H
ow many times recently
have you walked in to
a guitar shop and seen
acoustics made out of
wood you’d never seen
before? If you’re like me,
you gravitate to those guitars out of curiosity. You pick them up, turn them over, pick
out colors and patterns. When you turn it
over again, do you stick your nose in the
soundhole and take a whiff? Okay, maybe
that’s only me and my friend Steve. But you
get where I’m going, right?
I’m fascinated by the properties that different woods bring to guitars. I’m also concerned about deforestation, endangered
woods, and the displacement of entire
communities due to mismanagement of the
forests where guitar woods are harvested.
Fortunately, the time is ripe for a revolution
in lutherie, and woods like cocobolo, jacaranda, bubinga, zebrawood and katalox have
become part of the acoustic landscape. It’s
also been a chance for makers like Rainsong,
CA (Composite Acoustics), Flaxwood and
Blackbird to push the boundaries of carbon
fiber and composites—and it’s given Ovation
a chance to say, “Told you so.”
Never ones to wallow in doom and gloom,
we decided to do some fact-finding and get
the lowdown on just how endangered some
of our old favorites are, and just how viable
some of these new additions have been.
Our focus is flat top acoustics, so we talked
to Richard Hoover of Santa Cruz Guitar
Company, Nick Colesanti of Martin, Bob
Taylor of Taylor Guitars, Bob Long of Long
Guitars, Bradley Clark of Cole Clark Guitars,
and Chris Herrod of Luthiers Mercantile to
get a broad perspective on this topic.
Tops
Here’s some good news: spruce is not
endangered, nor is it in danger of being
endangered. That’s particularly good news,
because the top is responsible for about
ninety percent of a guitar’s tone.
The Sitka spruce so commonly used on
guitar tops comes from a supplier called
Sealaska, based out of the Tongass National
Forest in southeast Alaska. In 2004, Fender,
Gibson, Martin and Taylor were approached
by representatives from Greenpeace, who
invited them to visit Tongass and meet
with the folks at Sealaska about Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) certification and
the importance of sustainability. From this
meeting the Music Woods Coalition was
born. Nick Colesanti is very excited about
the work the coalition is currently doing in
assisting Sealaska to get FSC certified: “It’s
A bunya top on a Cole Clark Guitar from Australia
to be ground up and turned into pulp.
Martin’s response has been to seek out
those pulp mills and try to rescue some of
the logs that are suitable for tops. They
call it diaperwood.
a long, long process because they’re a big
organization, and it’s a lot of lumber, and it’s
a lot to do. We’re trying to help them and
they’re trying to help us, and we really hope
they get there because that would really be
a huge success story for the coalition.”
The five- and six-foot diameter trees that
have been the bread and butter for guitar
purposes are few and far between. Chris
Herrod says it’s the old growth, very large
trees that are endangered: “They’re hard to
come by. People want those because the
grain is very tight and straight and so forth.”
Those trees are not just being turned into
construction lumber or kitchen cabinets,
either. Many old-growth trees are destined
“I’ll tell you what’s very sad,” says
Colesanti. “You’re out in the woods and
you’re looking at these mammoth trees,
and they’re just beautiful and it took them
hundreds of years to grow, right? And all
you’re thinking is, wow, someone’s gonna
turn this into a diaper? Isn’t there something more noble that can happen with this
really cool tree?”
