dried for decades under proper temperature and humidity. That piece of teak there is actually dried for 90 years. Teak is not really used to make guitars because it produces too much oil to glue the wood together. But from drying them over for years, that was no longer a problem.

The wood you see on the left is called Ya mi ni, another furniture wood. It is used to make the neck of the guitar, even the top of the guitar. Tone-wise, it is very similar to spruce but harder. The one on the right, which I have difficulties spelling out the name even, is a wood used to make furniture, wood ornaments and many more. It is used for fretboard due to its hardness and rigidity like rosewood and ebony. But compare to them, this wood has a less appealing look and colour and from what I can observe, it is an open grain wood like rosewood, which means it will actually need conditioning.

(to be continued...)