Dru, you’re correct, listing the countries I’ve visited would take another thread. Another time, perhaps.
As for bunya pine as a top wood, on the Cole Clark guitars I’ve seen it on, it looks like exceptionally wide-grained spruce. I guess it sounds like spruce, too, but since the only guitars I’ve heard it on have been Cole Clarks I don’t have enough of a frame of reference to get any more nuanced in my description than that. If I could play some bunya pine-topped Martin D-18’s next to some regular spruce-topped D-18’s I could tell you more.
It seems likely to me that, just like Robert Godin designing the S6 Seagull, whoever’s behind the Cole Clark guitar designs figured out PRECISELY how to get the best possible performance out of some hitherto neglected local tonewoods. Nobody thought to pair western red cedar tops with laminated cherry backs and sides before Godin did, and so far as I’m aware no one was pairing bunya pine tops with Queensland maple backs and sides on factory-built guitars before the Cole Clark company came along.
There’s more to the guitars than just the Down Under tonewoods: Cole Clark guitars also feature CNC-carved bracing on the underside of the top that are carved out of the top itself, rather than glued on. There also seem to be some braces that are glued in, and the back braces are glued in.
Overall it’s kind of a brilliant design, and it’s nice to see true originality in guitar design being rewarded rather than punished in the marketplace. All of the Cole Clarks I’ve seen have had satin finishes and only one that I saw (an OM) had any sort of decoration to speak of, and even that was minimal, a bit of paua shell inlaid in the rosette.
But that might be because the store finds it easiest to sell the less expensive models. For all I know the company might make some lavishly fancy high end models, but I haven’t seen any.
Anyway, I really liked the sound of most of the Cole Clarks that I played, and admire them for daring to be different and choosing their own aesthetic approach rather than genuflecting at the altar of Martin or Gibson the way so many smaller guitar manufacturers tend to do. All of the Cole Clarks I played yesterday were versatile and handled being fingerpicked and flatpicked equally well, and all of them were surprisingly loud and projective, at least so far as I could tell without actually gigging with them.
They’re impressive guitars.
Back to Bruce: I didn’t know you had bought a guitar from Solda’s Music in Hobart, but given your bristling guitar arsenal it didn’t surprise me at all!
I can imagine the guitar stores all across Australia treating you the way Las Vegas gambling resorts treat their big spenders: when you fly into town they meet you at the airport with a limousine, take you in air conditioned comfort to your free penthouse suite, where there’s a bottle of champagne on ice and half a dozen high end guitars in stands arrayed in a semicircle:
“We took the liberty of bringing over some guitars we thought you might enjoy, Mr. Campbell. After you’ve rested a bit, I’ll be back with the limousine to take you to the store...”
It wouldn’t surprise me if, all across Australia, every music store employee is shown your picture and given these instructions: “If Bruce Campbell shows up, be VERY nice to the man!”
Moving on, this morning my wife and I and all of the other passengers went through New Zealand Customs, even though we’re out on the ocean far from land. We did the same thing heading into Iceland on our last cruise: doing it this way makes it much faster for us all to get off the ship once we make landfall.
Anyway, there was one New Zealand Customs officer in a blue uniform checking us through. Nice man. Later I saw him eating lunch and went up to him and asked:
“So, are you guys going to build a wall to keep the Australians out?”
He laughed and said: “No, no need - it’s too cold in our country for them!”
Wade Hampton Miller
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