Cedar
Cedar is most commonly used as an alternative to spruce tops in acoustic guitars. Its light, bright tone is often used for people who don’t like the warmer tones of walnut, rosewood or spruce. Some cedar top guitars include the Taylor 500 and 700 series.

Walnut
Walnut is used as an alternative to mahogany. Its large warm sound and stunning natural features make it ideal for the back and sides of acoustic guitars. If the wood is cut properly (parallel to the grain) it can also be used as guitar necks. Walnut has been used on such guitars as the Maton 325 series.

Ebony
Ebony (the wood commonly used in pianos) is a very good material to be used as a fret board. It is extremely dense but bright and durable and is very springy as used on a fret board. There are two kinds of ebony Gabbon ebony which only comes from the Gabbon forrest in affrica and Macassar Ebony which is less expensive and features a brown stripes trough it(although is is often dyed black). Ebony fingure boards are commonly used for Gibson Les Paul Customs.

Maple
Maple’s two main uses on a guitar are for the neck and body cap on an electric guitar. Its extremely dense grain makes it ideal to support the stress of string tension on a neck because of this they are to heavy and bright sounding to be used as a solid body. Les Pauls utilised  the brilliance of maple by capping the top of there solid body guitars with it as a finish while retaining the tone from the mahogany. Maple is occasionally used for the back and sides of acoustics guitars but not as often as rosewood or mahogany. Combinations of rosewood and maple necks are also possible with a maple neck and rosewood finger board (for example the Zack Wilde signature Les Paul) 

Ash
Ash is the original Telecaster body material. Its heavy, porous body belts out a twangy high end bite with a good bottom end response. Its classic rock ‘n’ roll sound is demonstrated by Jimmy Page on the Led Zeppelin 1 record. Ash is also used for its immaculate look on natural finish guitars.

Alder
Alder, perhaps most famous for its classic Stratocaster body material. Alder is the easiest material to make guitars out of as it doesn’t require a lot, if any pore fill. Its smooth light weight feel also gives it a full bodied sound with good high and mid-range frequencies which gives that classic twang only a strat can give. But the use of the light weight wood has compromised the bite that was once given from the ash bodied Stratocasters. The alder also responds well to high gain/output guitars as the high and mid range frequencies thrive in the distortion. This is well demonstrated in the Jackson Pro Series “Rand Rhoads” signature model. 

Mahogany
Mahogany was first introduced in guitar grafting as an alternative to expensive and hard to come across rosewood. It was also very practical that you would be able to build an entire guitar(except the fret board) out of one kind of wood. Solid bodied mahogany electrical guitars are marked with a warm clean tone with extenuated low to mid-range frequencies and a high end bite. This is the tone that Gibson prides them selves on producing through the les paul series (mahogany back, one piece neck and head stock). Mahogany is also used for acoustics but lends itself to a more “parlor” or twangier tone as compared to rose wood. This is well demonstrated on early beetles recordings as they used Gibson acoustics made entirely out of mahogany. Other popular guitars constructed from mahogany include S – series Ibanez,  PRS Artist series, B.C Rich Classic Deluxe Eagle, Gibson Grand Concert Cut Away(acoustic). 

Spruce
Spruce is the most commonly used wood in solid top guitars to date. Its light, but tight grain enables the wood too vibrate and act as a speaker cone. As a result of the high density of the wood, as the guitar ages the sap hidden in the grain crystallizes enhancing the resonating abilities of the guitar. Spruce is also graded on an “A” too “AAA” scale. These rating refer to the grain on the sound board. “A” grade spruce will commonly have long winding grain strands that taper off to the edge of the guitar. “AA” grade spruce is very similar in that it also has tapered grain but a high gloss, or mirror finish to it and finally “AAA” grade spruce is when there is no tapering of the grain and has at least 16-20+ grain lines per inch (or a minimum of 16 grain lines per 2.5cm). some popular spruce top guitar include Maton M100(AAA grade), Taylor 300-400 series, Tanglewood TW15 NS, Cole Clark FL-1, Martin DC-16e Koa, Epiphone EJ-200ce, A&L CW spruce burgundy. 

Rosewood
Rosewood (commonly Indian) as we know it today is the most common and popular choice for fret boards. This is due to its high density and ruggedness which allows the wood to stand to the constant ware and playing with all gauge strings. It is also a huge tone boost for acoustics as the density ads sustain with full bass, and high end bite with a distinctively gentle mid range. Although rose wood is the seemingly the perfect resonator in acoustic guitars little luck has come from full rosewood body electric guitars. This is due to the density of the wood making them extremely heavy and expensive as a result of rarity of the wood. There are of course some exceptions to this in higher market guitars such as the fender custom shop rose wood telecaster made entirely out of hand selected rosewood.