Bamboo

A fast-growing grass whose strips are laminated and pressed into boards hard enough for instrument work.

Because bamboo is a grass it reaches usable size in a few years rather than decades, which is why it turns up in instruments marketed on sustainability. Strips are glued into laminated boards, and heat treatment darkens them so a carbonised panel looks closer to a tropical hardwood. Makers who use it commonly describe a bright, hard, slightly dry voice with a quick attack, more like a dense hardwood than its lightness suggests. Its weaknesses are practical rather than tonal: visible node lines and glue joints limit how it can be finished, quality varies between suppliers, and thin sections do not route as predictably as solid timber.

Example: A bamboo-topped acoustic or bamboo-back electric is bought for its low environmental cost as much as its sound, which players often describe as bright and immediate.

typical use: Bodies, tops and fretboards on sustainability-led instruments, plus necks on some guitars and ukuleles.

Bamboo

See also