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here´s a link to an interesting article about woods, forests sustainability, etc
its good reading material, and involves facts that we all should be concerned about, not only as woodworkers but also as inhabitants of this planet.
maybe its been posted before. anyway its worth it

edit: the writer also makes an experience by building guitars with sustainable certified tonewooods, and with all native UK woods. pics and conclusions, etc.

http://londonmet.academia.edu/RayBeatti ... _Tonewoods

It's an interesting discussion - that mirrors discussions held here often enough.....

It's absolutely true that excellent musical instruments can be made out of most any material you have on hand..... including Wood that you would scarcely think could even be suitable (Like pallet wood full of nails).....

Most luthiers I have spoken with have in fact done it - Salvaged a doomed yard or street side tree or even the occasional Pallet... destined for the fire or for pulp wood.... and made some incredible instruments out of it..... Now ask them about selling said instruments for anything close to "Full Price".....

The trouble is the buying public and their perception.... You often get comments like "Holy cow - that Oak/Poplar/Pallet wood guitar sounds awesome... Can you make one in Cuban Mahogany or Brazilian Rosewood?" ... and when you try to steer the discussion back around to the merits of this particular guitar at hand.... you get looks like you are trying to swindle them... Like you're trying to sell them a beat up Ford Pinto with 200,000 miles on it when they wanted a New BMW 7 series..... Oh... Sure... It's a darn nice Pinto... but I came in here to buy a BMW..... OR.. They would be perfectly happy taking said "Non-Endangered" wood instrument off your hands for the princely sum of $99.00....... but not a penny more.... where they won't blink at $4K for a "Standard" Rosewood model.... "Yeah... I suppose it's pretty good.. But I really want Rosewood......"

If you want to SELL stuff - you gotta figure out how to get folks to BUY what you want to sell... Barring that - Sell them what they want to Buy..... Unfortunately the Latter is much easier than the former....

Thanks

you have to TELL them where you got the wood?

OK, I'm not saying LIE to them, but a mahogany guitar is a mahogany guitar.... regardless of whether the the wood was cut from a fresh billet or a hundred year old table top

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I am SOOO right with you on this John!

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Sorry to be the contrarian here, but when you're at the top of your game, there's no way you can make an oak guitar sound like a Braz guitar, and vice-versa. You can replace oak and Braz by other specimen if you want, and I have nothing against oak as a tonewood.
It is just the way it is.
Wood choices and their uniqueness is a crucial factor in the outcome of a build.
I never understood the car analogy, but all I can say is: if we must, I am concerned with building the equivalent of an Aston-Martin, certainly not a Pinto or BMW, I'll leave that to factories.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Of course Laurent. It would be naive, or ignorant at best, to say otherwise.

But where I'm with John, is that there IS a naiveness (is that a word?) as well from players that give way too much credit to the nature of the wood and not enough to the craftmanship of the builder. For exemple, none of my demos are made with traditional B&S woods: bubinga dreadnought, lacewood OM, ovengkol classical, sycamore flamenco (ok, that last one is not so untraditionnal, but still, it's not cypres). When customers try these demos, they all think the sound is great and all, and yet when they place their order, they go for the rosewood or mahogany.

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

I think is a matter of tradition, and popularity.
I agree on the the fact that you have build what you can sell if you are living on this activity.
i also think that customers often buy with their eyes and feel of security that an established material or product may give. But like Alain says, most people probably cant tell which wood is which if they only have their ears to judge. like its been prooven on many blind sound tests. its difficult.

I thought I was on an episode of Top Gear for a minute there.

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"Preoccupation with an effect gives it power and enhances the error"
from "Your Owner's Manual" by Burt Hotchkiss.

Many customers are also concerned about the ability to re-sell a guitar. They may not be planning to re-sell, but in case they may need or want to re-sell a guitar they know that the market might not treat them favorably with non-traditional woods. The tradition of "marrying a guitar for life" seems to be waining.

If it sounds good, it sounds good regardless of the material. Customers should recognize that. But mahogany doesn't sound like rosewood, etc., so there are still distinctions to be made.

You aren't actually contrarian... It was the point I was making.... It's not that Oak is inferior per-se... It's that your customers won't buy them..... so it doesn't matter how good they theoretically might be in their own rite....

I totally get that people are ordering something unseen from a thousand miles away.... When you have an instrument in your hands - it will tell you what it's got.... and when an instrument has "Mojo" - it has Mojo... Either you like that sound or you don't.... But when you gotta wait a year and pay a hefty deposit to try it out and maybe not like it... It's a different matter altogether....

That was my point.... As a Pro - You don't get too many commissions for woods with no current standard retail market presence... It doesn't matter whether they would be a great choice or not... For example..... There's not much of an avenue for someone to develop a preference for the sound of Oak guitars with some particular sort of music... For example, A Small body Oak guitar is magical with that old delta slide blues sound - but since Oak guitars are about as common as Hen's teeth... and Gibson L-00's weren't made of Oak... how would anyone ever know that?... and so when it comes to ordering one... they probably won't ever ask the question.... and if you offer it - the answer will likely be something like.... "Um... Yeah... Do you make that model in Mahogany instead?..."

Thanks

John, after doing this for a while now, I find it difficult to generalise. For example, the only inquiries I get for Brazilian are unserious, and usually accompanied by pics of sets I wouldn't dare to build with. As a matter of fact I've had more than a few patrons who made a point of not having any Braz on the guitar. Headplate, trim or otherwise.
I built my first mahogany guitar since 4 years this January, more precisely Cuban mahogany. Not a lot of demand, at least for me.
I find people who commission my guitars very open to suggestions. When I get a request for a specific tonewood combo I usually nudge the conversation toward "what tone do you have in mind?", and preferably with concrete examples. Vocabulary is important. Then I can offer suggestions, and they're usually not what the person had in mind to begin with.

It is entirely true that people buy with their eyes, but don't we all?

As for ordering an instrument from thousand of miles away, usually reputation precedes the call, and possibly a guitar or two have been tried before. Most people who order from me have played at least one of my guitars before hand. There's no better publicity BTW.

To come back to the OP, my belief is that artisan builders (people who build around or less than 20 instruments/year) have so little impact on anything but trends that it is a joke to even mention it. Even if you added the total production of all small builders in the US and Europe combined for a year, Martin's production alone would dwarf it by several orders of magnitude. Let's not even mention Godin and affiliated brands, Taylor, Larrivee and so on. All we can do is set a trend, make it cool to use a substitute for instance. But it is what it is: a substitute. People with the means will want the real thing. Who can blame them?
Now, when Godin, Taylor, Martin or any of the big factories decide to produce with this or that wood, I am sure it has an impact, but probably not as much as people think.
There's a growing market in Asia, and this will dwarf anything we knew before.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/