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another classic luthiers tonewood bites the dust...fender/fmic will no longer be using ash for their production guitars...ash and alder were the 2 fender mainstay body woods for decades!
statement from Christina Stejksal, Vice President of Global Communications:
As you know, it has become ever more difficult to obtain a steady and predictable supply of ash over the last several years.
A major cause of this shortage is the infestation of the Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive beetle native to Asia that is highly destructive to the North American ash tree and the attempts at curbing the beetle’s impact have been largely unsuccessful. Same goes for the compounding of the Emerald Ash Borer and the infestation results in chronic flooding in the Mississippi delta, where the majority of our swamp ash supply is harvested.
It is inevitable we as an industry and a brand need to make some changes, some proactive changes and what this means exactly for Fender. In order to uphold our legacy of consistency and high quality we have made the decision to remove ash from the majority of our regular production models. What little ash we are able to source will continue to be made available in select, historically appropriate vintage models, as supplies are available.
This marks the beginning of a new chapter at Fender that will inspire musicians with beautiful new tone wood combinations, new resonant body styles and bold new sounds – as always with our continued commitment to quality and value. With your help, we believe we will continue to achieve unprecedented success together.
cheers
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04-21-2020 06:23 PM
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As a community, we really do need to become a lot more welcoming to synthetic materials.
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i'd much prefer alternate woods to synthetics...synthetics take huge environmental toll too!!
fmic's move from rosewood fretboards to indian laurel...was a good move..just as the move from mahogany to sapelle...etc etc
orville gibson carved his first guitar out of walnut!!
cheers
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Even though there are to al characteristics to specific types of woods. I'm sure design and luthiers skills have as much to do with producing a great sounding instrument. Didn't Bob Benedetto make an archtop of very cheap wood to prove his point ?
I wonder how much is the look as well as being conditioned as consumers?
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Oh great, now everyone who wouldn't THINK of owning a strat or tele are going to gobble what's left of them up and inflate the prices :-(
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Sad to see. Governments listen to their foresters on about the same level as their epidemiologists, with predictable results.
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{ " A major cause of this shortage is the infestation of the Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive beetle native to Asia.... " }
....I hired a tree service last year whose crew worked two days cutting down ash trees in my yard, that'd easily been there for 100 plus years... .....The foreman told me all ash trees in this country are dying and will soon, without doubt, be extinct....
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btw..."synthetic" material guitars were being made in the 40's and 50's...maccaferri plastic guitars and danelectro masonite
don't see too much love for them jazzwise these days
not new or weird enough?
cheers
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Originally Posted by neatomic
Last edited by Jim Soloway; 04-22-2020 at 08:40 AM.
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steinberger???
i also knew geoff gould of modulus guitars a bit..first guy i knew dealing with industrial aeronautics carbon fiber for guitars..the 80's....for all the talk about rigidity and lack of "wooden" problems...they never really took off!!
carbon steinberger had great run..and in many ways still a great underrated design...all these "modern" headless guitars are basically piggybacking off the original
cheers
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They don't sell. The "handle" 2010
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Always those damn Be(e/a)tles....
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Originally Posted by rob taft
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Just got my 2nd Baja tele a couple of weeks before.
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Originally Posted by neatomic
Love cherry wood.
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Originally Posted by Jim Soloway
On a parallel note, I find Godin's use of non-traditional woods and novel lamination/design methods pretty interesting. That might be a stepping stone to composites. From what I understand, they sited their factory close to abundant sources of woods that other manufacturers don't use, and put in place sophisticate design, manufacturing QA/QC, and make great stuff cheaply. I bet they're poised to bring in other materials.
John
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swamp ash is a beautiful wood!! one piece tele body
cheers
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Originally Posted by John A.
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Guitarists- myself included- tend to be conservative to the point of hidebound. But as far as Telecasters and Stratocasters go, I have always preferred alder to ash in terms of tone. I've never played a pinecaster, though.
The simple truth is that any species of wood that is logged in a wholesale manner will eventually become in short supply. There are billions of people on the planet, most of whom utilize wood in many aspects of their life in one way or another, and that number is only going to keep increasing. That will continue to place demands upon materials and ultimately necessity products, such as structural wood for housing, is going to win out over vanity products like guitars.
So we are going to have to adapt to engineered materials. For solid body guitars, that really ought to be less problematic than for acoustic instruments. However, it's also possible that there have already been enough guitars made in terms of mass production. Fender and Gibson have always struggled with competing to sell new guitars versus the used instrument market.
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unfortunately, what makes this current ash problem so insidious is that it is not a matter of over demand or non sustaining proper growth ethics...it's a question of deadly infestation from outside it's natural environment
much like whats going on at the present moment on larger scale!
cheers
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Originally Posted by neatomic
The bigger threat other than tone woods (sorry) is food crops, yeah Avo, and annona may not be life sustaining as we could (but I wouldn't be happy about it) live without these but crops like citrus are another matter.
I guess it's the price we pay for globalization, but the money spent on treating plant pests is (IMO) better spent on human health I think.
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Originally Posted by GNAPPI
Originally Posted by GNAPPI
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When I was growing up we had a giant American Elm tree in our back yard, in a NYC suburb. Dutch Elm disease killed it, and wiped out most elms on the eastern seaboard. There is a stand of old growth elm in Central Park, thought to have survived DED because it is isolated in an urban setting.
Chestnut trees in North America have also been devastated by disease, in this case Chestnut Blight. There aren't many chestnut trees to see in this patch of the US; it is almost gone from its historical native habitat. Both of these tree species were noted for their huge, spreading crowns – magnificent specimens. Remember, the "village smithy" stood under a "spreading chestnut tree"...
A number of tree species may fall victim to various beetles and other insects due to global warming, as the frostline in the northern hemisphere moves farther up wooded mountains.
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Seems like that with all the dead ash trees, there would be plenty of material. At least for now. It would probably more profitable to use the last of it for baseball bats, though.
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Originally Posted by MaxTwang
Hey don't blame me for getting political if gonna you mock the life style choices is of people in liberal states.
Transcriber wanted
Today, 04:35 PM in Improvisation