TOO DANG PICKY?

The traditional tonewood brand is a powerful one. Are we being too loyal – or too fussy?

“The traction we’ve gotten from the Forest Stewardship Council-certified models is less than I would have expected. We use cherry. Well, cherry works, but it’s not the wood that most people think of. I think it’s just tradition. We’ve done too good a job of convincing the vast majority of guitar players that high-end acoustic guitars must be made from rosewood, mahogany, ebony and spruce. And, yeah, they work – but other woods work also.”

CHRIS MARTIN IV, MARTIN GUITARS

“People automatically think the guitar maker needs to get it together and stop wasting trees. And yet we use so few of them. And we make something that is not a wasteful product. We could stop being so dang picky about the materials, but that’s symbiotic with the players.”

BOB TAYLOR, TAYLOR GUITARS

“The Leonardo Guitar Research Project involved mainly students of lutherie building pairs of guitars to the same design in traditional tropical and non-tropical European woods. These were compared in blind tests and both players and audiences were asked to state a preference. Among several hundred individual tests, the results came out almost exactly 50/50.”

ADRIAN LUCAS, AJ LUCAS GUITARS

“In terms of wood’s capacity to vibrate and flap air around and make sound, some woods are better than others, but […] you can make a bad guitar with any wood. And if you know what you’re doing you can make a pretty damn good guitar with most woods. Balsa wood, I’m not so sure.”

ERVIN SOMOGYI, LUTHIER, FROM THE PODCAST ‘LUTHIER ON LUTHIER’