Muttley/Light...

[Light]

I mean, I hear what you're saying and all, but if I'm paying over $2000 for an acoustic, I'm sort of expecting mahogany and spruce, you know?

See, and I think you should be most worried about how it sounds and plays. Honestly, the wood is WAY less important than the builder/design issues. The way you brace the top, and the top wood, are far more important than the back and sides/neck/fingerboard woods. There is no wood I can think of that will make a worse guitar than any other (or conversely, a better). Different, perhaps, but that's why you should play them first. If it sounds good to you, who cares about the wood? But most guitar buyers won't even give alternative woods a chance. They see that it doesn't look like they expect it to look, and they won't even try it. That is stupid.

As Muttley said, the cost of the materials is a very small part of any guitars cost - even with us bitching about rising wood costs, they are still relatively cheap. I also think that marketing alternative woods from the top down (make them a premium option, then the vastly larger number of people buying cheaper guitars will start to demand them) is a much more successful way to make them desirable. I say charge more for them - there are plenty of people out there who assume that something that costs more is automatically better (as evidenced by the steady stream of people who are willing to pay Martin's $15,000 up-charge for Brazilian rosewood).

On the environmental thing it always used to amaze me that sting could rattle out a couple of albums worth of tunes above saving the rain rain forest done entirely on a guitar made of, yes you guessed it, rain forest.

I've talkled to Dick Boak at Martin (at the time, he was the artist relations guy) about that, and it was Dick who was the driving factor on that one. He was working from the essentially correct stand point that the real reason the rain forests are being destroyed has little to nothing to do with the logging industry, but with farming and urban development/sprawl. By giving the owners of these lands they ability to make money off of the trees, you give them an incentive to be selective in their forestry practices. As it stands, very few trees from the rain forests get taken down for wood products - far fewer for guitar building.

Martin probably uses less than 100 mahogany logs a year for their necks, which in the grand scheme of things is a pretty small number (remember, they are using spanish cedar for a lot of necks, and their cheapest guitars are using those laminated necks, so really this is just for style 18 and higher guitars). Compare that to the tens of thousands which are burned down for farm land every year. (I just watched a documentary last night with the following stat - the world looses enough forest every year to slash and burn farming to cover the entire state of South Carolina.)

Of course, when the Sting signature model came out using rain forest woods, there was a huge stink made on the internet, and they quickly redesigned the whole thing using alternative woods.

Personally, I'd have no problem with using Brazilian rosewood and Honduras
mahogany if they were harvested sustainably, but they just aren't. So I've gone to Sapele for all my mahogany needs, and when I use rosewood (not often) I use Indian. Dad has enough Honduras Mahogany for necks to last the rest of his life, and has a small stash of Brazilian back and sides that he charges enough for that it will also last, but they just aren't part of my building anymore. (I do miss working with Honduras mahogany though - its really wonderful stuff to work with!)



Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[ermghoti]

I've talkled to Dick Boak at Martin (at the time, he was the artist relations guy) about that, and it was Dick who was the driving factor on that one. He was working from the essentially correct stand point that the real reason the rain forests are being destroyed has little to nothing to do with the logging industry, but with farming and urban development/sprawl. By giving the owners of these lands they ability to make money off of the trees, you give them an incentive to be selective in their forestry practices. As it stands, very few trees from the rain forests get taken down for wood products - far fewer for guitar building.

A big +1 on utilizing tonewoods as a resource. If a tropical/subtropical landowner can sell a few hundred trees to North American or European builders, for a multiple of the potential crop yield of a given hunk of rainforest, they aren't likely to burn down a few thousand acres of it, are they?

I read that a sizable portion of Brazil's rosewood stock, that used to cover thousands of square miles, went to Japan, for disposable fast-food chopsticks.

 

[muttley600]

I've talkled to Dick Boak at Martin (at the time, he was the artist relations guy) about that, and it was Dick who was the driving factor on that one. He was working from the essentially correct stand point that the real reason the rain forests are being destroyed has little to nothing to do with the logging industry, but with farming and urban development/sprawl. By giving the owners of these lands they ability to make money off of the trees, you give them an incentive to be selective in their forestry practices. As it stands, very few trees from the rain forests get taken down for wood products - far fewer for guitar building.

Martin probably uses less than 100 mahogany logs a year for their necks, which in the grand scheme of things is a pretty small number (remember, they are using spanish cedar for a lot of necks, and their cheapest guitars are using those laminated necks, so really this is just for style 18 and higher guitars). Compare that to the tens of thousands which are burned down for farm land every year. (I just watched a documentary last night with the following stat - the world looses enough forest every year to slash and burn farming to cover the entire state of South Carolina.)

Of course, when the Sting signature model came out using rain forest woods, there was a huge stink made on the internet, and they quickly redesigned the whole thing using alternative woods.

Personally, I'd have no problem with using Brazilian rosewood and Honduras
mahogany if they were harvested sustainably, but they just aren't. So I've gone to Sapele for all my mahogany needs, and when I use rosewood (not often) I use Indian. Dad has enough Honduras Mahogany for necks to last the rest of his life, and has a small stash of Brazilian back and sides that he charges enough for that it will also last, but they just aren't part of my building anymore. (I do miss working with Honduras mahogany though - its really wonderful stuff to work with!)



Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

Thats exactly my standpoint. I've been banging on for years about the clear cutting of timbers all around the world. It's pretty much a direct result of the fact that once you stop the controled cutting of timber the forest has absolutely no economic value to anyone but illegal loggers. The sensible approach is to provide an economic incentive for the people who live and work in the regions to mange the resource.

My main beef with much of what goes on is that the illegal logging that goes on has nothing to do with either sustainable management or providing an opportunity for local communities to benefit and protect their resource. That illegal timber is still ending up in our supply chain. That is wrong and self defeating. We should pay nore for our timber if it means the resource is better managed and benifits those who directly rely it.

 

[Light]

We should pay more for our timber if it means the resource is better managed and benifits those who directly rely it.

I'm down with that. Though, of course, the customers probably aren't.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[YeshuasFan]

This is where I think the state dept. of conservation is outstanding in its forestry practices. They partner with farmers to leave some of their land in timber to provide wildlife habitat. The farmers retain leasing rights for hunting easements. Then, to prevent the forest from becoming a fire hazard, the dept. comes in and selects trees for harvest which have reached a certain level of maturity (usually oak, maple, and black walnut--the predominant species around here) and the farmer is paid for the harvested timber by the lumber broker.
The dept. also conducts managed "harvests" on some of the state-owned land and the harvesting revenue helps the state coffers. All in all, it's managed much more effectively and less controversially than the US gov't's practice of selling licenses to permit clear-cutting in certain acreages.

 

[32-20-Blues]

I'm down with that. Though, of course, the customers probably aren't.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

Depends on the customer. I wouldn't mind paying some amount of a premium if I knew the inflated price was definitely contributing to conservation.

 

[TelePaul]

See, and I think you should be most worried about how it sounds and plays.

Fair point, but if alt. woods sound and play as well as, say, 'established' woods, then why have manufacturers waited so long to start using them?

 

[muttley600]

Fair point, but if alt. woods sound and play as well as, say, 'established' woods, then why have manufacturers waited so long to start using them?

I think what light is getting at and I agree is that the market has come to place a value on certain combinations of style and timbers. That value judgement drives prices in that essentially the guitar buying public are a fairly conservative bunch.

I have the opinion that there are many styles and timbers that work but that comes from my background as a luthier not as a player and consumer. There is a whole other debate here but in a nutshell if had to build an instrument that I knew would sell it would stick closely to the formula you describe based on the expectation of the majority of guitarists not the reality of how different timbers or styles can sound.

We need to move away from that.

 

[YeshuasFan]

I think what light is getting at and I agree is that the market has come to place a value on certain combinations of style and timbers. That value judgement drives prices in that essentially the guitar buying public are a fairly conservative bunch.

I have the opinion that there are many styles and timbers that work but that comes from my background as a luthier not as a player and consumer. There is a whole other debate here but in a nutshell if had to build an instrument that I knew would sell it would stick closely to the formula you describe based on the expectation of the majority of guitarists not the reality of how different timbers or styles can sound.

We need to move away from that.

Preach it! Amen! And I'd be happy to try a guitar with walnut back and sides--as soon as I can afford to....