Seriously nice work.

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

Lumber companies have been cutting from tree farms for a long time now. I think it would be no stretch of the imagination to say that guitar companies could do the same. Think of the money Fender could save in the long run if the lumber used to build guitars came from their own stock. If it gets to the point that 'tone woods' are no longer readily available for purchase, somebody will come up with an idea. Countless people play guitar, bass, drums etc...and the industry is huge. No doubt when it comes down to it, it'll never be an issue.
As Ceri said, if a company no longer has tonewood "X" available, they can begin using some less known wood (koa, sapele etc...) and their marketing department will take care of convincing their customers that the new stuff is better than the old.
I believe we will see a shift in the materials used, but guitars will always be made of wood.

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Nice work your a real craftsman, and +1 on avaiability of product wood.
----Danny,

Trees Trees and more trees. Yep these are redwoods. The same holds true for all species of usable trees
----Danny,

http://youtu.be/0Opbb7O8KYY

+1 Brother...Gibson is simply gouging people...I mean a Fender Custom Shop Strat is less expensive that a standard reissue Les Paul? Screw That! I mean come on $5K for a Les Paul...HJ is laughing all the way to the bank that people will actually pay that!

T2

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What time is it? It's Fender Time.

That's gorgeous!

Rawk on!



Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Quoted for serious lol quotient...

I do hope that guitars as we know them don't die out. Would be a crying shame. I'm gunna buy all the gear I can now, just in case.

... hey, this excuse may actually hold water with the other half. Excuse me whilst I empty my bank account.

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'01 American Deluxe HSS Strat.
'87 Japan HSS Strat.
'11 Custom Shop FMT HSS Strat.

"Without music, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines and dates by which bills must be paid."

Very Good, more power to you Mate I love it.
----Danny,

Perhaps but not maple, alder, ash, etc. Fender isn't in 'the game' which requires investment in the millions of board feet of production. Fender's use of maple wouldn't amount to an hour's annual production for a large hardwood producer. It's nearly all going into hardwood flooring, stair treads, etc. What companies do is set some pieces aside for specialty use (such as guitar necks, etc.) . Some guitar companies use buyers that visit mills and purchase these prime pieces. some smaller Canadian guitar manufacturers are also specialty wood wholesalers selling lumber to other guitar manufacturers.

So for their "telebration," isn't Fender going to release a tele made out of Bamboo laminate? I thought I saw it when I was following them on the Namm vids.

We got a whole lotta bamboo... that could be an alternative... Those monocots grow like weeds

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Kid: "Hey Smokey! Where did you get your name?"
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I've sadly realized that my 1977 Gibson Les Paul Custom is worth less than a new Les Paul....it's worth a lot more than what I paid in '77,but it's a wonder anybody even buys a new one...I wouldn't pay their prices.

Why would they loose value as Fakes improve? And if you really think that then it would be true of all brands

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

Good discussion..

Ceri, I appreciated your scholarly comments and I loved that prime piece of cabinet making by CR Guitar Man.

I understand from other reading, that the availabilty of spruce for acoustic/classical tops is already a serious issue..

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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!

Ha - that is exactly my experience too. I was recently visiting a big "tonewood" supplier my side of the pond and he said it is getting harder and harder to source many types of hardwood because Chinese bulk buyers are scooping it all up for their domestic market. Rosewood in particular is highly prized in China for furniture, floors and other items and they are buying the entire output of big mills to send home.

As I arrived the owner of the timber company (exotichardwoods.co.uk) was working away in a mixture of rage and misery at a huge £10,000 / $16,000 consignment of Indonesian rosewood he'd just received from a previously reliable supplier. Most of the latest batch was so substandard as to be fit only for firewood and my guy said it would take him a couple of weeks to sort through it and separate out the 20% or so that was sellable, before putting the rest into his furnace. In the international timber trade there are no comebacks from a deal like that and he just has to take the hit and move on.

The cause was that he'd been sent the dregs of a mill's output, the rest having been vacuumed up by a Chinese buyer. And his experience wasn't the worst: he said a Dutch colleague had recently done a tour in person of tropical hardwood mills and loaded wood into a sea-container with his own hands. When it arrived in Holland a few weeks later the timber had been replaced with rocks, though somehow the door seals were still in tact.

When we whine about the cost of guitars we sometimes have no idea the risks people have taken to get that timber to us.

I'm away from home or I'd post photos of my supplier's warehouse. Amazing stuff (if you're interested in these things). For example, he had a big stack of 200 year old Cuban mahogany that had recently been rediscovered in an old warehouse in Bristol where it had sat for two centuries. Completely illegal to move that mahogany across borders these days, so that is a never-to-be-repeated stock. And he had huge pallets full of lignum vitae. And some gorgeous premium flamey sycamore (I bought a plank). And birdseye maple (I bought a plank and also some sawn acoustic backs and sides). And a mound of spalted beech. And several enormous planks of bog oak. And amazingly big trunks of ebony. And rosewood of many types. And... and... and...

Actually, Forum user Nutter did that tonewood road trip with me - we visited another famous instrument wood supplier that day too. Perhaps he has a photo or two he'd like to post...? [Calling: "Nutter...?"]



CR, that is fabulous. You are the real deal: respect.

There's eager eyes here to see any other pictures you might care to post...?

Cheers - C

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I'm no tree hugger, but trees really are needed. Recently in my area, most of the trees are gone as well as huge wooded areas and even a long standing golf course was turned into shopping centers and office buildings. What we have now is flooding in areas that never flooded before. Trees are need to turn CO2 into oxygen too. Water does not adsorb into asphalt.

An article in GC a while back said that Sitka Spruce is getting scarce. Some companies aren't replacing what they take. Think the government is in the way with regulations? If the lumber industry was deregulated, we wouldn't have a single tree in this country. Greed and a quick buck is all that will prevail. Look what happened to the banking industry with deregulation.

Get what you can now. If you can afford to get a nice acoustic made out of real solid tone woods not laminated garbage, get one. I know it looks like there's a lot of lumber around, but it's not good tone wood.

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