Why walnut bridges and fretboards?

bazmaz said:

I don't find all walnut to be overly light. But it depends.

To be honest, just like rosewood, there is 'rosewood' and there is 'rosewood', ditto, there is 'walnut' and there is 'walnut'.

In the same way as I used to see nice, dark evenly coloured rosewood, the cheaper end would use really pale and variable coloured cheaper rosewood.

With the introduction of walnut, again, I am seeing some nice evenly dark examples (not as dark as rosewood, granted), and some horrid pale looking stuff.

Same reasoning. You CAN get nice walnut if you pay for it - not all walnut is cruddy. Was the same with rosewood too.

Click to expand...

I think that is the way with ebony too. Not all are created equal. I do know that back around 2010 Gibson got raided for illegal ebony from Madagascar under the Lacy Act and had a bunch of it seized. The way I understood it, the Madagascar ebony was better, just illegal. I believe though that they had ebony from India and that was not illegal and it was returned to them. Anyway, I don't know how one can tell Madagascar ebony from ebony from India, but I guess that there is a difference.

It does look odd, I like the darker woods all around. I know there would be sonic advantages with a spruce top uke but I don't like the looks of them.

That doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I prefer ukes with different kinds of components. My Bonanza Oreo has Corian saddle and nut.

Rllink said:

I think that is the way with ebony too. Not all are created equal. I do know that back around 2010 Gibson got raided for illegal ebony from Madagascar under the Lacy Act and had a bunch of it seized. The way I understood it, the Madagascar ebony was better, just illegal. I believe though that they had ebony from India and that was not illegal and it was returned to them. Anyway, I don't know how one can tell Madagascar ebony from ebony from India, but I guess that there is a difference.

Click to expand...

Oh absolutely - same with ANY wood - you get good examples and bad. No matter what it is. It's just not the case that ALL Walnut looks bad.

Black walnut is a highly desirable type of walnut used in high-end gun stocks, furniture, instruments, tobacco pipes, and numerous other high end items. In Ohio there were a number of incidents about 15 years ago of black walnut tree-rustling. Trees cut down and hauled away in the middle of the night and sold to saw mills willing to look the other way for $15k to 20k. Even the stumps and roots can go for big bucks. (The roots often make beautiful burled walnut pipes and guns.

So I can imagine how much an old growth koa or rosewood tree must sell for today. I seem to remember reading an article about Godin paying $100k for a huge koa tree. But I could be mistaken about the price.