Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Carruth
In terms of it's measureable properties, density, stiffness and damping, OO is pretty much on par with BRW. Since those are the things that ought to determine how it 'sounds' you'd expect it to be right in line with Brazilian. It's really hard to say how true this is. There's always the possibility that we don't understand how these things work as well as we think we do, and there could be something else that we don't measure and have not factored in yet. Obviously, Osage doesn't look like Brazilian, at least when it's new, and people hear so much with their eyes that they tend to think it's not a perfect match. It would be possible to do real 'blind' tests, but you run into the problem that even 'identical' guitars made from the same wood tend to sound a bit different. Is the difference between a given BRW guitar and an Osage one of the same size and shape greater or less than you'd get between two Brazilian instruments? It would be hard to get a good solid answer to that question.
The Osage guitars that I've made have tended to have what I'd call a 'rosewood' timbre, and have been quite nice. I sold one at a Healdsburg festival within a couple of hours of opening.
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Makes me wish I kept all those trees I cut down for fence posts.
If you called the wood the more exotic sounding "Bois d'arc", you could have charged more...
