If you do research into guitar building you soon realize the great emphasis put on quartersawn woods for necks. Like many others, I prefer quartersawn timber when building necks. But is this historical assertion true?
While looking for alternative wood materials I came across the Leonardo Guitar Research Project, which carried out studies into alternative non-tropical woods.
An unexpected side-effect of their research has been to show that based on their relatively small sample and scientific method used, there is no obvious advantage to using quartersawn wood for neck material as opposed to flatsawn. I didn’t expect that.
http://www.leonardo-guitar-research.com/
Guitar neck stability and stiffness tests – An experimental study to determine the degree of gradual deformation under stress (creep) of different wood species serving as classical guitar necks. Research by Jacky Walraet and Kristof Meeus, April 2017
