Fine woods for instruments are getting tougher to find
By BILL GRAHAM
Sep. 17, 2007
The Kansas City Star
Behind a violin's soaring notes or a guitar's chime are fine woods vibrating along with plucked or bowed strings.
Orchestras, bands and parlor pickers for two centuries have enjoyed affordable instruments made from the finest tone woods cut from old-growth forests.
No more.
The best tone woods are becoming unavailable or prohibitively expensive as the world's forests succumb to overharvesting, illegal logging and pollution.
"Most people don't realize the situation with wood," said Anton Krutz, a violin maker at K.C. Strings in Merriam. "We give tours of our shop, and I find even advanced players are not cognizant of this."
The instrument business will adapt with other woods or synthetics and survive, experts said. But as fine woods for clarinets, guitars and violin bows dwindle, price increases could make fine instruments unaffordable for many musicians.
Bluegrass guitarist Kenny Preston of Kansas City, North, would love to own an acoustic guitar with Brazilian rosewood sides and back, a wood beloved for its beauty and the rich bass and treble tones it produces.
"But I haven't been blessed with that much money," Preston said.
Retail prices for a new Martin D-28 acoustic guitar with Brazilian rosewood were $600 to $800 in 1970. They're now $10,000 to $12,000, said Jim Baggett, a longtime instrument dealer at Mass Street Music in Lawrence.
Wood scarcity is the biggest factor.
With South America's coastal forests being depleted, Brazilian rosewood has become endangered and shipment of the wood between countries is restricted by CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
But the problem is not limited to one continent or exotic woods.
Commercial supplies of instrument-grade Sitka spruce from southeast Alaska — used for the sounding boards of pianos, guitars, and bowed instruments — may be exhausted within a decade, according to the Music Wood Campaign organized by major guitar manufacturers and Greenpeace to save Sitka.
Preston, who owns three Sitka-topped guitars, heard that message during a recent tour of the Taylor Guitar Co. factory in California.
"I was shocked," he said.
Sitka spruce is not endangered. But what is vanishing are the 6 to 8 feet wide trees — 300 to 600 years old — that produce fine-grained boards for musical instruments.
"Because of tonal and structural properties, you can't make instruments out of just anything," said Linda Davis-Wallen, who travels the globe buying wood for the C.F. Martin Guitar Co., a 174-year-old company in Nazareth, Pa.
Musical instruments use only a tiny fraction of world wood products, Davis-Wallen said. Most exotic hardwoods are turned into furniture, caskets, cabinets and flooring.
Alternative guitar woods such as American cherry and black walnut are used but have thus far not been embraced by customers, Davis-Wallen said. The future will see guitars made from more pieces and types of wood, as well as laminates and synthetics such as carbon fiber, she said.
But the sound is not the same. Certain premier tonal qualities will no longer be readily available to the average musician and, thus, listeners.
Among the problems:
-Pernambuco, the best wood for violin and cello bows, this year was forbidden to be exported from Brazil as raw wood by CITES. Bow makers are now working with stockpiled pernambuco.
-On the Serengeti Plain of Africa, conservationists worry that African blackwood (grenadillo) used for woodwind instruments such as clarinets and oboes is threatened because large trees are overharvested.
-Since the late 1960s, rosewood from India's jungles and tea plantations has substituted for Brazilian rosewood. But the most musically desirable logs are now difficult to find, Davis-Wallen said. .
-The trade in big-leaf mahogany from Central and South America is now restricted by CITES. Among the finest and most often used tone woods, it could become endangered if illegal logging is not halted, Davis-Wallen said.
-Ebony from Africa and Asia, used for fingerboards and other parts on guitars and violin-family instruments, is also becoming scarce, and some species are endangered, experts said.
Instrument makers are scrambling to find new tone woods, but competition for alternatives is increasing.
Martin has built Madagascar rosewood guitars. But exports from that African island were halted this year because of overharvest, mostly by shipments to China, Davis-Wallen said.
"China is wrecking the wood markets all over the world," she said. "They are gobbling up anything and everything."
Preserving tone woods
The public can help preserve tone woods for musical instruments by purchasing wood items from sustainable forestry methods and by supporting music wood conservation groups. Here's a partial list of organizations working to preserve tone woods.
- The Music Wood Campaign: This coalition of major instrument manufacturers and the conservation group Greenpeace are working with a Native American logging company to bring sustainable forestry practices to the last commercially available stands of Sitka spruce trees.
- The Forest Stewardship Council: Professional foresters and companies that use independent review to ensure that a wood product comes from a forest harvested in a sustainable manner.
- The International Pernambuco Conservation Initiative
