Good News for Ebony!

HomeBru

HomeBru

Joined
Nov 9, 2006
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Since many of us are very interested in exotic woods, I thought I would share this here:

About 20 years ago, I was shopping for a new guitar and discovered Taylor guitars. I bought my first Taylor then purely because of the sound and feel, but as I became familiar with the brand, I fell in love with the company due to their love of and respect for wood.

Fast forward to today, I was reading an article on Taylor's "Ebony Project" in Cameroon and discovered that Buck is now making knives with scales from Taylor's mill there. Nice to see other wood folks backing attempts to provide sustainability for valued resources.

Taylor's Ebony Project
Buck Knives Genuine Ebony on the front of their web page
 
I was looking at that ebony this morning on the stewmac website. Gorgeous wood.
 
very cool. thanks for sharing.
 
I wish them success, but who knows? Wasn't East Indian rosewood a plantation wood too? The best bet seems to be growing exotic woods as "nuisance" species in countries where it is not native, like the teak industry in Central America. I hear that some folks have done that with "genuine" mahogany aka Cuban mahogany somewhere in the islands of the Pacific.
With that said, I do like this idea better than the faux wood route that Martin has taken on their lower priced instruments with the Richlite product, which appears to be something akin to paper Micarta. .
 
jdm61 said:
I wish them success, but who knows? Wasn't East Indian rosewood a plantation wood too? The best bet seems to be growing exotic woods as "nuisance" species in countries where it is not native, like the teak industry in Central America. I hear that some folks have done that with "genuine" mahogany aka Cuban mahogany somewhere in the islands of the Pacific.
With that said, I do like this idea better than the faux wood route that Martin has taken on their lower priced instruments with the Richlite product, which appears to be something akin to paper Micarta. .
Click to expand...

I’ve seen a few guitars and basses with ebanol for fretboards. It’s indistinguishable tonally from the real thing. We’re seeing a lot of substitutions in guitars from traditional woods. Purpleheart and zebrano sound like rosewood. Wenge sounds like ebony (sort of.) we’re seeing more diversity with Cherry and Walnut guitars. Saepele is becoming popular too, as is moderately figured Koa.

African Mahogany sounds fine, but don’t use it for decking as it isn’t rot resistant like the real thing.
 
Willie71 said:
I’ve seen a few guitars and basses with ebanol for fretboards. It’s indistinguishable tonally from the real thing. We’re seeing a lot of substitutions in guitars from traditional woods. Purpleheart and zebrano sound like rosewood. Wenge sounds like ebony (sort of.) we’re seeing more diversity with Cherry and Walnut guitars. Saepele is becoming popular too, as is moderately figured Koa.

African Mahogany sounds fine, but don’t use it for decking as it isn’t rot resistant like the real thing.
Click to expand...

One of the other projects they're partnering in is plantation hard maple with Pacific Rim Tonewoods. They're experimenting to see if figure in maple is genetic by planting cloned "seedlings". https://www.goskagit.com/news/compa...cle_38f5acd7-88b6-5b5d-81f6-0aa8784ef4d6.html
 
HomeBru said:
One of the other projects they're partnering in is plantation hard maple with Pacific Rim Tonewoods. They're experimenting to see if figure in maple is genetic by planting cloned "seedlings". https://www.goskagit.com/news/compa...cle_38f5acd7-88b6-5b5d-81f6-0aa8784ef4d6.html
Click to expand...

I have a large supply of curly poplar here, some spalting. I’m going to make a wood kiln in the spring, and look into how to torrify wood. Poplar develops a curly grain in windy conditions at the lowest 10’ of the tree. The grain compresses as it bends. I’m going to make an acoustic out of it to see how it sounds. On an electric, it’s tonally similar to basswood. My favourites are basswood with a maple top, or mahogany with a maple top. Not a fan of swamp ash, although I made one for my brother in law, and it’s the best sounding tele I’ve ever heard. Others, not so much.
 
What you have been seeing for a number of years with the custom luthiers is them using the other rosewoods for the backs and sides of flat tops. I have seen some WILD cocobolo and African blackwood guitars on line in recent years. Some folks will tell you that really nice Honduran rosewood is a good and perhaps better than the Brazilian, but that would be a hard sell for most. What I don't like about what some luthiers do is the sapwood "skunk stripe" down the middle of a two piece back.
Gibson and the builders of arch tops have used maple for the back and sides for ages, but Martin has not as best as I can tell. They were always mahogany for the lower end models and rosewood for the higher end with rosewood boards on the cheap stuff and ebony on the pricier models. At times, they did make the series 21 models like the OM 21 with rosewood bodies but rosewood boards. Now they come with ebony. That all rosewood OM-21 was probably the best bang for the buck guitar that Martin sold since the bad old days of the 70's.
Most of the "mahogany" used for things like custom boat building today is Philippine mahogany aka meranti or, in the case of Central American builders, loro preto, which is actually a cousin of bocote and zirocote.
Willie71 said:
I’ve seen a few guitars and basses with ebanol for fretboards. It’s indistinguishable tonally from the real thing. We’re seeing a lot of substitutions in guitars from traditional woods. Purpleheart and zebrano sound like rosewood. Wenge sounds like ebony (sort of.) we’re seeing more diversity with Cherry and Walnut guitars. Saepele is becoming popular too, as is moderately figured Koa.

African Mahogany sounds fine, but don’t use it for decking as it isn’t rot resistant like the real thing.
Click to expand...
 
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jdm61 said:
What you have been seeing for a number of years with the custom luthiers is them using the other rosewoods for the backs and sides of flat tops. I have seen some WILD cocobolo and African blackwood guitars on line in recent years. Some folks will tell you that really nice Honduran rosewood is a good and perhaps better than the Brazilian, but that would be a hard sell for most. What I don't like about what some luthiers do is the sapwood "skunk stripe" down the middle of a two piece back.
Gibson and the builders of arch tops have used maple for the back and sides for ages, but Martin has not as best as I can tell. They were always mahogany for the lower end models and rosewood for the higher end with rosewood boards on the cheap stuff and ebony on the pricier models. At times, they did make the series 21 models like the OM 21 with rosewood bodies but rosewood boards. Now they come with ebony. That all rosewood OM-21 was probably the best bang for the buck guitar that Martin sold since the bad old days of the 70's.
Most of the "mahogany" used for things like custom boat building today is Philippine mahogany aka meranti or, in the case of Central American builders, loro preto, which is actually a cousin of bocote and zirocote.
Click to expand...

Yup. The stripe is pretty, but not good structurally or tonally. In the modern era, people aren’t as concerned with tone, as they plug in anyway. I’m not in that camp. I use fish glue, all quarter sawn woods, and thin nitrocellulose lacquer on electrics, and shellac on acoustics.

Good Mahogany is great sounding wood. I prefer it to almost any rosewood guitar I’ve played, outside of a 1946 Gibson my brother in law had. I have a couple guitars being built with real Honduras Mahogany I bought a couple decades ago. I’m thinking zebrano might be a good choice, or saepele. I might try a purpleheart guitar just because. In any event, I do more electrics than acoustics, but my heart is in learning to do archtop jazz boxes.

Here’s a tele I did for my brother in law last year.

B08BDE6D-F9F4-48D4-A66F-89E9F616EFB5 by Wjkrywko, on Flickr

He wanted it to look aged, not new, so I did that.
 
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I had a 40th Anniversary 1954 Strat reissue for a while. As you may know, for the first couple of years all of the Strats were swamp ash and even when they started using alder, the clear finish ones were still ash for a while. The unicorn Strat, the Mary Kaye model was ash even though the original was like a 1956-57 model. I had the ash Strat and a 62 RI in alder. The were both very nice, but I kinda preferred the ash plus I liked the bigger neck. It was big but not a cricket bat. My teacher liked the 62 better. I also a 52 RI Tele in butterscotch blonde with the black guard of course, and a custom shop 1951 Nocaster RI. I actually liked the regular 52 RI better, but it had some nasty Lindy Fralin pickups in it as did the 62 Ri Strat. The 54 had Duncan antiquities.Those plus the 4 Historic Les Pauls had RS Guitar Works pots, caps, etc. Sold them all when the crash hit and I got nerve damage in my left hand. The only thing that I have left is my little 1960 Gibson LG-1 acoustic and a Mexican Tele that was gutted and built up with high end parts. You would have liked my nice acoustic. It was the first gen Martin HD-28V, which had previously been sold as the Type 15 from the custom shop. It was their first attempt to build a production D 28 to something resembling mid 1930's specs. It was Indian rosewood and regular spruce, but it had the herringbone trim and the forward shifted scalloped bracing.
Willie71 said:
I have a large supply of curly poplar here, some spalting. I’m going to make a wood kiln in the spring, and look into how to torrify wood. Poplar develops a curly grain in windy conditions at the lowest 10’ of the tree. The grain compresses as it bends. I’m going to make an acoustic out of it to see how it sounds. On an electric, it’s tonally similar to basswood. My favourites are basswood with a maple top, or mahogany with a maple top. Not a fan of swamp ash, although I made one for my brother in law, and it’s the best sounding tele I’ve ever heard. Others, not so much.
Click to expand...
 
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Very nice, but either the board of the guard is the wrong color. But who cares. I don't like white guards on a Tele anyway. :D I have seen a couple of customs where guys used old barn salvage long leaf and/or loblolly pine. Those were badass and authentic to some degree as Leo and the guys used pine for the early prototypes and such.
Willie71 said:
Yup. The stripe is pretty, but not good structurally or tonally. In the modern era, people aren’t as concerned with tone, as they plug in anyway. I’m not in that camp. I use fish glue, all quarter sawn woods, and thin nitrocellulose lacquer on electrics, and shellac on acoustics.

Good Mahogany is great sounding wood. I prefer it to almost any rosewood guitar I’ve played, outside of a 1946 Gibson my brother in law had. I have a couple guitars being built with real Honduras Mahogany I bought a couple decades ago. I’m thinking zebrano might be a good choice, or saepele. I might try a purpleheart guitar just because. In any event, I do more electrics than acoustics, but my heart is in learning to do archtop jazz boxes.

Here’s a tele I did for my brother in law last year.

B08BDE6D-F9F4-48D4-A66F-89E9F616EFB5 by Wjkrywko, on Flickr

He wanted it to look aged, not new, so I did that.
Click to expand...
 
jdm61 said:
Very nice, but either the board of the guard is the wrong color. But who cares. I don't like white guards on a Tele anyway. :D I have seen a couple of customs where guys used old barn salvage long leaf and/or loblolly pine. Those were badass and authentic to some degree as Leo and the guys used pine for the early prototypes and such.
Click to expand...

This was my bil’s specific direction. He had a vision, and it came together. I prefer maple fretboards on telecasters, but not my call. The bridge pickup is a 1950s hand would tele pickup, 5.17k iirc. The neck pickup is generic as he never uses them. The pickguard is Bakelite, vintage nos, not a modern repro. It’s one colour only. I ordered single colour g-10 and micarta from AKS for custom pickguards. I think natural canvas micarta would make a cool pickguard.
 
Cool. Where did you find a Bakelite pick guard that hadn't come apart? When messing with Tele pickups, I found that the Fralins were very nice, if a bit hot. Didn't like their hum buckers as much as the Jim Wagner WCR's. The best bargain that I found was the Duncan Broadcaster bridge. It is the classic old flat pole piece steel guitar pickup like the regional Teles had and it and some RS guts and amn ashtray bridge really woke up that Mexican Tele which was an early model with a polar body. The guitar tech that did my work said that if I ever wanted to sell that one, give him a call.
Willie71 said:
This was my bil’s specific direction. He had a vision, and it came together. I prefer maple fretboards on telecasters, but not my call. The bridge pickup is a 1950s hand would tele pickup, 5.17k iirc. The neck pickup is generic as he never uses them. The pickguard is Bakelite, vintage nos, not a modern repro. It’s one colour only. I ordered single colour g-10 and micarta from AKS for custom pickguards. I think natural canvas micarta would make a cool pickguard.
Click to expand...
 
jdm61 said:
Cool. Where did you find a Bakelite pick guard that hadn't come apart? When messing with Tele pickups, I found that the Fralins were very nice, if a bit hot. Didn't like their hum buckers as much as the Jim Wagner WCR's. The best bargain that I found was the Duncan Broadcaster bridge. It is the classic old flat pole piece steel guitar pickup like the regional Teles had and it and some RS guts and amn ashtray bridge really woke up that Mexican Tele which was an early model with a polar body. The guitar tech that did my work said that if I ever wanted to sell that one, give him a call.
Click to expand...

I didn’t source the parts on this one, just the wood. My brother in law had this stuff put aside. The pickup is awesome, one of the best I’ve ever heard. It suits this guitar beautifully.

I’m planning to wind my own pickups in the near future. Pickups are really quite simple. I’ve found many of the eBay pickups sound much better than you would think, as long as you stay away from the super cheap sets. I’m a fan of Seymour Duncan pickups, but I’ve found you can get 98% of the sound for 1/8 the price.
 
It is weird where you can find stuff. Back in that 2005-2006 time period, RS Guitar Works was using these caps in their guitar parts kits that had been built for a high end audio company Hovland that was making things like tube power amps that started at $7500 for the 40 WPC model and went up from there quickly, so the parts quality was ridiculous. Unfortunately, that company went under during the crash so no more badass caps after about 2008.
Willie71 said:
I didn’t source the parts on this one, just the wood. My brother in law had this stuff put aside. The pickup is awesome, one of the best I’ve ever heard. It suits this guitar beautifully.

I’m planning to wind my own pickups in the near future. Pickups are really quite simple. I’ve found many of the eBay pickups sound much better than you would think, as long as you stay away from the super cheap sets. I’m a fan of Seymour Duncan pickups, but I’ve found you can get 98% of the sound for 1/8 the price.
Click to expand...
 
Interesting - I saw today on the Buck site about the Ebony program, but did not know the Taylor connection.

A good friend of mine (who is a VERY talented guitarist) had several beautiful Taylor guitars, which he stored at my house for a number of months when he was afraid of a potential divorce situation.

One of the guitars was from the "Liberty Tree" if I remember correctly. These were all acoustic and acoustic electrics and they played very well and of course were each gorgeous.

best regards -

mqqn
 
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