raid on Gibson Guitar

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Hey Bas, Thanks for passing that along. This is the first time I ever read about any type of enforcement of protected woods. Does anyone have other articles about raids at other type of woodworking facilities (furniture makers for instance) where lumber was confiscated? Marc

Reply to
marc rosen

basilisk wrote the following:

I gotta ask. What does the type of wood for the fretboard have anything to do with the sound?

Reply to
willshak

Hey Will, I am not a musician but I experimented with making a cheap vibraphone a few years ago and the types of wood made a difference in sound. I don't know if that characteristic can be applied to string instruments but it exist in percussion types. Marc

Reply to
marc rosen

marc rosen wrote the following:

The fretboard doesn't produce sound, only the strings and the metal frets in the fretboard do.

Reply to
willshak

The sound is produced by the vibration of the strings enhanced and amplified by resonances in the body. The strings are coupled to the body at two locations - the bridge and the top of the fretboard.

The density of the fretboard wood has a direct relationship to the sound of the instrument.

Reply to
Scott Lurndal

OK. thanks. I can appreciate that. I'm not a guitar player. I tried when young, but the callouses that I built up cracked and I bled all over the fretboard. It wasn't worth the pain.

Reply to
willshak

my understanding is that a fretboard should be dimensionally stable and resist wear. The wood should be of fairly uniform density, so that the strings will have the same response on each fret. a non-uniform fretboard (and neck) would have "live" and "dead" acoustic spots affecting sound quality. Ebony, rosewood and maple have usually been the woods of choice for those reasons. Ebony is much more expensive.

Mesquite might do very well functionally due to its exceptional hardness and dimensional stability. I imagine that the hardest part would be getting a large enough straight-grained piece. I found these, that I think are pretty cool:

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(last picture)
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(bass has mesquite top and fretboard)

Reply to
Just Wondering

This link provided by Just Windering:

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that ONLY the soundboard contributes to the sound or tone of a guitar; the back, sides, fretboard, &tc. do not.

Interesting luthier.

-Zz

Reply to
Zz Yzx

Are you joking? Luthiers want to know whether the wood came off of the east or the west side of the tree. There are some banjo bridges being made out of wood salvaged from shipwrecks in Lake Superior that go for quite alot (don't have the figure off hand). No kidding.

Reply to
Bill

Violins don't have frets, but everything that is attached supposedly affects the way the instument vibrates, as well of course as things that aren't attached like a bow.

Reply to
Bill

That's a convenient point of view to have if you are trying to sell them.

Reply to
Bill

The harder the wood, the longer it will vibrate, meaning the longer it will sustain the sound.

Rosewood is used for marimba bars for that reason.

Reply to
-MIKE-

lawbreakers, isn't it?

Muckin' Faroons.

Ayup, I believe we can prune about 75% of the agencies off the roles of the gov't and still be able (BETTER able) to protect our shores and (BETTER) feed, house, and educate our citizens. Cut the FAT!

-- Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. -- Jimi Hendrix

Reply to
Larry Jaques

To be accurate, I provided this link:

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only wanted to show a gitar with a mesquite fretboard, which I thought was cool. It may be well that the type of wood used to make the soundboard has a greater effect on a guitar's tone than the type of wood used to make any other part of the guitar. However, I don't personally agree as a general statement that only the soundboard affects how a guitar sounds. If that was true, a $150 mass-produced guitar could be made to sound as good as a $10,000 custom one, just by manufacturing it with a properly designed soundboard. (We're talking about acoustic guitars; solid body electrics don't have soundboards.) A bridge padded with soft rubber would obviously muffle the sound, which shows that the engineering of the bridge affects a guitar's sound. The dimensions of the body affect the sound, as does the placement and rigidity of the internal bracing. The shape of the frets definitely affects the sound quality; a fret flattened by wear muddies the sound. I could go on, but these examples make the point.

Reply to
Just Wondering

I saw another report claiming it was not the WOOD, per se, but the fact that the wood was not "finished" by union workers in India.

The feds are not saying - yet - just what their beef is, whether it's the wood itself or something else. The problem could be lack of the proper paperwork in the importation process. We don't know yet.

Reply to
HeyBub

It's even worse:

"[WASHINGTON] Today's uncovering of secret multi-agency program for shipping illegal Gibson guitars to Mexican drug cartels left red-faced officials of the U.S. Department of Justice scrambling for an explanation amid angry calls for a Congressional investigation...

"Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, Justice Department officials admitted that the guitars were part of a complicated sting program know as "Operation Fast and Fretless," ostensibly designed to stem traffic of illegal guitars and amplifiers between the U.S. and Mexico. The multi-agency program - involving Justice, ICE, TSA, EPA, IRS, FDA, Fish & Wildlife, USDA, and the Bureau of Whiskey, Groupies & Hotel Rooms - reportedly encourage border area pawn shops to sell the guitars to known drug kingpins."

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Reply to
HeyBub

There are whole guitars being made of wood that has been submerged in swamps for thousands of years.

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Reply to
DGDevin

Please document that whether or not wood workers in India belong to a union has anything to do with this matter. At least you didn't repeat the claim being made on the right-wing of the blogoshpere that the real reason Gibson was raided is because the company's CEO gave $3,500 to Republican candidates in the last election.

In this case that is apparently the basis of the action, that Indian law requires this wood to be finished there and not exported raw. Allegedly (as the popular saying goes) Gibson's paperwork was somewhat less than accurate, i.e. describing raw wood as finished pieces to get around the law. In a previous case the feds apparently tracked a shipment of allegedly illegally harvested wood from Madagascar through an intermediary to Gibson and that case is the subject of a lawsuit working its way through the courts.

Reply to
DGDevin

same) also suspected as one of the reasons for the tone of the early

18th century violin makers of the area, a la Stradivarius?
Reply to
Swingman

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