NEW - Gibson Dark Walnut Collection

[simoncroft]

I'm a fan of all of them, especially the 345 and Flying V. Too bad that the 345 does not have the Vari-tone knob. They've left off the most important feature to the 345. When I bought my ES-335, I was hoping that maybe an ES-345 would cross my path first. It's always been my favorite of the ES line. I do agree about the Flying V pickguard. Maybe black would be a better option. I even went that route with my '58 Flying V copy that I built. The bound fingerboard, is the Bee's Knees, and is perfect.

@RobinS, too bad I'm not sure when I'll be traveling to Germany again. I'm usually in the Mainz, Freiburg, or Pfronten areas often, and could arrange to have stuff shipped to me, then meet with you on one of my trips to see family or go to the factory for training. I do this often with friends and family in the UK and DE as my wife works for an airline, and I'm travelling inexpensively quite often.

My only walnut guitar has a mix of walnut and maple.


View attachment 102608

I used to own one of those. It was the actual one featured in The Ultimate Guitar Book. Very nicely made, but I felt the boomerang pickups were better looking than they were sounding. Also, cutting into the top fret just to have pretty pickups seemed a bit of a silly compromise. Wish I'd kept it though!

 

[Sapient]

Very cool. They should come with two extension sections like a kitchen table.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

I didn't know that all true mahog is considered endangered now.
That's depressing.

 

[Col Mustard]

yes it is depressing, but not necessarily for guitarists.
we can get along without tropical tone wood.
(and we should). It's just the world we live in now. Even in areas where there are
still harvestable supplies of tropical tone wood, all the big logs are long gone.
The idea of a Gibson SG with a one piece body made from a single log of mahogany
is a 20th century notion... totally obsolete now. It never made any difference to tone.

Guitarists can say: "well, I prefer a mahogany body with a rosewood fretboard"
but if the supplies of those woods are gone, or tied up in dodgy political situations
then the preferences of guitarist don't matter. We have to play what we can get our
grubby mitts on. And the value of older guitars made with those woods will go up.

We have plenty of good wood in this country. See my Gibson J-45 AG above.
Mahogany, rosewood and ebony are traditonal, but so is maple and cherry, ash
and walnut... how about hickory and beech... Alder and birch... Let's do this.

I don't think there's any reason we can't make good instruments with what we have.
Leo Fender has been making excellent guitars with maple necks and ash or alder bodies
since 1951.

If the world we live in has over-harvested all the tropical tone wood due to greed and
mismanagement, corruption and profiteering, then we can turn to the forests of North
America. We have no right to point the finger at anyone... we destroyed the native
forests in North America ruthlessly. We've re-planted some areas and they've grown
back nicely. With intelligent management we can move on and make excellent
instruments out of what grows in our new-growth forests.

 

[Thatbastarddon]

maple and cherry, ash
and walnut...

The only caveat there is ash. Ash is becoming more and more scarce. IIRC there has been a lot of loss of ash trees to invasive insect damage. G&L seem to be offering more “ash topped” bodies on their basses these days, and I do remember reading that they were having trouble getting ash a couple/few years ago.

Ash Trees Are Dying Everywhere. This Is Why.

A bug is going to make your summers hotter

www.sierraclub.org

 

[Headache]

The only caveat there is ash. Ash is becoming more and more scarce. IIRC there has been a lot of loss of ash trees to invasive insect damage. G&L seem to be offering more “ash topped” bodies on their basses these days, and I do remember reading that they were having trouble getting ash a couple/few years ago.

Ash Trees Are Dying Everywhere. This Is Why.

A bug is going to make your summers hotter

www.sierraclub.org

I made a guitar out of ash once, it was sooooo heavy

 

[67plexi]

I have a 1953 Fender Esquire one piece swamp Ash body it's light what I understand is Leo Fender was having a hard time sourcing light weight Ash
and went to alder in 1956

 

[Col Mustard]

I made a guitar out of ash once, it was sooooo heavy

yep, the bass I'm playing in my avatar is made of swamp ash... It's a lovely wood,
but the bass weighs ten pounds. Les Paul guys might not flinch at a ten pound instrument
...and I don't either because I'm a bass player and it's part of the job. We just shoulder a
heavy instrument. And we used to carry heavy amps too, but there's been some
advancements made in the last 20 years.

I named this one Luretta after a song by Townes Van Zandt.

But jeez! She's a heavy babe.

Well, I picked this body online at Warmoth, and I chose it for its beauty
AND because in 2009 it was much less expensive than all the other bodies they had, made out of exotic
and attractive woods. So I don't complain that it's heavy. My old '66 Fender weighed just over nine pounds.
I use a wide strap.

Where I hunt the ash trees have fallen like soldiers... lying this way and that way all through the forest.
Some have fallen across each other. The Emerald Ash Borer is the culprit. It's a bark beetle.
It kills large Ash trees and small ones. Pretty sad, unless you have a wood stove.