Good local wood for shamisen

Building/Repair
#1

Greetings!

Let’s start off with, that I know absolutely nothing in constructing musical instruments! But, I do build armor for cosplay and movie prop replicas so I’m pretty good with my hands.

That being said, I want to build my own shamisen. I have Kyle’s book on that and I’ll be using it, however the wood he recommends are… well expensive in my area (Eastern Canada). Since I’ll be learning woodworking and such, I feel that it would be great if I had a simple affordable wood which I can make mistakes with, at least for the first shamisen I build.

So I’m wondering if anyone has any recommendations of a easily accessible North American wood that will work well. I’m not searching for something that will give the best tone quality, but just something so that I can start learning to build, then later on I can upgrade to a nicer wood.

I was thinking of maple, but it turns out there are multiple species of maple? Which I honestly had no idea. Pretty bad for someone who puts maple syrup every day in his morning coffee :wink:

Also, what would be the characteristics that make certain woods sound different? With my science background, I understand acoustic reverberation pretty well, but I’m not exactly sure how that applies to a different type of wood.

Much obliged!

#2

You put maple syrup in your coffee?

#3

You put maple syrup in your coffee?

Yup just a little bit. It’s tastier than white sugar :slight_smile:

#4

Hmm… I could see that.
Well, as one who swigs maple syrups straight from the jug, I guess I shouldn’t judge. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anywho! Seeing your Raider costume on facebook, I’m sure you have the skills to make a shamisen! (Making those costumes and movie prop replicas require a lot of fine detail precision, I’m sure)

I think maple would be nice. Reigen recently had a shamisen made from maple. I think any kind will do. Whatever you can get your hands on at an affordable price. :slight_smile:

I think the species makes a bigger difference when it’s cut thin for guitar, violin and such. However, the shamisen dou is so thick, I don’t think it will make a huge difference. (unless one is drastically harder than another) Again, the biggest influence to tone quality is the skin (as well as interior dimensions of the body)

Please share your pictures! :slight_smile:

#5

Hmm… I could see that.
Well, as one who swigs maple syrups straight from the jug, I guess I shouldn’t judge. :stuck_out_tongue:

Are you secretly a Canadian? That’s the type of thing we do since we get it in abundance here in Quebec :slight_smile:

Anywho! Seeing your Raider costume on facebook, I’m sure you have the skills to make a shamisen! (Making those costumes and movie prop replicas require a lot of fine detail precision, I’m sure)

Indeed! The pictures don’t do it justice, there’s a ton of fine detail that I did, going down to the texture of the materials and the painted rust on the metal parts and grime on the clothes. Same thing for my Mandalorian armor, all the weathering and battle damage. But I love that kind of thing, definitely as something to differentiate from my work. I mean, I love my job, but writing network drivers to abstract networking (yeah you read that right) for cloud tech is fairly abstract and I don’t get to touch it or display it to people (it also makes for very boring conversation with non network people).

I think maple would be nice. Reigen recently had a shamisen made from maple. I think any kind will do. Whatever you can get your hands on at an affordable price. :slight_smile:

Sounds good! I’ll give it a shot!

I think the species makes a bigger difference when it’s cut thin for guitar, violin and such. However, the shamisen dou is so thick, I don’t think it will make a huge difference. (unless one is drastically harder than another) Again, the biggest influence to tone quality is the skin (as well as interior dimensions of the body)

Ah true! I did not consider that aspect of the shamisen versus other instruments. I actually just checked the acoustic absorption coefficient for various maple woods, and they all differ but seem to be similar at relatively the same thickness! I’ll go with what’s affordable then!

I’ll have to figure out what to do for the skin, but I’m not there yet so let’s start by building the dou then go from there :slight_smile:

Please share your pictures! :slight_smile:

Of course! I’m a big fan of documenting my work (actually, all my props and costumes are fully documented). I might start a thread here and update it each time I make progress.

Damn, I’m overflowing myself with projects… new armor, building an operating system from scratch and now a shamisen. It’s gonna be a busy year!

Much appreciated Kyle!

#6

o yeah… a nice piece of birdseye maple could be really lovely for a shamisen!
Maybe some walnut or cherry or something for the itomaki.

Kyle and Calvin, all your talk of swigging maple syrup from the jug is making me feel suddenly very homesick!
Of course it is well known that when one is born in spring maple sap running country, after that obligatory slap on the ass, they run you outside, dip you in a bucket of maple syrup that one can find hanging off every tree and then get a husky to lick it all off you to help get you all warm again.

#7

I enjoy using local (Seattle area) woods for musical instruments. My first shamisen was made of cherry wood from a fruit tree that had died in our yard. Cherry is wonderful to work, although not nearly as dense as traditional shamisen woods. My second one was African Padouk, per Kyle’s recommendation. Both look good and play well.

I agree with Catherine about birdseye maple, but only for the body; use a straight-grained piece for the neck, due to the small details. Finer grain woods (e.g. maple or cherry) will work better than coarse grain woods (e.g. oak or ash). Otherwise, as long as you’re not trying to satisfy a “shamisen purist”, you should be able to find a suitable block of wood at your local hardwood supplier.

#8

o right. good point about the neck!
It’s going to be awesome Calvin and Kyle’s book will get you where you need to go.
Have a blast.

#9

Calvinsan,

If I had to choose, Rock Maple would be the choice. But no matter what you’re using, it must be well dried, or at least well-dried for your area. Birdseye would indeed be lovely but you will fight the wood every step of the way - it wants to move and twist, it wants to burn, it does not scrape or sand out evenly, but it would look amazing. One would be obliged to become a virtuoso shamisenist to match the instrument.

Big leaf maple is much softer; lower silica content so it’s easier on the tools, it’s cheaper but does not have the density and ‘ring’ of rock maple. Rock maple is the wood of harps, partly because of the awesome forces at work on a fully tuned harp - not really an issue with shamisen - but rock maple does resonate.

#10

awesomely helpful info (as usual!) Tomo san.

#11

Thank you, Catherinesan. You have only encouraged me to get even more pedantic:

To ampify what Dansan is talking about vis-a-vis “coarse” and “fine” grain woods, what he is referring to is ‘ring porous woods and ring diffuse woods.’

Oak and Ash are ring porous - when you cut the end grain, sand it smooth and blow out the sanding dust, you can see tiny holes (with a loupe or other magnifier) especially in the spring wood. These are channels for fluid in the living tree. Oak and Ash may be very hard woods, but the open pore structure does affect acoustic properties. Sometimes this dampening effect is desirable - many bass electric guitars are made from Ash.

Ring diffuse woods (Maple, Cherry, some of the tropical hardwoods) have a very tight pore structure. They behave more like metal acoustically - there is little dampening of sound waves as they travel through the wood, as opposed to ring porous woods where the open pores act like insulation.

May I also add that tropical hardwoods come from the tropics, often from countries with little regard for the environmental impact of felling trees. All of my tropical hardwood is left over from my father’s woodpile, collected in Brazil when we lived there in the 1960’s. I will not buy tropical hardwood today and urge others not to.

Salvage is a great way to go - I built a fine set of shoji from a big-leaf maple skid that had an industrial dishwasher bolted to it and was being thrown away. A friend is still working his way 30 years later through a whole church’s worth of cherry pews, prime clear wood fully cured and destined for a landfill. Very satisfying to give a new life to old wood.

#12

Wow, that is a lot of info! This is very helpful Tomo san, thank you very much!

I’ll take your recommendations in consideration when picking the wood. I might only start the project more in March or April when the weather gets a bit better around here so I’ll have plenty of time to look into all your recommendations and pick something I like.

Catherine, thanks for your input as well :slight_smile:

#13

Meanwhile, if you can’t decide, why not try cardboard? It is cheap and easy to find. :wink:

(I wonder why Kyle never proposed this one? :wink: )

#14

Meanwhile, if you can’t decide, why not try cardboard? It is cheap and easy to find. :wink:

本気でダンボール工作！→ 三線を作ってみた！　Cardboard Sanshin - YouTube

(I wonder why Kyle never proposed this one? :wink: )

How do you find these videos?!

#15

wow

#16

Now that is wicked cool.

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