Carpathian Spruce

[Martin Sheridan]

Those mountains run through the region of Bosnia. And that is where he supposedly got it.

A few years ago some wood cutters were at the VSA and had various woods from all over the world, and invited makers to guess where it came from. Their point, as my friends made to me, is that one can not tell. I think they said there is one exception, but I can't think of what it is right now.

I don't know how many times I've heard dealers and makers say that the wood on such and such instrument came from...........fill in the blank. The wood cutters who have been all over claim this isn't so; that visually you can't say. I've noticed for example that some of the Chinese instruments I've handled look like they have Canadian red spruce, but they don't.
On the other hand some of the Chinese companies claim to sell instruments made with European wood. I don't know if that is true or not, but they charge more for them.

A few years ago I was talking to a wood cutter from the north country and he told me this story. A friend of his ordered some wood from Europe that was advertised as "Bosnian rarity". It was maple with a price tag way above what one would normally pay. When it arrived at his shop it still had the north country wood cutters name stamped on it( And to boot it wasn't even maple, but a highly flamed birch. I think it was cut in Michigan if I remember correctly, sold to the European dealer, who turned around and sold it back to a maker in the states as a rare Bosnian maple.

Another friend of mine went to a well known shop in Germany which sold woods to the US. He told me that all the uncut logs at the place where marked with stamps that said, USA. So I guess they could say truthfully that their wood was from Germany (having made a round trip).