duluthdan Posted June 6, 2012 Share Posted June 6, 2012 13 minutes of very thoughtful and thought provoking information about the growing scarcity of Ebony. From the Acoustic Newsletter: http://www.acousticletter.com/the-future-of-ebony-by-bob-taylor-forword-from-tony/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j45nick Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 That's pretty mind-blowing, but it's no real surprise. I don't know what the answer to this problem is, but it would appear that Bob Taylor is a thoughful man who has reached a rational decision. The tropical hardwoods we demand for guitars--notably true mahogany, true rosewood, and true ebony--are staggeringly endangered, and don't readily lend themselves to plantation cultivation because of the long time horizon for harvesting these slow-growing trees. However, this may be the way of the future. A large percentage of the teak currently in use is plantation grown, but teak can be harvested and used for furniture when it is relatively young. The same is simply not true of these other woods, particularly given the plank sizes (widths) needed for traditional musical instrument construction. It's not that far off from the war-time shortages of woods experienced by Gibson, but this shortage has much greater long term implications, including the potential for extinction of some high-value species. When you travel through southeast Asia--particularly Indonesia and Malaysia--it is shocking how many tropical hardwood forests have been cut down for oil palm cultivation, since palm oil is a significant component of so many processed foods. Oil palm plantations stretch for miles, replacing virgin tropical rainforest. The same thing happens in many portions of Brazil, with virgin hardwood forest cleared for more conventional and valuable agriculture. I'd like to know what percentage of these endangered woods end up in US-built-guitars--legally harvested and imported--compared to the amount ending up in the massive musical instrument factories of Asia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ponty Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 Yes, I have just seen this video. Six months ago I was very keen to sell my 13 year old 000-28 Custom. I had better keep it - Ebony board on a Mahogany neck. Martin are already using striped ebony and select hardwood fior the neck ie Spanish Cedar. From what I see though, Gibson is still using traditional tone woods. May be I should get another one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onewilyfool Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 Long live Micarta!!! http://www.guitaromnivore.com/2011/03/refretting-martin-micarta-fingerboard.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JuanCarlosVejar Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 I'll probably start ordering guitars with b grade ebony =D JC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BluesKing777 Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 Very, very depressing but as Nick says, no surprise. I should stay out of it, I get steamed up. Are they going back to get all the 19 out of 20 trees they have already chopped that they deemed 'no good', or have they gone rotten? And Wily, I have a Martin DCX-1RE with Micarta fingerboard, bridge and Stratabond neck and weird laminate body....it is ok for live use with the supplied Fishman pickup, but you would never dream of sitting on the couch and fingerpicking it - does not have much soul....I made it worse by putting Elixirs on it. They say that once Armageddon comes, there will only be cockroaches, plastic bags and Martin DCX-1REs left..... BluesKing777. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motherofpearl Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 How about morado? Why don't they use that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j45nick Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 They say that once Armageddon comes, there will only be cockroaches, plastic bags and Martin DCX-1REs left..... BluesKing777. Plus some Rainsongs, Composite Acoustics guitars, and the occasional Ovation bowl blowing through with the tumbling tumbleweeds....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mojorule Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 Plus some Rainsongs, Composite Acoustics guitars, and the occasional Ovation bowl blowing through with the tumbling tumbleweeds....... Nah, JT's banner collection will still be knocking about too, mark my words. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincentw Posted June 7, 2012 Share Posted June 7, 2012 good video Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merseybeat1963 Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 So basically he has cornered, with a government assurance, 75 % of the Ebony..from the last place it can be had quantity,and he is going to put the non black wood on the guitars no matter what & try to shape the market.Now the black stuff gets astronomical..ok. My opinion ...for 40 years Martin wasted all of that premium Brazilian Rosewood tonewood ..the one tone wood reputed to have a trampoline effect on the sound of the best guitars..by putting a heavily braced plank as a soundboard on them. That is the waste. These indespensable tone woods in my opinion should only be used only on Master grade handmade superb instruments where the benefits of that subtile quality makes a difference. (Not just superficially present) When I last took the Martin tour the person scalloping the braces did it in 20 seconds..no bending ,tapping..v o i c i n g the soundboard. This is where the waste is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nodehopper Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Guitars are a small percentage of the use of many of these woods. Furniture, cabinetry, flooring etc. used up so much more of the worlds wood supplies. It is just that the instrument industry is one of the last to look for alternatives and is now under the spot light. merseybeat1963 - Who or what agency decides what luthiers are good enough to be allowed to have these woods for their use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merseybeat1963 Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Guitars are a small percentage of the use of many of these woods. Furniture, cabinetry, flooring etc. used up so much more of the worlds wood supplies. It is just that the instrument industry is one of the last to look for alternatives and is now under the spot light. merseybeat1963 - Who or what agency decides what luthiers are good enough to be allowed to have these woods for their use? Good question...if it gets down to that point where materials have become so scarce..Possibly some sort of Guild of Master Guitar Makers as there was for centuries in Europe for other trades...maybe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jt Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Nah, JT's banner collection will still be knocking about too, mark my words. And, hopefully, still making music! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jt Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Guitars are a small percentage of the use of many of these woods. Furniture, cabinetry, flooring etc. used up so much more of the worlds wood supplies. It is just that the instrument industry is one of the last to look for alternatives and is now under the spot light. merseybeat1963 - Who or what agency decides what luthiers are good enough to be allowed to have these woods for their use? A very good point. Only 1% of cut tropical hardwoods are used for making musical instruments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParlourMan Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Ultimately, it's a commodity and money does the talking. Times have changed and a resource supply has dried up, as such that now makes that resource more attractive, the laws of supply and demand mean they can charge accordingly, it's the not the first and certainly won't be the last material to fall into this category. The sadness here is the short-sightedness that was clearly evident, bringing us to the position we're in. Limiting free choice with what to do with the remaining supplies is absurd, wouldn't a floor or furniture in some architecturally protected stately home preserved for historical value be a better use and open to more common enjoyment than some lounge player with the cash to flash playing some mediocre fingerpicking exercises in front of his iPad to publish on youtube and upload to a guitar forum? Is the next step a skills test when it comes to ownership? I know we're all guitar nuts here, but if we're going to talk about reality and species extinction a guild of master luthiers tossing & turning over decisions of what type of guitar to build with a slab of Brazilian seems a little ridiculous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
57classic Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 So basically he has cornered, with a government assurance, 75 % of the Ebony..from the last place it can be had quantity,and he is going to put the non black wood on the guitars no matter what & try to shape the market.Now the black stuff gets astronomical..ok. My opinion ...for 40 years Martin wasted all of that premium Brazilian Rosewood tonewood ..the one tone wood reputed to have a trampoline effect on the sound of the best guitars..by putting a heavily braced plank as a soundboard on them. That is the waste. These indespensable tone woods in my opinion should only be used only on Master grade handmade superb instruments where the benefits of that subtile quality makes a difference. (Not just superficially present) When I last took the Martin tour the person scalloping the braces did it in 20 seconds..no bending ,tapping..v o i c i n g the soundboard. This is where the waste is. Re: ebony I think you're missing the point. Bob Taylor is going to extend the supply by a factor of 10. More supply will be available than previously thought. The tonal qualities won't be affected but the appearance will be on a majority examples. I'm all for a great looking guitar and think some of that striped ebony is cool. I'm sure many builders will dye it to be uniform in color. Isn't it better to still be able to buy a guitar with an ebony board than not? Mismanagement and lack of foresight of natural resources has led us down this road. As has been stated, timber for musical instruments accounts for a miniscule % of the industry. Their voice and clout has been equally small in the past. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mojorule Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Good question...if it gets down to that point where materials have become so scarce..Possibly some sort of Guild of Master Guitar Makers as there was for centuries in Europe for other trades...maybe? Think I'm essentially with PM here, but if there were to be some sort of decision, I'd rather entrust it to players than builders. Imagine a guild of master builders who decided only to use top grade wood on Ren-built Master Museum pieces or their post-Ren equivalent. The looks might be stunning (or gaudy, depending on taste and what they actually did with them). The guitars might also sound fantastic for all we know. But the problem is we would never know, because they would be so visually special that nobody would ever play them for fear of damaging the visual aspect. Whereas players might prefer the best hog to go on a plain-Jane 45 and the best rosewood to go on a simple AJ which would get played and heard. In this respect I'm ultimately with JT - even though many of the banners he has just recorded are put together with supposedly lesser cuts of wood - the best guitars will hopefully be being played, not just gawped at. Though that category might include laminate-maple-backed 45s with four-piece tops and no truss-rod, it should also include more recent guitars built from nice tonewoods. They should be treated as tonewoods above all, though, at least by guitar makers. All the fancy marquetry that is done on instruments with the nice wood is really treating them more like furniture anyway. If that's what people want, then fine, and it may well be more valid to create some fine floors, chairs and tables than fine-sounding guitars as PM said. But if there is wood for guitars, tone should be coming before looks when the (wood)chips are down. If it doesn't, then guitar makers (and buyers) could probably do with a spot of education. Returning to PM's argument, though, it is worth remembering that guitar playing is not just about us and our egos, lots of people who don't play enjoy the playing of others live and on record. Despite all the recording shenanigans that we've talked about loads, there is something in the success of certain instruments which suggests that they do sound especially good to the non-playing majority as well as to the playing minority. So it is just possible that keeping back some nice mahogany for a J45 and some nice rosewood for a D28 might be appealing to a larger public than keeping it back for members of the National Trust would be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j45nick Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 merseybeat1963 - Who or what agency decides what luthiers are good enough to be allowed to have these woods for their use? Sounds to me like it would have to be market-driven. Ultimately, only Bill Gates and Larry Ellison might be able to afford guitars built with these woods. Can ebony be successfully dyed, so that lighter streaks could be darkened? I think I read somwhere that it can, but I can't find that reference. One of the great things about ebony is its hardness, as it doesn't wear as quickly as rosewood in fretboards. I wonder if the white wood is sapwood or heartwood, and if it is as hard as the black stuff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j45nick Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Ultimately, it's a commodity and money does the talking. Times have changed and a resource supply has dried up, as such that now makes that resource more attractive, the laws of supply and demand mean they can charge accordingly, it's the not the first and certainly won't be the last material to fall into this category. The sadness here is the short-sightedness that was clearly evident, bringing us to the position we're in. Limiting free choice with what to do with the remaining supplies is absurd, wouldn't a floor or furniture in some architecturally protected stately home preserved for historical value be a better use and open to more common enjoyment than some lounge player with the cash to flash playing some mediocre fingerpicking exercises in front of his iPad to publish on youtube and upload to a guitar forum? Is the next step a skills test when it comes to ownership? I know we're all guitar nuts here, but if we're going to talk about reality and species extinction a guild of master luthiers tossing & turning over decisions of what type of guitar to build with a slab of Brazilian seems a little ridiculous. Agree 99.9% with what you say. Ultimately, the market will and should make these decisions, but as a vanishing resource, there is some obligation to manage that resource for the future if some social benefit is seen from its existence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j45nick Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 A very good point. Only 1% of cut tropical hardwoods are used for making musical instruments. That is true, but that 1% may be the prime examples of the species, and it may not reflect the waste associated with discarded trees, as is implied in Mr. Taylor's video. You can get by with lesser grades of wood when it comes to furniture making. We had/have a similar issue in the boatbuilding industry. Teak and mahogany were (and still are) widely used in premium yachtbuilding, but the demand is for the highest quality material, labeled FEQ (First Export Quality). Even with material of this quality, the waste factor is enormous in getting from the log to the finished product. Generally, a large percentage of the log goes into the trash in the form of sawdust and unusable off-cuts. You often can't burn this waste to produce heat or energy, as it contains large quantities of substances that are pollutants or irritants. By contrast, many of the furniture makers in southeast Asia, where tropical hardwoods are widely employed, use up parts of the tree that would be discarded by other industries. Labor is so cheap that they can afford to piece together smaller, otherwise unusable material to create finished product. Just compare cheap imported Indonesian teak outdoor furniture with its dramatically more expensive US-made counterpart (for example, Bruce Lauer). It is possible that the musical instrument business may be the final, ultimate users of rare tropical hardwoods. The value added in the manufacturing process is so high that the additional cost of the raw materials is less important than it would be in other industries. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ParlourMan Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 ... there is some obligation to manage that resource for the future if some social benefit is seen from its existence. Couldn't agree more, Nick. Existing stocks price will probably determine its usage and any future resources should always be from reputable dealer and with sustainable resources in mind so it may be some time beyond our lifetimes where it became a viable option with any scalability. I was actually more responding the concept of some guild of luthiers making decisions for the market (ridiculous) and the wood that martin had "wasted" on back & sides for heavy topped guitars by today's standards in the past. It simply wasn't so back then, minimised returns for warranty work were a bigger consideration than Brazilian rosewood stocks. Undeniably the majority of it's value in the modern world is in it being a near depleted resource, sonic properties are arguable and opinion based, limited availability makes it a bit special The 'special' tag affords it some perception of quality that won't necessarily be true. Hindsight is a marvellous thing and that's what has been applied, many a shoddy guitar has been made from Brazilian rosewood when it was not an endangered species. I guess sometimes we need to remind ourselves we're manufactured goods consumers and not guardians of the holy grail. Lovely though the guitars are I think deforestation to brutal and dangerous levels such as those that have triggered the current situation with Brazilian rosewood are far bigger concerns than guitars not being able to be made from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
57classic Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Couldn't agree more, Nick. Existing stocks price will probably determine its usage and any future resources should always be from reputable dealer and with sustainable resources in mind so it may be some time beyond our lifetimes where it became a viable option with any scalability. I was actually more responding the concept of some guild of luthiers making decisions for the market (ridiculous) and the wood that martin had "wasted" on back & sides for heavy topped guitars by today's standards in the past. It simply wasn't so back then, minimised returns for warranty work were a bigger consideration than Brazilian rosewood stocks. Undeniably the majority of it's value in the modern world is in it being a near depleted resource, sonic properties are arguable and opinion based, limited availability makes it a bit special The 'special' tag affords it some perception of quality that won't necessarily be true. Hindsight is a marvellous thing and that's what has been applied, many a shoddy guitar has been made from Brazilian rosewood when it was not an endangered species. I guess sometimes we need to remind ourselves we're manufactured goods consumers and not guardians of the holy grail. Lovely though the guitars are I think deforestation to brutal and dangerous levels such as those that have triggered the current situation with Brazilian rosewood are far bigger concerns than guitars not being able to be made from it. Well said ParlourMan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jt Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 That is true, but that 1% may be the prime examples of the species, and it may not reflect the waste associated with discarded trees, as is implied in Mr. Taylor's video. You can get by with lesser grades of wood when it comes to furniture making. We had/have a similar issue in the boatbuilding industry. Teak and mahogany were (and still are) widely used in premium yachtbuilding, but the demand is for the highest quality material, labeled FEQ (First Export Quality). Even with material of this quality, the waste factor is enormous in getting from the log to the finished product. Generally, a large percentage of the log goes into the trash in the form of sawdust and unusable off-cuts. You often can't burn this waste to produce heat or energy, as it contains large quantities of substances that are pollutants or irritants. By contrast, many of the furniture makers in southeast Asia, where tropical hardwoods are widely employed, use up parts of the tree that would be discarded by other industries. Labor is so cheap that they can afford to piece together smaller, otherwise unusable material to create finished product. Just compare cheap imported Indonesian teak outdoor furniture with its dramatically more expensive US-made counterpart (for example, Bruce Lauer). It is possible that the musical instrument business may be the final, ultimate users of rare tropical hardwoods. The value added in the manufacturing process is so high that the additional cost of the raw materials is less important than it would be in other industries. An excellent point, Nick! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mojorule Posted June 8, 2012 Share Posted June 8, 2012 Couldn't agree more, Nick. Existing stocks price will probably determine its usage and any future resources should always be from reputable dealer and with sustainable resources in mind so it may be some time beyond our lifetimes where it became a viable option with any scalability. I was actually more responding the concept of some guild of luthiers making decisions for the market (ridiculous) and the wood that martin had "wasted" on back & sides for heavy topped guitars by today's standards in the past. It simply wasn't so back then, minimised returns for warranty work were a bigger consideration than Brazilian rosewood stocks. Undeniably the majority of it's value in the modern world is in it being a near depleted resource, sonic properties are arguable and opinion based, limited availability makes it a bit special The 'special' tag affords it some perception of quality that won't necessarily be true. Hindsight is a marvellous thing and that's what has been applied, many a shoddy guitar has been made from Brazilian rosewood when it was not an endangered species. I guess sometimes we need to remind ourselves we're manufactured goods consumers and not guardians of the holy grail. Lovely though the guitars are I think deforestation to brutal and dangerous levels such as those that have triggered the current situation with Brazilian rosewood are far bigger concerns than guitars not being able to be made from it. Agreed, but of course the subjective argument about sonic properties will also be resolved by the market. Just not necessarily by the guitar market alone, but by the broader range of musical markets (consumption of live music, consumption of recorded music) which convey information about what people want to hear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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