I was reading an interview recently, by the oddly named chap who heads up Gibson Guitars.

He was referring to the recent surprise raid on the Company by their Environmental Protection agency, and was seriously suggesting that within 10 years we can say goodbye to general production electric guitars made of traditional tone woods. I've heard similar comments before, but that was the first time I've seen it stated so bluntly by a major electric guitar manufacturer. And if it's that bad for electric guitars, what's the future for affordable acoustic instruments, where the wood selection is even more critical?

Perhaps now really IS the time to buy that guitar you always promised yourself..

Discuss..

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Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

Before someone makes a joke concerning Viagra let me say that these regulations do have some benefit. They will make your present instruments more valuable in the future. That being said I'm sure that some enterprising luthier will find a way to recycle existing wood stocks to produce affordable instruments. God forbid there may be too many guitar players in the world and we all get blamed for destroying the world's eco-system. I believe in forest management, but I hate government beauracracy.

I don,t think so. Some woods yes but all no. Alder, Ash, Maple, Pine

Considering all the projects and "instruments" (I say that with a bit of disdain) that HJ has approved or touted as the "Guitar of the Future," I cannot put any creedence to his words on any subject.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

If we don't make guitars out of wood, the forest will overpopulate and wildfire will scorch the entire Earth.

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My ability to spell is in direct proportion to the amount of coffee I've had.

We've only got a bazillion acres of forests with those trees in Canada. The amount of wood that goes into guitars doesn't even register as a percent of their harvest.

Re the guy at Gibson...get a new job. I saw a Les Paul Custom last week from China that was near perfect. The first thing that comes to anyone's thoughts when buying a Gibson is 'is it a fake?' I've sold off all but two of my Gibsons, they are going to keep losing value as fakes improve.

Maybe that is just BS to set everyone up for outrageous price hikes, or to justify the meteoric rise is the prices of guitars that come with the G word on them we've seen in the past 10 years.

I don,t think Gibson can afford a price hike. They are way overpriced now.

He may have been referring to rosewood and mahagony. Brazilian rosewood is endangered.

Take a close look at Pacific North West Export Shipping and you will quickly realise where Most of our (QUALITY) wood is going. For instance the Japanese are buying Hardwoods for there use and Sinking it in Japanise coastal holding ponds for ut to (200) YEARS. Maby they will sell some of it back to us for makeing guitars in the year 2211.
----Danny

Chris Martin IV, CEO of Martin Guitars has been saying that for years now. In an interview a couple of years ago in Guitarist magazine he was predicting that we would see more and more non-traditional "tonewoods" appearing in instrument making, and when you think about it that has been going on for a while now. Back in the day nobody had heard of using furniture timber such as Koa, Sapele and Padauk in guitars: now they are being sold for a premium as high-end features. We'll be seeing that trend increasing.



And that is exactly what Martin guitars have been doing. Along with their growing catalog of less usual tonewoods they also include "HPL", which I believe means High Pressure Laminate:

http://www.martinguitar.com/guitars/choosing/woods.html

That is now to be found in a surprising number of their guitars, as clicking on the HPL icon on that page reveals. For example, the 000X1AE, which at $719 is not an entry level model:

http://www.martinguitar.com/guitars/cho ... &m=000X1AE

You'll notice the back and sides of that guitar are "mahogany pattern HPL textured finish"; that is, an artificial wood. And the neck is Stratabond, which is Martin's multi-laminated artificial neck blank material. It looks like this:



Martin make high claims for those manufactured woods and reviews I've read in the guitar press say they don't sound bad. As yet I can't comment from personal experience.

Martin know that these developments are likely to be strongly resisted by the traditionally minded guitar community, so for a long time they were very cagey about them and didn't give specifics on their website. But as we see from those links they are being more open about it now, and maybe they will soon become less bashful about their finishes too. You'll have noticed that the guitar linked to above lists its finish type as "hand rubbed", but it doesn't say hand rubbed what. In fact, they don't believe the voodoo about nitrocellulose any more than some of us here, and for years now they have been sneaking waterbased finishes onto many of their lower and middle catalog instruments, without quite saying so out loud. Hopefully they'll soon feel able to admit it, because it's an entirely good thing, far as I'm concerned.

The future is going to be different, but it may be interesting too.

Cheers - C

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dang - you "beat me" to it (my little viagra joke)

you should all take up the accordian, they're real chick magnets

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Now on Facebook Too

Yep. The HPL guitars are also made in Mexico. I just bought a Martin Performer Series guitar. It has a Sitka Spruce top, solid African Sapele back and sides and hardwood neck but the interesting thing is it has a Richlite composite bridge and fingerboard. The fingerboard feels and looks a bit like Ebony. Richlite is paper and resin. From a local luthier I spoke to last week, he said it machines like wood and never heard of a problem with it. It plays and sounds wonderful. Martin has been using composite fingerboard materials since the 70's. I tried a bunch of different guitars before I bought it and I thought it sounded better than the Taylor's , Epi Masterbuilt, Guild etc. in the same price range. I just couldn't see buying a Martin guitar that was made in Mexico with laminates to boot. It's the wave of the future. The sad thing is guitar making actually uses a very small percentage of the woods being used. Most of it is used for constructing homes and furniture.

And yes C, they are being resisted buy the old timers and embraced by guys like me where an acoustic guitar is secondary in what I do.I don't care, it still has a lifetime guarantee.

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Life...... It's sexually transmitted and always fatal

We have a huge international logging company here in the midwest and when I tried to buy quarter-sawn white oak from them they almost laughed at me - said almost ALL of their wood, cut and kiln dried here in the midwest is headed for China. He also said China is paying top dollar (sending some of our own money back to us, I guess) and they can't afford to sell to little guys like me.

As far as current tone woods (alder, basswood, poplar, pine) these grow so fast and are so widespread I don't see how they could ever be used up. Basswood and poplar were considered junk woods in MN when I lived up there from 1975-2000. You could buy them at any sawmill (if the mill would even cut them) for less than $1 a board foot.

There are more acres of timber in this country now that there were when the Pilgrims got here and a good portion of these acres are lumber farms. I find the whole idea laughable.



This is what I do with quarter-sawn white oak.

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Dennis in CR
Rockin' since 1963