New Woods?

[Desmund Nichols]

Just curious, are there any new woods that you have in mind to work on basses? I see that the website says that a lot of woods are limited or discontinued.

[Ken Smith]

Just curious, are there any new woods that you have in mind to work on basses? I see that the website says that a lot of woods are limited or discontinued.

Well, some woods that were tried for Cores ended with letting demand regardless of our efforts. Also, in trying these other woods, we get to see what works best.

If it listed as is limited or discontinued, it's for a reason. We either don't need it or no one is really asking for it. Also, we are doing just fine with the other woods we have and use.

One example is Paulownia, a light weight Asian wood brought here by seeds 100s of years ago as packing filler for fine china. When the seeds were thrown away and some fell in the grass or got caught in the wind, they sprouted trees. We bought 2 small sliced up logs of this wood about 12 years ago. I think we made one heel block for a bolt-on and 2 basses with it as Cores. The wood was lightweight but soft. So soft that it didn't carve well along side the other woods it was glued up with and took extra time to level. This wood was used so save a few ounces in weight and ended up being dead piled in the basement for nearly 10 years after those few attempts. Recently, I sold the remaining stock pile (95% of what I purchased) to an specialty wood dealer below the price that I paid for the wood.

In Japan, this is known as 'Princess Tree'. I think they bought one bass with this wood in the core. That's all. It just didn't fly!

[Bryan L Williams]

That is very interesting about the packing filler! :)

Is this also known as "Dragonwood"?