Quote:
Originally Posted by tofurkey
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Obviously, the Wall St. Journal don't know doodley-squat about making guitars. Indian rosewood was not the wood in question. Madagascar ebony was, and both companies have used it in the past. Some cub reporter didn't do his homework.
it is a possibility that Martin could have purchased wood from the same supplier Gibson used, and may find itself in similar trouble. As I mentioned, rare wood is like blood diamonds, and I tend to think ICE agents doesn't know what wood is what anyway. Any diamond is a diamond. Wood is all different. Some Madagascar looks, weighs, smells and tastes exactly like African ebony, and it would take a DNA test to say which is which.
As a matter of fact, both Henry Juszciewicz and Chris Martin are members of the US committee that oversees the use of CITES restricted wood. When I worked at Gibson in 2003, Henry got tired of all the hanky-panky surrounding the use of old Brazilian stump wood, reclaimed from trees that had been cut down decades earlier, and ordered all remaining stocks in Montana to be made into a final batch of guitars.
From then on, no more Braz was used as body wood. Gibson is currently using up their final stash of Braz fingerboard stock, and when that's gone, no more bridges or boards will be made from it either. The entire industry understands that using endangered wood is a loser's game. Since some the buyers won't give up their lust for some of it, the only thing left is to simply quit trying to satisfy that group.
I don't know any guitar company leader's political persuasion, and it doesn't matter a lick. All of the US makers large and small face exactly the same problems, and none of them is stupid enough to manufacture a guitar for just one group of political beliefs over another. Believe it or not, guitar making is not political.
I had to laugh at that post.
Indian rosewood is used by
EVERYBODY. And everybody includes Swedish socialists, Chinese communists, Iranian jihadists, Argentine nazis, Chilean anarchists, and every other political persuasion in the world. There is no nation on the planet that does not make guitars. Only the number of guitars made and the quality of the guitars differs.
Bob Taylor used an old shipping pallet grabbed from a stack out in back of the factory to make a guitar, just to prove that it's the construction quality, not the wood, that makes a good guitar good. He and his best guys built it and finished it with the same care as their most expensive guitars.
I played that guitar, and it sounded great. Taylor had to plug all the nail holes with aluminum, and the wood was about as ugly as it gets, with deep stains and very irregular grain, but it had an excellent top. Needless to say, he got a lot of folks wanting one just like it.
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