Visit to John Monteleone

[Prossi@cozen.com]

RHVB,
What an odd, bitter and angry comment! Bribe is a very ugly word and implies criminal conduct. Very odd!

[Ol' Fret]

If you're asking as much as he is for an instrument there must be a healthy margin to bribe those providers

Or, he's been storing the wood "since forever" and that explains part of his tarifs!

It would make no sense for a luthier to bribe his tonewood dealers in order to get the "best" pieces.
Most folks in this business, luthiers and tonewood providers, at least, the premier league, are very well connected and have been working together for years and decades - a very trusting relationship. The dealers appreciate these top flight clients and often know exactly which specific tonewood properties the latter are after.
Usually, the better part of the dealers have something like a vault where they store the cream of their pieces. This is the place where the top flight luthiers find their wood; mere mortals, like us, would have no access to that vault. This behavior may look snobby, but imagine yourself as a luthier making just three or four instruments per year: you neither would waste your time and risk to disappoint the expectations of your customers by using / selecting average material - would you?
It may be all different with two or three larger guitar companies that - due to corporate circumstances - have been oriented towards maximum sale numbers and quick profit, where bribery in one form or another was documented. This can hardly work for a long period of time.

In the crazy violin making scene, luthiers, who either have a hard time to already get access to these vaults or are simply super ambitious, check and go personally through a number of one or two thousand plate blanks to find the two or three best for their next instruments. In the more robust and sane archtop guitar world this would be an exception; in Germany, Artur Lang was one of those.
Of course, excellent tonewood is just one factor in making fine instruments, but people that picky are usually picky about all other things as well, their instrument designs and constructions - maybe even other human interactions.


Storing tonewood "forever" to get higher gains doesn't make sense either. After cutting, the wood doesn't get any "better" after five or seven years of appropriate (air-) drying and storing; today that's one of not so many evidence-based facts in lutherie. The tonewood dealer is interested to make a living from selling, not so much from storing, and the luthier doesn't often have the space or the correct conditions to store tonewoods "forever" (air circulation, RH-controlling, beetles, and so on).
Of course, older tonewood is more expensive to find on the market - simple supply and demand.

[gitman]

Ol' Fret,
thanks for the very informative and rational explanation, it all makes perfect sense to me. Having lived for 20+ years next door to a now retired violin-maker/luthier I know how HE
conducted business with his suppliers and I've seen his modest wood-stash.
I commented on the extraordinary VISUAL quality of the Monteleone guitars and mandolins and we all know that the figure and flame and quilting has very little if not nothing to do with the tonal qualities of a particular piece of maple. People have and will always succumb to the dazzling surface , be it with guitars, furniture,
and what have you, all-the-while being familiar with the concept of not buying a book by it's cover ... I remember seeing a price list from the A-List luthier Bruce Sexauer and while his normal prices already were quite high, he offered special sets of braz. Rosewood, Blackwood, Ziricote, Pernambuco and other VERY exotic and rare wood specimen for upcharges ranging from 3 to 5 GRAND. Amazing ....

[Ol' Fret]

Ol' Fret,
thanks for the very informative and rational explanation, it all makes perfect sense to me. Having lived for 20+ years next door to a now retired violin-maker/luthier I know how HE
conducted business with his suppliers and I've seen his modest wood-stash.
I commented on the extraordinary VISUAL quality of the Monteleone guitars and mandolins and we all know that the figure and flame and quilting has very little if not nothing to do with the tonal qualities of a particular piece of maple. People have and will always succumb to the dazzling surface , be it with guitars, furniture,
and what have you, all-the-while being familiar with the concept of not buying a book by it's cover ... I remember seeing a price list from the A-List luthier Bruce Sexauer and while his normal prices already were quite high, he offered special sets of braz. Rosewood, Blackwood, Ziricote, Pernambuco and other VERY exotic and rare wood specimen for upcharges ranging from 3 to 5 GRAND. Amazing ....

Gitman, thank you for your kind words! To this day, IMHO, the basics of making finer plucked and bowed musical instruments are still coming from the old master makers of lutes and instruments of the violin family, who empirically sorted out what had been working well or just so-so, from the wood selection, - cutting and drying to the design, to the building, to the finish. According to my observation, the "better" a guitar maker was or is, the more he had / has studied the techniques used by the old masters. Though doubts on this and other theories are always allowed: on our worse days, in this chattering internet world, don't we think about words like "value may be more there, where no content is communicated"?

Though I never played one of his instruments, Bruce Sexauer must be an amazing guitar maker. It was particularly fascinating to learn a bit about his finishing techniques, that seem to be a bit more sophisticated like the ordinary nitro spraying or PU-coatings. Like a handful of other small-scale makers - Alan Carruth, Laurent Brondel, and others - he is convinced that a guitar finish made with (short) oil varnish is superior to most other techniques, in any case visually, but also sonically.
The archtop guitar scene rarely goes beyond the nitro coating from the earlier days of industrialization, which can reliably produce quick and satisfactory clear coats or sunburst patterns, but cannot come close to the beauty of good oil varnishes. A handmade (wiped) sunburst can be second to none. Wasn't it Lloyd Loar who used oil varnish on his Gibson instruments and then layered French Polish on top? The knowledge about such techniques seems to be largely buried today, for example, that it is not only possible, but rewarding to lay an alcohol-based top layer over an oil-based varnish with a stunning outcome - though this would require a lot of expertise and time.

Meanwhile, due to CITES regulations, the use of Pernambuco or African Blackwood is similarly restricted as the use of Brazilian Rosewood. Also, it's legally almost impossible to lay your hands on boards of such wood species, big enough for making archtop guitar plates. If you were able to get some, these planks would either be second choice (like stump wood) or fine and rare old stock, i. e., very expensive. If you knew how to make a really great finish, the ground (special grounds may be ok, but these commercial fillers on acoustic instruments - Ugh!), color and top coating, the woods could be kept plain without much figure, just with the existent natural imperfections. Tradition is so strong - not only among classical musicians.