Guitar manufacturers like Taylor and Gryphon are utilizing native California trees marked for removal in the state’s urban areas to birth a new generation of acoustic instruments.
The motive: helping musicians and consumers dodge the increasing prices for prized woods needed to make guitars, as well as helping memorialize condemned native trees in the state.
If you look at the product catalogue for any major guitar retailer, you see the same few words mentioned over and over: rosewood, ebony, mahogany.
These are also the words you may see while reading news reports about the ongoing deforestation in the Amazon.
The sound quality of the world’s instruments depend on these rainforest trees—and demand for guitars is expected to increase.
So, what about a guitar made from shamel ash, red ironbark, or black acacia?
These are three species now being used by Taylor Guitars and Gryphon Stringed Instruments, which are commonly found growing along sidewalks and median strips all over Central and Northern California.
Playing a lead role in this movement is West Coast Arborists (WCA), a family-run business of tree surgeons that manage urban trees for 320 towns and municipalities, public agencies, and private communities in 4 different states.
WCA believes that trees in cities do more than just offer shade and beauty, they are means of connecting to a fundamental Earth circuitry amidst areas covered in concrete. That’s why for every tree they’re instructed to remove, they plant two.
WCA also believes that a large urban tree deserves to have a second life, and that these species which shade us and our dogs offer quality, craft-ready lumber.
In fact, a quarter-century ago, reports CBS in San Francisco, WCA created an urban wood recycling program called Street Tree Revival.
Now, if a large tree is marked for felling, its dimensions and location will be uploaded to a central database that can be accessed by craftsmen in the area, who can then buy the wood from the tree.
Bob Taylor, who founded Taylor Guitars 50 years ago, has identified several species that possess the acoustic properties necessary for use in guitars.
“We developed a system where our IT department could use any time [sic] a list comes out with trees that are going to be removed. And they see a shamal ash is identified, it automatically sends a notification to me at area manager and to our Street Revival people that, ‘Hey, here’s a possible tree we can send to Taylor,’” said Tim Patterson, a manager with WCA.
Ebony and irony
That’s not all he identified, however. As good an idea as the use of native California trees in making instruments was, Taylor found that ebony, one of the woods traditionally used to make guitar bridges and fretboards is harvested with extremely wasteful practices; with about one tree used for every 6-10 cut down.
The reason? Not all ebony trees found in the Congo Basin contain the black wood that we associate with guitar woods. In Africa, where the trees are harvested, loggers don’t know which ones possess the jet black wood. If after felling, they find the interior is streaked with brown, they leave it to rot.
Taylor’s use of native California trees, such as red ironbark, are about providing alternatives to this kind of logging—as much as it is about saving consumers money.
During a visit to the jungle, Taylor told his Cameroonian contacts that he would buy the streaked wood.
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“But they said ‘Sir you can’t sell that wood!’ They’re used to decades—a century, of only black wood, and so are the consumers,” Taylor told CBS in a separate story.
“Now, if you buy a Taylor guitar, that’s the wood you’re going to get.”
Ironically, that streaked wood the Cameroonians said Taylor wouldn’t be able to sell is gorgeous, and very similar to natural wood grains which are sold by instrument manufacturers specifically for its aesthetic taste. Mechanically, it’s exactly the same as totally black ebony.
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Back in California, CBS got to accompany WCA to the felling of one such tree—a 30-foot-tall shamal ash that was pruned, cut, and gently lowered to the ground via a crane. The tree had to be removed because it posed a risk to a pair of utility lines, and was then taken to WCA’s facilities to be milled and shipped off to Taylor or Gryphon.
“The topic does not even come up, you know ‘what this wood is and where did it come from.’ Instead, it’s like “Wow, this sounds great, and it looks beautiful,” said Richard Johnson, one of the founders of Gryphon.
WATCH the story of WCA and Taylor’s ebony inspiration below from CBS News…
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