Home Grown
This issue, guitar maker Alex Bishop considers alternative tonewoods: have traditional timbers have had their day?
Afew months ago I hinted in this column about a new project I am undertaking to visit the ‘50 Great British Trees’, as designated by The Tree Council in 2002. With my furniture-making friend Danny in tow, we decided that in addition to seeing each of these unique trees in person, we would pay homage to every one in the form of a piece of woodwork. In my instance, this leaves me with the daunting task of somehow building 50 guitars before my own time runs out. The trees are standout examples from a diverse range of species; timeless yews, lofty sequoias and a quirky mulberry tree all populate the
“It seems crazy to build a guitar from protected South American timber when there are so many interesting woods on our own doorstep”
list. Using any parts of the actual trees themselves would likely constitute some form of illegal activity, so instead my intention to incorporate some of these types of wood into musical instruments has formed a perfect excuse to go shopping, feeding an already unhealthy addiction to timber accumulation.
The first ‘Tree’ guitar I have begun work on is appropriately inspired by the first Cedar of Lebanon tree to be planted in the UK (located in Childrey, Oxfordshire), which first took root in 1642. Cedar is seemingly not uncommon in lutherie – Western Red cedar, Yellow cedar and Spanish cedar are all familiar species to guitar makers – although rather like ‘mahogany’ the name is thrown around to cover a number of largely unrelated trees. I am using Cedar of Lebanon for the soundboard and neck, which excites me on the basis that these are the two main parts of the guitar where I am normally the least experimental with my materials. I have a penchant for building featherweight instruments, so using timber almost as light as spruce for the neck is just the kind of thing to get a locked-down luthier like me excited.
The sound of a guitar is going to be directed by the materials used for its back and sides, but wood selection is about more than this; there is the whole context to consider. For example, to me, it seems almost crazy for a UK-based luthier to be building a guitar from protected South American timber when there are so many interesting woods on our own doorstep. In much the same way that the great Spanish flamenco guitar builders used locally sourced Mediterranean Cypress to help create their signature sound, we, too, have a variety of interesting timbers at our disposal: English walnut, bog oak, yew and cherry to name a few. I am building guitars at the moment using some of these woods, but luthiers Rosie Heydenrych (Turnstone Guitars) and Alex Potter (AS Potter Guitars) have taken things a step further by creating guitars made exclusively from English-grown timbers.
Creative Control
As lockdown restrictions have been gradually eased throughout the year, it’s been increasingly looking like it’s high time for another ‘Tree’, and next on the list is the Brighton Pavilion Elm. Hard and durable, that elm has found use in wagon wheels, the keels of ships and hockey sticks, I’m told. Perhaps soon we’ll be adding guitar fingerboards to that list? Add to that my recent order of curly redwood that is already on its way to the workshop (for the ‘Wellingtonia’ tree in Stratfield Saye, Hampshire), and it’s fair to say that my wood store is starting to look more like a kind of botanical research project.
Part of the joy of building guitars by hand is that we are in complete control of what materials we wish to use. Not being beholden to the constraints of a factory-style process means we can afford to experiment with each build, using our intuition to shape each component differently depending on the characteristics of the timber. It is in this way that the boutique guitar builder brings forward new sounds, and – despite a small output of instruments per year – we can be a big part of the development of the acoustic guitar in the 21st century.