Official Luthiers Forum!

Last week I had the great pleasure of calling up forum sponsor Alaska Specialty Woods, speaking with the owner, Brent, and placing an order for a handful of tops.

Some dealers know tonewood inside out and can guide us to the best choices, and Brent is one of them. When I explained that I was looking for some inexpensive tops to do some testing with, he started asking me some really great, thoughtful questions right away. Did I want them all from the same tree? Would comparing different trees be interesting? Did I want them sequentially cut, or maybe get a few that were spaced out from each other in the log. I didn't even know these things were options, but he helped me work out an order and had tracking info emailed to me an hour later. I was impressed. Brent couldn't have been easier to work with. He told me they're a custom shop, and this is the kind of service they like to do.

Yesterday Brent sent me an email asking if they'd arrived (the tracking information hadn't been updated since, oh, I don't know, Friday), and today I got another letting me know they'd gone out for delivery.

Without getting into specifics, I'm the happy new owner of six gorgeous Sitka tops for what I would've paid for two AA grade tops from many of the other great suppliers in the industry. I can't tell you how happy I am to have had the opportunity to work with Brent, and wanted to post this thread as a small measure of thanks for going above and beyond.

Nothing but good experiences with Brent.

+1

Steve

I ordered from them. The one board foot of bracewood is like 5 or more sticks of bracewood from LMI, but at the price of one stick of bracewood. Very good value, to top that off the wood has minimal runout, and even the sawn ones are big enough that you can split them yourself...

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

I bought 7 bearclaw sitka tops years ago from Brent. These were from his "Head" tree and are among the best spruce tops I have in my stash. They are quartered and without runout - all seven are very resonant and stiff. Brent was very nice to deal with.

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John Lewis
Wannabe builder owned by 2 crazy dachshunds