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very very little D. melanoxylon can compete with finest Koa and Brazilian, say. trees are too small, twisted, and gnarly. because of the diameter, most NICE quartersawn includes sapwood (Jeffrey Elliott is, as far as i can tell, one of the biggest users of African Blackwood). but most of the time there are cracks, wormholes at worst and flatsawn sections at best. truly fine blackwood is at least equal in cost to the finest Koa, represented by the Brozeman above. (that is truly beautiful!). nothing beats the beauty of the finest Koa, but it’s really tough to find Blackwood with the perfection of the Brozeman example. i have pics, but can’t figure out how to post here. a perfect flitched set of blackwood which will be used by John Slobod; and a finshed guitar by Mr. Truaugot.
i like them precisely because they are a breeze to remove with NO damage to the guitar… i’ve never had a use for a pickup. of course, to remove all traces of electrification, one has to use something like the vintage jack from tapatune, too. i purchased a 34d, used, years ago, which had a properly installed k&k and vintage jack. actually did a tutorial, with pictures, of that pickup removal on the martin forum, when somebody asked back then.
I do feel it competes and diminishes from the “center of the plate”
sadly, agreed. see my larry robinson, martin millionth above. i’m all about the wood… with the exception that martin’s 45 style is elegant to me. but, have to hold off to see what the completed headplate looks like.
UNLESS…..RH has created a pickup system that eminates from the wood itself……
well, i thought of that… something organic… i hope. i remember when Brand M did their millionth… they took a wonderful piece of braz (extremely rare for them to even sell nice brazilian) and had Larry Robinsin rout most of the surface away for inlays. i mean, they HAD the brazilian…:) well, RH knows what he’s doing… he IS the man.
“Built by Richard Hoover with the finest tone woods on the planet……”
i agree with this part. wow on the design. now, and i really don’t want to create drama, but a pickup? really?
“Boutique”( I hate that word)
ME TOO! always hated that word – and pains me the RH even uses it:) all the great builders are way more that boutique-y.
re: pricing… the thing that jumps out at me, and i think it would be reflected in the pricing of these legacy (true legacy!) instruments for Richard, is indeed the provenance of the wood, the provenance of the trees. (not even taking into account the spiritual connection with the trees). so the dartboard that i would start with is: as noted, the scgc kauri om-45 currently at Down Home is 48.2K. Dana Bourgeois’ 2023 number 10,000 om-45 with, to me, his most spectacular wild “private stock” Brazilian (I’m typically only a fan of vertical non-stump) and solid 14K Gold-bar RIBBON in place of abalone/ablam for all the seams, was 95K (Dana bought the gold for something like 18K). Bill Collings’ #20,ooo D-45 using his most precious private stock of vertical-to-the-last-drop old-growth Brazilian was 75K in 2015 (albeit in the days when Collings still allowed 10-off.) so… upward of 100k, easy. hope i’m wrong for my sake, but not for scgc! Still a small shop…unbelievable.
Daniel, that’s the best idea I’ve heard as to what happened to both the SCGC and Collings fora since both of the original ones were “lost” (about at the same time!) and had to be born anew from the ground up, sadly without the participation of some of the diehard original hardcore members. Tremendous technical content was lost on both: for SCGC, some great historical contributions from the likes of Richard, Steve Swan and Dan Roberts (although facebook is indeed where Dan has been flourishing with his own instruments); on the old Collings forum, there were great back-and-fourths between the likes of “outsiders” John Arnold, Jim Merrill, Raymond Morin, John Griffin, Jim Baggett and one holdover, Frank Sanns. for me, the facebook format doesn’t do it.:)
