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Tonewood is the term generally used to designate wood with recognized and consistent acoustic qualities when used in the making of musical instruments. The type of wood used on stringed instruments, such as a guitar, is probably the single most influential factor contributing to its tone.

It is rare that a musicial instrument is made entirely of a single kind of wood. Since sound is generated through vibration, the instrument’s primary wood is selected for the particular characteristics of its vibration. In portions of the instrument not responsible for generating tone, woods are selected for other reasons: a hard wood for the fingerboard, an easily-worked wood for decoration, etc. No wood is inherently a “tonewood”–the distinction is of use. Hence ebony, a dense wood, is not a tonewood when used for fingerboards (a common use), but is a tonewood when crafted into the body of a guitar.

There are a variety of different tonewoods to choose from. Below are descriptions of the general tonal properties of some of the most widely used tonewoods for acoustic guitar making. While it is possible to construct an acoustic guitar with a single tonewood, it is common to employ two different tonewoods: one variety for the back and sides, and one for the sounding board, or “top”.