Official Luthiers Forum!

Any other Katz guitars are out there?

Unfortunately - Mario passed away last summer.... And so there is no longer a source for this wood. And he was pretty close to the vest on what it really was.

I haven't heard anything about the disposition of whatever store of wood may have been at his place...

Thanks.

Mario's wife still has her eBay going.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

I have a couple sets. Still seasoning.

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

I was lucky enough to get a number of sets. Have used for an OM and a couple of dreads, which turned out well. I could spare a few sets if anyone is interested.

At what price?

This is the finished guitar that Mario used as a banner at the top of the old Forum. It is a Katz guitar.





This is another Katz I am working on now. Just happened to use herring bone on both.





Michael

That looks like some of the lower grade Engelmann I have. It's stripey but stiffer than the typical wall paper white stuff.

Nice guitars Michael, I was thinking engleman or white spruce.

Very nice guitars Michael. That first top is very unlike any that I have. Mine show very little contrast between the grain lines and the rest of the wood. I would describe the guitars as having a very smooth mellow sound, no harshness there at all.





edit: whoops, don't know why the pics are wrong orientation. pm me if you have interest in some sets

Did Mario ever reveal the big secret of what this wood actually is or is Katz to forever remain a mystery wood?

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Didn't Mario sell a lot of Lutz? I have some (non-Mario) Lutz with that type of coloring, although it's not exclusive to the hybrid...

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

The wood will be one of two things, either West Coast Hemlock or Balsam Fir. I cut a bit of both when I was in Terrace but didn't bring any with me. I am in Alberta now and will be setting up my sawmill again this spring and may cut some but I have over 300 Lutz tops still so don't really feel a strong desire to acquire more wood when these tops on hand make fine guitars. But for any of you that want to experiment, those two species will get you where you want to be and should be fairly readily available in lumber form that you could re-saw.

Thanks
Shane

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Canada

Taken to the grave that one. He launched it together with Cumpiano. Maybe someone needs to interrogate him.

I visited with Bill Cumpiano a number of years ago when I was out that way. He had already purchased tops from me at that time so discussed wood in general. While I was there he asked me if I was cutting Hemlock as he had tried it before and liked the result but wanted more to work with. My time was limited and my order log too large to spend time processing wood that would not, in the short term anyway, see the acceptance that spruce had so I did not look into this. My visit with Bill is one of the reasons that I believe Hemlock is probably the species here. It is definitely one of the two though. There aren't a lot of other options, the price and volume of the wood processed was low so it had to be local (despite Mario's claims) as transportation costs would eat all of the profit and then some. There is no Douglas Fir in the area or larger Pine. We have Spruce, Hemlock, Balsam Fir and Western Red Cedar in commercial volumes. All four species would make a decent sounding guitar but the structural nature of spruce, longer fibre and lower specific gravity, make it the superior choice in my opinion.

Shane

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Canada

I didn't get the impression that Mario was running a "high volume operation". . I could be wrong, though.

There was some suspicion that the wood may have been white spruce or a hybrid thereof... White spruce has earned the nickname "cat spruce" because of the smell... Hence the suspicion with the name "Katz"...

That could be John. The Lutz Spruce that both Mario and I processed was a White/Sitka hybrid. There was talk about Engelmann forming part of that mix but I remain sceptical in that assertion as I was told by the forest technicians and research scientists in the area that Engelmann only played in for trees above 3,500 feet. At that elevation in the Skeena drainage the trees are small and gnarly. The best trees came from 900 to 2000 feet. So white spruce is certainly prevalent in the area, almost for certain all of it in this area was hybridized. But with Mario's naming system maybe he found some Spruce that looked or felt a bit different than the stuff he typically harvested. When he moved from Terrace out to Rosswood he was closer to the Nass Watershed where the hybridization components may have been a bit different with maybe a bit more White Spruce influence than we saw in Terrace. I do recall Mario saying that this was not spruce but who knows.....he didn't really like me much when we stopped working together.

Shane

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Canada

300 lutz tops! Wow.... And I bet those weren't the duds.

I think you need to come back online... You really did make some truly high quality tops.

The Katz wood came from Tumbler Ridge BC in the eastern part of the province.

Bob

I would be surprised if you couldn't find a Hemlock worthy of a decent guitar top. They come in a variety of density and hardness. I'm pretty sure the long grain stiffness and strength is a little weak. I've had my power knocked out twice and the corner of my wood shed taken out all by Hemlock. There's not many growing in my yard but they do like to break in the wind.

The traditional issue with hemlock is ring shake. That makes lumber kinda dicey and why you just don't see it. It would otherwise be a great wood.

Likely an Engelmann/White Spruce hybrid then Similiar to the wood sold out of the Kootney's and that Larry Stamm used to produce.

Shane

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Canada

Shane, Good to see your posts again. Do you know if Larry Stamm is still in the tone wood biz?

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

Shane - I don't know much about conifer hybrids. How hard or easy is it to identify a Lutz (or Katz) hybrid tree in the wild? Are they visibly different enough to allow a clear easy ID? Also, how consistent or varied are traits between individual hybrid trees produced from the same two parent species? I'm guessing the mix of parental genes isn't necessarily 50/50 and varies over some range of proportions between individual hybrid trees which would affect traits of individual hybrids. I'm wondering if the wood from one Lutz tree has good characteristics for guitar tops, does another Lutz tree necessarily have the same good qualities since it's a different hybrid?

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Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I've often wondered the same thing. It's not all the same, that's for sure. I've had lutz range from .32g/k3-.47. So, all over the place.

It's the same as any other type of wood. Being the right species is not enough in itself to make it good quality for our purposes.

It's still my favorite.