As a guitar maker, I cannot help but feel a great reverence for the woods I use to build instruments. Frankly, I don’t know how anyone could look at a piece of beautifully figured wood, with all of the Chaos and Order of Nature showing its perfect form, and NOT feel a sense of wonder.

   I select woods for premium tonal characteristics, workability and stability in service, and of course, beauty. Every effort is made to obtain the finest instrument woods, with the consideration that it should be from trees that are responsibly and sustainably harvested. One can never know for sure if this is the case, but to ignore the issues of conservation and stewardship of the world’s forests is, in my opinion, dangerously irresponsible.

  

   Here in the second decade of a new millennium, our wood resources are becoming ever more slender, particularly in woods that have been traditionally been used in guitar making for generations. Brazilian rosewood, for example, has long been the platinum standard for backs and sides in fine acoustic guitars. Brazilian Rosewood has been illegal to harvest, export, or import since 1992, when it was added to the  CITES Appendix 1 list of endangered species. This magnificent tree has been logged nearly to extinction. The remaining trees are priceless, but they are still being illegally cut down and sold.

   In the last century, more than twenty percent of Brazil’s virgin rainforest has been destroyed, (that’s hundreds of millions of acres) and it still continues at the rate of 1.5 acres per second. If deforestation continues at the current rate, there will be nothing left in forty years. Profit motives have long strangled the breath out of any argument for sustainable forestry. It is a very sad situation.

   Brazilian rosewood can still be found today, and is still obtainable, at very high cost. Years ago, lumber arbitragers and woodworkers saw the writing on the tree trunk, and some of those with the resources bought up huge amounts of the stuff, and put it away in private reserve. A lot of what we’re seeing on the market today is coming from long-held stashes that were bought and put away before the ban. That wood has elevated astronomically in value since the 70‘s.

   Some of it is stump wood, the remains of already harvested trees. Some of it is freshly cut, illegal, black market wood. Whatever its source, Brazilian rosewood must be legally certified to buy or sell, and if you are carrying a guitar made with it across international borders, you run the risk of having your guitar confiscated at the customs office, if you lack the required documentation. There’s also the onerous Lacey Act to contend with.You might as well be traveling with an elephant tusk under your arm.

   While I agree that top-grade Brazilian Rosewood is the plus ultra of acoustic guitar tonewood, I will not offer it as an option in my guitars, unless I get some that I’m completely sure is legal, pre-CITES ban, or recycled wood, and its provenance is certified, and my use of it is not supporting further deforestation. But who knows how many hands it’s passed through, since it was cut down?

   Brazilian Rosewood would come at a very steep markup in the cost of a guitar. I’ve seen premium Brazilian for sale at two and even three thousand dollars per set. Many of the sets being sold now are of such low quality that they would have been consigned to the burn pile twenty years ago. And yet, they are fetching hundreds of dollars, just because they are Brazilian Rosewood.

   To my way of thinking, that’s just off the charts, especially when there are so many other excellent options for using non-endangered, sustainably managed, and much more economically realistic woods.

   If someone absolutely has to have a Brazilian Rosewood guitar, I would be most inclined to refer them to a luthier who has a deeply invested stash of it. I’m not that guy. I’ve been building guitars only since year 2000; I got in too late to stake a claim to a piece of the Brazilian Rosewood pie.

   Just during my decade-plus of practice, I’ve seen the supplies of various tropical Ebonies, Rosewoods, Acacias, Mahoganies, and the temperate to subarctic Spruces, Cedars, and Redwoods dry up, or rise continually in price, while the best quality woods become ever more scarce. And then something in geopolitics changes, the market adjusts, and the supplies open up again, or wood that you thought was in abundance is suddenly GONE... It’s vexing, to say the least.

   Lots of things figure into the guitar tonewood equation, not the least of which is politics. That is, if the country that exports this or that ebony or rosewood is at war with one of its neighbors, or if a whole country has fallen under the sway of profligately corrupt and self-interested leadership, you can expect some wild fluctuations in the supply and price of this or that ebony or rosewood.

  International Politics and sustainability of resources are things I’m forced to think about when I’m buying guitar woods.

(pause)

 

   Varying degrees of these characteristics exist in all woods, so if you’re well versed in what is most desirable in guitar tonewoods, a great many choices can be made without further depleting dangerously limited resources.

   The photo at left features a 2013 Guitar I built with a lucky recent find. The back and sides are Red Gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) which grows abundantly in the Eastern United States. It has tonal character similar to Honduran Mahogany, and it works and finishes like a dream. And, as you can see, it has beautiful color and figure.

  This particular guitar sounds like a temple bell.

  

   Whenever possible, I like to buy wood in billets or boards, that I can re-saw into guitar sets in my own shop. I’ve taken some chances, spending the whole wad on stuff I’ve never built with before. Canary wood, Argentine Brown Ebony, Monkeypod, Mexican Katalox, and Shedua are some of my best finds. And I found that Limba is an excellent neck wood, as good as the best Honduran Mahogany. Several species of Walnut, and Cherry, are also excellent neck woods. I select these woods for straight grain, with vertical or rift figure through the heel.

  As beautifully figured as some slab-sawn (aka plain-sawn) woods can be, I usually avoid them, because, no matter what the species, slab cut woods tend to be more unstable, and prone to warpage and distortion than quarter- or rift-sawn woods.

   The guitar pictured at left is built with “alternative” woods. The back and sides are Mexican Katalox, with flamed Bigleaf Maple and Purpleheart inlay and bindings. The neck is Claro Walnut.

   Katalox is often vividly beautiful, and has a similar Q as top quality rosewoods. The plank I bought for this guitar was only about four and a half inches wide, so I had to make a four piece back. That’s just another creative option, if you’re willing to think outside the box...literally.

   Aside from stalking the isles of local and online exotic lumber dealers, I also source my wood supplies from a number of dealers who cater specifically to luthiers. Luthiers Mercantile and Allied Lutherie are two longtime favorites, as they have extensive selections of the very best guitar woods, already sawn and rough-dimensioned into sets, ready to build with, after a month or two of acclimation. Both companies are completely reliable and honest in their quality grading, and their customer service is top notch. I will only use the highest quality woods I can find, obtained from the most reliable, reputable sources.

...of note regarding top (soundboard) woods...

  

   The vast majority of acoustic guitar soundboards are made with so-called softwoods from temperate to subarctic zone coniferous trees, such as Spruces, Pines, Cypresses, Firs, Cedars, and Redwoods. These woods have ideal properties (in various measure) to make articulate, great-sounding, durable, responsive soundboards for string-driven acoustic instruments.

   For best stiffness and dimensional stability, as well as best tone production, soundboard woods should be quartersawn, with as little runout as possible. (Runout occurs in wood sets cut from a tree with a radial twist in the trunk, which gives the two halves of a bookmatched guitar top a “two-tone” look, due to opposite reflectance properties...blah blah. I won’t bore you too much with lumber milling ephemera; suffice to say that, for the best acoustic soundboards, the wood must be cut to exacting criteria to make best use of their properties.

   Therefore, these woods are graded, according to degree of quarter, amount of runout, stiffness-to-weight ratio, and the cosmetic appearance of the wood.

   “A” grade wood is what you’d expect to see on a low-priced, consumer-grade factory guitar. “AA” would qualify as a higher price point production guitar. You get the picture: The more A’s a piece of wood rates, presumably the higher quality, all the way up to Master Grade, which is usually described as that one-in-a-thousand, perfect-in-every-way guitar top.

   I have sometimes found these ratings to be fallacious, or mildly disingenuous. Mainly because there is no real, regulated standard to go by. Tonewoods are given these ratings by the seller, who naturally has a vested interest in promoting them to best effect, so that the most dollars will be generated from their sale.   

   Furthermore, assigning a “AAAA” rating to a piece of German Spruce MOSTLY means that this is a really, really PRETTY piece of wood. Not nearly so much attention is given to its TONAL character and properties.

   So, I always take those A’s with a grain or two of salt, until I can inspect the actual wood with my hands, eyes, and ears.

   Now, I’ll climb down off my soapbox, and say that I have found several extremely trustworthy and ethical tonewood sellers who will always grade their wood reliably and honestly, so you can feel confident of the character and quality of the wood that you’re paying for.

   I’m coming the long way around to saying, some of the very best sounding top sets aren’t necessarily going to be all that pretty or beautiful or special looking. And some of the ones that look perfect will, unfortunately, sometimes sound kind of uninspiring.

  For these reasons, when I become the owner of a new stack of guitar tops, I will rate them according to MY criteria. My criteria are basically (in order of importance):  1. Tonal potential;  2. The cut, and structural properties;  3. Visual appeal.

     Some of the best top woods also have sustainability issues. Two that stand out are Adirondack Red Spruce and California Redwood.

   Adirondack  Red Spruce became the premier guitar top wood in the early twentieth century, and is most often seen in fine pre-war (WW II) guitars. Grand old growth trees of this species were almost gone by 1950, and restrictions were put on further harvesting. Premier guitar makers, notably C.F. Martin, switched to Sitka Spruce as their standard top wood in the late forties, because good quality Adirondack Spruce had been so heavily logged that it was hard to find trees big enough to bother cutting.

   The species is no longer endangered, because of conservation and forest management efforts, and vigorous replanting. But most of the trees alive today have not yet reached their full maturity, and are not big enough to yield high quality standard two piece top sets.

 

    Carpathian Red Spruce is another top choice from the boreal forests of Eastern Europe. Taxonomically, Carpathian is nearly identical to Adirondack in every respect. And it is much more abundant, and available at higher quality. This is the first choice alternative to Adirondack. It’s also fairly expensive, as are other European Spruces, but definitely worth it.

  California Redwood is another premium topwood, harvested from the largest and most majestic trees on Earth. Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) was mercilessly harvested from the mid-1850s until the 1970s, seriously decimating the population. Redwood trees have a limited range, in foggy, cool, coastal Northern California to extreme Southern Oregon. I read that only about 5% of the old-growth, 2000-plus-year-old, 300-foot-tall  majestic forest giants still remain. That is a tragedy!

   Because these trees have become so scarce, I refuse to use any of this wood that I am not 100% sure is from trees that wereharvested long ago, or has been recycled from old structural timbers and such; or that the wood was harvested from dead, standing trees or windfall.

   Fortunately, if you know where to look, a lot of century-old redwood can be found and used for guitars. I have about two dozen sets that were originally cut in the late nineteenth century, including about ten sets that were re-sawn from the center roof beam of a small country church that was built in southern Oregon around 1900. At least that’s what the guy I bought it from says. Truly, this wood has the quality of legend. It seems to vibrate with prana.

   So called “Sinker” Redwood is another splendid and exotic tonewood, which began showing up in the late 90’s. It is called “Sinker” because it is milled from giant logs that had lain submerged and buried in the mud at the bottom of rivers in Northern California, ever since the trees were cut in the late nineteenth century.

   During a bridge construction project on Big River some years ago, the augers that were used for drilling piling holes in the river bottom kept coming up clogged with wood. Further exploration revealed that these massive logs, potentially hundreds of thousands of board-feet worth, covered the river bottom, and were there for the taking.

   Some enterprising individuals built barges, equipped with heavy-duty winches, and very laboriously hauled a good number of these behemoth logs out of the muck. Once they were gotten ashore, and dried, and sawn into subdivided chunks, they discovered some of the most beautiful, dark, mineral-streaked, perfectly preserved Redwood ever seen.

   Once the local NoCal luthiers caught wind of this, they grabbed onto it. Sinker Redwood turned out to be phenomenally good tonewood for stringed instruments. Since then, Sinker Redwood has attained the cachet of super-premium, holy-grail tonewood. It is expensive, and the price keeps rising, because the supply is getting more and more scarce. Environmental regulations have been put in place to protect the river ecosystem; dredging up these sunken logs from the river bottom is SERIOUSLY invasive and destructive. So whatever logs remain submerged down there are likely to stay there.

   Sinker Redwood is my absolute favorite top wood, in all respects. I’ve made quite a few Sinker-topped guitars, and I’ll keep using it as long as I can keep getting it.

   One of the things I really like about Sinker is, you don’t incur any Karmic debt from molesting any of the few remaining living forest giants. This is recycled treasure. Finest kind.

(...another brief pause...)

   As you can tell, I love talking about wood. It’s one of my favorite subjects. If you’ve read this far, I’ll belabor the discoursea little further. Some thoughts on some of my OTHER favorite top woods:

    The better grades of Sitka are extraordinarily good tonewood. The most versatile guitars are often topped with Sitka. I prefer Sitka Spruce that comes from Alaska. Most Sitka is ivory or pinkish, to pale tan in color, straight-grained, and very tough. Some has beautiful figure, called “bearclaw”, and some rare specimens exhibit wavy or flamed figure. The photo at left is a Falcon guitar, featuring an Alaskan  Sitka top with extreme bearclaw figure.

  

   And like Adirondack, Carpathian often has legendary tone qualities. It may take Carpathian several years to reach its full tone potential on a well-built guitar; so if the guitar sounds great when new, in  a few years it will sound phenomenal.

   Excellent quality Carpathian is readily available if you know where to look, and it’s not prohibitively expensive.

 

    It is hard to find sets of Engelmann that don’t show some degree of runout, because the trees tend to grow with a twist in the trunks. The better grades I’ve found come from British Columbia. Lovely stuff!

   Old growth boards sometimes exhibit 60 to 80 annular lines per inch of width. Imagine how much history is in these trees...

   Yellow Cedar also has excellent tonal qualities, including a spacious, wide dynamic range, strong fundamental, and complex overtones. This wood makes exceptionally versatile guitars.

  

   Port Orford Cedar is sometimes used as a substitute for Spanish Cypress on Flamenco guitar backs and sides.

  

   Port Orford Cedar is highly esteemed for its lively, responsive, colorful tone and wide dynamic range. It has an indescribable, intoxicating aroma when you saw and sand it.

   The specimen in the photo is only sanded to 60 grit. It’s actually a gorgeous set, featuring iridescent flame figure.

   Red Cedar is well known for its warm and colorful sound, with strong overtones. It does not have as wide a dynamic range as most Spruces; it really excels as a melodic fingerstyle guitar wood.

   Red Cedar is a longtime favorite of mine, because of its lush, expressive tone and beautiful light tan to dark brown color. Red Cedar is similar in many respects to Redwood.

   German, Italian, Swiss, and other European Spruces: Sorry, I don’t have any good photos of these, but I did want to mention them, because they are available, and the better specimens are as good as it gets. Euro Spruces tend toward the pricey side, because the higher quality sets are fairly scarce and in high demand. I am always on the hunt for Swiss Moon Spruce. If you are interested in talking about European Spruces, contact me and we can discuss the particulars.

   So, then, in conclusion (finally), there are many splendid, wonderful woods that can be used to make brilliant acoustic guitars. If you are thinking of commissioning a custom instrument, you should ponder carefully what sort of sound quality you are after, and what will best serve your playing style. I can recommend a number of great choices of wood combinations to create an instrument that not only sounds ravishing, but looks gorgeous as well.

   We can talk more about it whenever you’re ready...