Brazilian Rosewood still available?

[justonwo]

Originally Posted by Bruce Sexauer

The Reverb sets are all flatsawn and otherwise flawed in ways that would eliminate them from consideration for my work. The same is true of the current offerings from Allied.

The quality level that I require, at minimum, is unlikely to be found today for under $1500, and I would expect to pay twice that for true quarter straight grained air dried un-cracked BRW grail-wood.

Many will argue that my standards are unnecessary and unrealistic, but the essential nature of wood has not changed, and I am merely sticking with the traditional standards based on the wisdom of the ages. Also . . . Along with a number of my peers, I do have the wood.

Really? People argue your standards are unrealistic? I’m surprised by that. Frankly, my take on fancy wood is that if you’re going to go for it, you might as well get the good stuff. If not, stick with a high quality set of a different wood. I would rather have fantastically quartered “pedestrian” wood than flatsawn/knotted Brazilian. I think you probably agree with me on that. Plus, if you’re going to spend north of $10k on a guitar, getting flatsawn wood just seems crazy to me.

[Erithon]

Originally Posted by justonwo

I would rather have fantastically quartered “pedestrian” wood than flatsawn/knotted Brazilian... if you’re going to spend north of $10k on a guitar, getting flatsawn wood just seems crazy to me.

My thoughts exactly.

[Bruce Sexauer]

If I have been any influence in the thinking demonstrated in the last two posts, that will contribute to my sense of self worth.

[printer2]

But, but... Birdseye Maple?

[Bruce Sexauer]

And, and, . . .the Tree.

[charles Tauber]

The underlying, unspoken assumption that many guitar buyers make is that if a guitar has back and sides made of Brazilian rosewood, that guitar is going to be great. That assumption is often accompanied by another assumption that a great instrument will be produced from any quality of Brazilian rosewood: as long as it's made with Brazilian, it will be great.

Given those assumptions, many are willing to pay premiums to obtain guitars made of any kind of Brazilian rosewood. Many who want the pre-CITIES, quarter sawn, spider-webbed quality are willing to pay huge up-charges to get it.

Given that one person's "great" is another's "reject", the assumption is simply false that any guitar made with Brazilian rosewood is, by definition, a great instrument. There have been many truly great guitars made with Brazilian rosewood but there have also been many that are nothing special.

In that frenzy to obtain "guitar greatness" via Brazilian rosewood, many are buying and/or using wood that, prior to CITIES, would have been discarded by most reputable luthiers as being unsuitable for guitar making. That raises an interesting question for modern times.

Today, there are more guitars being produced than at any time in history. To feed that production, many guitars are made out of materials that would have traditionally (historically) been rejected as unsuitable for guitar making. One example is production guitars made of flat-sawn black walnut. (Black walnut, a domestic tree, is not in limited supply and is readily available in quarter sawn stock.) So far, we are not seeing large numbers of these guitars self-destructing due to the use of the wooden materials from which they were made.

Traditionally, there were good reasons that guitar makers chose the wood they chose: sound quality, workability, stability, longevity. With modern machinery to largely eliminate workability issues, and with modern climate controls to ease issue of stability, and with many modern players buying and selling instruments like any other consumer item, are the traditional characteristics of wood selection too conservative? It would seem for many buyers, they are. Put another way, many buyers don't seem to care. An obsession with humidity monitoring and control by many buyers largely eliminates the need for stability of materials: when the materials from which the instruments are made do crack, buyers just accept the cost of repair as part of the price of ownership, as is the obsession with humidity control. Many buyers, rightly or wrongly, expect huge discounts on used instruments that have had repaired cracks. That, too, many figure, is part of the cost of ownership.

There is no guarantee that the selection of materials, alone, will ensure sound quality, stability and longevity. However, history has shown that instruments made with good material selection, on average, fare better in the long run than those that aren't. If the warranty that a manufacturer offers doesn't cover material-related issues, such as proneness to cracking, then the brunt in using such materials is mostly borne by the buyer.

Arguably, one-off type luthiers tend to have more of their personal reputation on the line and will tend towards a more lenient interpretation of what they cover in their warranties. For that reason, many don't want to use materials that have higher probabilities of developing issues in the future. Also, a luthier who only makes a dozen or so instruments a year, can afford to be very demanding about the materials he or she uses. By contrast, a factory that needs materials for 1000 guitars a day, can't afford to be that demanding: they need a lot of lumber everyday to feed the factory.

[s2y]

Check out the classifieds. I've never seen so many BR guitars for sale. Yes, I am among those. Only selling because the neck is a bit much for my small hands. My other BR guitar is staying with me until my hands give up or I die.

[tadol]

There are alot of BR guitars for sale, and almost every one references what it would cost to order new - if they were all Indian, and the "new" cost weren't so high, most would likely not be for sale, but I think many BR guitars were bought strictly as "investment" when the availability of the material started to tighten up -

[printer2]

Originally Posted by charles Tauber

...To feed that production, many guitars are made out of materials that would have traditionally (historically) been rejected as unsuitable for guitar making. One example is production guitars made of flat-sawn black walnut...

When I first started building I was practicing resawing with some flat sawn walnut. When there was a thread asking what an all walnut body would sound like I decided to make a guitar using this wood to see what it would sound like. If it self-destructs no big loss. Years latter and still no crack. Two of my softwood guitars, the flat sawn one has no cracks, the quartered one did.

[tadol]

Might wanna invest in lottery tickets - you might be very lucky!

Seriously - you can get away with flatsawn sometimes - it’s not that it’s more prone to cracking, it’s more likely to warp irregularly with repeated exposure to changes in humidity, which can be a problem when sawn thin. Key word is “likely” -