Because we were taught that BRW was the Holy Grail from the day we didn't know any better and first stepped into a guitar shop and learnt about it from...a guitar elder! These biases are passed on from one generation to another. Oft repeated, it becomes accepted as the truth. BRW is the Holy Grail because "everyone" who knows more than I do says so. Any newbie to this forum soon learns the same thing.
Hifi speakers, flatscreen TV salesmen know this: goose up the treble, goose up the bass, set the TV on dayglo VIVID. They catch the ears and capture the eyes. Loud and dayglo sells. In the less salubrious parts of town, painted ladies practise the same tactics: show legs and cleavage and lots of make-up. OK, I am no saint and go to parts of town mamma always told me I should not ever go as a child.
EIR is demure, conspicuously inconspicuous in a way that BRW is not. We are drawn to BRW immediately. Koa for that matter, too. But as any man who has made the mistake of marrying the woman who wears a lot of make-up knows, there may not be much there there.
The endangerment to Brazilian RW trees, the high cost demanded of BRW makes its distinct tonal colouration an unworthwhile chase. It is not necessarily a better tonewood. It is just rings differently. We are conditioned to hear this BRW ring as tonally superior and desirable.
Give an EIR guitar a deeper listen and hear what it can do for your music, for your songs. Don't live by the dogma of other guitar players.
Trouble with EIR is that it is just too common, it is just too good. It is too affordable and we like to get what is above our pay grade. It is like D'addario strings, so good that it becomes common.
I heard Jason Vieaux recently. At the end of the piece, Jason revealed that he was playing his new EIR Gernot Wagner, not his BRW Gernot Wagner. Jason sounds like Jason. His music did not suffer for his use of the EIR Gernot Wagner.
I must be a hypocrite because as I said, I am hardwired by early exposure to the received wisdom of guitar elders and conditioned to desire BRW. For those who have not been so hardwired and conditioned, give EIR a good listen. Forget about BRW landscaping, forget about rarity, forget about bragging rights that accrue from its high boutique pricing, forget about its smell even. Give EIR a good solid listen and see if you do not actually prefer its conspicuously inconspicuous tonal palette to the obviously coloured sounding chiming rumbling BRW.
All IN MY Very Humble Ha'p'orth of Opinion, of course.
