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  #16  
Old 09-28-2014, 04:29 PM
acoustophonic acoustophonic is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Guitarsan View Post
I got to wondering about your comment and figured I would Google to learn more.

Saving others the effort, here's another reason you gotta love Bob Taylor:

"The cutters said another issue was the wide discrepancy in value between highly desirable black ebony and the more marbled wood (featuring lightstreaked variegation), also referred to as “déclassé” (lower class or grade) wood. Crelicam previously only paid a fourth of the black ebony price for the déclassé wood (about 8 cents a pound) because it was less desirable among their instrument-making clients. At that rate, the cutters said, it wasn’t worth all the labor to haul the déclassé wood out.

Bob asked them how they determined which trees were black and which were déclassé. They said they cut down an ebony tree and looked at the wood. If it was marbled, they simply left the tree and moved on. Bob asked how many trees on average they would have to cut to find a black one. They said about 10. Bob was shocked. Bob says. “Not even the previous owner of Crelicam knew. The cutters don’t tell anybody that. I just started asking questions and went down that rabbit hole and they told me.”

Bob told the cutters on the spot that he would buy the déclassé ebony from them and pay the same price as the black wood. They were taken aback. But no one will want it, they said. “Well, now they will,” Bob told them. It was a decision he says he and Vidal felt compelled to make to be responsible stewards of the forest resources.

“Now that we know this, we can’t un-know the realities here in Africa,” he says. “We live in a different world, a world where we have to respect that environment. Decisions had to be made, and Vidal and I have proudly made them. Our ebony reflects the reality of the forest. This is what ebony looks like. Here’s the good news based on what we learned: There’s 10 times as much usable ebony in Cameroon as we thought there was.”


The rest is here:

http://www.taylorguitars.com/sites/d...2012_Ebony.pdf
I've posted this in other areas, but here's the vid from Bob about the state of ebony and what we can expect in the future.

http://youtu.be/anCGvfsBoFY
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  #17  
Old 09-28-2014, 05:43 PM
joemcg joemcg is offline
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There's also a very scary movie that features Bob and Chris Martin regarding,the state of Sitka Spruce. It's called "Musicwood." I purchased my copy on iTunes about 4 months ago.

Watch that and you will see that our kids may think of Sitka Spruce the way we now think of Brazilian Rosewood.
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  #18  
Old 09-28-2014, 05:50 PM
robj144 robj144 is offline
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It's still laminate back and sides, correct? Besides cosmetic, how much difference would the koa veneer make?
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Old 09-28-2014, 06:20 PM
joemcg joemcg is offline
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Yup laminate b&s. According to the guys at Taylor the laminate woods also can have an impact on tone. No certain how much as cpmpared to solid.
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  #20  
Old 09-29-2014, 02:25 AM
Fro Fro is offline
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You can see the laminations from the side of the guitar and the outside wood layer is close to paper thin. I doubt you'll hear any more difference in different back/side woods as you'll hear in several examples of the same model. The spruce/hog/koa tops will sound different obviously.

Last edited by Fro; 09-29-2014 at 04:36 PM.
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  #21  
Old 09-29-2014, 07:31 AM
Guitarsan Guitarsan is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robj144 View Post
It's still laminate back and sides, correct? Besides cosmetic, how much difference would the koa veneer make?
Taylor says rosewood vs koa vs whatever laminate on the side and back of GS Minis are not different sonically. The solid tops are another matter.
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