Acoustic Magazine January 2016 Back Issue

You never stop learning, do you? During the course of everyday conversations, the remarks of a couple of guys who are far more knowledgeable about acoustic guitars than I am really got me thinking about the importance of tonewoods and how we all seem to gravitate to certain configurations. Rosewood and spruce is the first combo that springs to mind, quickly followed by mahogany and spruce, and then maybe mahogany and cedar.
The point made to me was that a quality acoustic guitar’s tone is more about the craftsman behind the instrument than the wood. “It’s about the chef, not the ingredients,” was how it was succinctly put to me. Yes, of course I’m aware that how an instrument is crafted has a massive impact on how well it performs, but I’m not sure I’d ever really considered the ‘chef’ to be the determining factor.
As I thought about this, I was reminded of time I spent with Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars – a man who has contributed as much as anybody to the high standards and quality of acoustic guitars today. When discussing with him the reducing stocks of available tonewoods and how his company was approaching the problem, he took me down the corridor and showed me a guitar hanging on the wall among some his greatest creations. The guitar had been built by Bob’s hands from a pallet retrieved from a skip on the compound. His point was to prove, again, it’s more about the chef than the ingredients. The lesson? Maybe we get too hung up on what a guitar is made from, rather than from who has built it.
Steve Harvey
Editor