You may have heard about the Customs Department's raid a week ago on the Gibson Guitar factories in Nashville and Memphis.
Armed agents wearing SWAT gear went into the factories during working hours, sent the employees home, and searched the factories for possibly illegal wood that is used for guitar fingerboards. They hauled off several pallets of wood, and assorted parts, and may have seized some completed instruments.
Guitar players everywhere are in an uproar over this, and the wingnuts are having a field day with it. They are claiming the Feds will take your guitar away from you.
...and the Feds could.
The guitar is a great instrument. It's very versatile, portable, durable, and lends itself to a vast array of music and playing techniques. An acoustic guitar is like a good dog- it can smother you with love or bark like mad. An electric guitar can be a growling monster or the sweetest dripping honey.
While Americans didn't invent the guitar, we did our own thing with it, and the most copied designs and sound all over the world come from a few American companies. The Gibson Guitar Co. is one of them. They make the fabled Les Paul guitar many other extremely popular models. They are also famous for their fine banjos and mandolins- both are the world standard of quality. Every product Gibson makes has a fingerboard, and the woods used for the board are either rosewood or ebony.
About 40 years ago, the U.S. lost it's market in cheap guitars to the Japanese. So instead of building instruments with low price as a big deal, they turned to building the best they could make, using only the best materials. Gibson was nearly run into the ground by bad management from the parent company who owned it in the 70's, and a young guy and his former college roommates, who all had just made some money on Wall St., bought Gibson at a very good price.
Henry Jusczkiewicz was the guy, and he became CEO of the privately owned corporation. He returned Gibson to it's golden days, and turned the troubled Gibson Guitar Co. around. He did it by going back to making guitars by hand, using only the best materials, and building their products like they were at their very best periods of the past. Gibsons were always expensive, and they're still very expensive. But they are like Cadillacs- as there are people who still want to drive American iron, so are there guitar players who want to play a Gibson, and nothing else will do.
If you own an American guitar, or know someone who does, I know how you players feel. Your guitar is special. It's better than others just like it. You got a particularly good one. We all feel the same way.
I worked for Gibson twice, over 10 years apart, for a few years each time, but I never really left the company; in between my periods of being a formal employee, I did custom work for Gibson as an independent contractor. The last job I did for them was finished in 2009. I got to know a lot about rare woods and the problems associated with them.
Before the Big Bust of 2008, Henry's efforts of reclaiming Gibson's glory days had largely succeeded. The company was selling everything it could make, even though the guitars were harder to find and much more expensive than ever. None of that mattered to the middle-aged baby boomers who always wanted one. They had the dough, and were willing to spend it, whether the guitar was an acoustic with a body made of rosewood and an ebony fingerboard, or a Les Paul with a rosewood board, or a Super 400 jazz box with an ebony fingerboard and bridge.
As long as the new guitar was made just the same way as it was in the past, using the same materials, they were happy.
Therein lay the problem. Gibson, Martin, and the other famous guitar makers could not
legally buy some of the most preferred wood because it was now endangered. Brazilian rosewood is an example:
For about 400 years, Brazilian rosewood was the preferred wood to use for guitar bodies. It's a very beautiful wood visually, and produces a deep resonant tone that sparkles on the high notes. As the demand for the wood grew- it was also widely used in furniture, premium home fixtures such as doors and cabinetry, and panelling. Lots of panelling. Some was solid, some was veneer, and Braz still graces boardroom walls all over the world. The demand eventually outstripped the supply. The trees just didn't grow fast enough. The forests were also being destroyed, accelerating the scarcity.
Before Brazil finally put a halt to all rosewood export, the wood cutters were down to harvesting the stumps of trees that had been cut down 50-100 years earlier. This stump wood was selling as a rough set- 2 or 3 boards just large enough to build a single guitar- for around $5,000 or more. And that was just the wood, long before it ever became a guitar. As the supply became increasingly scarce, this wood became the musical equivalent of blood diamonds.
To counter this, the CITES international treaty was developed and signed by almost all nations in the world. This treaty decrees which species are threatened or not, which may be harvested, how the wood is documented and registered, and other stuff. The US is a signatory to the treaty. Gibson and all the others know that trying to supply a steady demand for wood that is no longer sustainable (or even legal) is a losing deal. The industry turned to a close relative of Brazilian rosewood- Indian rosewood, which is also called Palisander.
Indian rosewood looks different, but has a beauty of it's own, and sonically, it is very hard to tell one rosewood from the other. Rosewood is as preferred for it's durability as much as it's other properties, and is the standard material for use in fingerboards. Every guitar has a fingerboard, and acoustic guitars also have rosewood bridges.
The only real difference between the two is their smell. Braz smells like roses (hence the name) when it is sanded, and Palisander smells like horse manure. Neither odor is noticeable once a guitar has finish on it.
Another fine hardwood used for fingerboards only is ebony. Ebony is a scrubby little tree that has very hard mostly black wood. It's very heavy and durable, and comes from Africa, India, Ceylon, and other tropical nations.
In 1988, a particularly black species from Madagascar, an island nation off Africa, became available. This ebony was desired for it's hardness, it's blackness, and it was very reasonably priced. Gibson began using it exclusively.
Cutting the ebony was a boon for the poor farmers of Madagascar. It brought in needed extra money. Unfortunately, they cut too much, and the wood went on the endangered list. Since many of Madagascar's native species are not found anywhere else on the world, endangerment is a very deep problem. For the ebony trees, once they are gone, that's it. There is not similar wood, period.
Henry is on the board of directors for the Rainforest Alliance, one of the organizations that certify and regulate the use of threatened woods. He is also a very controversial guy- he likes to sue, and has sued other guitar companies, large dealers, and others for copyright infringement, patent infringement, and similar issues often in the past. He has won some, lost some.
But he knows his certification paperwork. He was part of writing some of it.
In 2009, the Customs Dept. raided Gibson's Nashville factory, carrying firearms and wearing SWAT suits, and seized some pallets of Madagascar ebony that had been cut before the ban went into place (according to Henry). The wood was purchased from a broker who represented a large European wood dealer, and the certification papers were examined and the wood cleared customs at the port of entry. Why the wood was seized is very mysterious- no charges have been filed yet, but Henry has been pressing Customs to release his wood. It's not only expensive, but is vital to his production. He recently stepped up his legal actions, and was pressing for trial, or for charges against the company, but Customs is dragging it's feet.
Last week, Customs raided Gibson a second time, seizing pallets of Indian rosewood and pallets of Indian ebony. Neither wood is endangered. No explanations from Customs as to why this wood was seized.
The Indian wood problem has a complication. Some of the signatories of the CITES treaty added their own requirements to exportation. India, seeking to add value to it's raw materials, requires that all wood used for fingerboards must be finished goods when it is shipped. Apparently, Customs seized the wood on the possibility that it violated an Indian law, not a US law. Again, Henry steadfastly claims the wood meets all Indian certification.
While the wood is only part of a guitar, when finished, the complete instrument is worth much more. Henry stands to lose $3 million worth of finished goods.
He's a well known Republican; the Repubs have raised hell with this, claiming there is a conspiracy to put Gibson out of business. There are a lot of divisive issues now, and this one is unnecessary. It strikes to the heart of every person who wants a Gibson product.
It also comes at a very bad time, as the Gibson factory was flooded badly in Nashville. It took many months to get it running again.
I'm on Henry's side in this particular battle. I'm also worried that inattention to this by the Administration may really hurt Pres. Obama, come election time, as people love their guitars deeply. It is one of those things that non-political people will grab onto.
Customs should either pony up and present charges, or give the contested wood back. At the least, after 3 years, Henry should get his day in court.