Its good to hear your experience with a mahogany F – I had an all mahogany F, but it didn’t ring my bell. I was searching for a replacement for a ‘29 000, and the F just wasn’t the sound I was looking for. Every FS I’ve seen has been eir, and almost every FTC has been maple. There was one of the 40th anniversary FTCs in mahogany, which I only tried briefly and lightly, and couldn’t say I was overwhelmed with it (it was VERY pretty, though) and I got a few minutes with the FTC in granadillo that went to NAMM, and that I was EXTREMELY taken by. Unfortunately, the back of an FTC tales about same amount of material as the backs of 3 regular guitars, so its not likely they’ll make many in the more exotic woods. My 12 string F in walnut is fantastic to my ear – its a very warm and musical 12 string – and I’m pretty sure that thicker walnut blanks would be more easily available for an FTC, but I don’t know if the walnut would have the right tonal characteristics for a carved back. Maybe Richard has already tried it –
But the rest of the FTC is pretty much normal, so there are all the usual options for tops, fretboards, inlays and other decorations – and the maple is a beautiful material that takes toners and stains really well, so you could do some really cool things – Theres a maple archtop I love thats got an incredible emerald green stain thats absolutely gorgeous. And I’ve seen a picture of the same model in an azure blue thats probably just as nice. A little custom binding, some nice dyed inlay material, it could really be quite sweet.
An FTC would make an incredible canvas to create a really special and unique guitar – the hardest part would be deciding on the details that would make it uniquely yours, but Richard would be the perfect person to advise and help make that happen.