Although acoustic guitars usually have spruce tops, you don't see many electric guitars with pine wood bodies. Softwoods can have a broad frequency response with good midrange resonance, giving a generally lively sound. Softwoods will dent easily, so a hardened coating is often used.

But if you have decided to make pine bodied electric guitar, where do you get the wood? If you live in the backwoods you could get your chainsaw and harvest some for yourself, but you'll have to wait ages for it to dry out. Or you could do what Zachary did and use an Ikea table top. (You could also go to your local timber merchant, but that would be far too sensisble). Anyway, the raging globalisation of the Swedish furniture chain coupled with rampant deforestation means that nowadays your local branch of Ikea is probably nearer than your local forest.

Zachary bought an unfinished end table for $15, enough for three guitar tops. With DiMarzio Virtual P90 pickups the guitar has great midrange tone, just what you would expect for this type of wood, which screams Texas blues and Billy Gibbons. Zachary hasn't covered the body with a protective finish, but why would you want to hide that gorgeous AAAA-private stock IKEA top?

Here is the link to the full details and pictures of the project.