fastredponycar wrote: ↑Mon Mar 24, 2025 1:32 pm
Endtime wrote: ↑Fri Mar 21, 2025 7:37 pm
yeah that’s a manufacturing “flaw”. There’s plenty of Indonesian guitars being made and it’s pretty much Solar that does this regularly. Obviously don’t know where they source it and dry it, but this shouldn’t be. Even here in Chicago. I’ve only seen one other on this level and it was an acoustic that was in a garage for 30 years. And that’s literal…. A 3yo guitar kept in a house and Played, should never have this problem.
Wouldn't surprise me if part of the cost cutting is not properly kiln drying the wood.
I do a little wood working on the side and not letting wood dry adequately always leads to cracking and warping.
For my guitar builds, I buy from a proper local supplier. It’s all properly dried. But even so, these days I buy wood for future builds well in advance. I just buy lumber when I see something I like or just want some more stock. And it sits in my workspace for years. It’s NOT climate controlled. But my experience is wood will react no matter how stable one keeps it.I feel it’s important to have the wood experience all the climate and humidity changes. It seems to have it stabilize after this process. So leaving it back in my workspace where it goes thru all the seasons at least once, if not numerous times, I find once they are turned into guitars, they’ve been extremely stable. A couple early builds I’ve done did have some warping and cracking. In fact, I remember the SPECIFIC one that changed the way I used to buy “proper” wood and then build it right away, it was an Explorer I was building, that I cut the body shape out. Prolly sat around for a month or 2 after routing it out and it totally warped. I had never seen a body warp that much. And I have moisture meters and all kinds of tools used to be sure I’m using wood with proper moisture…
And my experience as a wood flooring contractor of 27 years, since we use 1000s of individual boards during an install, I know some boards just warp and react MUCH more than others. While moisture and properly dried matters, each individual piece does still move and react individually. Wood is natural and has a “mind of its own” to some degree.
I’m sure even a bigger manufacturer can have a stock of lumber that’s been sitting around for years before use. Perhaps since Solar is rather new, their stock hasn’t had that time to kind of weed out the boards that aren’t stable enough
