BODY MATERIALS

Ash

This wood is slightly dense and slightly heavy. It produces bright sound with more emphasis on highs which gives it a more attack characteristics. The wood has a fairly white shade with beautiful grain patterns. This type of wood originates mostly from North American regions and Canada.

Alder

This wood is slightly dense and is lightweight. This is the most popular body material used by Fender because of its well-balanced feature like wood stiffness, weight and tone quality with more emphasis on the midrange. This wood has a reddish shade. This type of wood originates mostly from Canada and North American regions.

Mahogany

This wood is soft but slightly heavy. One of the popular feature of this wood is fat and mild bass tone. This tone characteristics makes this wood the choice of Fender for chambered body. Mahogany is also used for neck. This  wood originates mostly from Africa and Latin America.

(I have no idea why Fender Japan classified mahogany as softwood)

Poplar

This wood is comparatively light and easy to process. Its easy to distinguished from grains to tone that is  flat to midrange. This wood is mostly used on beginners models like the Fender Mustang. This wood originates mostly from cold regions of North America, Canada and Europe.

Basswood

This wood is light and easy to process. It is quite unremarkable although the grains look like alder. It generally gives a flat tone.

NECK MATERIALS

Maple

This wood is very dense and heavy. This is ideal for body material because of its durability and well-balanced tone from bass region to upper register although its mainly used by Fender for neck material. The tone is pleasant when used as one piece neck. It is not uncommon to see beautiful variety although it is quite expensive when used. Maple originates mostly from North America and Canada.

Rosewood

This wood is dense and heavy. Fender used it mainly for fingerboard materials because of its grain and beautiful tea brown color. It produces fat sound due to overtones compared to one piece maple when used as fingerboard. The quality of tone makes this wood ideal as fingerboard material. This wood originates mostly from Latin America, India and mostly from Southeast Asia.