Those aren't generally khaya. They're Avodire (which may be from mahogany, but most darker guitars are actually khaya) or agathis. most of the less expensive older japanese copies are agathis or pancake agathis. They actually sound fine unless they have a bent top (but I had a super top shelf luthier and violin maker call me a few weeks ago and tell me how suprised he was at the quality of sound coming from an older bent top agathis bolt on les paul). Khaya guitars should sound a lot like honduran if the density is similar. BUT, you may not find that many vs. agathis and avodire because good khaya blanks aren't much cheaper than honduran mahogany. khaya is generally similar in color to honduran (though most guitars are covered with a toned lacquer or stained to cover up their true color) - this is the back of a guitar that i french polished. Khaya, no color adjustment except for that which is naturally in the shellac (#1 light buttonlac).

@viaductdreams It varies based on tree age. Older honduran can be very dense, and african can be relatively light. The really light plantation grown honduran mahogany often isn't that stable if it's sawn flat (not veritical grain look on the bottom of the guitar).

You won't get a sound like that from mahogany - it's not dense enough. it's more like a sharper knock sound for a given density. If you get beech and maple and they're both the same density, maple will have a sharp note and you'll feel it resonate when you hit it. Beech will make a thud, even dry. Because of that, we make instruments out of maple and tools out of beech (in the very old days, there was no virtue in pounding your nerves with maple tools - too much shock and it leads to hand and elbow damage over time). Long story short, if you want something as musical as a marimba, you need to get one of the rosewoods used to make the bars (?) on them. I've made guitar necks out of rosewood. It's so heavy that it's not as resonant as you'd think and you lose some bottom end acoustically.

For a piece of furniture, yes!

It depends on what you want in a guitar. It's probably more stable, it's more bug resistant, and it's probably from an older tree. If you like a 10 or 11 pound guitar with more sustain and less resonance, then you might like it. If you like a resonant guitar, then the weight will kill some of that - there's just not enough string energy to really vibrate it. The denser mahogany is preferable for carvers and furniture makers because it's usually harder, more stable and more bug and rot resistant. Hopefully, you never have a bug problem in a guitar!! I don't plan on one. A lot of the honduran that's being sold now isn't the same quality as the older stuff. It's flatsawn, from smaller faster growing trees and it can be less stable and require some time sitting as stock wood. Stew mac sold a bunch of one piece bodies last year, and just my opinion, but quality has gone out the window there. i cut two les paul body backs out of the blanks I got from them and both cupped quite a lot and now I'm going to let them sit for a couple of years to age, and if that doesn't stop them moving, I'll bake them before using them. There's wood variance between types and within types. No really hard and fast rules - as in, I've been much happier with quartered khaya blanks than I have been with most of the light weight honduran mahogany that's available. Limba is starting to show up inexpensive in quantity and quartered, too, but it's a bit soft and I haven't finished a guitar with it yet.