Official Luthiers Forum!

Jeezzz -- every community has an active music scene with struggling musicians. Wealthy people had nothing to do with that situation. Most of us wish we had more material things and many are jealous, sounds like you are too. It may be best to just get over it.

Back when I worked for a guitar factory, we didn't call them royalists, we called them customers. And we loved them!

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

Seems like every year we get one of these "the tree" postings. Does anyone know where these "the tree" guitars go? I'd love to hear some recordings that could justify all the hype of this miracle wood.

I'm skeptical of the stuff on ebay. You'd think for $1500 you could see a clear photo of the merchandise. Not some fuzzy cell phone snapshot.

Here ya go, Quine. A nice little track from an Olson made from the tree

http://m.soundcloud.com/syndicatedarts/ ... -1/s-RhvRO

Sounds like a typical Olson to me.

Nice!

Not sure "The Tree" made it what it is though.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Personally i don't think back and sides have all that much to do with tone. Regardless of the wood.

I am a fan of the tree because I think it looks fantastic and I love the story behind it. As far as "magic tone" I don't believe any wood alone makes guitars sound amazing.

Well, the guitar sounds great, and is made of beautiful wood.

That's better than, the guitar is made of beautiful wood, and sounds like crap, IMO.

All things being equal, if two guitars sound great and one is made of beautiful and highly figured exotic woods, guess which one's going to cost more money.

I'm okay with that.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Checking the link to an article on the history of the guitar, I find a photo of a guitar with extraordinary back wood. But, if I understand correctly, figure on wood from the tree is all over the place in appearance. I guess anyone paying a premium for a set will look at photos first.

It's often said "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". For some a beautiful piece of wood, for some a great story. What we attribute value to is a highly individual thing. I can see both Haans and Zeke McKee's point of view and more or less agree with them both.

It has always amazed me at how effective a good marketing plan is at separating people from their money.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

and sometimes from each other too.... unfortunately.

Zeke made a comment about how much contribution back and sides make to a guitar. I don't have an answer but I can tell you about an experiment that I did and that was previously posted here on the OLF years ago, 2007 to be exact.

Below are some pic of two of mine. They are about 7 years old now and have both been great guitars if I do say so myself.

Both guitars are OMs, both guitars were built side by side and are identical in the neck woods, bracing (adi from the same chunk), bridge designs AND weights (The ebony bridge had some material removed to match the weight of the lighter BRW bridge, sound hole size, bracing patterns, scale lengths, nut and saddle material (all bone), even the strings are the same.

What's not the same are the tuners with one guitar being Waverlys and the other Gotohs.

The only other difference between the two is one is some rather flat BRW but pretty stuff at least to me and the other has some killer Koa. The guitars are within less than two ounces overall of each other as well. One had 3.5 ounces of finish applied and the other has closer to 4 ounces and yes I weighed how much the weight increased after finishing.

I specifically set out to attempt to isolate the contributions of the back and side materials (and build myself a nice BRW instrument with a flat but pretty set that I would not want to sell to a client).

Lots of folks have played them both including many OLFers as well.

Here are some of the impressions that people tell me about and my own as well.

1) They are totally different animals and do not sound the least bit alike beyond the strong mids that IMO are characteristic of tapered bracing.

2) The BRW guitar is louder with overtones beyond any other instrument that I have ever built. Even a bit much for my taste preferring mahogany instruments personally.

3) The Koa guitar has a sweet sound all it's own and it's a bit "dark" in tonal coloring and better suited for Alice In Chains unplugged stuff.

4) The BRW guitar has deeper and more profound bass and the Koa guitar has highs that seem a bit thinner.

Overall these two instruments are as different sounding as two different guitar perhaps from two different makers.

And yet the only real difference including the age of both now is the back and side set material and the tuners. Maybe someone should start selling tuners as "tone tuners...."

My conclusion back then, and I'm sticking to it these days too, is that one of the contributions of the back and side materials is that they tend to color the overall tone to a pretty good degree. So much so that material selection is important especially when a desired outcome is desirable. And the level of coloring of tone can be profound as well.

Now back to this thread about some stinkin tree.... I agree with Hans and would expand some of his comments to add that any wood with suitable properties to become a guitar is tonewood to some one.... The very word "tonewood" is marketing hype to me.

What was also glaring to me in this thread was that unless I missed it while I was out in the street has anyone mentioned the influence of the skill of the Luthier? A highly skilled Luthier is in my view capable of turning the least expensive set of plain Jane..... Mahogany into one of the best sounding guitars that any of us may have ever experienced.

As such if "The Tree" does indeed have superior "potential" as a "tonewood...." much of this in my mind depends on at the end of the day who's building with it.

Regarding high prices, luxury goods, folks who hoard instruments and deny them to the rest of the world.... etc. Who cares! If it's not something that I can do something about it never makes it to my list.

Lastly.... if one is in the market for fine art does one buy it on ebay??? How about a Ferrari... are you going to purchase a $400K super car sight unseen off ebay??? Personally when speaking of "The Tree" or BRW or anything that is not considered a completely understood "commodity" with little room for misunderstanding I would never, never make such a purchase from ebay.

Every few days someone comes into our shop grinning like an idiot pleased as punch with themselves and excited to show us what they "won" on ebay. And very nearly every week we have the unpleasant task of telling them that the required repairs (if the thing is even authentic, we have seen ebay fakes passed off as a Gibson vintage mando....) will cost about 2X what the thing is worth after the repairs are made.

Some days I feel like it's wall hanging central and worse yet who wants to be the one to provide the information, delicate as we try to be, indicating that they just were ripped off big time.

Anyway I'm always going to advocate that folks do what they please. If this means purchasing the "Tree" so be it. I have had two sets, still have one and can appreciate the attraction. If it's not your bag so be it too.

But if there is one message in my mindless rant here that I would hope to convey it's that the wood does not the fine instrument make.

The Luthier does....

Yes, I did....



I gave credit to Olson.

As far as your experiment goes, I don't think I'd draw such certain conclusionsfrom just two guitars.

I bet two Brazilians or two Koas would also have sounded pretty different from each other.

Any given day you can walk down to GC and pick out 3 of the same model guitar from Martin or Taylor, they'll all sound different from one another.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

I still say back and sides don't determine an instrument. That's just my opinion though. I'm in the class that you could take two consecutive pieces cut from the same log and give it to two luthiers and get two different sounding instruments.

Oh, brother...

Forum posters can say anything and they do ---- I am thinking Oh brother! too.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

At least when posters "say anything" and express thoughts and opinions it creates a dialogue and a conversation. Which is what keeps a forum alive. Which IMO is better than people who sit back and make 10 posts a year, contributing virtually nothing to the forum.

A real problem here is that by the time the wood gets cut into 1/4" thick pieces you can't say that it came from "the tree". Can you do a DNA analysis? Is is just as good as "the tree" if it looks like "the tree"? Is ugly wood form "the tree" as good as pretty wood because it has the same sound? DOES it have the same sound? Are we listening with our eyes?

Like pieces of the true cross, they are everywhere.

We all have different opinions and it is very hard to back these things up with science as there hasn't been a general consensus on an authority to do tests. After that has been achieved then the test must be done with many being built exactly the same and having the same test done over them all. The test itself is another topic as to how to label the sounds people hear as being bright, loud, sharp, tight etc. and how to test for these sounds. So in the interest of time just agree to disagree until we have those test done.

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久保
美智え

Not true. I have the entire cross out in my barn. Anyone who claims they have a piece is a liar.

From my experience there is some variety as to the look of the various parts of the "tree". But it's not a tremendous difference. First of all the wood from it has sort of a red tint. Secondly I've found that though the tortoise shell figure an the sausage figure look different they are pretty recognize able as being from the tree. Some of the stuff has documents showing where it came from here or there which helps to verify it's authenticity. What we really need is the "tree" expert, Jay Howlett, to chime in. He could answer many more questions than the average person on the subject.

A fave of mine....

That's hilarious!!!!

Hahaha 'tone tuners.' I like that one

I think The Tree story is a good one and as such is also marketable. It's just the way things work. When I was a kid I used to collect coins, I still have the collection. A penny is only worth a penny but if it's a 1909 S VDB it's gonna get you about $500 because for some odd reason a bunch of people think it's worth that much.

I'm no expert on 'the tree' but I've had better looking mahogany for 1/10th the price, and currently have sipo sets with that veiny figure for even less. That's a lot of $ for a story, but IMO folks can spend their money however they like and it's nobody's business but theirs.

I'd love to hear your opinion, Ken. Glad to see you posting so much here recently.


I know at least one person who would pay to have a guitar made with a set from "the tree". Even if I told him that he's just paying for the story. Even if I told him that the quality of the guitar is down to the skill of the maker.

Like the apocryphal story of the shop with two identical ashtrays, one for £5 and one for £10. Some people want a £5 ashtray and some want a £10 ashtray.

I do think that tortoise shell figure is gorgeous.