Green Guitars, Anyone?

[newey]

And, no, I don't mean a surf-green strat . . .

Just musing aloud here, but has it occurred to any G-nutz out there that our shared hobby/passion/profession doesn't exactly use the greenest, most sustainable technology? (No, not more sustain- most sustain-able)

How many mega-benefit "Concert For The Earth" things have we seen where the Big Rock Star professes his love for the environment in between playing tunes on a Koa bodied Tele or a Zebrawood strat. Beautiful pieces, to be sure, but it takes 40 years to grow a Koa tree.

A small point, maybe, and I can sense all the tone freaks rising up to smite me. "What, no exotic woods?" Well, hey, that day is coming!

Just curious, has anyone known of/heard of anyone experimenting with building a more sustainable guitar?

I know bamboo flooring is all the eco-rage now, the makers claim it's tougher than oak flooring. And bamboo can be farm-grown in 5 years to productive size. Why not a body out of laminated bamboo? Who knows, maybe it would "sustain" like crazy?

Similarly, pups could be wound with recycled wire. And gains could certainly be made in the manufacturing processes for the electronic parts we use, if the manufacturers saw a demand for a "greener" pots or switchs. Use of solvents in manufacturing processes could be reduced, for example.

If nobody's tried to build a greener guitar before this, maybe it should start right here with this community.

OK, this is turning into a rant now so I'll shut up now. But I may start experimenting . . .

[kuzi16]

ya know, i was thinking just the opposite...

i was thinking a guitar that is GAS powered and its made out of at least 5 different hard to find rain forest trees, Elephant Ivory for the nut and the inlay would glow in the dark because its radioactive.
just to make it worse i think i should have a case covered in baby seal skin with Koala fur on the inside.

;D


did i cross the line?

[newey]

As I was posting the above last night, I just knew someone was going to go with that, Kuz. But I was actually being semi-serious.

But I'm also a little surprised that we haven't seen some company marketing their guitars as "eco-friendly" since everything else is getting that spin in the marketplace these days.

Probably first off, we'll see someone selling their piezo-equipped Strat copy as a "Hybrid" . . .

[andy]

Of all the comanies that might try it, Yamaha have actually had a go. This is from a good few years back too.

www.giles.com/yamaha1/pressreleases/PAC/bamboo.htm

I read an underwhelming review at the time, and pretty much forgot about it. Looking through Harmony Central just now though, the response seems pretty good...

reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Guitar/product/Yamaha/FGB1/10/1

[flateric]

Have you not seen the launch of the new eco-Martin acoustic?

www.mguitar.com/guitars/choosing/guitars.php?p=c&g=9&m=LXM%20Little%20Martin

for HPL, read 'high pressure laminate' = formica kitchen surface! Good resonance too.

Made out of a combination of MDF and formica veneer and touted as a quality answer to the depletion of the rainforests looks like Martin have a struggle on their hands pandering to their traditional customers willing to shell out thousands of dollars for an authentic quality instrument. Good luck to them - PRS did a good job of cutting a lot of money out of their Korean production and retain a high quality reputation, they're launching more new models now than Fender-endorsed strat mods.

[JohnH]

Gibson appear to have dipped a toe into the green pond, with these 'Smartwood' guitars:

www.gibson.com/Products/GibsonElectric/Gibson%20Electric%20Guitars/LesPaul/Studios/Smartwood%20Studio/

J

[sumgai]

Not to forget Switch Guitar's Vibracell technology:

www.switchguitars.com


The problem here is obvious, for those who wish to give it a moment's cogitation - old habits die hard... really, really hard. (Challenge to ChrisK: make a two-worder out of that! )

Consider: If the vibracell guitar mentioned above had been introduced, say, a year after Leo's first Broadcaster, where do you think the industry would be today? I'd lay more than even money on there being a very large percentage of "alternative materials" guitars available today, perhaps even the majority of them.

No, the fact is, absolutely every person who has played a guitar 'expects' a certain tone to come out of it. When that tone is not forthcoming, then it doesn't matter one whit how "green" the guitar might be, all that counts is the fact that the guitar isn't going home with the potential buyer - he saved his money to buy tone, not green..... pure and simple, that little sentiment.

That's the habit you'll have to overcome. And guess what? That tone you need to "imitate" (you have to actually originate it, but it has to imitate a real guitar's tone)? In order to get that tone with non-traditional materials will require some investment of time, effort and most importantly, capital. More to the point, a lot of experimentation will need to take place, and if you're like most inventors I've ever met (including the one I see every morning in the mirror), you waste a helluva lot of materials, trying to get to the Holy Grail. But wait, it gets worse!

What about all that electricity I used while trying to find the chalice? And for that matter, what if the material is superior to wood (in terms of tone), but it takes car-load of coal to fire the generators to make enough electricity to form the material into the desired shape? Where's the "green benefit" in that, eh?

This comes under the heading of TCO - total cost of ownership. What is often forgotten though, is that in order to own something, that thing had to be made, and all of the costs in that making have to be considered in the final TCO figure, not just the purchase/operating/future maintenance costs. That's where most "green" cases go awry, they tend to forget the little niceties like this.

But not all, I said "most". Some companies are indeed into looking at the big picture, and will do well in the future. Not because they'll scream "we're green, we're green" until the cows come home, but because they'll be making a clearly superior product, in every way that matters to the buyer. You see, there isn't just one thing you can't legislate - morality - there's another thing along side of that - taste. You can't pass a law telling someone that he/she has to like a certain tone, even it it's not traditional, just for the sake of being green.

And that is truly why old habits die hard. ;D

HTH



sumgai

[newey]

Thanks Andy, flateric, Sumgai and JohnH for the links, guess it's not a new idea after all. I probably would have known that if I had googled before the post, but it was just something I had to get off my chest.

But I suspect it's some thing we'll be hearing more about in the future,

Sumgai (as always) makes a good point. You have to look at the big picture in these things. We could probably make a larger difference to the planet by convincing a few stars to park their Gulfstreams than by putting greener guitars in the hands of thousands of players.

As I said originally, a small point perhaps. But many thanks to alll who responded.

[mlrpa]

And then there's Rainsong Guitars, who started doing the green thing quite a few years ago. Their guitars are all made from carbon fiber, and have a respectable sound.











(edited by sumgai to show a link to their website)

[gfxbss]

seems to me that pete townshend skhould have played one of those. that would be a tough puppy to smash. ;D

[newey]

So there are MANY setting the trend here. However, I notice only the Gibson and the Switch are true electrics with mag pups. My original musing here kinda assumed an electric.

The Rainsong looks interesting but I didn't note any "green" claims in their promo materials there. I'm not sure carbon-fiber mfg. can claim to be terribly green- it's still pretty petro-chemical intensive. But you probably could play it in a driving rainstorm as the name implies. I'd be interested in seeing a solid-body electric out of that material tho.

[kuzi16]

newey said:

I'd be interested in seeing a solid-body electric out of that material tho.

i bet it would be more of a "solid" body.

by that i mean hollow (at least a little bit) but looks solid.

Im not 100% sure how carbon fiber works but i think that having the guitar 1 3/4+ inches thick out of solid CF would produce some building issues and needless cost. CF is incredably strong and a sheet even 1/4 of an inch thick is "structural" (at least for guitars)

either that or it would be filled with some sort of expanding foarm filler, but that hardly sounds green either...

[sumgai]

kuzi,

Interesting, what you say about CF being structural at ¼".

I note that probably nobody making guitars of CF (or graphite, for that matter) will be making any Green claims lately - they are energy-intensive in their manufacture, and that's a deal-killer right there. Not to mention that they're built to last virtually forever, meaning that they don't biodegrade if they're dumped - another "Green test" failure.

An interesting amalgam of CF and graphite can be found at Moses. Costly, but talk about a cut above the average.

HTH



sumgai

[newey]

Resurrecting this thread from 18 months ago because I predicted we'd see more of this.

Zero Impact Guitars

Now, we must ask the same question posed by Sumgai: Are they just screaming "We're Green, We're Green"?

The site speaks of using recycled swamp ash, recycling necks, and rewinding old pickups. But their production model "Eco-Axe" claims being made from FSC-certified Alder as its only "eco" feature. And it uses a Moses graphite neck (see previous discussion . . .).

How this all adds up to "Zero Impact" is unclear to me.

They do, however, give away "Wheat Ware biodegradable guitar picks" in a monthly drawing, along with a logo Tee and coffee mug.

If I used those, I wonder if all the picks I misplace would disintegrate before I found them again . . .

[cynical1]

Interesting. I remember thinking that would be a clever way to get quick name recognition for a new start up..."strike while the iron is hot" and capitalize off the current "green" mania. Granted, that's a bit cynical, but what did you expect...

With copper recycling prices being so high, and with the process involved in recycling it to wire, there's no cost benefit...if you could find someone who would cut a small OEM any deals on the spools...

The wood would be easy to find. Just find anyone tearing down an old building and you'd have a lifetime supply of hard dried wood to work from. A friend of mine built a guitar for his father from an old maple shelf be found in his grandfather's garage. Sorry in advance for the big images, but I don't have an image utility on this laptop and I'm off to catch a train...but take a look:













And the finishing can be done with water based products. Personally, I don't like them or use them myself, but there is a segment of the industry that swears by them. They are harder to work with as they have a tendency to raise the grain on the wood your working with, but hey, whatever blows your skirt up.

I would be willing to put money on the fact that, although everyone cries about saving the planet, no one would cough up the coin for a complete "zero-impact" guitar. My guess is, that if you found someone to make all your components out of recycled materials you'd be pushing the $3000.00 mark in a heart beat...and that'd be your cost.

So, the lesson is, the easiest way to go "green" is to have a lot of "green" to start with.

Happy Trails

Cynical One

[ChrisK]

I must confess to being confused.

If we make guitars out of trees, don't we have to grow the trees? Don't they convert carbon dioxide to oxygen (a relatively good things for humans). Doesn't it take a long time for the trees to grow? That's a lot of oxygen.

We destroyed over a million acres of rain forest in 2004 just to make room to grow the additional soybeans demanded by those "waxing green". (This really pd off my daughter when I told her - she likes soy products.)

Alternative materials infer synthetics, which are usually made from hydrocarbon compounds, often called oil.

The Emerald Boring Beetle (a gift from the Chinese) is destroying the ash trees in North America. Thousands in Ohio have already been precipitously destroyed to slow the spread and to reduce liability. Buy it now.


I think that the world should plant a million exotic trees in the fond hope of being around in 40 years to harvest them (and of course, to continuously replant).

It can't hurt; unless we figure out how to process soybeans into bodies (I tried, the significant addition of wasabe didn't help, well, it did help the taste).

It's mighty good on dried peas, though.

[newey]

The Emerald Boring Beetle (a gift from the Chinese) is destroying the ash trees in North America. Thousands in Ohio have already been precipitously destroyed to slow the spread and to reduce liability. Buy it now.

The response of many small towns in Ohio, when they lost all their elms to Dutch Elm disease in the 1960's, was to replace the elms with ash. And now we get this.

The good news is, 40 years later, science has developed a disease-resistant elm, so now we can all go back to elms on the treelawn.

Of course, Ash is used for guitars.

Problem is, the larvae reside in the wood after it's cut, and transporting infested trees is therefore verboten. There are signs all over instructing folks not to transport firewood for this reason.

Cut trees are burned on site, in what is probably a vain attempt to limit the spread.

Someone transporting infected wood into Ohio is presumed to be how we got the beetles in the first place.

[D2o]

I remember Dutch Elm running through Nova Scotia in the late 70's - early 80's ...

... and we have been trying to get a handle on the spread of "Asian Long Horn Beetles" in T.O. for the past number of years.

[sumgai]

Jul 13, 2009 9:02:09 GMT -5 D2o said:

... and we have been trying to get a handle on the spread of "Asian Long Horn Beetles" in T.O. for the past number of years.

Enter the Genetic Modification Kit, coming soon to a hardware store or nursery near you!

Yes, right behind mosquitoes and fleas (human-bothering pests), we'll be able to genetically wipe out plant-bothering pests, right off the shelf. Look for it in 10 years at best, probably way less.

HTH


Nostradamus (in disguise)